Dear Matt:

 

            I make bold as a near-native of Russian to answer your query re “luk”.

            Luk in Russian certainly means “onion(s),” and the onion bulb and also the cupola of a Russian church

            is called “lukovitsa”. In addition, “luk” means bow, as in bow and arrow.

 

            A bend, usually in a river is “luka”. Among the Gospels, the one according to Luke is in Church Russian

            “ot Luki,” meaning that the name is Luka, grammatically feminine. Craftiness is also implied in the stem “luk,”

            such as in “lukavyi,” with an implication of cunning, and can even be used as a noun to mean “The Evil One.”

 

            Finally, for most literate Russians, I think, “luk” brings to mind “lukomor’e,” a river bend featured in the opening lines

of Pushkin’s early long narrative poem fantasy Ruslan and Liudmilla, in which a learned tomcat attached to a golden chain

winds himself day and night about a green oak standing at a bend in a river. Masha in Chekhov’s Three Sisters speaks the opening lines of L&R in Act I,

perhaps pointing to her sense of being enchained in a dead marriage.

 

Possibly in all this there are pointers to Kinbote and thematic lines in Pale Fire.

 

Best wishes,

 

Jerry Katsell