Dear Abdellah,
It seems that VN never even heard of Machado, or
did he?
Btw., the title of V. Botkin's book, "Letters about
Spain", also brings to mind the title of Gogol's last published work,
"Vybrannye mesta iz perepiski s druz'yami" ("The Chosen Excerpts from
the Correspondence with Friends", 1847).
To return to Chekhov's friend Suvorin, the
editor of the Novoe Vremya newspaper: I notice that his name
differs only in two vowels and the accent from Severin, the name of the hero of
Sacher-Masoch's Venus in Furs. The name of the novel's central female
character, Wanda von Dunajew, reminds one of Ada's schoolmate Vanda Broom
(who has different sexual tastes, though). Wanda's "fluvial" family name comes
from Dunay, Russian name of the Danube. Humbert's father,
too, had a dash of the Danube in his veins.
On the other hand, one remembers Suvorov, the
Russian general who took Izmail, the Turkish fortress in the estuary
of the Danube.
best,
Alexey Sklyarenko