The Russian original (my literal translation): 
"After you I've had four lovers, with each richer than the last. Now everything is just perfect. He has a consumptive wife abroad. He's just left for a month to visit her. He's not young, burley. He adores me". 

The English translation by Dmitry and Vladimir Nabokov: 
"I had only four lovers after you., but to make up for it, each was richer than the last, and now I'm exceptionally nicely established. He has a consumptive wife, the daughter of a general. She lives abroad. In fact, he has just left to spend a month with her at Davos. ("Goodness, I've been there last Christmas."). He is elderly and very chic. And he adores me." 

As I've shown elsewhere, in his 'translation'-explicitation of this novel, Nabokov became more precise in terms of the topo-details and sort of 'smeared' the chrono-details. He even shortened the duration of the action by one day by not allowing Franz to go to Berlin to return the cigarette-case to Dreyer's American partner (the joke with the cigarette-case was dropped from the English version altogether). 

Ljuba Tarvi
Helsinki

On 15.2.2015, at 15.34, Nabokv-L wrote:

-------- Original Message --------
Subject:     Nabokov referring to Der zauberberg
Date:     Sat, 14 Feb 2015 07:17:05 -0800
From:     Paul M.F. <modest.figeys@HOTMAIL.COM>
To:     <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
CC:     Paul M.F. <modest.figeys@HOTMAIL.COM>


In Chapter 9 of 'King, Queen, Valet'
Erica tells to  Kurt Dreyer that she is now the mistress of and older and very 'chic' man.  This man is married with the daughter of a general and she has TBC.  She lives abroad . The man left now for Davos to be for a month with his wife.  (my translation from the Dutch translation ).

I can read this only as a reference to Thomas Mann and 'Der Zauberberg'.
Can someone tell me if this reference was already present in the original version of the book in 1928.
Was Nabokov criticizing Thomas Mann also at other occasions at these times ?

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