Alexey Sklyarenko: I speak of Ada's fingernails in my article "'Traditions of a Russian family' in Nabokov's Ada" (The Nabokovian, #52, Spring 2004, pp. 13-26)….. Bosch, whose Garden of The Earthly Delights is so important in Ada, plays also a major role in Gorky's novel "The Life of Klim Samgin" (see my article "The Fair Invention in Nabokov's Ada and Gorky's The Life of Klim Samgin" in The Nabokovian #58, Spring 2007). Gorky's hero is a namesake of Baron Klim Avidov…

 

JM: Fascinating links, Alexey. Perhaps you can add something more related to Klim Avidov. He will make passes also at Ada, at least this is a metamorphosis I remember finding at the Three Swans hotel (with a transformed mural with “Leda”), related to Ada’s long neck and Jupiter Olorinus, although it’s not clear why Ada resembles the swan and not Leda (who mothered Castor and Pollux, Helen of Troy and …was it Pegasus?) Unless the unscrabbled Baron felt himself to be both Ada and her ravisher.