A.Sklyarenko: "Like Van Veen, Nabokov was ein unverbesserlicher Witzbold, but, Rack being a Mozart-like figure, "Baron von Wien" seems to hint at several characters in Pushkin's "Little Tragedies" ..."

JM: Rack as a Mozart-like figure? Why then Vienna, or Pushkin's little tragedies, duels and Salieri? Besides, whenever Nabokov mentions Wien he is referring to the "Viennese quack." 

What puzzles me is the transition from  Dr. Froit to the other Austrian* [ "Aqua reckoned she must procure for herself a maximum period of undisturbed stupor ...and the carrying out of that second part of the project was simplified and encouraged by another agent or double of the Isère Professor, a Dr Sig Heiler ...Such patients who proved by certain twitchings of the eyelids and other semiprivate parts under the control of medical students that Sig (a slightly deformed but not unhandsome old boy) was in the process of being dreamt of as a ‘papa Fig,’ spanker of girl bottoms and spunky spittoon-user..."] A sad joke, at first sight and, until now, at a second and a third sight too.

 

 

btw: Chateaubriand's birth and death dates are 4 September 1768 - 4 July 1848. He was 26 when he met Charlotte Yves.

While I quoted B.Boyd's commentaries I inadvertently wrote "like" instead of "light" in the sentence: "Ada's playful allusions to Chateaubriand appear to make like of the whole subject of incest."