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Fwd: bursting into tears: two children in a poem & Ada
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----- Forwarded message from jansy@aetern.us -----
Date: Sun, 3 Apr 2005 17:25:33 -0300
From: Jansy Berndt de Souza Mello <jansy@aetern.us>
Dear List,
I just re-read Nabokov's interview. BBC Television [1962] and was struck by a
poem that VN wrote & where a boy and a girl burst into tears.
It made me think of a question VN asked in "ADA" ( the latter has been
"answered" by several people, usually to point out a moral tale about Ada
crying because she intuitively felt Van´s seduction scheme, but I cannot agree
with that).
I wonder if anyone sees a special connection between what I now consider as two
ineffable bursts into sorrowful bliss?
Excerpt from the interview:
"my favorite Russian poem is one that I happened to give to my main character in
that novel (...) Which I wrote myself, of course; and now I'm wondering whether
I might be able to recite it in Russian.
Let me explain it: there are two persons involved, a boy and a girl, standing on
a bridge above the reflected sunset, and there are swallows skimming by, and the
boy turns to the girl and says to her, "Tell me, will you always remember that
swallow? - not any kind of swallow, not those swallows, there, but that
particular swallow that skimmed by?" And she says, "Of course I will," and they
both burst into tears.
Odnazhdy my pod-vecher oba
Stoyali na starom mostu.
Skazhi mne, sprosil ya, do groba
Zapomnish' von lastochku tu?
I ty otvechala: eshchyo by!
I kak my zaplakali oba,
Kak vskriknula zhizn' na letu!
Do zavtra, naveki, do groba,
Odnazhdy na starom mostu . . . "
excerpt from ADA:
His reversed body gracefully curved, his brown legs hoisted like a Tarentine
sail, his joined ankles tacking, Van gripped with splayed hands the brow of
gravity, and moved to and fro, veering and sidestepping (...) but that summer
afternoon, on the silky ground of the pineglade, in the magical heart of Ardis,
under Lady Erminin's blue eye, fourteen-year-old Van treated us to the greatest
performance we have ever seen a brachiambulant give. Not the faintest flush
showed on his face or neck! Now and then, when he detached his organs of
locomotion from the lenient ground, and seemed actually to clap his hands in
midair, in a miraculous parody of a ballet jump, one wondered if this dreamy
indolence of levitation was not a result of the earth's canceling its pull in a
fit of absentminded benevolence.
Questions for study and discussion: 1...; 2...; 3. Why did Ada burst into tears
at the height of Van's performance?
Thank you,
Jansy
----- End forwarded message -----
EDNOTE. The poem is attributed to Fyodor, the poet protagonist of THE GIFT (p.
106) in the English in recollection of a dead girl friend of his 16th year.
Presumably parallel to VN's Tamara. Boyd provides a very plausibe comment re
the tears in the ADA episode in his ADAONLINE. I do not see much similarity
betwen the scenes.