As I mentioned earlier, Annensky's penname was
Nik. T-o (nikto is Russian for "nobody"). One of Annensky's
articles in Vtoraya kniga otrazheniy ("The Second Book of Reflections",
1909) is Geyne prikovannyi ("Bedridden Heine"*).
Heine, who spent the last twenty five years of
his life (the last eight of them the poet was bedridden) in
Paris, writes in his Memorien: "Hier in Frankreich ist mir gleich nach meiner Ankunft in Paris
mein Deutscher Name "Heinrich" in "Henry" uebersetzt worden, und ich musste mich
darin schicken und auch endlich hierzulande selbst so zu nennen, da das Wort
Heinrich dem franzoesischen Ohr nicht zusagte und ueberhaupt die Franzosen sich
alle Dinge in der Welt recht bequem machen. Auch den Namen "Henri Heine" haben
sie nie recht aussprechen koennen, und bei den meisten heisse ich Mr. Enri Enn;
von vielen wird dieses in Enrienne zusammengezogen, und einige nannten mich Mr.
Un rien.**"
Un rien = Ruinen (cf. in Ada: "His [David van Veen's] nephew and heir, an
honest but astoundingly stuffy clothier in Ruinen (somewhere near Zwolle,
I'm told), with a large family and a small trade, was not cheated out of the
millions of guldens, about the apparent squandering of which he had been
consulting mental specialists during the last ten years or so." 2.3) = reunion - o
In his Memorien Heine tells that he had
received his name Harry (he was baptised and became Heinrich only much later) in
honor of his father's friend and business partner in Liverpool. Heine's father
was a Jewish merchant in Duesseldorf who sold, among other things, velveteen
(Mr. Harry knew the best factories in Liverpool and Manchester*** that
produced velveteen).
Velveteen + v = velvet +
Veen (cf. about David van Veen's nephew and heir: "A tattling tabloid reported, around 1890, that out of curiosity
'Velvet' Veen traveled once - and only once - to the nearest floramor
with his entire family", 2.3)
David van Veen = divan [Dvina] +
dva + even (dva - Russ., two;
Dvina - Western Dvina, Daugava, and Northern Dvina,
rivers in Kurland and Russia)
Btw., I notice that the maiden name of Heine's wife
Augustine (whom the poet called Mathilde) was Mirat. Cf. Marat, who was stabbed
by Charlotte Corday, and Murat, on Antiterra, the Navajo chieftain who was
shot by Cora Day
*a play on Prometey
prikovannyi ("Prometheus Bound", a tragedy by Aeschylus)
**"Mr. Nothing"
***There is liver in Liverpool and
man in Manchester; an eagle daily tore at Prometheus's liver
until he was finally released by Hercules (btw., in Ilf and Petrov's "The Golden
Calf", the secret Soviet millionaire Koreyko is a modest employee in
Gerkules, a Chernomorsk firm that deals in woods,
les, having nothing to do with the hero of Greek myths; one
remembers famillionaer, one of several portmanteau words in
Heine's Die Baeder von Lucca)
Alexey Sklyarenko