Владимир Набоков: pro et contra T1

«The Russian title of this little novel is SOGLYADATAY (in traditional transliteration), pronounced phonetically „Sugly-dart-eye“, with the accent on the penultimate. It is an ancient military term meaning „spy“ or „watcher“, neither of which extends as flexibly as the Russian word. After toying with „emissary“ and „gladiator“, I gave up trying to blend sound and sense, and contented myself with matching the „eye“ at the end of the long stack. Under that title the story weaved its pleasant way through three installments of „Playboy“ in the first months of 1965».