Subject
Vandemonian
From
Date
Body
"Wincing and rearraging his legs, our young Vandemonian cursed under his breath the condition in which the image of the four embers of a vixen's cross had now solidly put him. One of the synonyms of 'condition' is 'state,' and the adjective 'human' may be construed as 'manly' (since L'Humanite means 'Mankind'!), and that's how, my dears, Lowden recently translated the title of the malheureux Pompier's cheap novel La Condition Humaine, wherein, incidentally, the term 'Vandemonian' is hilariously glossed as 'Koulak tasmanien d'origine hollandaise'." (2.5)
The term 'Vandemonian' (absent from Malraux's La Condition Humaine) reminds one of pandemonium, "the abode of all the demons" and hell's capital in Milton's Paradise Lost, but also of Van Diemen's Land, the former name of Tasmania. Van Diemen's Land is mentioned in the beginning of Swift's Gulliver's Travels: "in our passage from thence to the East-Indies, we were driven by a violent storm to the north-west of Van Diemen's Land" (A Voyage to Lilliput, Chapter I).
The name of the ship onboard which Gulliver sails from Bristol to the South-Sea, Antelope, brings to mind Antelope Gnu, the name Ostap Bender gives to Adam Kozlevich's car in Ilf and Petrov's The Golden Calf.
As to pandemonium, it is mentioned in The Twelve Chairs, the first novel of Ilf and Petrov's dilogy: "If I stole them [the chairs] from you, then take the matter to court, but don't cause pandemonium in my house" (Chapter Thirty-Seven, "The Green Cape"). Engineer Bruns addresses these words to Father Fyodor, the priest who became a diamond hunter. Earlier in the novel, as they stay in Sorbonne, a cheap hotel in Stargorod, Ostap Bender asks Father Fyodor through the keyhole of a locked door: "How much is opium for the people [i. e. religion]?" (Chapter Twelve, "The Sultry Woman, a Poet's Dream").
One of five or six words glossed in Malraux's "Chinese" novel is nguyen, "to need badly" in the slang of Shanghai opium-smokers. Nguyen is an imperfect anagram of Jungen, German for "boys". In The Twelve Chairs (Chapter Thirty-One, "A Magic Night on the Volga") Vorob'yaninov (who is about fifty) travels as Ostap's "boy" (an artist's assistant) onboard the Skryabin ship.
pandemonium + Van Diemen = Vandemonian + pen + medium
Laputa + lopata + plebs + pagoda + doroga + Daugava + Ind = palata + bes poputal + Ladoga + pogoda + raduga + Dvina
Laputa - the flying island in Gulliver's Travels; Laputa = uplata (payment, paying); cf. in Ada (Part Four): "Her two maids, who were supposed to have flown over the day before on a Laputa (freight airplane) with her trunks, had got stranded somewhere... they couldn't pay the absolutely medieval new droits de douane"
lopata - Russ., spade, shovel; lopata = oplata (pay, payment)
doroga - Russ., road; doroga = goroda (cities)
Daugava - Latvian name of Dvina
Ind - Russian name of Indus; Ind = dni (days)
palata - Russ., palace; chamber, hall
bes poputal - Russ., "it's the devil's work"
Ladoga - lake in NW Russia, the biggest in Europe; the Neva flows from the Ladoga lake to the Bay of Finland; on Antiterra, an elegant town in Mayne, U.S.A.; Ladoga = Lagado (the metropolis of Balnibarbi, the continent in Part III of Gulliver's Travels)
pogoda - Russ., weather
raduga - Russ., rainbow
Dvina - see Daugava; Dvina = divan
Alexey Sklyarenko
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/
The term 'Vandemonian' (absent from Malraux's La Condition Humaine) reminds one of pandemonium, "the abode of all the demons" and hell's capital in Milton's Paradise Lost, but also of Van Diemen's Land, the former name of Tasmania. Van Diemen's Land is mentioned in the beginning of Swift's Gulliver's Travels: "in our passage from thence to the East-Indies, we were driven by a violent storm to the north-west of Van Diemen's Land" (A Voyage to Lilliput, Chapter I).
The name of the ship onboard which Gulliver sails from Bristol to the South-Sea, Antelope, brings to mind Antelope Gnu, the name Ostap Bender gives to Adam Kozlevich's car in Ilf and Petrov's The Golden Calf.
As to pandemonium, it is mentioned in The Twelve Chairs, the first novel of Ilf and Petrov's dilogy: "If I stole them [the chairs] from you, then take the matter to court, but don't cause pandemonium in my house" (Chapter Thirty-Seven, "The Green Cape"). Engineer Bruns addresses these words to Father Fyodor, the priest who became a diamond hunter. Earlier in the novel, as they stay in Sorbonne, a cheap hotel in Stargorod, Ostap Bender asks Father Fyodor through the keyhole of a locked door: "How much is opium for the people [i. e. religion]?" (Chapter Twelve, "The Sultry Woman, a Poet's Dream").
One of five or six words glossed in Malraux's "Chinese" novel is nguyen, "to need badly" in the slang of Shanghai opium-smokers. Nguyen is an imperfect anagram of Jungen, German for "boys". In The Twelve Chairs (Chapter Thirty-One, "A Magic Night on the Volga") Vorob'yaninov (who is about fifty) travels as Ostap's "boy" (an artist's assistant) onboard the Skryabin ship.
pandemonium + Van Diemen = Vandemonian + pen + medium
Laputa + lopata + plebs + pagoda + doroga + Daugava + Ind = palata + bes poputal + Ladoga + pogoda + raduga + Dvina
Laputa - the flying island in Gulliver's Travels; Laputa = uplata (payment, paying); cf. in Ada (Part Four): "Her two maids, who were supposed to have flown over the day before on a Laputa (freight airplane) with her trunks, had got stranded somewhere... they couldn't pay the absolutely medieval new droits de douane"
lopata - Russ., spade, shovel; lopata = oplata (pay, payment)
doroga - Russ., road; doroga = goroda (cities)
Daugava - Latvian name of Dvina
Ind - Russian name of Indus; Ind = dni (days)
palata - Russ., palace; chamber, hall
bes poputal - Russ., "it's the devil's work"
Ladoga - lake in NW Russia, the biggest in Europe; the Neva flows from the Ladoga lake to the Bay of Finland; on Antiterra, an elegant town in Mayne, U.S.A.; Ladoga = Lagado (the metropolis of Balnibarbi, the continent in Part III of Gulliver's Travels)
pogoda - Russ., weather
raduga - Russ., rainbow
Dvina - see Daugava; Dvina = divan
Alexey Sklyarenko
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/