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Fw: Fw: Vivian Darkblooms in LOlita and ADA notes
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----- Original Message -----
From: alex
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum
Sent: Sunday, May 02, 2004 12:32 PM
Subject: Re: Fw: Vivian Darkblooms in LOlita and ADA notes
The Vivian of Ada can be a woman all right, and even the same person that we briefly glimpse in Lolita. S. Ilyin in his 'translation' renames this ADA character (or, rather, annotator) 'Vivian Damor-Blok' without a second's hesitation. And I don't blame him for that. I, on the contrary, used to imagine Vivian as a male and I think I had a right to do so. Stricly speaking, I would prefer not to transliterate his name at all in my translation and keep it in Latin characters (so as not to spoil the anagram).
I hope Sergey Karpukhin will see even more evidence than he could expect me to bring forward that ADA is essentially a Rusian novel after reading my three notes in the forthcoming issue of The Nabokovian. If you don't get it (I'm addressing Sergey now), please write me.
best,
Alexey
----- Original Message -----
From: D. Barton Johnson
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Sent: Sunday, May 02, 2004 8:10 PM
Subject: Fw: Vivian Darkblooms in LOlita and ADA notes
----- Original Message -----
From: Sergey Karpukhin
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum
Sent: Sunday, May 02, 2004 7:27 AM
Subject: Vivians
Just out of curiosity. Alexey Sklyarenko in his remarkable paper refers to Vivian Darkbloom (author of the ADA Notes) as to a male (in male gender in Russian: в примечаниях Вивиана Даркблума к "Аде"). I always assumed that it was what Lolita wanted Humbert to believe, but in reality Vivian was a woman. In the Russian translation of LOLITA Mrs Vivian Damor-Blok is most certainly a lady (see the suave John Ray's Foreword). Is the Vivian of ADA of different sex than the Vivian of LOLITA?
Incidentally, I am looking forward to seeing more of Alexey's evidence that ADA is a "Russian novel written in English".
Respectfully,
Sergey