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Boyd on ADAonline revisions, cont.
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Here are the ways I will incorporate this material:
11.05-07<http://www.ada.auckland.ac.nz/ada12.htm#11.05>: an old nurse in
Eskimo boots. Upon the infinitely wise countrywoman's suggestion, she
goose-penned: The Eskimo boots are a misguided attempt to costume
Tatiana's nurse, a Russian. Nabokov here also burlesques the traditions
that Pushkin's own nurse's tales prompted him to write some of his
narrative verse (see EO II, 361-62, 452-53). As Alexey Sklyarenko also
points out (Nabokv-L, 21 January 2010): “In Pushkin's novel Tatiana
doesn't ask, of course, her nurse's advice and writes a love letter to
Onegin of her own accord: ‘All at once in her mind a thought was born .
. . / “Go, let me be alone. / Give me, nurse, a pen, paper, / and move
up the table" (Chapter Three, XXI, 3-6). The adapter's mistake was
probably prompted by the following lines in Pushkin's novel: "On the
nurse's advice, Tatiana, / planning that night to conjure, / has on the
quiet ordered in the bathhouse / a table to be laid for two." (Chapter
Five, X, 1-4).”
11.08<http://www.ada.auckland.ac.nz/ada12.htm#11.08>: a love letter:
MOTIF: letters<http://www.ada.auckland.ac.nz/motifs.htm#letters>.
Tatiana's letter to Onegin has a Nabokovian echo in Lolita, when
Charlotte Haze writes a letter to Humbert declaring her love (I.16), and
still closer echoes later in Ada, when “Tatiana, a remarkably pretty and
proud young nurse” at the Lakeview Hospital in Kalugano, where Van is
being tended for the wound incurred in his duel, after spurning his
course advances there, “much later, . . . wrote him a charming and
melancholy letter in red ink on pink paper” (312.25-26) and when Lucette
sends Van “from California a rambling, indecent, crazy, almost savage
declaration of love in a ten-page letter (366.12-13).
I will add something like this to the Afternote on this chapter, as an
antepenultimate paragraph:
We first glimpse Marina here playing the part of Tatiana writing her
letter to Onegin, or in this version, "Lara" writing to "d'O." Lucette
will send Van “from California a rambling, indecent, crazy, almost
savage declaration of love in a ten-page letter, which shall not be
discussed in this memoir. [See, however, a little farther. Ed.]”
(366.12-14). Van in fact incorporates much of Lucette’s letter into the
dialogue of the scene in his rooms at Kingston. Where Demon in I.2
instantly responds to Marina playing the role of the writer of a
love-letter, Van resists Lucette in II.5 when she follows her own
“savage declaration of love” by bringing to him at Voltemand Hall (named
after the letter-carrier in Hamlet) a letter from Ada. Like Onegin, who
resists Tatiana’s declaration, Van at Voltemand resists Lucette’s
passion for him. Thus again, although the scene of Marina and Demon at
the theater seems especially to prefigure Van and Ada, and their swift
falling in love, the letter scene on stage particularly prefigures
Lucette’s doomed attempt to win Van over through a passionate love
letter, as Demon’s breaking from his seat to make love with Marina
prefigures Van breaking from his seat at the vision of Ada on screen, on
the night of Lucette’s death, to ejaculate by masturbating to ensure he
continues to resist Lucette’s amatory pressure on him.
Corrections and suggestions to ADAonline
(http://www.ada.auckland.ac.nz/) always welcome and acknowledged.
Brian Boyd
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/
11.05-07<http://www.ada.auckland.ac.nz/ada12.htm#11.05>: an old nurse in
Eskimo boots. Upon the infinitely wise countrywoman's suggestion, she
goose-penned: The Eskimo boots are a misguided attempt to costume
Tatiana's nurse, a Russian. Nabokov here also burlesques the traditions
that Pushkin's own nurse's tales prompted him to write some of his
narrative verse (see EO II, 361-62, 452-53). As Alexey Sklyarenko also
points out (Nabokv-L, 21 January 2010): “In Pushkin's novel Tatiana
doesn't ask, of course, her nurse's advice and writes a love letter to
Onegin of her own accord: ‘All at once in her mind a thought was born .
. . / “Go, let me be alone. / Give me, nurse, a pen, paper, / and move
up the table" (Chapter Three, XXI, 3-6). The adapter's mistake was
probably prompted by the following lines in Pushkin's novel: "On the
nurse's advice, Tatiana, / planning that night to conjure, / has on the
quiet ordered in the bathhouse / a table to be laid for two." (Chapter
Five, X, 1-4).”
11.08<http://www.ada.auckland.ac.nz/ada12.htm#11.08>: a love letter:
MOTIF: letters<http://www.ada.auckland.ac.nz/motifs.htm#letters>.
Tatiana's letter to Onegin has a Nabokovian echo in Lolita, when
Charlotte Haze writes a letter to Humbert declaring her love (I.16), and
still closer echoes later in Ada, when “Tatiana, a remarkably pretty and
proud young nurse” at the Lakeview Hospital in Kalugano, where Van is
being tended for the wound incurred in his duel, after spurning his
course advances there, “much later, . . . wrote him a charming and
melancholy letter in red ink on pink paper” (312.25-26) and when Lucette
sends Van “from California a rambling, indecent, crazy, almost savage
declaration of love in a ten-page letter (366.12-13).
I will add something like this to the Afternote on this chapter, as an
antepenultimate paragraph:
We first glimpse Marina here playing the part of Tatiana writing her
letter to Onegin, or in this version, "Lara" writing to "d'O." Lucette
will send Van “from California a rambling, indecent, crazy, almost
savage declaration of love in a ten-page letter, which shall not be
discussed in this memoir. [See, however, a little farther. Ed.]”
(366.12-14). Van in fact incorporates much of Lucette’s letter into the
dialogue of the scene in his rooms at Kingston. Where Demon in I.2
instantly responds to Marina playing the role of the writer of a
love-letter, Van resists Lucette in II.5 when she follows her own
“savage declaration of love” by bringing to him at Voltemand Hall (named
after the letter-carrier in Hamlet) a letter from Ada. Like Onegin, who
resists Tatiana’s declaration, Van at Voltemand resists Lucette’s
passion for him. Thus again, although the scene of Marina and Demon at
the theater seems especially to prefigure Van and Ada, and their swift
falling in love, the letter scene on stage particularly prefigures
Lucette’s doomed attempt to win Van over through a passionate love
letter, as Demon’s breaking from his seat to make love with Marina
prefigures Van breaking from his seat at the vision of Ada on screen, on
the night of Lucette’s death, to ejaculate by masturbating to ensure he
continues to resist Lucette’s amatory pressure on him.
Corrections and suggestions to ADAonline
(http://www.ada.auckland.ac.nz/) always welcome and acknowledged.
Brian Boyd
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/