Subject
reading ADA anagramatically
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Date
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May I shift, after the lively debate over PALE FIRE, to ADA?
The novel's second paragraph begins:
"Van's maternal grandmother Daria ("Dolly") Durmanov was the daughter of Prince Peter Zemski, Governor of Bras d'Or, an American province in the Northeast of our great and variegated country..." (1.1).
Bras d'Or ("arm of gold") is the name of a salt lake on the Cape Breton island (in the Canadian province Nova Scotia) that also hints at Labrador, a large peninsula in NE North America and a region of Atlantic Canada (named after Portuguese explorer J. F. Lavrador who first sighted it in 1498).
Some time ago, Victor Fet pointed out to me that labra (pl. of labrum, Latin for "lip") was an entomological term, meaning "part of the mouth of an arthropod". Victor noted that there was labra in "Labrador", "Calabria" (region in S Italy; cf. mysterious "Gypsy politicians or Calabrian laborers" who appear at the picnic in Ardis the Second: 1.39), and palabra (Spanish for "word"; pah, pronounced rather like palabra's first syllable, is Ada's beloved expletive and the first word that Van hears her say: 1.5)
Reading Heine's Die Reise von Muenchen nach Genua ("The Journey from Munich to Genoa", 1829), I discovered that La Bra* was the name of Verona's main piazza. Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is set in Verona (city in N Italy, E of Venice). Verona - or = Vena (Russian name of Vienna and Russian for "vein") = Neva ("the legendary river of Old Rus", as Ada calls it: 2.1). Neva + da (Russian for "yes") = Nevada (an American State; on Antiterra, the name of a gambling town: 2.1). Nevada + ice (cf. "with tangible water and ice separating the political, rather than poetical, notions of 'America' and 'Russia'": 1.3) = Ada + Venice (the city built on numerous small islands in the laguna of Venice, in N part of the Adriatic; the setting of Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice"; after love-making to Ada, 1.31, Van compares himself to "a certain Venetian", namely, Casanova, whose "Memoirs" are evoked elsewhere: 2.8).
We have thus bridged, in only three paragraphs, several places in different parts of both our world and Demonia (aka Antiterra, Earth's twin planet, on which ADA is set), including the river that flows in Nabokov's (and mine) home city. May be, my "anagramatic" method is worth anything, after all? May be, a ? million? :)
Alexey Sklyarenko
*In his Italienische Reise ("The Italian Journey", 1786) Goethe refers to this square as il Bra (il Bra = libra, Latin for "balance"; Libra is also the name of a zodiacal constellation).
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The novel's second paragraph begins:
"Van's maternal grandmother Daria ("Dolly") Durmanov was the daughter of Prince Peter Zemski, Governor of Bras d'Or, an American province in the Northeast of our great and variegated country..." (1.1).
Bras d'Or ("arm of gold") is the name of a salt lake on the Cape Breton island (in the Canadian province Nova Scotia) that also hints at Labrador, a large peninsula in NE North America and a region of Atlantic Canada (named after Portuguese explorer J. F. Lavrador who first sighted it in 1498).
Some time ago, Victor Fet pointed out to me that labra (pl. of labrum, Latin for "lip") was an entomological term, meaning "part of the mouth of an arthropod". Victor noted that there was labra in "Labrador", "Calabria" (region in S Italy; cf. mysterious "Gypsy politicians or Calabrian laborers" who appear at the picnic in Ardis the Second: 1.39), and palabra (Spanish for "word"; pah, pronounced rather like palabra's first syllable, is Ada's beloved expletive and the first word that Van hears her say: 1.5)
Reading Heine's Die Reise von Muenchen nach Genua ("The Journey from Munich to Genoa", 1829), I discovered that La Bra* was the name of Verona's main piazza. Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is set in Verona (city in N Italy, E of Venice). Verona - or = Vena (Russian name of Vienna and Russian for "vein") = Neva ("the legendary river of Old Rus", as Ada calls it: 2.1). Neva + da (Russian for "yes") = Nevada (an American State; on Antiterra, the name of a gambling town: 2.1). Nevada + ice (cf. "with tangible water and ice separating the political, rather than poetical, notions of 'America' and 'Russia'": 1.3) = Ada + Venice (the city built on numerous small islands in the laguna of Venice, in N part of the Adriatic; the setting of Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice"; after love-making to Ada, 1.31, Van compares himself to "a certain Venetian", namely, Casanova, whose "Memoirs" are evoked elsewhere: 2.8).
We have thus bridged, in only three paragraphs, several places in different parts of both our world and Demonia (aka Antiterra, Earth's twin planet, on which ADA is set), including the river that flows in Nabokov's (and mine) home city. May be, my "anagramatic" method is worth anything, after all? May be, a ? million? :)
Alexey Sklyarenko
*In his Italienische Reise ("The Italian Journey", 1786) Goethe refers to this square as il Bra (il Bra = libra, Latin for "balance"; Libra is also the name of a zodiacal constellation).
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/