Ada, or Ador: A Family Chronicle

p. 9. All happy families etc: mistranslations of Russian classics are ridiculed here. The opening sentence of Tolstoy’s novel is turned inside out and Anna Arkadievna’s patronymic given an absurd masculine ending, while an incorrect feminine one is added to her surname. ‘Mount Tabor’ and ‘Pontius’ allude to the transfigurations (Mr G. Steiner’s term, I believe) and betrayals to which great texts are subjected by pretentious and ignorant versionists.

p. 9. Severnïya Territorii: Northern Territories. Here and elsewhere transliteration is based on the old Russian orthography.

p. 9. granoblastically: in a tesselar (mosaic) jumble.

p. 9. Tofana: allusion to ‘aqua tofana’ (see any good dictionary).

p.10. sur-royally: fully antlered, with terminal prongs.

p.10. Durak: ‘fool’ in Russian.

p.10. Lake Kitezh: allusion to the legendary town of Kitezh which shines at the bottom of a lake in a Russian fairy tale.

p.11. Mr Eliot: we shall meet him again, on pages 361 and 396, in company of the author of ‘The Waistline’ and ‘Agonic Lines’.

p.11. Counter-Fogg: Phileas Fogg, Jules Verne’s globetrotter, travelled from West to East.

p.11. Goodnight Kids: their names are borrowed, with distortions, from a comic strip for French-speaking children.

p.13. Dr Lapiner: for some obscure but not unattractive reason, most of the physicians in the book turn out to bear names connected with rabbits. The French ‘lapin’ in Lapiner is matched by the Russian ‘Krolik’, the name of Ada’s beloved lepidopterist (p.13, et passim) and the Russian ‘zayats’ (hare) sounds like ‘Seitz’ (the German gynecologist on page 181); there is a Latin ‘cuniculus’ in ‘Nikulin’ (‘grandson of the great rodentiologist Kunikulinov’, p.341), and a Greek ‘lagos’ in ‘Lagosse’ (the doctor who attends Van in his old age). Note also Coniglietto, the Italian cancer-of-the-blood specialist, p.298.

p.13. mizernoe: Franco-Russian form of ‘miserable’ in the sense of ‘paltry’.

p.13. c’est bien le cas de le dire: and no mistake.

p.13. lieu de naissance: birthplace.

p.13. pour ainsi dire: so to say.

p.13. Jane Austen: allusion to rapid narrative information imparted through dialogue, in Mansfield Park.

p.13. ‘Bear-Foot’, not ‘bare foot’: both children are naked.

p.13. Stabian flower girl: allusion to the celebrated mural painting (the so-called ‘Spring’) from Stabiae in the National Museum of Naples: a maiden scattering blossoms.

p.16. Raspberries; ribbon: allusions to ludicrous blunders in Lowell’s versions of Mandelshtam’s poems (in the N.Y. Review, 23 December 1965).

p.16. Belokonsk: the Russian twin of ‘Whitehorse’ (city in N.W. Canada).

p.17. en connaissance de cause: knowing what it was all about (Fr.).

p.18. Aardvark: apparently, a university town in New England.

p.18. Gamaliel: a much more fortunate statesman than our W.G. Harding.

p.19. interesting condition: family way.

p.19. Lolita, Texas: this town exists, or, rather, existed, for it has been renamed, I believe, after the appearance of the notorious novel.

p.20. penyuar: Russ., peignoir.

p.20. beau milieu: right in the middle.

p.20. Faragod: apparently, the god of electricity.

p.20. braques: allusion to a bric-à-brac painter.

p.23. entendons-nous: let’s have it clear (Fr.).

p.24. Yukonets: inhabitant of Yukon (Russ.).

p.25. lammer: amber (Fr: l’ambre), allusion to electricity.

p.25. my lad, my pretty, etc: paraphrase of a verse in Housman.

p.25. ballatetta: fragmentation and distortion of a passage in a ‘little ballad’ by the Italian poet Guido Cavalcanti (1255–1300). The relevant lines are: ‘you frightened and weak little voice that comes weeping from my woeful heart, go with my soul and that ditty, telling of a destroyed mind.’

p.27. Nuss: German for ‘nut’.

p.28. Khristosik: little Christ (Russ.).

p.28. rukuliruyushchiy: Russ., from Fr. roucoulant, cooing.

p.29. horsepittle: ‘hospital’, borrowed from a passage in Dickens’ Bleak House. Poor Joe’s pun, not a poor Joycean one.

p.30. aujourd’hui, heute: to-day (Fr., Germ.).

p.30. Princesse Lointaine: Distant Princess, title of a French play.

p.31. pour attraper le client: to fool the customer.

p.34. Je parie, etc.: I bet you do not recognize me, Sir.

p.35. tour du jardin: a stroll in the garden.

p.36. Lady Amherst: confused in the child’s mind with the learned lady after whom a popular pheasant is named.

p.36. with a slight smile: a pet formula of Tolstoy’s denoting cool superiority, if not smugness, in a character’s manner of speech.

p.37. pollice verso: Lat., thumbs down.

p.39. Sumerechnikov: the name is derived from ‘sumerki’ (‘dusk’ in Russian).

p.42. lovely Spanish poem: really two poems — Jorge Guillén’s Descanso en jardin and his El otono: isla).