12: Carnavaux: the incorrect plural of “carnaval” (French for carnival). Used as a joke in Jean-Marie Blanche’s poems to go with Saint-Saëns’ “Hémiones” in “Le Carnaval des Animaux”. Blanche rhymes “carnavaux” with the plurals for “cheval” and “animal” – “…si l’hémione est un cheval / si les hémiones sont des chevaux / il a, comme tout animal / ils ont, comme tous les animaux / leur place dans notre carnaval / comme dans tous les carnavaux” (See Book 1, Chapter 1)
12: Ivor Black: Ivory Black? The “BL” sound in names is often a hint of an incestuous relationship. VV, Ivor and Iris may in fact all be Count Starov’s children, which would make VV’s marriage to Iris an incestuous relationship. Nabokov himself gives weight to this theory when he said “Actually I don’t give a damn for incest one way or the other. I merely like the “bl” sound in siblings, bloom, blue, bliss, sable” (Time, 1969). (See Book 1, Chapter 1)
12: Cypresses:a tree common in Mediterranean areas; a common symbol for death, life, and resurrection.
12: Emblematic irises: a specific type of hybridized iris flower, also a double entendre because the irises could be emblematic of Iris Black
12: Eucalypt: Woody plants characteristic of Australia or Asia
12: Fleur-de-lis:another reference to an iris, the name of VV’s first wife. The fleur-de-lis is a stylized iris used by the French court
12: Prickly-Pear shrubs: A type of plant native to the Americas. This blurs the location of the Black Villa as Eucalpyt trees and Cypresses were previously mentioned, and now we have prickly pears. These plants are all reminiscent of beach areas, and so perhaps Nabokov is trying to create an idealized beach villa with all the plants that remind one of the beach
13: Lemon-breasted, indigo-blue ara: a parrot, humorous because in many ways this book parrots Nabokov’s life
13: Mata Hari: an exotic dancer who was convicted and executed by the French for being a German spy during WWI
13: Nineteen Fourteen or Fifteen: the beginning of WWI. This is another instance of VV’s poor memory and lack of attention to detail, the exact opposite of Nabokov.
13: Allo: hello in French, and in Russian when on the telephone.
13: Otto: German name meaning “wealth”. The most famous Otto is Otto von Bismarck, a Prussian statement who dominated European affairs leading up to WWI
13: a small anxious family in a hot country far away: the few things that the parrot can say remind VV (and Nabokov) of an anxious, stereotypical European immigrant family who has moved to Asia or Africa due to some type of colonialism.
13: A wrong word in motion feels somehow like the dry biscuit that a parrot holds in its great slow hand: Nabokov plays on this wing/hand idea in a 1969 interview with Vogue: “Deception is practiced even more beautifully by that other V.N., Visible Nature. A useful purpose is assigned by science to animal mimicry, protective patterns and shapes, yet their refinement transcends the crude purpose of mere survival. In art, an individual style is essentially as futile and as organic as a fata morgana. The sleight-of-hand you mention is hardly more than an insect’s sleight-of-wing. A wit might say that it protects me from half-wits. A grateful spectator is content to applaud the grace with which the masked performer melts into Nature’s background.”
13: Salle d’eau: French for bathroom
13: She was a deaf-mute: the initial description of Iris that is contradicted just a page later.
13: Low relief of pantomime: low relief refers to projecting an image with shallow depth, just as pantomime hints an idea, shallowly, through gestures
13-14: The whole affair belonged to another life, to another book, to a world of vaguely incestuous games that I had not yet consciously invented: a reference to Ada, or Ardor, Nabokov’s book about incestuous siblings who communicate through their own special code
14: Medusa-infested island: a monster in Greek mythology who had the face of a woman with snakes in place of hair. She could turn onlookers to stone through eye contact and is often associated with female rage and nihilism.
14: I had my revenge after dinner: the moment when the phone rings is the moment that VV discovers that Iris is not actually deaf nor mute
14: Nina Lecerf: A name that references The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, a book written by Nabokov between 1938 and 1939
14: A Continental hand kiss: perhaps a reference to the Leo Robin’s lyric “a kiss on the hand may be quite continental, but diamonds are a girl’s best friend,” or a reference to the fact that a kiss on the hand is characteristic of the European continent. This, again, sets the location of the Villa far from Europe.