A.Sklyarenko brought fascinating associations related to Ada, Pushkin, Byron and more. It was nice to be reminded that “Byron is the author of The Prisoner of Chillon (1816). On Antiterra 'She Yawns Castle' is also known as Château de Byron (3.8).” ( Château de Byron indicating Chillon/Byron, not only Chateaubriand)
He adds: “It was, incidentally, the same kindly but touchy Avidov (mentioned in many racy memoirs of the time) who once catapulted with an uppercut an unfortunate English tourist into the porter's lodge for his jokingly remarking how clever it was to drop the first letter of one's name in order to use it as a particule, at the Gritz, in Venezia Rossa. (1.36)/” [  ]  “Venezia Rossa brings to mind "a crag on the Ross, overgrown with wild moss" in a song that Van, Ada and Lucette hear in 'Ursus' (2.8), and that "crag on the Ross" seems to be linked to odna skala, grobnitsa slavy (one cliff... the tomb of glory) in Pushkin's "To the Sea."

Jansy Mello:  Following AS’s lead with the creative move from Rossa to Ross, we find that, after leaving the Ursus we reach (an almost anagrammatic) “russet” land (“There’s a crag on the Ross, overgrown with wild moss”) when Van and his two girls essay a cartographic ménage: “ The top sheet and quilt are tumbled at the footboardless south of the island where the newly landed eye starts [   ] A dewdrop on russet moss eventually finds a stylistic response in the aquamarine tear on her flaming cheekbone[  ] out of the dim east to the bright russet west…”

However, after picturing the red-ochre reference in “Venezia Rossa” I also started to imagine youthful Humbert’s experiences in “a princedom by the sea” with his first love rising from the foam like a Boticelli Venus, recovered in Lolita.*  This made me go back to the other doomed little russet girl, Lucette. The tragic connection between the two tear-pink girls and the stark contrast between rising Venus and Lucette’s sinking in the sea became rather strong in my mind.

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*-  - “she had one of those tender complexions that after a good cry get all blurred and inflamed, and morbidly alluring [  ] I simply love that tinge of Botticellian pink, that raw rose about the lips, those wet, matted eyelashes;
- her russet beauty and the quicksilver in the baby folds of her stomach;
- for there is nothing more conservative than a child […] be she the most auburn and russet, the most mythopoeic nymphet in October's orchard-haze;
- Dolores, so rosy and russet, lips freshly painted, hair brilliantly brushed;
- although actually her looks had faded, I definitely realized, so hopelessly late in the day, how much she looked — had always looked — like Botticelli's russet Venus — the same soft nose, the same blurred beauty.