To Carolyn's query:

No, they are not synonyms.

A swift (Russ. strizh, стриж), Apodus, is a highly aerial bird that belongs to family Apodidae (order Apodiformes). They are the fastest fliers among birds (speed over 100 mph recorded)

They are superficially similar to swallows (Hirundinidae), but are not closely related. (Swifts are more closely related to hummingbirds.)

Nabokov’s swallow is a common barn swallow, Hirundo rustica.

Barn swallow returning from its southern migration is the first European and Russian messenger of spring, as in a saying “one swallow does not make a spring” (μία χελίδὼν ἕαρ ού ποίεῖ), recorded in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics -  or a staple textbook poem by Alexandr Pleshcheyev (1858), put to music by Chaikovsky (as "The Grass Grows Green...") in his “Sixteen Songs for Children, Op. 54”

Nabokov’s choice of a swift over a swallow in his line “That particular swift that went by” might just be an audible preference of a rushing bird in an one-syllable “swift”.

A highly feminine nature of Russian “lastochka” is lost in English translation (“strizh” in Russian is masculine), so I think the names are interchangeable.

Swallow is a very common bird in Russian poetry from Derzhavin to Akhmatova and Mandelstam.

A recent article (in Russian) is attached:

Bel’skaya, L.L. (2013) Lastochka v russkoi poezii [Swallows in Russian poetry], Russkaya rech’ 2: 45-51, which ends with a VN quote from The Gift poem,

Interestingly, Boris Pasternak, in his early Poverkh barierov book, had a well-known 1916 poem about swifts (Strizhi).

I am sure Nabokov knew it well – we know he read Pasternak very carefully.

Victor Fet

Thank you, Alexey. This poem in English and Russian is on an old Spoken Arts LP I still have somewhere. One one side of the record VN reads a chapter from Lolita and on the other a selection of poems. The recording on the web sounds exactly like the reading the way I remember it. So Lastochka is "swallow" and/or "swift"? Are they the same bird? No ornithologist, I.