Dear Friends,
Amid
all the admirable research and discourse dedicated to these words and
related matters, I noted the mention of "Dmitri's memory" as a possible
source of assistance. I can offer the following tidbits. I have a very
clear, even tactile recollection of the upright metal posts for
passengers to hang onto, usually located near the doors and on the open
platforms of European urban public conveyances.The Russian term for
them that, as a child, I learned from my father was штанга [shtanga].That,
of course, does not preclude the plethora of other usages and of
variants in other languages (such as stang in English,
stangue in French, stanga and the aggressive verb stangare
in Italian, or the German stange
from which, like certain other words with a technical sense, it may
have traversed to Russian. It is also true that VN also used it for a
(generally wooden) soccer goalpost. I doubt that there is any link here
between the suicide journeys in The Gift and Pale Fire.
I can also offer an amusing sidelight for "beaver." My father once
told me about a game played at Cambridge when he was a student there.
When one among a company of friends was the first to espy a bearded
gentleman he would cry out "beaver," and thereby win a point. A similar
game, I am told, is played in present-day Russia using sightings of
cats or automobiles of an agreed-upon color.
DN
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