It may or may not be relevant that the Russian word rooká can mean both arm and hand.
This may or may not explain the apparent conflict between the descriptions of Cervantes’ disability by Alexey and Jansy.
Make of it what ye may!
For the physical facts, we have Cervantes’ own testimony:
"I had lost the movement of the left hand for the glory of the right" ( Viaje al Parnaso [or Viaje del Parnaso], Journey to Parnassus)
A bullet hit his left arm reducing its mobility, but control of the hand, it seems, was totally lost.
In everyday English, we would not refer to Cervantes as ‘one-armed.’ But, effectively, in terms of usage, the term is applicable.
Google throws up a strange gitanilla-Lolita coincidence. The daughter of film actress Lola Flores is also a Lolita.
See http://www.larazon.es/noticia/534-morena-clara-faraona-y-gitanilla
where Lolita discusses Luis Lucia’s 1954 movie «Morena Clara» faraona y gitanilla
Stan Kelly-Bootle
On 30/07/2011 23:10, "jansymello" <jansy@AETERN.US> wrote:
A. Sklyarenko:D'Onsky's son, a person with only one arm...It belatedly occurs to me (better late than never!) that Cervantes was one-armed. The author of Don Quixot is mentioned in Ada (3.6):
"One of Osberg's concoctions" mentioned by Demon must be his novel The Gitanilla. The gitanilla's name is Lolita
JM: I'm no expert on Cervantes but, as I recollect it, he lost the use of his left hand, not the entire arm. [text as corrected later by JM]
In one of his interviews Nabokov observes that he's lent Lolita's authorship to one of his inventions, Osberg. I don't remember the exact words. Both items deserve further checkings...