173: 1954-1955: The year Nabokov’s novel Lolita, the literary parallel or shadow of Bel, was published in Paris.
172: thirteenth birthday: Though Lolita is twelve and a half at the beginning of Nabokov’s novel, the number ‘thirteen’ corresponds with the chapter in which Humbert Humbert first achieves an “euphoria of release” with Lolita.
173: suffragettish: This adjective derives from the noun “suffragette”, defined as “a woman seeking the right to vote through organized protest.”
173: Myrna Soloway: “I understand she is very good at ferreting out places for rent”, says Ninella Langley (Nelly) of Soloway, in the letter she and Bel’s mother write to Vadim in part three of the book announcing a nullification of their marriage.
174: Proust and Prevost: “Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust was a French novelist, critic, and essayist best known for his monumental novel In Search of Lost Time, published in seven parts between 1913 and 1927.” The first half of this book, Nabokov cites as one of the only four books he considers to be great, of the 20th century. “Antoine François Prévost d’Exiles; 1 April 1697 – 23 December 1763), usually known simply as the Abbé Prévost, was a French author and novelist.”
174: onduled: This invented verb, we can suppose, comes from the geometric term Unduloid, defined as “a surface with constant nonzero mean curvature obtained as a surface of revolution of an elliptic catenary: that is, by rolling an ellipse along a fixed line, tracing the focus, and revolving the resulting curve around the line.” This may be, in some obscure, abstract, Nabokovian poetics, descriptive of the curvature of a female body. Or the warp of an old mirror.
174: Elmago: is an englishized fusion of the Spanish word “el mago” meaning “the magician”.
174: The magic of Mithra: Possibly a reference to the “Mithras Liturgy”, a “text from the Great Magical Papyrus of Paris, part of the Greek Magical Papyri. The modern name by which the text is known originated…based on the invocation of Helios Mithras as the god who will provide the initiate with a revelation of immortality.”
174: the most prestigious prize in the world: most ikely The Nobel Prize in Literature, which Nabokov was considered for in 1974, but never awarded.
175: I had a black headache: This theme of “blackness”, as it relate to headaches, has occurred a number of times previously, all on the occasions of a brief emergence of Vadim’s self diagnosed mental illness or “dementia” as he calls it. For example, following the exposure of his affair with Dolly, and directly preceding a brief stint of hospitalization in New York, Vadim recounts, “I stood there, my head brimming with a blackness of pain seldom known before.” pg. 146.
175: Devonshire: the archaic but not expired epithet for Devon, a south west county of England, popular for its comparatively mild climate, rural and hilly landscape, rocky coastline and low-density population. It is a popular destination for recreation and leisure in England.
175: Lady Morgain: This could possibly be a reference to the nineteenth century Irish novelist Lady Morgan, who was best known for 1806 novel, The Wild Irish Girl, hence the quotations around her nationality. Her husband, however, was a knighted physician and had nothing to do with ambassadorship or Oxford.
176: Tyrolean: This word “Tyrolean” comes from the alpine state in West Austria, Tyrol. Tyrolean dress is used to reference traditional Austrian clothing.
177: the Opera…Onegin: Eugene Onegin is an opera composed by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, based on the Alexander Pushkin novel of the same name, which consists of “389 stanzas of iambic tetrameter with the unusual rhyme scheme “AbAbCCddEffEgg”, where the uppercase letters represent feminine rhymes while the lowercase letters represent masculine rhymes.”
177: taught to me by Ivor: this is the brother of his first wife, Ivor Black.
177: on the beach of Cannice: the town where Vadimi vacations with Ivor and meets his first wife, Iris.
178: Exile from Mayada: the title of Vadim’s 1947 publication of short stories. This corresponds, in year, with Vladimir’s publication of a collection of stories titled Nine Stories, through New Directions in New York City (1947).
178: the right-hand sidewalk…Recht’s Liquor Store: a clever and small play with words here, Nabokov imbricates the previous dialogue with the name of a liquor store: rechts, meaning “right” in German.
179: A toi: curiously lacking a grave accent over the ‘a’, this is french for ‘yours’.
180: Elles vous aime tant!: French-They love you so!
181: kegelkugel headache: the German word for ‘bowling ball’, and also the name of a German bowling company that makes a range of equipment, including bowling balls and pins.
181: Dolmite Dollies: the two girls Vadim calls “little phantoms” and claims are the result of is “recrudescent madness” pg. 176.
182: fadeur: French, meaning blandness, dullness, insipidness.
182: Woman’s Own World: Most likely a references to the British lifestyle magazine, founded in 1932, called Woman’s Own