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VN and Andrej Bitov (fwd)
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From: Ulrike Goldschweer <goldsub3@mailhost.rz.ruhr-uni-bochum.de>
I'd like to draw your attention to the cycle of stories
'Prepodavatel' simmetrii' (The teacher of symmetry, cf. Chelovek v
pejzazhe. Povesti i rasskazy, Moskva 1988, S.309ff.), written by
Andrej Bitov. In his "Foreword" Bitov invents an author named E.
Tajrd-Boffin (which ist indeed an anagram of Andrej Bitoff, as Bitov
himself told Ellen Chances, cf. The ecology of inspiration, 1993,
p.290, fn. 20), whose stories he is going to re-tell (or re-invent).
Protagonist (or narrator, or author?) of some of the stories is the
writer URBINO VANOSKI, who later changes his pseudonym into RIS
VOKONABI, both names being - in my opinion - anagrams
of SIRI(N)-NABOKOV, a conclusion furthered by another anagram
in the first story of the cycle (Vid neba Troi/The sky above Troia),
namely V. VAN-BOOK, and by many other details throughout the stories.
Given Bitov's actual occupation with Nabokov and his work, the idea
of Bitov (a great mystificator of himself, too) hiding
references to Nabokov in some of his texts doesn't seem improbable at all.
I wrote about it in my dissertation forthcoming around
summer/autumn of this year. By the way: I came upon these
associations by chance, the main subject was chaos theory and how to
use it in literary theory.
The problem is that, if one has identified some of the hints (e.g. the
anagrams), the search for more of them gets a Kinbotean touch, for it
is next to impossible to differentiate between details "the author has
hidden" and details that are the result of one's own reading.
Bitov's stories are still worth reading.
Ulrike Goldschweer
Ulrike Goldschweer
Lotman-Institut fuer russische
und sowjetische Kultur
Ruhr-Universitaet Bochum
D - 44780 Bochum
goldsub3@rz.ruhr-uni-bochum.de
I'd like to draw your attention to the cycle of stories
'Prepodavatel' simmetrii' (The teacher of symmetry, cf. Chelovek v
pejzazhe. Povesti i rasskazy, Moskva 1988, S.309ff.), written by
Andrej Bitov. In his "Foreword" Bitov invents an author named E.
Tajrd-Boffin (which ist indeed an anagram of Andrej Bitoff, as Bitov
himself told Ellen Chances, cf. The ecology of inspiration, 1993,
p.290, fn. 20), whose stories he is going to re-tell (or re-invent).
Protagonist (or narrator, or author?) of some of the stories is the
writer URBINO VANOSKI, who later changes his pseudonym into RIS
VOKONABI, both names being - in my opinion - anagrams
of SIRI(N)-NABOKOV, a conclusion furthered by another anagram
in the first story of the cycle (Vid neba Troi/The sky above Troia),
namely V. VAN-BOOK, and by many other details throughout the stories.
Given Bitov's actual occupation with Nabokov and his work, the idea
of Bitov (a great mystificator of himself, too) hiding
references to Nabokov in some of his texts doesn't seem improbable at all.
I wrote about it in my dissertation forthcoming around
summer/autumn of this year. By the way: I came upon these
associations by chance, the main subject was chaos theory and how to
use it in literary theory.
The problem is that, if one has identified some of the hints (e.g. the
anagrams), the search for more of them gets a Kinbotean touch, for it
is next to impossible to differentiate between details "the author has
hidden" and details that are the result of one's own reading.
Bitov's stories are still worth reading.
Ulrike Goldschweer
Ulrike Goldschweer
Lotman-Institut fuer russische
und sowjetische Kultur
Ruhr-Universitaet Bochum
D - 44780 Bochum
goldsub3@rz.ruhr-uni-bochum.de