It belatedly occurs to me that Mashen'ka's surname
in Maykov's eponymous long poem is Krupa ("Miss Groats"). Now, Lenin's wife was
Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya (1869-1939). Her surname comes from
krupa, but there is also krup ("croup") in it. This reminds me
that VN's friend, the poet and critic Vladislav Khodasevich (1886-1939),
entitled his article on Mayakovski "The Décolleté Horse" (1927). Several characters in
Ada (Baron d'Onsky, Demon Veen) seem to be horses.* Cf. Marina's words
to Van: "The Zemskis were terrible rakes (razvratniki), one of them
loved little girls, and another raffolait d'une de ses juments and had
her tied up in a special way - don't ask me how (double hand gesture of
horrified ignorance) - when he dated her in her stall" (1.37). Ada (Demon's
daughter), too, loves "stallions", but the equine gene seems to have missed
Van.
*see also my Russian article "All's Well that Ends
Well"
Alexey Sklyarenko