From Ada's letter to Van: He [Demon] and I have gamed at Nevada, my rhyme-name
town, but you are also there, as well as the legendary river of Old Rus.
(2.1)
Nevada blends Neva, the river flowing from Lake Ladoga through
St. Petersburg (VN's home city and Russia's former capital) into the Gulf
of Finland, with Ada. Nevada obviously has no Van in it. But
Veen being the family name of Demon, Demon's cousin Dan and their
children Van, Ada and Lucette, Ada does not make a mistake when
she states that Van is also there. For, in Dutch
veen means what neva means in Finnish: "peat
bog."
In the Prologue to The Bronze Horseman (1833) Pushkin
mentions the low and marshy banks of the Neva and the Finnish
fisherman, a sad stepson of Nature:
Прошло сто лет,
и юный град,
Полнощных стран краса и
диво,
Из тьмы лесов, из топи
блат
Вознёсся пышно, горделиво;
Где прежде
финский рыболов,
Печальный пасынок
природы,
Один у низких берегов
Бросал в неведомые воды
Свой ветхой невод,* ныне там
По оживлённым берегам
Громады стройные теснятся
Дворцов и
башен; корабли
Толпой со всех концов
земли
К богатым пристаням
стремятся;
В гранит оделася
Нева
(An age passed, and the young
stronghold,
The charm and sight of northern nations,
From the woods’ dark
and marshes’ cold,
Rose the proud one and precious.
Where once the Finnish
fisherman,
Sad stepson of Nature, alone,
By low riverbanks’ a
sand,
Cast into waters, never known,
His ancient net, now on the
place,
Along the full of people banks,
Cluster the tall and graceful
masses
Of castles and palaces; and sails
Hasten in throng to the rich
quays
From all the lands our planet masters;
The Neva-river’s dressed with
rocks)
On Antiterra (Earth's twin planet on
which Ada is set) Pushkin's poem is known as Headless
Horseman:
The year 1880 (Aqua** was still alive -
somehow, somewhere!) was to prove to be the most retentive and talented one in
his long, too long, never too long life. He was ten. His father had lingered in the West
where the many-colored mountains acted upon Van as they had on all young
Russians of genius. He could solve an Euler-type problem or learn by heart
Pushkin's 'Headless Horseman' poem in less than twenty minutes.
(1.28)
The Headless Horseman is a novel
(1866), set in Texas, by Captain Mayne Reid. In Speak, Memory
(Chapter Ten) VN tells about his childhood games with his cousin Yuri
Rausch von Traubenberg and how they used to enact a scene from the
Mayne Reid novel.
The name Nevada is derived from
the Sierra Nevada mountains, which means "snow-capped mountain range" in
Spanish. From The Desert Home by Captain Mayne Reid: We knew, from the appearance of the mountain, that
it was one of those where the snow lies for ever, and which throughout Mexico
are termed “Nevada,” or snowy.
*note the wonderful alliteration
and a play on the river name; one is also reminded of Pushkin's
lines in the Introduction to Ruslan and Lyudmila: Tam na nevedomykh
dorozhkakh / sledy nevidannykh zverey (there, on trails unknown to man are
the footprints of unseen animals)
**Demon's demented wife whose name and mania (poor Aqua believes that
she learnt to understand the language of water) bring to mind nevedomye
vody (unknown waters) mentioned by Pushkin in The Bronze
Horseman
Happy New Year to everybody!
Alexey Sklyarenko (who never even
tried to memorize The Bronze Horseman and whom it took
more than twenty minutes to solve
Ada)