Alexey Sklyarenko:The last thing Van thinks of before he falls asleep and has his
dream of floramors is a red dog: Through rain forests and
mountain canyons and other fascinating places (oh, name them! Can't - falling
asleep), the room moved as slowly as fifteen miles per hour but across
desertorum or agricultural drearies it attained seventy, ninety-seven
night-nine, one hund, red dog - (2.2) Bazarov, the
hero of Turgenev's "Отцы и дети" ("Fathers and Sons," 1861), sees red
dogs in his death-bed delirium...
JM: I was hoping that Bazarov counted until
one hundred...Nabokov remembered the German for dog (Hund), but there was no way
to avoid getting it readily made with a red coat (hund-red). This suggests that
any literary associations with "red" ( "Red Veen") would probably not have
been deliberate.