Manfred Voss: Oxford University Press
indeed published a book entitled "Russian surnames" by the Oxford professor
Boris Unbegaun - alas not before 1972[...] Research into surnames is a
legitimate pursuit, although there may be a whiff of pedantry and pedestrianism
connected with it. I fail to understand what the fuss is about in this
surname discussion. That VN ascribed a surname book to Kinbote is in all
likelihood pure fictional fluff.
JM: Not really fictional
fluff...
Returning to sentences extracted from
D.Barton Johnson in "Worlds in Regression" who may serve as
indicators of his original interpretation:
1."Pale Fire's Index ... has
almost no relevance to the poem, but only to that portion of the Commentary
which adduces the Zemblan theme [...] The major portion of the index is a
"Who's Who" of Zemblan history...".
Johnson stresses how "anagrams play a vital role in our understanding of the
labyrinth of Pale Fire and show once again that such word games
are one of the ways in which Nabokov's fictional worlds relate to each
other. The failure of the characters to recognize
their literal kinship with each other is but a dimension of
their failure to find the name of their creator who orchestrates the letter play
that makes up their worlds".
Surnames, as I find them in VN,
are a rich terrain for anagrams.