Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0004230, Fri, 25 Jun 1999 21:02:32 -0700

Subject
Ada: Oceanus Nox? (fwd)
Date
Body
EDITOR's NOTE. For those with differing editions of ADA, the passage under
discussion is a page or two from the end of Chapter 5 in Section III.
Col. Rea's proposal below looks quite plausible. One also wonders about an
anagram. Suggestions?
Possibly relevant is the name "Violet" (as in Van's secretary
Violet Knox) is a loaded one for VN connected with an affair at Cambridge
as hinted at here and there in his work, esp. the long Russian
"Universitetskaya poema."

------------------------
A note to a note on a note to Ada!
or
Why academics get a bad name


On page 494 of _Ada_, Lucette, "felt clogged with Oceanus Nox,
n,o,x." Vivian Darkbloom annotates, "p 494, Nox: Lat, at night."
("Notes to _Ada_ by Vivian Dark-bloom",J. E. Rivers and William Walker,
p 257, in _Nabokov's Fifth Arc_, ed. J. E. Rivers and William Walker).
On page 293 of their "Notes to Vivian Darkbloom's Notes to Ada in that
same volume, Rivers and Walker correctly comment, "In Latin nox does not
mean "at night" but simply "night". But we are still left with an
anomalous phrase. Indeed we might suggest that "Oceanus" should
properly be ablative in Latin, "Oceano", as object of with (Latin
ablative carrying the functions of earlier instrumental case). This
would yield the strange, "Oceano Nocte", if we also adopt Rivers and
Walker's suggestion, in which "Oceano" could even be taken as an
adjective modifying "Nocte". Surely Nabokov, comfortable with Russian
cases, an old Cantabrigian sufficient in Latin, would not have intended
the unlikely collocation of nominatives of "Oceanus Nox" without good
cause, even though we admit the word play of "Nox" for Violet Knox.

But we are tempted to wonder about the possibility of an allusion
to Victor Hugo's appropriate poem, "Oceano Nox", "Night at Sea"; or "Night
on the Ocean": (the title function also justifying the capitalization of
these two words). The opening stanzas go [I translate]:

Oh! how many mariners [!]: Fr. 'marins'] ...
Who departed happy for distant travels,
Have vanished in this dismal horizon!
How many have disappeared, hard and sad fate!
In a bottomless sea, on a moonless night,
Buried forever under the blind ocean!

....Plunged in the abyss, none will know their end....

None will know your fate, poor lost heads!
You roll across the somber stretches,
Striking unknown reefs with your foreheads....

Comments appreciated (probably!)

John