Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0019403, Sat, 13 Feb 2010 16:52:13 +0300

Subject
Veen
Date
Body
From Russia and the Golovins back to Neverland and the Veens. If I'm not mistaken, the Dutch pronounce the word veen ("peat bog") rather like the Anglophones do "feign" (a minor point, but perhaps worth noting; I'm indebted to A. Bouazza who clarified it to me). A couple of anagrams with Veen, just to "divert" folks:

VEEN = EVEN = NEVERLAND + O - RONALD = VENERA + ROD - ARDOR

VAN VEEN = NEVA + VENICE - ICE = VENENA + V

DAVID VAN VEEN = DVE NA DIVANE + V = DEVA NE DIVAN + V = NA DNE + AVID + VEVEY + E - EYE

Ronald is a male given name; cf. Ronald Oranger, the publisher of Ada (5.4); Venera is the Russian name of Venus; Venera = Erevan (the capital of Armenia); rod is Russian for "family, kin, clan"

Neva is "the legendary river of Old Rus" (2.1); venena is Latin for "poison" (cf. the line from Blok's poem about a Jewish chemist: "And before the cabinet inscribed venena")

David van Veen is a wealthy architect of Flemish extraction, a grandfather of Eric Veen (2.3); dve na divane means "two [girls] on the divan," deva ne divan, "a girl is not a divan," in Russian; btw., divan = Dvina (Western Dvina and Northern Dvina, two rivers in Russia); Na dne ("At the Bottom," 1902) is a famous play by Gorky; Vevey is a town on the north shore of Lake Geneva between Lausanne and Montreux; in Russian, it is pronounced exactly like "V. V.," the acronym VN's name-and-patronymic

Alexey Sklyarenko

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