I think I like this anagram better than its earlier version, with G and gagara:
 
ARAGVA + KURA + TARTAR + BERLIN + MOISEY + KVAS = ARARAT + KURVA + GIBRALTAR* + ENISEY + MOSKVA (Moisey is the Russian name of Moses, the Hebrew prophet who led the Israelites out of Egypt and who is mentioned in Ada: 1.14; kvas is a Russian non-alcoholic drink; cf. kvasnoy patriotizm, "jingoism;" Ararat is a mountain in E Turkey, a landing place of Noah's ark; Enisey is a Siberian river mentioned in Mandelshtam's poem "Za gremuchuyu doblest' gryadushchikh vekov...";** Moskva is the Russian name of Moscow; cf. Mandelshtam's kurva Moskva, "Moscow the whore," translated by Lowell as "the curved streets of Moscow")
 
*GIBRALTAR = GRIB ("mushroom;" cf. about Price: "old retainer whom Marina (and G. A. Vronsky, during their brief romance) had dubbed... 'grib'" 1.38) + ALTAR (on Antiterra, a place name apparently corresponding to our Gibraltar; cf. "a small map of the European part of the British Commonwealth - say, from Scoto-Scandinavia to the Riviera, Altar and Palermontovia..."). By the way, GRIB + VOEVODA (commander of an army in medieval Russia; the title of Pushkin's 1833 translation of Mickiewicz's poem Czaty, "The Ambush") + DIANA = GRIBOEDOV + VANIADA (Van-and-Ada; cf. "the Vaniada divan," 2.5, "Vaniada's Adventures," 2.7).
**"For the sake of the resonant valor of ages to come..." (the poem's line 13 reads: Uvedi menya v noch', gde techyot Enisey, "Lead me into the night where the Enisey flows;" Nabokov's translation of the poem that was also mistranslated by Lowell can be found in his article "On Adaptation" (1969), SO, pp. 280-81) 
 
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.