Jansy Mello: While I found only a few entries related to
the "Parandrus" (more often described as a shape-shifter instead of having
the chameleonic ability to change colors)*, there's one article by Omry
Ronen about HISTORICAL MODERNISM, ARTISTIC INNOVATION AND MYTH-MAKING IN
VLADIMIR NABOKOV’S SYSTEM OF VALUE JUDGEMENTS that, judging from the summary
online, may interest you - also because he suggests a connection with
Bend Sinister, by associating Nabokov's rejection of
a "forced mythological attitude" to "pointless paronomasia...in the same
terms as Max Muller had applied to mythology, 'an illness of language'."
Differently from you he offers a new reference to understand "Esmeralda"
(he connects to Thomas Mann's "Doctor Faustus").
.
So we may glean that "Nabokov’s attitude toward modernism can be
reconstructed on the basis of his own critical statements, the tastes of some of
his characters, and his choice of specimens for critical study and translation,
and models for creative emulation [ ] Nabokov’s ultimate opinion on
the individual representatives and currents of new Russian literature is
expressed in the metaliterary passages of Ada and Look
at the Harlequins!, rather than in The Gift.
In Look at the Harlequins!, this is facilitated by
blending or “ligaturing” of Russian and Anglo-American writers: Bunin and
Thornton Wilder, or Merezhkovskij and Faulkner.[ ] Of the heritage
of modernism, he rejected and consistently parodied and compromised in his own
art not merely some of its specific artistic errors, but above all the general
and typical fault of its approach to certain types of subject matter, most
significantly, the forced mythological attitude toward poetic imagery, narrative
motifs, and thematic inventory. [ ] He expressed his rejection of
its pointless paronomasia, a contagious disease in the world of words, in his
introduction to Bend Sinister in the same terms as Max Müller
had applied to mythology, “an illness of language”.// Nabokov’s contempt for the
myth of the 20th century was both artistic and moral. He found tasteless Thomas
Mann’s image of Hetaera esmeralda in Doctor Faustus as part of
Mann’s myth of the diabolic nature of modernism, based on false racial and
aesthetic presuppositions (cf. Lines Written in Oregon and the title of
Vadim Vadimovich’s novel in Look at the Harlequins!:
Esmeralda and her Parandrus). The fallacy of the Jungian psychology as
applied to literary criticism by Maud Bodkin in her once popular book appears to
be spoofed in Pale Fire, especially in the “white
fountain/white mountain” episode, as well as in the names of characters (aunt
Maud, Dr. Botkin).Most consistently Nabokov de-mythologized the most universal
of mythological themes, the theme of death, as he detached the problem of
immortality from the problem of the existence of gods, “including the big
G”.
http://www.rvb.ru/philologica/07eng/07eng_ronen.htm
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* - wikipedia: Parandrus is an animal from Medieval bestiaries. They were
ox-sized, long-haired, with antlers and cloven hooves, but could change their
shape at will