"the violent dance called kurva or ‘ribbon boule’ in the
hilarious program whose howlers almost caused Veen (tingling, and light-loined,
and with Prince N.’s rose-red banknote in his pocket) to fall from his
seat."
kurva ("whore") = rukav ("sleeve"). Tatarin ("a
tartar"), a character in Gorky's At the Bottom, exclaims: Karta
rukav soval! ("you've put the card in your sleeve!"), as he accuses
Satin of cheating in a card game.
'ribbon boule' hints at "Moscow's ribbon of boulevards," as Lowell
mistranslated the phrase kurva-Moskva ("Moscow the whore") in a
poem by Mandelshtam, but also at Boule de suif ("Ball-of-Fat"), the
prostitute in Maupassant's eponymous story (1880). According to Vivian
Darkbloom, Guy de Maupassant (1850-93) doesn't exist on Antiterra. Instead of
him, they have on Demonia 'Guillaume de Monparnasse,' as Mlle Larivière,
Lucette's governess, signs her stories and novels. During their first ramble in
Ardis park, Ada asks Van: "Have you read any of Mlle Larivière's stories? Well,
you will. She thinks that in some former Hindooish state she was a
boulevardier in Paris; and writes accordingly"
(1.8).
Boulevard de Montparnasse is street in Paris. As I pointed out earlier,
Montparnasse is also a character (a good-looking bandit) in Victor Hugo's
Les Miserables. In L'Homme qui rit, Hugo notes that
"boulevard" and "billiard" (a game played with hard balls of ivory) are
related words: Of bowling-green, a green on which to roll a
ball, the French have made "boulingrin." Folks have this green inside their
houses nowadays, only it is put on the table, is a cloth instead of turf, and is
called billiards.
It is difficult to see why, having boulevard (boule-vert),
which is the same word as bowling-green, the French should have adopted
"boulingrin." It is surprising that a person so grave as the Dictionary should
indulge in useless luxuries. (Book the Third. Chapter I:
"The Tadcaster Inn").
It is surprising that a writer as grave as Mlle Larivière should
adopt the rather immodest pen-name Monparnasse (the leaving
out of the 't' should make it more intime). I may
return to Hugo, and the adjective vert ("green")
later.
Boule means "ball" in French. The Russian word for
boule is shar (which also means "sphere," globe").
Shar + ada = sharada ("charade"). I suspect, I managed to
solve Nabokov's difficult charade in Ada.
Alexey Sklyarenko