Carolyn Kunin [to Jansy's "I'm curious about why
Kinbote introduced a Gillette, instead of
a Wilkinson blade.".] Jansy, This one is easy: because in
Russian the safety razor is not a 'Vilkinsonka,' but a Zhiletka, as I
wrote!
Alexey Sjklyarenko [to Carolyn's
CK's "zhiletka po-russky, deriving from
Gillette"] Zhiletka is colloquial
for zhilet, "waistcoat." We borrowed it from the French, along
with the phrase pleurer dans le gilet de qn (poplakat'sya
komu-l. v zhiletku).
Mikwe Marcus: The character of Helena in
Shakespeare's All's Well that Ends Well is based on Gillette de Narbonne in
Boccaccio's Decameron, story #9. She is therefore an "ancient Gillette", as it
were.
Jansy Mello: I
remembered Wilkinson's blades because they are related to England
and to swords, which feature in Pale Fire, too (flowerlet,
botkin,stiletto...).
Besides, judging from his comments in "Lolita" and in
"Pale Fire," we should consider that Nabokov enjoyed newspaper and magazine
adds (btw: Gradus used a safety razor to extract a newspaper
clipping.)
The Decameron/Shakespeare link is very elaborate and
scholarly. Sometimes it's worth to bet on simpler
connections. Although Nabokov was a genius with words, language
and signifiers, themselves, express a kind of
autonomous genius of their own.