Alexey Sklyarenko: Hugh Person dies in the fire in the Ascot Hotel (chapter 26). At least two characters in The Golden Calf, dvornik (yardman) Nikita Pryakhin and no one's grandmother, perish in the fire [ ] When Hugh Person first meets Armande on a Swiss local train (in June, 1959), she reads R.'s novel Figures in a Golden Window (The Burning Window, as she garbles its title: chapter 9). The cover is by the famous Paul Plam (plamya is Russian for "flame; fire").[ ].The "prophetic" name of Turgenev's female phantom also brings to mind Ellis (the pen-name of Lev Kobylinski*), Baudelaire's Russian translator (when he writes of Armande, his new acquaintance, in his diary, HP prophetically quotes Baudelaire: Ouvre ta robe, Déjanire that I may mount sur mon bûcher), and Havelock Ellis, the English psychologist.

Jansy Mello:I had a vague recollection about the lines related to Dejanire, without linking them to Baudelaire. Google led me to Alfred de Musset (there are two or three ancient VN-L postings in the archives about him) and here are the last lines of his poem dedicated to Julie (I underlined the ones under discussion).*

Allons, Julie, il faut t'attendre
A me voir quelque jour en cendre,
Comme Hercule sur son rocher.
Puisque c'est par toi que j'expire,
Ouvre ta robe, Déjanire,
Que je monte sur mon bûcher.

* - Julia, in "Transparent Things": "Yes. June sets her new dollhouse on fire and the whole villa burns down...That cover is by the famous Paul Plam." [ ] The Burning Window or whatever it was called had been given her only the day before, on her twenty-third birthday, by the author's stepdaughter whom he probably - // "Julia." // Yes. Julia and she had both taught in the winter at a school for foreign young ladies in the Tessin. Julia's stepfather had just divorced her mother whom he had treated in an abominable fashion [ ] Hugh and the new, irresistible person had by now switched to French, which he spoke at least as well as she did English."