frances assa: "And of course Tristana, like Dolores, means sadness."
 
jansy mello: Yes, suffering (Dolores) and sadness (Trist-ana). It also suggests Tristan, Iseult's lover - a medieval legend with which VN was certainly familiar, although I'm doubtful that he'd ever heard of, or considered, Galdós's novel. 
Nabokov's "perverse" plots are in a sharp contrast to the shivers his style provokes in me. I cultivate the sensation that he's chosen all sorts of crimes to divert the general reader's attention to what, to him, was central to his art ("enchantment" instead of "yard-spinning"*). 
He once said that it was not he who was famous, but Lolita...And I think that this observation is also applicable to Humbert Humbert (who, inspite of his solipsistic standpoint, presented her to the world.)
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* The duplicitous meaning of "enchanter" is significant, no?   
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