Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0016173, Fri, 11 Apr 2008 14:44:52 -0400

Subject
THOUGHTS: Family names in PF
From
Date
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Dear Jerry,

I have never taken Botkin seriously, but when I went looking for
evidence that Shade himself might be the "american scholar of russian
descent" I did research his mother's maiden name, Lukin which I
discovered is both an English name as Kinbote claims, but also a
fairly common Russian name. Caroline Lukin's name does seem to
suggest some relation to Charles Kinbote. But, speaking of Jekyll and
Hyde, also please not to forget that the first act involving both
Jekyll and Hyde in RLS's story is one of kinbote - - Hyde does the
damage, and Jekyll pays the victim's family monetary compensation - -
that is, he pays kinbote.

Carolyn Kunin (no relation)

On Apr 11, 2008, at 10:37 AM, NABOKV-L wrote:

> As Fran Assa returned to Danish stilettos and the location of
> New Wye, maybe this is a good time to mention a couple things
> that I can't find in the list archives.
>
> Not explicitly, anyway--I think both Carolyn Kunin and
> Andrew Brown have hinted at the connection with Dr. Jekyll.
> Nabokov said in /Lectures on Literature/ that "Jekyll"
> comes from the Danish word for "icicle". As Shade uses
> "stiletto" as a metaphor for icicles, Kinbote's "Danish
> stiletto" could refer to the dual personality of Botkin and
> Kinbote, or as Carolyn argued, of Dr. Kinbote and Mr. Shade.

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