Carolyn Kunin: "The names and relations between Violet Knox and Ronald Oranger have always intrigued me. I was able to google up Brian Boyd's surmise that there might be a link between John Rae, Jr and Oranger. There certainly is a consonance there, as probably intended by VN. But I don't think it solves what I perceive to be a riddle. I may have stumbled on at least part of the solution. I think VN is referring to Monsignor Ronald Knox.... I suspect it's the monsignor's famous limerick that holds the key.(...Knox's humorous comment on the pre-existential philosopher Berkeley's concerns about perceptions and reality):"

Well, I must agree that this manoeuver, in itself, doesn't solve any riddle. Unless it should unfold a panoramic view about "editors" (and there's Hugh "Parson" in TT). Please note that only the first limerick was creatred by Knox. At least, according to the entries in "The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations" (Oxford University Press, 1979) where God's answer is fittingly listed under "Anonymous."

I invented an association of my own to another fabulous consonant avian solution: Namely, Cantaboff / "Chantecleer" (a "beast's fable" from Chaucer's "The Nun's Priest's Tale", - "The Chanticleer and the Fox" - as informed by Wiki, when I searched it for a vaguely remembered children's book, namely Walter Wangerin, Jr.'s "The Book of the Dun Cow.") What a trip! Inspite of Dmitri's musical career, Vladimir Nabokov was not overly fond of operas and singing. His father and Sergei seem to have often attended concerts together. VN was "off"..

Ingibjorg Elsa Bjornsdottir informs that he "just completed a MA thesis and received a MA degree in translation studies" and that he "wrote about Vladimir Nabokov and his translation of Eugene Onegin into English." In his experience "Nabokov´s great commentary to his translation of Eugene Onegin" are "the main work, and the text of Eugene Onegin itself, as secondary work and to be understood only with reference to the paratext i.e. to the commentary." I remember that Carolyn lamented the fact that Vladimir Nabokov didn't employ his talents as a poet in his translation of Eugene Onegin. Now we read a different appraisal, focusing mainly on the work of VN, the commentator who, apparently, aided or inspired his non-Russian readers to reconstruct Pushkin's "unheard melodies" in their minds: