Dear Don and list

I have a few ruminations on “Pale Fire”: Can anybody help me with the conundrum of why Charles Kinbote’s “head of department” is named Nattochdag? As far as I am aware, this word consists of three Swedish words attached together of which the English equivalent is Night-and-day. Reason versus lunacy perhaps? Or good in opposition to evil/bad? Just below the word Nattochdag is the word attached, and later the word Netochka, these words seem to want me to do something – but what? “Netochka” I think translates roughly into English as “nameless nobody”, Dostoyevsky’s first, unfinished novel is titled thus and if my memory serves me, it is about a young lady condemned to live as an outsider, as an observer. Could this be some ghostly reference to Shade’s unattractive daughter?

Later, and all on the same page, on the same page, we have the amusing The Hally Vally muddling up Odin’s residence and some Finnish epic. This Finnish epic is, I assume, “Kalevala” where Joukahainen’s sister Aino drowns herself.

Lastly, and more general, has anybody thrown any thoughts in the direction of Gogol’s “The Diary of a Madman”?

Any help would be wholly appreciated.

Sincerely,

Christopher Grierson