In The Waltz Invention, the English version of VN's play Izobretenie Val'sa (1938), Son (the reporter who runs errands for Waltz and whose name means in Russian "sleep, dream") becomes Trance. In his book Original o portretistakh ("The Model about the Portrait Painters," 1922) Evreinov says that, despite his "trance," "visions" and other psychic peculiarities, William Blake, when he drew his biblical characters, always used himself as a model: