199: pensums: A Latin word used in the French, Danish and Norwegian languages. Coming from the Latin “weight (of wool to be handed over as part of daily work)”, or simply “task”, pensum in French means a punishment in school, specifically the archaic practice of ‘writing lines’.
199: Petit Larousse: The more common and short-hand name for Le Petit Larousse Illustré, a 20th century French-language encyclopedic dictionary. Nabokov uses this encyclopedia dictionary for one of Clare Quilty’s pseudonymous hotel guest-book entries, “N. Petit, Larousse, Ill”, in his 1955 novel Lolita.
199: just east of Larive: while there is not a town in Switzerland called Larive, the word La Rive in French means “by the shore”.
199: Charlie Everett: The name of the young man who Bel elopes with to the Soviet Union. Self referentially, however, Nabokov seems to be alluding the boy in his 1955 novel, Lolita, Charlie Holmes, who Lolita and her friend Barbra Burke lose their virginity to at Camp Q.
200: ”Karl Ivanovich Vetrov”: The first name could possibly be a vague namesake for Marx. “The surname Vetrov comes from veter (wind) reminding one of the saying ishchi vetra v pole (“go and chase the wind in the field”, meaning “it is no use searching”).
200: ci-devant’s: A term from post-Revolutionary France: “ci-devant nobility were those nobles who refused to be reconstituted into the new social order or to accept any of the political, cultural, and social changes brought about in France by the French Revolution.” Ci-deviant comes from the French, meaning “from before”, which could be used to describe Nabokov or Vadim as exiled nobles of Russia.
200: Berne: The de facto capital of Switzerland.
200: compère: Chiefly British term for a person who introduces the performers or contestants in a variety show; host.
200: Spying had been my clystère de Tchékhov…Kalikakov: Alexey Sklyarenko, a Nabokov scholar notable for the first translation of Ada into Russian does an excellent job elucidating the brilliance and intracacy of Nabokov in this curious passage:
“Klistiry (clysters) and kal (faeces) are mentioned by Chekhov in a letter of October 22, 1896, to Suvorin: ‘Yesterday faeces obstructed the bowels of one rich peasant and we gave him giant clysters. He came to life.’
Chekhov is the author of The Duel (1891). Vadim’s father ‘died in a pistol duel with a young Frenchman on October 22, 1898, after a card-table fracas at Deauville, some resort in gray Normandy.’
Kalikakov blends kal with kak (kakat’ means “defecate”) but also has Lika in it. In a letter of October 18, 1896 (on the day following the first performance and flop of The Seagull in the Alexandrine Theatre), to his sister Chekhov asks Maria Pavlovna to bring Lika Mizinov to Melikhovo: “When you come to Melikhovo bring Lika with you.”
In a letter of October 24, 1898, to Lika Mizinov Chekhov informs her of his father’s recent death and says that Pavel Egorovich died because of the pinched intestine.”
203: tawny mountain of “Bogdan’s”…bliny: Bogdan is a slavic masculine name native to Eastern European countries derived from the Slavic words Bog/Boh meaning “god”, and dan meaning “given”. The word ‘bliny’ is a Slavic word for what has been popularized in American culture as a ‘pancake’. Nabokov seems to be riffing on the Slavic origins of the “tawny mountain” of pancakes Vadim eats while discussing the trip to Russia he will take in an attempt to find his daughter Bell.
203: BINT: The word ‘bint’ is a primarily informal or derogatory British word for a girl or woman, originating from Arabic, literally “daughter, girl”.
203: Oblonsky (a Tolstoyan invention): This is a reference to Tolstoy’s great novel Anna Karenina: Oblonsky is Anna’s maiden name and the name of her brother Stepan Oblonsky.
203: Oberon Bernard Long: This is a reference to the fairy king Oberon from Shakespeare’s play A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
203: Dumberton: Vadim uses this false address previously when signing a visitor book during his final tryst with Dolly, which will result in the end of his marriages to Annette: “I had the presence of mind to put down the dumbest address I could produce at the moment, Dumbert Dumbert, Dumberton.” (143). This, of course, also echoes the name of Nabokov’s narrator in the novel Lolita, Humbert Humbert.
204: Evropeyskaya or Astoria: These are two historic hotels in St. Petersburg. Evropeyskaya is the Soviet-era name for what is now called Grand Hotel d´Europe, which is located roughly 1 mile from Nabokov’s birthplace and childhood home. The Hotel Astoria is located on the same street as the Nabokov house, less than 900 feet away.
204: General Gurko: A possible nod at Naboov’s 1947 novel Bend Sinister, with a protagonist cleverly named Krug (the first four letters of Gurko backwards).
204: Jovian: Either a reference to the 4th century AD Roman Emperor Flavius Jovianus Augustus, or the Roman god Jupiter. Given the hirsute context, Seeing that the Emperor in all remaining depictions was beardless, we may assume Vadim is referring to the god.
205: alchemysterious: A Nabokovian invention combining the noun ‘alchemy’, meaning ‘ a seemingly magical process of transformation, creation, or combination’ with the word ‘mysterious’, meaning ‘ difficult or impossible to understand, explain, or identify’ to produce a wholly enigmatic and shadowy word.
205: otlynivayu–“shirk”: This was a fascinating and frustrating word to research. With an initial Slavic tinge, I assumed the word was Russian. However, after extensive research on Google, every hyperlink I investigated that contained the words “otlynivayu” and “shirk” within them brought me constantly to a highly dubious online Canadian drugstore, riddled with typos and cumbersome, odd language. It felt like a delicious Nabokovian example of philistinism; like a guiding hand from the author himself, leading me down rabbit holes of Viagra pills and contraceptives in the word-crammed world of the internet he no doubt would have hated so very much.