Alexey Sklyarenko Slon is Russian for "elephant" and "bishop" (chess-man). Machines are better in chess-playing than translating. 

 À propos de slon: Vera Nabokov's maiden name was Slonim. In TRLSK Sebastian Knight's girlfriend and muse is Clare Bishop.

 

JM: In a way, my search for elephants, rooks, crows, ravens (closing in jackdaws) was not totally wasted because we, those who speak no Russian, might have missed  “slon” and “slonim” and the two Bishops in RLSK.  Chess terms and moves receive different designations, according to the language used to name them. I wonder, again, if a kind of “Nabokov Chess-Dictionary” could not be made available helping us to travel from rook/tower/castle/elephants/bishops, in English, French,Spanish, aso.

I suppose “Solus Rex” and other famous moves keep their names in the different languages. How about “check mate”?

 

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To add a finishing touch, from wiki on Murakami’s novel (his quoted words, in the end, were already mentioned once in the List, in connection to PF’s “riddles”…)

Kafka on the Shore (海辺のカフカ, Umibe no Kafuka^?) is a novel by Japanese author Haruki Murakami (2002). Comprising two distinct but interrelated plots, the narrative runs back and forth between the two, taking up each plotline in alternating chapters.The odd chapters tell Kafka's story as he runs away from his father's house to escape an Oedipal curse and to embark upon a quest to find his mother and sister. After a series of adventures, he finds shelter in a quiet, private library in Takamatsu, run by the distant and aloof Miss Saeki and the androgynous Oshima. There he spends his days reading the unabridged Richard Francis Burton translation of A Thousand and One Nights and the collected works of Natsume Sōseki until the police begin inquiring after him in connection with a brutal murder. The Oedipus complex is a concept developed by Sigmund Freud…The even chapters tell Nakata's story. Due to his uncanny abilities, he has found part-time work in his old age as a finder of lost cats (a clear reference to The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle). The case of one particular lost cat puts him on a path that ultimately takes him far away from his home, ending up on the road for the first time in his life. He befriends a truck-driver named Hoshino. Hoshino takes him on as a passenger in his truck and soon becomes very attached to the old man. ..Nakata and Kafka are on a collision course throughout the novel, but their convergence takes place as much on a metaphysical plane as it does in reality and, in fact, that can be said of the novel itself. Due to the Oedipal theme running through much of the novel, Kafka on the Shore has been called a modern Greek tragedy.

Kafka on the Shore demonstrates Murakami's typical blend of popular culture, quotidian detail, magical realism, suspense, humor, an involved and at times confusing plot, and potent sexuality. It also features an increased emphasis on Japanese religious traditions, particularly Shintoism....

Characters:Kafka Tamura: Clearly named in honor of the Czech writer Franz Kafka, Kafka is a "cool, tall, fifteen-year-old boy lugging a backpack and a bunch of obsessions" and the son of the famous sculptor Koichi Tamura. His mother and sister left the family almost before he became conscious of them. He occasionally interacts with a hectoring, exhortative alter ego "The-boy-named-Crow", which is approximately what "kafka" means in Czech (a closer translation is jackdaw). Crow tells himself throughout the novel that he must be "the toughest fifteen-year-old in the world." Satoru Nakata: A "mentally defective sexagenarian" as John Updike calls him, Nakata lost many of his mental faculties when, as one of sixteen fourth-graders out on a mushroom-gathering field-trip toward the end of World War II, a strange silver light was seen in the sky and the entire class fell into a deep sleep. Unlike the other children, who woke up in a few hours, Nakata remained unconscious for many weeks, and, upon finally awakening, found that his memory and his ability to read had disappeared, as well as his higher intellectual functions. In their place, Nakata found he was able to communicate with cats. Sakura: Young woman Kafka meets on the bus.Johnnie Walker: Cat killer.Colonel Sanders: Pimp and hustler.Oshima: Gender dysphoric librarian, owner of mountain retreat. Becomes close with Kafka throughout the course of the novel. Hoshino: Truck driver.Miss Saeki: Manager of a private library.

 

Murakami: "Kafka on the Shore contains several riddles, but there aren't any solutions provided. Instead, several of these riddles combine, and through their interaction the possibility of a solution takes shape. And the form this solution takes will be different for each reader. To put it another way, the riddles function as part of the solution. It's hard to explain, but that's the kind of novel I set out to write."