There's a reference to a Hoffmann Street in "A Nursery Tale." The street is fairly significant in the story. Frau Monde (the devil) has chosen a house on that street as the site for the story's climactic finish, and it's there that Erwin, the protagonist, asks for directions from a "dummylike chauffeur" who tells him that he has reached his destination.
Bruce
Date: Thu, 23 Sep 2010 16:44:09 -0300
From: jansy@AETERN.US
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] Fw: [NABOKOV-L] Spring in Fialta and ETA HOffman's "The Automata."
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
JM: "Did Hoffmann manage to reconcile the "unreal intimations" he transformed into fiction, with "real life" events, did he merge life, fiction and Art? No, garantees Paul de Man. Yes, opines Jean Starobinski... Did Nabokov?" (SF's narrator confesses that "were I a writer, I should allow only my heart to have imagination, and for the rest rely upon memory, that long-drawn sunset shadow of one's personal truth." ... "I felt myself bound to seek for a rational, if not moral interpretation of my existence, and this mean choosing between the world in which I sat for my portrait, with my wife... between that happy, wise and good world... and what?" )
Related to the question above (merging life and Art) I found an indication about a possible discussion on this theme by V.Khodasevich. I don't have access to his text, I wonder if a kind soul can send me a copy? *
Khodasevich, Vladislav: "On Sirin" [1937]. TriQuarterly (Evanston, IL), 17, Winter 1970, pp. 96-101.
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* The brief quote comes from "A face russa de Nabókov: poética e tradução." (2010)
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