In the 1920s VN wrote a negative
review of Remizov' "Звезда надзвёздная" (Star above the Stars).
FA: If VN really did think so highly of Wells, why did he not
choose him for his essays on English novels?
I don't know. Btw., young VN met Wells
in St.-Petersburg and Wells' son George (whom he disliked) in Cambridge.
Let's play some more word golf/anagams:
ERO = ORE = OREDEZH + ODA - ODEZHDA =
LADORE - LAD = REBRO + I - RIB (Oredezh is the river mentioned
in Speak, Memory; oda is Russian for 'ode;' odezhda
is Russian for 'clothes;' rebro is Russian for 'rib')
G + ORE = GORE = GEROY - Y = OREGON -
ON (gore is Russian for 'grief;' cf. Griboedov's play Gore
ot uma, "Woe from the Wit," mentioned in Ada; geroy
is Russian for 'hero;' on is Russian for 'he')
M + ORE = MORE = ROME = ROMEO - O =
HOMER - H (more is Russian for 'sea')
S + ORE = SORE = EROS = ROSE
H + ERO = HERO = HEROD - D = WHORE - W
Z + ERO = ZERO = OZERO - O (ozero
is Russian for 'lake')
Some of these words occur in Ada: "According to Bess (which is 'fiend' in
Russian), Dan's buxom but otherwise disgusting nurse, whom he preferred
to all others and had taken to Ardis because she managed to extract
orally a few last drops of 'play-zero' (as the old whore called it) out
of his poor body..." (2.10).
Bes (sic!) is Russian
for 'demon,' 'evil spirit.' Besy is a poem by Pushkin
("Demons," 1830) and a novel by Dostoevsky ("The Possessed," 1872).
There is a Russian saying: Sedina v borodu, bes v rebro
("one's beard is turning grey, a demon settles in one's rib"), meaning
'one is a prey to desires, as one is getting old.' It can be applied to
ageing Daniel Veen. On the other hand, this saying is quoted by Ostap
Bender, the hero of Ilf and Petrov's The Twelve Chairs,
who beats up Vorob’yaninov after the failure at the auction when,
because of Vorob’yaninov’s crush on Liza Kalachov, the two missed the
chance to acquire all ten Gambs chairs, one of which concealed diamonds
in its upholstery (ch. XXI: “Corporal Punishment”).
Zero it the favorite roulette number
of la baboulinka (Russo-Fr., 'grandma'), a character in
Dostoevsky's The Gambler (1867). On the other hand, in
The 12 Chairs (ch. XXV: "Conversation with a Naked Engineer"),
Bender and Vorob'yaninov are compared to gamblers who are "playing a
kind of roulette in which zero could come up eleven out of twelve
times. And, what was more, the twelfth number was out of sight, heaven
knows where, and possibly contained a marvellous win."
Note that chair is French
for 'flesh'. This word also occurs, along with plaisir (cf.
'play-zero' above, Bess' pun on plaisir), in Ada:
"Marina, with perverse vainglory, used to affirm in bed that Demon's
senses must have been influenced by a queer sort of 'incestuous'
(whatever that term means) pleasure (in the sense of the French plaisir,
which works up a lot of supplementary spinal vibrato), when he fondled,
and savored, and delicately parted and defiled, in unmentionable but
fascinating ways, flesh (une chair) that was both of his wife
and that of his mistress, the blended and brightened charms of twin
peris, an Aquamarina both single and double, a mirage in an emirate, a
germinate gem, an orgy of epithelial alliterations." (1.3)
Alexey Sklyarenko