Subject
Bulgarian allusions
From
Date
Body
Vadim Vadimovich writes about his surname that he can not remember:
"I definitely felt my family name began with an N and bore an odious resemblance to the surname or pseudonym of a presumably notorious (Notorov? No) Bulgarian, or Babylonian, or, maybe, Betelgeusian writer with whom scatterbrained emigres from some other galaxy constantly confused me; but whether it was something on the lines of Nebesnyy or Nabedrin or Nablidze (Nablidze? Funny) I simply couldn't tell. I preferred not to overtax my willpower (go away, Naborcroft) and so gave up trying - or perhaps it began with a B and the n just clung to it like some desperate parasite?"
If V. V.'s family name is Blagidze (as I believe Don Johnson also thinks), then it resembles Blagoev, a rather frequent surname in Bulgaria. Dimitr Blagoev (1856-1924) was the founder and leader of the Bulgarian Communist party. He happens to be a namesake of Dmitri Insarov, the hero of Turgenev's novel Nakanune (On the Eve, 1860), a Bulgarian insurgent. The names Insarov and Starov (the name of Iris's murderer, with which Insarov rhymes) have the letters a, o, r, s, v and the names Insarov and Sirin (Nabokov's Russian nom de plume) the letters i, n, r, s, in common.
STAROV + SIRIN = INSAROV + STIR
Alexey Sklyarenko
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"I definitely felt my family name began with an N and bore an odious resemblance to the surname or pseudonym of a presumably notorious (Notorov? No) Bulgarian, or Babylonian, or, maybe, Betelgeusian writer with whom scatterbrained emigres from some other galaxy constantly confused me; but whether it was something on the lines of Nebesnyy or Nabedrin or Nablidze (Nablidze? Funny) I simply couldn't tell. I preferred not to overtax my willpower (go away, Naborcroft) and so gave up trying - or perhaps it began with a B and the n just clung to it like some desperate parasite?"
If V. V.'s family name is Blagidze (as I believe Don Johnson also thinks), then it resembles Blagoev, a rather frequent surname in Bulgaria. Dimitr Blagoev (1856-1924) was the founder and leader of the Bulgarian Communist party. He happens to be a namesake of Dmitri Insarov, the hero of Turgenev's novel Nakanune (On the Eve, 1860), a Bulgarian insurgent. The names Insarov and Starov (the name of Iris's murderer, with which Insarov rhymes) have the letters a, o, r, s, v and the names Insarov and Sirin (Nabokov's Russian nom de plume) the letters i, n, r, s, in common.
STAROV + SIRIN = INSAROV + STIR
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/