a moneylender, the famous St Priest of
Chose (Ada, Part One, 28)
B. Boyd's Annotations
(The Nabokovian #59): "VN writes of Count Emmanuil Sen-Pri [Saint-Priest]
(1806-28), mentioned in Pushkin's Evgeniy Onegin, VIII.xxvi.4: 'This young
artist shot himself... according to [some] in the presence of an eccentric
Englishman who had promised to pay his gambling debts if guaranteed the
spectacle of self-murder' (EO 3.197-98)."
Count de Saint-Priest is said to have been a gifted
cartoonist. There are cartoonists in Ada (1.30):
"Mascodagama's spectacular success in a
theatrical club that habitually limited itself to Elizabethan plays, with queens
and fairies played by pretty boys, made first of all great impact on
cartoonists. Deans, local politicians, national statesmen, and of course the
current ruler of the Golden Horde were pictured as mascodagamas by topical
humorists."
St Priest + malina + Greece
+ Grace = St Alin + masterpiece + Greg + race
карандаш + фига + рот = шарада +
книга + торф
malina - Russ.,
raspberry (cf. Mandelshtam: "Whatever the execution, it's a raspberry to him
[Stalin]")
Grace, Greg - the
Erminin twins
St Alin - Colonel St
Alin, a scoundrel, one of the two seconds in Demon Veen's duel with d'Onsky
(1.2); cf. Van's words to Greg Erminin: "Your father preferred to
pass for a Chekhovian colonel." (3.2)
карандаш - pencil; cf.
Pushkin: "had blunted in all albums, / Saint-P[riest], your pencils" (EO, Canto
Eight, XXVI, 3-4)
фига - fig
рот - mouth
шарада -
charade
книга - book
торф - peat
Alexey Sklyarenko