Like Golovin (Ivan Ilyich's surname in Tolstoy's
story), Karenin (Anna Arkadievna's and her husband's surname in Tolstoy's novel)
comes from "head". Karenon (the word Tolstoy discovered in Homer) means
in Greek what golova means in Russian: "head".*
The name Van Veen, of Ada's
protagonist, looks like the curtailed, or "beheaded", name Ivan
Golovin. The little tail vin (all that remains of Golovin
after beheading) means "he" in Ukrainian. The Russian word for "he" is
on.
While karenon ends in -on, the name Onegin
begins with it. There are many
on's ("he's") in Eugene Onegin. For the first time
it occurs in the novel's third line:
On uvazhat' sebya zastavil
He [Onegin's uncle] has made one respect him [in
other words, has died].
In her letter to Onegin (Chapter Three)
Tatiana once refers to him in the third person:
Ty chut' voshyol, ya vmig
uznala,
vsya obomlela, zapylala
i v myslyakh molvila: vot
on!
Scarce had you entered, instantly I knew
you,
I felt all faint, I felt aflame,
and in my thoughts I uttered: It is
he!
In his long poem Khorosho ("Good", 1927)
Mayakovsky parodies Tatiana's dialogue with her nurse in Chapter Three of
EO and also uses the pronoun on:
A kak poyot on pro svobodu...
Ya s nim khochu, - Ne s nim, tak v
vodu!
And how he [A. F. Kerenski] sings of
freedom...
I want with him. If not with
him, then [I'll plunge] into water!
If mysterious Khina Chlek** = Lilya Brik,
then Lapis-Trubetskoy, a character in Ilf and Petrov's "The Twelve Chairs", a
graphomaniac, is a satire on Mayakovski, Lilya Brik's lover. A newspaper
editor calls Lapis, who once used the word domkrat*** in a
wrong context, Lapsus. Lapis is Latin for "stone", while
lapsus means "blunder". The name R. G. Stonelower, of the
translator who rendered the title of Tolstoy's novel as Anna
Arkadievich Karenina (1.1), seems to hint not only at George Steiner and
Robert Lowell, but also at Nikifor Lapis-Trubetskoy.
*I point this out in "Vsyo khorosho, chto
khorosho konchaetsya" (All's Well that Ends Well), a Russian
article available online in Topos.
**Lapis's former mistress in Ilf and Petrov's
novel. Khina Chlek = chlen (member) + Kikhada (Don Quixote's real name in
Cervantes's novel; transliterated Russian spelling) - da (yes)
***jack. Domkrat + e = demokrat (democrat;
while Lapis doesn't know what a domkrat is, the meaning of
democrat is unknown to Mayakovski)
Alexey Sklyarenko