Subject
[NABOKOV-LIST] [ Ada,
or Ardor] siblings and their discoveries in the attic
or Ardor] siblings and their discoveries in the attic
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J.Aisenberg: I never thought to question Ada's insertions as Van's inventions--does that call Ronald Oranger the editor into question as well? [...] I always took it for granted that the novel was a folie a deux; that anti-terra was a grotesque solipsistic fantasy wherein the lovers try to live happily ever after but can't.
Jansy Mello: My comment was modest [We cannot be certain that Ada's editorial scribbling is really Ada's] but J.A slightly enlarged it to call into question editor Ronald Oranger. These are conjectures worth entertaining, not only because they express a familiar pattern in that (Transparent Things, Pale Fire, ... ) which might deceive us into considering it as being "familiar."
Van often writes as if he were senile and quite mad. Nevertheless his creativity is mostly intact, whereas bright and precocious Ada's contributions or presence are sedate and conventional. Could both be writing the novel in a "folie a deux"? I shall have to read it again to check Vaniada's suicide, Violet's mistakes, Ronald's participation. Or the neat full circle when the couple "dies into the book" like one of the pressed flowers or inkblots in the album they, as kids, might have investigated in the attic.
J.Aisenberg: I have wondered if they were really brother and sister, and whether this simply became a fond delusion for the couple because it made them feel like they were more alike somehow
JM: Van wrote: ‘Why do stairs creak so desperately, when two children go upstairs,’ she thought, looking up at the balustrade along which two left hands progressed with strikingly similar flips and glides like siblings taking their first dancing lesson. ‘After all, we were twin sisters; everybody knows that.’ The same slow heave, she in front, he behind, took them over the last two steps, and the staircase was silent again. ‘Old-fashioned qualms,’ said Marina."
Why would Van, at this point, make Marina doubt that Van and Ada were siblings? It seems quite preposterous.
In this sentence, though, there is no reference to similar birthmarks, nor would Van and Ada both show them on their left hands. Their marks formed a cross: The right instep and the back of her left hand bore the same small not overconspicuous but indelible and sacred birthmark, with which nature had signed his right hand and left foot.
Other references to birthmarks, gemelarity, mirrors and consanguinity:
1. (patting his brown blotched hand on which their shared birthmark had got lost among the freckles of age);
2. He discovered her hands [...] She had on the back of her left hand the same small brown spot that marked his right one. She was sure, she said — either disingenuously or giddily — it descended from a birthmark Marina had had removed surgically from that very place years ago [...]
3.‘Old storytelling devices,’ said Van, ‘may be parodied only by very great and inhuman artists, but only close relatives can be forgiven for paraphrasing illustrious poems. Let me preface the effort of a cousin — anybody’s cousin — by a snatch of Pushkin, for the sake of rhyme —’
‘For the snake of rhyme!’ cried Ada. ‘A paraphrase, even my paraphrase, is like the corruption of "snakeroot" into "snagrel" — all that remains of a delicate little birthwort.’ (birthwort? wart?mark??? "snagrel"..."mongrel"?)
4....consanguineocanceroformia[...] Don’t put your little cold hand on my paw — that could only hasten your end and mine. On with your story.’ [...] Oh, I love her hands, Van, because they have the same rodinka (small birthmark), because the fingers are so long, because, in fact, they are Van’s in a reducing mirror, in tender diminutive, v laskatel’noy forme’ (the talk — as so often happened at emotional moments in the Veen-Zemski branch of that strange family, the noblest in Estotiland, the grandest on Antiterra — was speckled with Russian, an effect not too consistently reproduced in this chapter — the readers are restless tonight). [...]‘Yes, she started a rather sad little affair with Johnny, a young star from Fuerteventura, c’est dans la famille, her exact odnoletok (coeval), practically her twin in appearance, born the same year, the same day, the same instant —’ That was a mistake on silly Lucette’s part....
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Jansy Mello: My comment was modest [We cannot be certain that Ada's editorial scribbling is really Ada's] but J.A slightly enlarged it to call into question editor Ronald Oranger. These are conjectures worth entertaining, not only because they express a familiar pattern in that (Transparent Things, Pale Fire, ... ) which might deceive us into considering it as being "familiar."
Van often writes as if he were senile and quite mad. Nevertheless his creativity is mostly intact, whereas bright and precocious Ada's contributions or presence are sedate and conventional. Could both be writing the novel in a "folie a deux"? I shall have to read it again to check Vaniada's suicide, Violet's mistakes, Ronald's participation. Or the neat full circle when the couple "dies into the book" like one of the pressed flowers or inkblots in the album they, as kids, might have investigated in the attic.
J.Aisenberg: I have wondered if they were really brother and sister, and whether this simply became a fond delusion for the couple because it made them feel like they were more alike somehow
JM: Van wrote: ‘Why do stairs creak so desperately, when two children go upstairs,’ she thought, looking up at the balustrade along which two left hands progressed with strikingly similar flips and glides like siblings taking their first dancing lesson. ‘After all, we were twin sisters; everybody knows that.’ The same slow heave, she in front, he behind, took them over the last two steps, and the staircase was silent again. ‘Old-fashioned qualms,’ said Marina."
Why would Van, at this point, make Marina doubt that Van and Ada were siblings? It seems quite preposterous.
In this sentence, though, there is no reference to similar birthmarks, nor would Van and Ada both show them on their left hands. Their marks formed a cross: The right instep and the back of her left hand bore the same small not overconspicuous but indelible and sacred birthmark, with which nature had signed his right hand and left foot.
Other references to birthmarks, gemelarity, mirrors and consanguinity:
1. (patting his brown blotched hand on which their shared birthmark had got lost among the freckles of age);
2. He discovered her hands [...] She had on the back of her left hand the same small brown spot that marked his right one. She was sure, she said — either disingenuously or giddily — it descended from a birthmark Marina had had removed surgically from that very place years ago [...]
3.‘Old storytelling devices,’ said Van, ‘may be parodied only by very great and inhuman artists, but only close relatives can be forgiven for paraphrasing illustrious poems. Let me preface the effort of a cousin — anybody’s cousin — by a snatch of Pushkin, for the sake of rhyme —’
‘For the snake of rhyme!’ cried Ada. ‘A paraphrase, even my paraphrase, is like the corruption of "snakeroot" into "snagrel" — all that remains of a delicate little birthwort.’ (birthwort? wart?mark??? "snagrel"..."mongrel"?)
4....consanguineocanceroformia[...] Don’t put your little cold hand on my paw — that could only hasten your end and mine. On with your story.’ [...] Oh, I love her hands, Van, because they have the same rodinka (small birthmark), because the fingers are so long, because, in fact, they are Van’s in a reducing mirror, in tender diminutive, v laskatel’noy forme’ (the talk — as so often happened at emotional moments in the Veen-Zemski branch of that strange family, the noblest in Estotiland, the grandest on Antiterra — was speckled with Russian, an effect not too consistently reproduced in this chapter — the readers are restless tonight). [...]‘Yes, she started a rather sad little affair with Johnny, a young star from Fuerteventura, c’est dans la famille, her exact odnoletok (coeval), practically her twin in appearance, born the same year, the same day, the same instant —’ That was a mistake on silly Lucette’s part....
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/