EDNote: My travels unexpectedly took me out of internet range;
apologies for this delay. ~SB
FA: If VN really did think so highly of Wells, why did he not
choose him for his essays on English novels?
I don't know. Btw., young VN met Wells
in St.-Petersburg and Wells' son George (whom he disliked) in Cambridge.
Let's play some more word golf/anagams:
ERO = ORE = OREDEZH + ODA - ODEZHDA =
LADORE + Y - LADY = WHORE + Y - WHY = REBRO + I - RIB (Oredezh
is the river mentioned in Speak, Memory; oda is
Russian for 'ode;' odezhda is Russian for 'clothes;' rebro
is Russian for 'rib')
G + ORE = GORE = GEROY - Y = OREGON -
ON (gore is Russian for 'grief;' cf. Griboedov's play Gore
ot uma, "Woe from the Wit;" geroy is Russian for 'hero;'
on is Russian for 'he')
M + ORE = MORE = ROME = ROMEO - O (more
is Russian for 'sea') = HOMER - H
S + ORE = SORE = EROS
H + ERO = HERO = HEROD - D
Z + ERO = ZERO = OZERO - O (ozero
is for Russian 'lake')
Some of these words occur in Ada: "According to Bess (which is 'fiend' in
Russian), Dan's buxom but otherwise disgusting nurse, whom he preferred
to all others and had taken to Ardis because she managed to extract
orally a few last drops of 'play-zero' (as the old whore called it) out
of his poor body..." (2.10).
Bes (sic!) is Russian
for 'demon.' Besy ("The Demons") is a poem by Pushkin (1830)
and a novel by Dostoevsky ("The Possessed," 1872). There is a Russian
saying: Sedina v borodu, bes v rebro ("one's beard is turning
grey, a demon settles in one's rib"). It is quoted by Ostap Bender, the
hero of Ilf and Petrov's The
Twelve Chairs, who beats up Vorob’yaninov after the failure at the
auction when, because of Vorob’yaninov’s crush on Liza Kalachov, the
two missed the chance to acquire all ten Gambs chairs, one of which
concealed diamonds in its upholstery (ch. XXI: “Corporal Punishment”).
Zero it the favorite roulette number
of la baboulinka (Russo-Fr., 'grandma'), a character in
Dostoevsky's The Gambler (1867). On the other hand, in
The 12 Chairs (ch. XXV: "Conversation with a Naked Engineer"),
Bender and Vorob'yaninov are compared to gamblers who are "playing a
kind of roulette in which zero could come up eleven out of twelve
times. And, what was more, the twelfth number was out of sight, heaven
knows where, and possibly contained a marvellous win."
Note that chair is French
for 'flesh'.
Alexey Sklyarenko