I was re-reading Chapter 1 and came across a strange word: “versta”:
When inviting him to deliver a Friday-evening lecture at Cremona–some two hundred versts west of Waindell, Pnin’s academic perch since 1945–the vice-president of the Cremona Women’s Club, a Miss Judith Clyde, had advised our friend that the most convenient train left Waindell at 1:52 P.M., reaching Cremona at 4:17; but Pnin–who, like so many Russians, was inordinately fond of everything in the line of timetables, maps, catalogues, collected them, helped himself freely to them with the bracing pleasure of getting something for nothing, and took especial pride in puzzling out schedules for himself–had discovered, after some study, an inconspicuous reference mark against a still more convenient train (Lv. Waindell 2:19 P.M., Ar. Cremona 4:32 P.M.); the mark indicated that Fridays, and Fridays only, the two-nineteen stopped at Cremona on its way to a distant and much larger city, graced likewise with a mellow Italian name.
A “verst” is an obsolete (since 1924) Russian unit for measuring distance, slightly longer than a kilometer. I found it interesting that the narrator, who otherwise “dominates” Pnin in part through his superior grasp of the English language, would choose to use such an obscure word in his own narrative voice. On the other hand, the word is in the OED, so an American reader “could” look it up and be rewarded with a Russian history tidbit about a system of measurement that was, like Pnin’s and V.N.’s childhood Russia, “abolished by one blow of history.” (12)
Another strange thing that I found: “Robert Horn” appears twice in the novel. In Chapter 1, at the bus terminal, Bob Horn attends to Pnin’s luggage: “Just tell them Bob Horn sent you.” (25) In Chapter 7, during the theater performance at the narrator’s aunt’s country estate, his double shows up: “I came with my brother, and next to me sat the steward of my aunt’s estate, Robert Karlovich Horn, a cheerful plump person from Riga with bloodshot, porcelain-blue eyes, who kept applauding heartily at the wrong moments.”
I don’t think this coincidence “means” anything, but it’s still significant. It suggests that the character “Bob Horn,” who “helps” Pnin with his valise, is only called “Bob Horn” because to the narrator, that name has the right associations, and is fitting for a bus stop attendant. This further suggests that even more of the novel may be free improvization, and reduces (my) faith in the reliability of the narration.
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