Sklyarenko: Guillaume de Monparnasse …iis the penname of Mlle Larivière, Lucette's governess. Her real name comes from rivière, French for "river". Below is Heine's poem Der Apollogott (1851). Its setting is the Rhine River. Its heroine is a young nun enamoured of a fop whom she believes to be the Apollo god. The poem begins with the mention of a cloister. Mount Parnassus ("Mont-Parnass") and Amsterdam are also mentioned in it…
Wohl tausend Jahr' aus Graecia
Bin ich verbannt, vertrieben -
Doch ist mein Herz in Graecia,
In Graecia geblieben."

 

Tom Rymour: Actually, Old McNab is having a go at Guy de Maupassant (Guillaume de Monparnasse)and his 'worst short story ever written', "La Parure" (usually trans as "The Diamond Necklace") in which a young  functionary's wife borrows a 'riviere de diamants' to wear to the ministry ball -- then loses it.

 

JM: Why did Nabokov choose a masculine pen-name for Mlle Larivière? He often mentions Larivière’s passion for Marina and her manly ways, but is this sufficient to explain “Guillaume”? Could he have included Apollinaire - and there’s an Apollo inset, too, and a Vladimir in this name (google informs that his name had been Wilhelm Albert Vladimir Apollinaris…) A fake one side by side to some true association?

 

A diamond string of associations came from Sklyarenko. In Heine’s strangely mocking lines, there is true pathos here and there when, like Vladimir, also Apollo moans his exile from Graecia, as much as Heine must have lamented his …

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