NABOKV-L discussion

Dear Nabokovians, 

Dear Nabokovians, 

I am writing a research paper about the intertextual parallels between “Lolita” and “The Price of Salt,” which is a 1952 lesbian romance novel by Patricia Highsmith (although to me it reads more like a novel about a creepy obsession). 

This post is a continuation of responses to David Potter’s post on the List-Serve 03/03/25, re: Nabokov’s Aunt Preskovia (Pauline Tarkovsky), who was a psychiatrist and wrote a book on “Women Who Kill” (now available in English. Nabokov writes in SM her curious final words:  “That’s interesting. Now I understand. Everything is water, vsyo—voda.”

This makes me wonder if these remarkable words were the impetus ADA’s theme of a world technology based on water, instead of electricity.

I’m sure others here have noticed this because it’s quite obvious and Sebald was famously into Nab, but there’s a direct reference to Chapter 8 of Speak, Memory at about 20% of the way through WG Sebald’s Austerlitz.  
 

I am pulling my hair out because of this. 
DECADES AGO, I read a passage by Nabokov in which he describes the translator's work as assembling diverse elements which he glues and hammers together until the resulting object throws a shadow closely resembling the subject that he is trying to transpose across languages.

AND NOW, I can't find it anywhere.

I can't find it in the Pushkin foreword, The Real Life of SK, Pale Fire, etc.

So... where is it?

Lots of gratitude and praise to anyone who knows.

Cheers,

Trevor

Edit: wrote "Ada's Foreword" instead of "Lolita's"

There are apparently some allusions to Melville and Tolkien in Lolita's foreword, which I hope can be confirmed. Apologies for any sloppiness. Unitalicized, bold mine:

For almost the past week or so I've been reviewing the opening of Ada, as well as the family tree and certain conspicuous passages, and I think I've crashed into the tip of a Melvillean iceberg. If I'm not dreaming, that is. I hope my errata such as typos will be forgiven.

I've taken to applying the vowel shift of 4.29-34 and I've come across some interesting finds.