…“as to the chopped off
golo- part”, should I add to
Alexey’s exegesis from unusual angle (a lurking taxonomic idiolect):
Golovin
– Vin
[Veen] in Russian exactly mirrors the zoological terminology golotip
(holotype) – tip (type).
While
holotype is the most important term in taxonomy (=the unique
original specimen of the species), it is often but imprecisely also called “type”;
the couple seems to be a play relevant to VN’s constant literary emphasis on unique
as opposed to typical. See VN – HH dialogue in Lolita: A Screenplay
about species and specimens.
Plus,
there is a precious comical Greek/Russian pseudohomophony, holo- /golo-,
Greek ‘h’ (like German) again is Russian ‘g’, bringing in
discussion of weird Russian transliterations (Gomer, Gamlet, Golokost), always relevant
to VN visual interlinguistics.
Note
that when (in old or alternative Russian usage) this “h” is dropped, one gets Omir
instead of Gomer, omonim (not gomonim) , etc.
A
non-sophisticated Russian would read “holo” as “golo” (naked,
empty), since there are plenty of words starting with “golo-“ (e.g. golodranets,
ragamuffin), often visually fusing “naked” and “hungry” (golod). Golotip
then becomes something like “naked type” (a Platonian featherless human?),
dangerously close to Schedrin’s golovotiap.
Golo of course is palindrome
of O Log
One
also recalls Pushkin’s comical but rich ‘literary’ rhyme goly / glagoly
(naked / verbs) (Domik v Kolomne.)
Victor
Fet
From: Vladimir Nabokov
Forum [mailto:NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU] On Behalf Of Alexey Sklyarenko
Sent: Wednesday, February 10, 2010 7:14 AM
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Subject: [NABOKV-L] golova, Golovin, Veen
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
All
private editorial communications, without exception, are read by both co-editors.