Alexey Sklyarenko: In Pushkin's Ruslan and Lyudmila...the magic cap makes the heroine invisible*. Nabokov seems to cross pagan (sun god Hors) and Christian (chudotvornaya, miracle-working, Yukonsk Ikon) miracles. If turned into a man, Lucette would be Lucien. In Ada (3.8), Lucien is a concierge at Les Trois Cygnes, a hotel in Mont Roux: 'Lucien,' said Dr Veen, peering over his spectacles, 'I may have - as your predecessor would know - all kinds of queer visitors, magicians, masked ladies, madmen - que sais-je? and I expect miracles of secrecy from all three mute swans. Here's a prefatory bonus.' / 'Merci infiniment,' said the concierge, and, as usual, Van felt infinitely touched by the courteous hyperbole provoking no dearth of philosophical thought.".Btw., Lucette, with her jeweled head and "struthious" dress (3.5), is linked to the beautiful Tsarevna Lebed' (Swan Princess) from Pushkin's Skazka o tsare Saltane ("The Fairy Tale about Czar Saltan," 1831).
JM: How fortunate that translations and versions don't alter the character's gender. Interesting link bt. Lucette and Lucien, emphasizing the "Three Swans." Van usually praises Ada's "cyrgneous hand" and her long swan-like neck ( "the Lucette line of her exposed neck") in an equivocal way, since Van himself courts her like a Jupiter Olorinus ( ie, Zeus under the disguise of a white swan seducing Leda). The quotes below are difficult to disentangle!
Ada:"Their open mouths met in tender fury, and then he pounced upon her new, young, divine, Japanese neck which he had been coveting like a veritable Jupiter Olorinus throughout the evening."
This led me to a set of scrabble the three children ( three swans?) received from Marina's former lover, Baron Klim Avidov. Its rectangles were "of ebony inlaid with platinum letters, only one of which was a Roman one, namely the letter J on the two joker blocks (as thrilling to get as a blank check signed by Jupiter or Jurojin). It was, incidentally, the same kindly but touchy Avidov (mentioned in many racy memoirs of the time) who once catapulted with an uppercut an unfortunate English tourist into the porter’s lodge for his jokingly remarking how clever it was to drop the first letter of one’s name in order to use it as a particule, at the Gritz, in Venezia Rossa."
and to an event, in the vicinity of the "Three Swans," when Ada and Van make the entire surroundings cinematically invisible due to a "twist of time" and where Van (and not the anagramatic Avidov) has a tiff with a tourist:
" He pushed through the revolving door of the Bellevue, tripped over a gaudy suitcase, and made his entrée at a ridiculous run. The concierge snapped at the unfortunate green-aproned cameriere, who had left the bag there....A German tourist caught up with him, to apologize, effusively, and not without humor, for the offending object, which, he said, was his./‘If so,’ remarked Van, ‘you should not allow spas to slap their stickers on your private appendages.’/ His reply was inept, and the whole episode had a faint paramnesic tang — and next instant Van was shot dead from behind (such things happen, some tourists are very unbalanced) and stepped into his next phase of existence/... Ada... was hurrying toward him. Her solitary and precipitate advance consumed in reverse all the years of their separation as she changed from a dark-glittering stranger with the high hair-do in fashion to the pale-armed girl in black who had always belonged to him. At that particular twist of time they happened to be the only people conspicuously erect and active in the huge room, and heads turned and eyes peered when the two met in the middle of it as on a stage...he raised to his unbending lips and kissed her cygneous hand, and then they stood still...the Lucette line of her exposed neck, slender and straight, came as a heartrending surprise."
Sergey Sakoun: The novel "Защита Лужина" (“Luzhin defense”) was translated into English very exact, (I made a list of all differences between original and translate) except Russian words and terms not familiar to English readers, and some idioms: "Being born in this world is hardly to be borne," instead of “Это ложь, что в театре нет лож” (This is a lie that in theatre has no boxes), 'rented with a long view but at short notice' instead of "квартиру на барскую ногу, снятую на скорую руку" (flat on a landlord’s foot, rented on a fast hand).
On contrary for example such novels as “King Queen Knave” or “Laughter in the Dark”, that was translated into English very markedly differ from original and welcome of the reverse translation on Russian. (But no sense to translate “The Defense” back into Russian) This is another argument that allegory-chess pattern of the novel, based on interrelationship of details, and was carefully (word for word) kept in English text.
JM: Thanks to Sergey Sarkoun for the careful match between the English and the Russian sentences in "The Defense" and his translations.
In relation to the former posting about "shaggy" and "horse", I'd like to remind him that Nabokov often resorted to the word "shaggy" when he referred to dogs and to something devilish (particularly black dogs, as in his early "Nursery Tale" or those of the skye terrier kind).
.......................................................................................
* Wikipedia: "Cloaks of invisibility are relatively rare in folklore; although they do occur in some fairy tales, such as The Twelve Dancing Princesses, a more common trope is the cap of invisibility. The cap of invisibility has appeared in Greek myth: Hades was ascribed possession of a cap or helmet that made the wearer invisible. In some versions of the Perseus myth, Perseus borrows this cap from the goddess Athena and uses it to sneak up on the sleeping Medusa when he kills her. A similar helmet, the Tarnhelm, is found in Norse mythology. In the Second Branch of the Mabinogi, one of the important texts of Welsh mythology, Caswallawn (the historical Cassivellaunus) murders Caradog ap Bran and other chieftains left in charge of Britain while wearing a cloak of invisibility.[...] In classical mythology, the Cap of Invisibility (Ἄϊδος κυνέην (H)aidos kuneēn in Greek, lit. dog-skin of Hades) is a helmet or cap that can turn the wearer invisible...Wearers of the cap in Greek myths include the goddess of wisdom Athena, the messenger god Hermes, and the hero Perseus...The Bibliotheca (2nd/1st century BC) implies that the Helm of Invisibility was created by the Uranian Cyclopes, who gave Zeus the thunderbolt,Poseidon the trident, and a helmet to Hades for their war against the Titans (Titanomachy)... In the classical mythology of the Renaissance, however, the helmet is regularly said to belong to the god of the underworld, and becomes proverbial for those who conceal their true nature by a cunning device."