I notice that Corso and Orsini (Corso Orsini
is a street crossed in LATH by Vadim, a few minutes before he gets
paralized), blend in Corsini, a Florentine princely family. Its
founder, Neri Corsini, who lived in the 12th century, probably came from
Corsica. In 1730 Lorenzo Corsini was was elected pope as Clement XII. Ieronim
Dominikovich Corsini (1808-76) was a Russian architect and painter. He is the
author of the beautiful fence in front of the Sheremetev palace in St.
Petersburg at the Fontanka embankment. Like Florence ("Louise was in
Florence or Florida"), Fontanka is mentioned in LATH (in the chapter where
Vadim describes his visit to Leningrad): "From travelers I knew that our
ancestral mansion no longer existed, that the very lane where it had stood
between two streets in the Fontanka area had been lost, like some
connective tissue in the process of organic degeneration." (Part Five,
1)
Alexey Sklyarenko