There is one thing about Nabokov's "late
namesake" that I forgot to mention: he was born in Georgia (in a
village called Bagdadi). Despite his being Russian, in one of his poems
(Vladikavkaz - Tiflis, if I'm not mistaken) Mayakovsky
proclaims himself to be gruzin, a Georgian.
In LATH (part 7, 3) Vadim Vadimovich
wonders, if he does have some princely Caucasian blood. Among the names he
probes when trying to remember his family name are two Georgian:
Nablidze and Bonidze. Perhaps, his name is Blagidze? I quote from
Part One (ch. 13) of LATH:
"The stroy that appeared among other
faits-divers in the Paris dailies after an investigation by the police
- whom Ivor and I contrived to mislead thoroughly - amounted to what follows - I
translate: a White Russian, Wladimir Blagidze, alias Starov, who was
subject to paroxysms of insanity, run amuck Friday night in the middle of a calm
street, opened fire at random, and after killing with one pistol shot an English
tourist Mrs. [name garbled], who chanced to be passing by, blew his brains out
beside her."
As far as I remember, the alias of Iris' murderer,
lieutenant Starov, isn't mentioned anywhere else in the novel. The maiden
name of Vadim's second wife, Blagovo, begins like Blagidze, differing
from it only in the "ovo" ending. Iris' maiden name, Black, has the
same first three letters. I remember that D. B. Johnson discusses the BL sounds
in the names of the characters in his article on LATH, but I
don't have it at hand.
Btw., this may be irrelevant, but I notice that
Notorov (the Bulgarian name tried on and rejected by V.V.) is an anagram of
novotor, a native of Torzhok (old city in the province of Tver).
Vor-novotor (vor is Russian for "thief")is a character in
Saltykov-Shchedrin's The History of One City (1869), a founder of
Glupov. On the other hand, novotor differs from novator
(innovator) only in the middle vowel. Notorov is accented on the first
syllable, novator on the second and novotor, on the
third.
Alexey Sklyarenko