I am 12,000 miles from my texts but suspect that HH kept CQ's name unchanged out of vindictiveness.

 

Brian Boyd

Then what purpose is served by John Ray referring to his biographer and paramour as "Vivian Darkbloom"? In fact, as " ' Vivian Darkbloom ' ", no?

 

Mind you, this would be entirely in accord with the Freudian tradition, to which I have already alluded in this correspondence, of pretending to maintain rigorous confidentiality while simultaneously flagrantly breaking it. (If you don't believe me about this, I can provide chapter and verse for a number of such instances in the classic case studies of Freud himself.) But it is difficult to see how Nabokov could have known about this, except by intuition and his undoubted gifts as a Menschenkenner, because I only established this fact about Freud after Nabokov died. 

 

Anthony Stadlen