NABOKV-L discussion

What does everyone think of the new Vintage International edition covers for a few VN books, attached?  I've seen them in bookstores already.  Overall I'm not that impressed.  I guess I'm glad they reverted to The Defense.  Lolita has a new introduction too, which I'm also not that impressed by.

It seems obvious to me that Nabokov was writing under the influence of Hoffmann, or at least the culture that Hoffmann created.  I'm reaching out see if there's ever been an study tracing the Hoffmannian influences in VN's work.  The automannequins in KQK, obviously.  And that one seems to me to be his most "German" book.  But he never listed Hoffmann among his literary influences (though maybe by proxy through Poe).

What other examples can we think of that support the Hoffmann -> Nabokov pipeline?  The two authors read remarkably similarly to me.

Dear Nabokovians, 

Dear Nabokovians, 

I am writing a research paper about the intertextual parallels between “Lolita” and “The Price of Salt,” which is a 1952 lesbian romance novel by Patricia Highsmith (although to me it reads more like a novel about a creepy obsession). 

This post is a continuation of responses to David Potter’s post on the List-Serve 03/03/25, re: Nabokov’s Aunt Preskovia (Pauline Tarkovsky), who was a psychiatrist and wrote a book on “Women Who Kill” (now available in English. Nabokov writes in SM her curious final words:  “That’s interesting. Now I understand. Everything is water, vsyo—voda.”

This makes me wonder if these remarkable words were the impetus ADA’s theme of a world technology based on water, instead of electricity.

I’m sure others here have noticed this because it’s quite obvious and Sebald was famously into Nab, but there’s a direct reference to Chapter 8 of Speak, Memory at about 20% of the way through WG Sebald’s Austerlitz.  
 

I am pulling my hair out because of this. 
DECADES AGO, I read a passage by Nabokov in which he describes the translator's work as assembling diverse elements which he glues and hammers together until the resulting object throws a shadow closely resembling the subject that he is trying to transpose across languages.

AND NOW, I can't find it anywhere.

I can't find it in the Pushkin foreword, The Real Life of SK, Pale Fire, etc.

So... where is it?

Lots of gratitude and praise to anyone who knows.

Cheers,

Trevor