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