Thanks for the pruning, Dmitri. As Giulia Visintin remarked, I'd better avoid thorny issues when not properly shod.

I'm sorry, though, for having side-tracked John Rea's original quest: "It will be remembered that the novel in question was translated into Italian by a certain Dmitri Nabokov, whose inspired translation of the play in question was, "Gighe Focose," literally "Fiery Jigs". It is a scholarly embarrassment to me that I cannot recall where Mr N. wrote a brief note including this gem... Someone with more lively memory is welcome to rescue me here..."

( By the way "Focose"...doesn't it also suggest "Ardent,i.e, full of ardor"?)

Michael Strickland noted a slip when Andrew Brown named Virginia Woolf's novel "Floss" instead of "Flush" ( the name of the Browning couple's dog in her 1933 book) before he observed that Colette's dog Floss, in "Speak,Memory" answers to a similar call. How delightful.

Jansy

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