Van to Ada: 'We'll vroom straight to my place as soon as you wake up, don't bother to bathe, jump into your lenclose...' (3.8)

 

As I pointed out before, "ninon" (a play on nylon*) and "lenclose" hint at Ninon de Lenclos, a famous French courtesan (1620 or 1616-1705).

 

In a letter of October 30, 1833, from Boldino to his wife in St. Petersburg Pushkin calls Ninon de Lenclos staraya kurva (old whore):

 

I can't wait to see your hair dressed à la Ninon; you must look marvelously pretty. Why didn't you think of that old whore earlier and didn't copy her hair-do?

 

In the same letter Pushkin asks Natalie to give up her coquetry:

 

Да, ангел мой, пожалуйста не кокетничай. Я не ревнив, да и знаю, что ты во всё тяжкое не пустишься; но ты знаешь, как я не люблю всё, что пахнет московской барышнею, всё, что не comme il faut, всё, что vulgar... ("you know how I dislike everything that smacks of a Moscow miss")

 

I his poem Net, ne spryatat'sya mne ot velikoy mury... ("No, I can't hide myself from the great nonsense..."**) mistranslated by Lowell Mandelshtam calls Moscow kurva (whore):

 

Who has enough warmth inside his glove

to ride around the whole of Moscow the whore.

 

 

Rukav (sleeve) is menstioned in another Mandelshtam mistranslated by Lowell, "За гремучую доблесть грядущих веков..." (For the sake of the resonant valor of ages to come...):

 

better, like a fur cap, thrust me into the sleeve

of the warmly fur-coated Siberian steppes.

 

*nylon blends NY (New York, known on Antiterra as Man) with London

**note the correct translation

 

Alexey Sklyarenko