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Re: golova, Golovin, Veen
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For what it's worth, Ivan Ilyich Golovin is the title character in
Tolstoy's "The Death of Ivan Ilyich"
JC
On Feb 10, 2010, at 7:14 AM, Alexey Sklyarenko wrote:
> As I said in one of my previous posts, golova is Russian for "head."
> The surname Golovin comes from golova. The Golovins were an old
> aristocratic family (included in Barkhatnaya kniga, "the Velvet
> Book," of Russian nobles). The most famous of them is Fyodor Golovin
> (1650-1706), diplomat, the state chancellor, an associate of Peter
> I. In the years of his diplomatic service in the Amur region (near
> the Chinese border) he founded Nerchinsk, the city that was a place
> of penal servitude during the next two centuries (it is mentioned by
> Pushkin in his poem Tsar Nikita and his Fourty Daughters, 1822).
>
> Ivan Gavrilovich Golovin (1816-90) was an émigré since 1844. He is
> the author of Geographic Studies (1849), Zapiski (Memoirs, 1859),
> etc. He loathed Lermontov and was loathed by Hertsen (both of whom
> he knew personally). One of his pen names was Nivolog (a palindrome
> that combines vino, voin and ovin* with Log, the Supreme being on
> Antiterra). His patronymic reminds one of Pushkin's Gavriiliada (a
> frivolous long poem about the Archangel Gabriel, 1821), not to be
> confused with Gavriliada, a cycle of poems on Gavrila by Nikifor
> Lyapis-Trubetskoy, a character in Ilf and Petrov's The 12 Chairs, a
> graphomaniac.
>
> The surname Veen, of the main heroes of Nabokov's Family Chronicle,
> looks as if the old Russian surname Golovin were "decapitated" (as a
> result of golovotyapstvo, which is Russian for "bungling" but
> literally means "head chopping") and all that remained of it was a
> little tail: Vin (or, in English spelling, "Veen").** Incidentally,
> vin is Ukrainian for "he" (as to the chopped off golo- part, it
> reminds one of golyi, "naked," golod, "hunger," and Goloday, an
> island in St. Petersburg, that was named, according to Nabokov,***
> after Holiday, an English manufacturer). As has been pointed out
> before, veen (pronounced 'feyn') is Dutch for "peat bog." Neva means
> the same in Finnish. Btw., Neva = Vena (Russian name of Vienna;
> besides, vena is Russian for "vein").
>
> In the pre-Revolutionary Russia, golova was also used in the sense
> gorodskoy [note the adjective's masc. ending! the noun golova is
> fem.] golova, "mayor." Golova (mayor) is a character in Gogol's
> stroy Noch' pered rozhdestvom (Christmas Eve). Another character in
> this story is chyort (the devil).
>
> *vino means "wine" in Russian, voin, "warrior," and ovin, "barn";
> besides, Batyushkov spells Bion, the ancient Greek poet (2nd century
> B. C.), Vion.
> **Similarly, the name Zemski, of Van's and Ada's ancestor, looks as
> if Zemski were an illegitimate son of Prince Vyazemski. Cf. the
> Trubetskoy/Betskoy and Repnin/Pnin pairs.
> ***see Glory
>
> Alexey Sklyarenko
> Search the archive Contact the Editors Visit "Nabokov Online Journal"
> Visit Zembla View Nabokv-L Policies Manage subscription options
> All private editorial communications, without exception, are read by
> both co-editors.
>
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Tolstoy's "The Death of Ivan Ilyich"
JC
On Feb 10, 2010, at 7:14 AM, Alexey Sklyarenko wrote:
> As I said in one of my previous posts, golova is Russian for "head."
> The surname Golovin comes from golova. The Golovins were an old
> aristocratic family (included in Barkhatnaya kniga, "the Velvet
> Book," of Russian nobles). The most famous of them is Fyodor Golovin
> (1650-1706), diplomat, the state chancellor, an associate of Peter
> I. In the years of his diplomatic service in the Amur region (near
> the Chinese border) he founded Nerchinsk, the city that was a place
> of penal servitude during the next two centuries (it is mentioned by
> Pushkin in his poem Tsar Nikita and his Fourty Daughters, 1822).
>
> Ivan Gavrilovich Golovin (1816-90) was an émigré since 1844. He is
> the author of Geographic Studies (1849), Zapiski (Memoirs, 1859),
> etc. He loathed Lermontov and was loathed by Hertsen (both of whom
> he knew personally). One of his pen names was Nivolog (a palindrome
> that combines vino, voin and ovin* with Log, the Supreme being on
> Antiterra). His patronymic reminds one of Pushkin's Gavriiliada (a
> frivolous long poem about the Archangel Gabriel, 1821), not to be
> confused with Gavriliada, a cycle of poems on Gavrila by Nikifor
> Lyapis-Trubetskoy, a character in Ilf and Petrov's The 12 Chairs, a
> graphomaniac.
>
> The surname Veen, of the main heroes of Nabokov's Family Chronicle,
> looks as if the old Russian surname Golovin were "decapitated" (as a
> result of golovotyapstvo, which is Russian for "bungling" but
> literally means "head chopping") and all that remained of it was a
> little tail: Vin (or, in English spelling, "Veen").** Incidentally,
> vin is Ukrainian for "he" (as to the chopped off golo- part, it
> reminds one of golyi, "naked," golod, "hunger," and Goloday, an
> island in St. Petersburg, that was named, according to Nabokov,***
> after Holiday, an English manufacturer). As has been pointed out
> before, veen (pronounced 'feyn') is Dutch for "peat bog." Neva means
> the same in Finnish. Btw., Neva = Vena (Russian name of Vienna;
> besides, vena is Russian for "vein").
>
> In the pre-Revolutionary Russia, golova was also used in the sense
> gorodskoy [note the adjective's masc. ending! the noun golova is
> fem.] golova, "mayor." Golova (mayor) is a character in Gogol's
> stroy Noch' pered rozhdestvom (Christmas Eve). Another character in
> this story is chyort (the devil).
>
> *vino means "wine" in Russian, voin, "warrior," and ovin, "barn";
> besides, Batyushkov spells Bion, the ancient Greek poet (2nd century
> B. C.), Vion.
> **Similarly, the name Zemski, of Van's and Ada's ancestor, looks as
> if Zemski were an illegitimate son of Prince Vyazemski. Cf. the
> Trubetskoy/Betskoy and Repnin/Pnin pairs.
> ***see Glory
>
> Alexey Sklyarenko
> Search the archive Contact the Editors Visit "Nabokov Online Journal"
> Visit Zembla View Nabokv-L Policies Manage subscription options
> All private editorial communications, without exception, are read by
> both co-editors.
>
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/