I want to correct an inacuracy in my recently
posted note on Garshin, Gorky et al. in ADA. The title of Osberg's novel is, of
course, The Gitanilla ("Van's eye over his umbrella crook traveled
around a carousel of Sapsucker paperbacks: ...The Gitanilla, Salzman,
Salzman..." 3.3), not "Lolita." Lolita is apparently the name of its
heroine, the little gypsy girl after whom an ample skirt was dubbed
(1.13).
Also, I noticed only later that IGRA ("game,"
"play;" Cagliostro = Caligari + ostrog - igra) = RIGA. Cf. the Riga Black
Balsam (the liquor Garshin has drunk accidentally) and Giuseppe Balsamo
(Cagliostro's real name). Incidentally, I haven't seen the German film about Dr
Caligari. I came across this name in Kuzmin's cycle of verse "The
Trout Breaks the Ice" (1927). Like Dumas, Kuzmin has written a novel about
Cagliostro ("The Miraculous Life of Joseph Balsamo, Count Cagliostro,"
1919).
Alexey Sklyarenko