Carolyn Kunin:  In my pursuit of Kalmakov, I came across a costume design by Goncharova for the character 'Sirin' in...the Rimsky-Korsakov opera Tsar Saltan. Has anyone really studied the meaning(s) and implication(s) of VN's choice of nom de bird? [  ]. It seems possible that in choosing the name 'Sirin,' VN intended to affiliate himself with this cult ("Firebird).

Jansy Mello: In a controversial article by Penny McCarthy* we find a very elaborate answer that connects Sirin, Phoenix and Firebird. The author claims that:

 "it is the phoenix that will provide the 'clef' to Nabokov's self-identification with Philip Sidney. One 'phoenix' reference in Ada I have not mentioned is the newspaper called 'Golos Feniksa' on page 413, which is glossed by Darkbloom as '"The Phoenix Voice", Russian language newspaper in Arizona' [   ] This gloss takes us into the heart of Nabokov's very private myth. Exiled from his own Arcadia, the family estate in Russia, he became, among the Russian community in Berlin, the writer whose pen-name was 'Sirin'. This alter ego haunts The Gift, flits across a page of Speak, Memory (p. 220), and as Ben Sirine, is said in Ada to have been identified as an influence on Van Veen (p. 270).[  ] In real life, 'Sirin' was Nabokov's nom de plume for various pieces, including his contribution to the first issue of the emigre newspaper in Berlin, Zhar-Ptitsa, 'The Firebird'. How closely the bird was interwoven with Nabokov's early work is shown by the fact that the original kernel of Camera Obscura was a tale called 'Rayskaya Ptitsa', 'Bird of Paradise'.

There's more:

"Nabokov traces the etymology of 'sirin' through 'siren', the mythical Greek bird with a woman's face"[   ]"His pronouncements on its modern meanings are somewhat confusing, ranging through Snowy Owl and Hawk Owl ( SO,p. 161) to pheasant. It is the Russian bird of paradise according to Brian Boyd. But Nabokov himself, under the pseudonym 'V. Cantaboff', describes it slightly differently: it was 'a glorious variety of the pheasant haunting Russian woods: it remained as the "fire-bird" in national fairy-tales [...] this wonder-bird [...] the very soul of Russian art' (pp. 180-81). (24) And his glorious credo in Strong Opinions emphasizes the firebird quality of his own ego."

 

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* - "Nabokov's Ada and Sidney's Arcadia: the regeneration of a Phoenix" by Penny McCarthy (available through various links in the internet)