Jansy mentioned an essay in which I analyzed that very sentence singled out as Nabokov's prose at its worst (in Watts's 1947 review of Bend Sinister) as an example of a distinct kind of Nabokovian metaphor: Susan Elizabeth Sweeney, “Nabokov’s Amphiphorical Gestures,” Studies in Twentieth Century Literature 11.2 (1987): 189-211.

 

- SES