I just received the latest Nabokovian and read with interest Matt Brillinger's piece "Hippopotamians in Ardis." I didn't quite understand what MB meant by the "archetypal river," but he seems to have missed the fact that Hippo is the name of a river. Moreover, this river is mentioned in ADA: "Such a drought affected Hippo in the most productive months of Augustine's bishopric that clepsydras had to be replaced by sandglasses" (Part Four, "Texture of Time"). So the Mesopotamians/Hippopotamians word-play proves even more complex than most readers of Ada would take it to be. I wonder if another African river, Limpopo, could be involved in it?

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