Except that Punin's name is stressed on the first syllable, while the incorrectly disyllabic Puh-nin would have to be stressed on the second, and its first syllable would be schwah, not an "oo".  :-)

"D. Barton Johnson" wrote:

 

-------- Original Message --------

Subject:	Pnin versus Punin
Date:	Tue, 18 Jun 2002 11:59:37 -0700 (PDT)
From:	Galya Diment <galya@u.washington.edu>
To:	Nabokov <NABOKV-L@listserv.ucsb.edu>

 

 ----------------- Message requiring your approval (22 lines) ------------------

From: galya@u.washington.edu

This is most likely way out there and my apologies if it has been
mentioned before -- but while writing my talk on Pnin for the July St.
Petersburg Symposium, I came across again Nabokov's statement in
_Strong Opinions_ about how the name Pnin should be pronounced: "... in
English words starting with 'pn', one is prone to insert a supporting 'uh'
sound -- 'Puh-nin' -- which is wrong" (52). Punin was, of course,
Akhmatova's third (common-law) husband, and what makes this information
potentially somewhat pertinent is the fact that Pnin is one of
Liza's husbands, and in their Paris days Liza wrote "mauve poems...
(courtesy Anna Akhmatov)" (45). During Liza's visit to Waindell,
she actually recites her new poem for Pnin (Ia nadela temnoe plat'e) in
which Nabokov obviously parodies
Ak
hmatova (much to her chagrine at the
time). So this little joke, if intended, would not only make Liza into
ersatz Akhmatova, it would make Pnin into ersatz Punin.

Galya Diment

--
Art, whose honesty must work through artifice, cannot avoid cheating truth.
   — Laura Riding