Subject
Burning Barn in ADA
From
Date
Body
In the night of the Burning Barn, when Van and Ada make love for the first time, they see three silhouettes from the library window:
'Look, gipsies,' she whispered, pointing out at three shadowy forms - two men, one with a ladder, and a child or dwarf - circumspectly moving across the gray lawn. They saw the candle-lit window and decamped, the smaller one walking a reculons as if taking pictures. (1.19)
The child or dwarf in this company is certainly Kim Beauharnais, the kitchen boy and photographer at Ardis, who later blackmails Ada. As we have established, Kim = Mik = kimono - ono = mikado - ado. While the name Kim, of the eponymous little hero of Kipling's novel, 1900, set in India, points to India, the name Mik, of the eponymous little hero of Gumilyov's poem, 1918, set in Africa, points to Africa, the words "kimono" and "mikado" point to Japan. Both of them are mentioned and explained in the "Japanese" chapter of Jules Verne's novel "Around the World in Eighty Days" (1873). And so is Benten, the name of the see goddess on several Japanese islands and of the indigenous part of Yokohama visited by Passepartout, the valet of Phileas Fogg (Jules Verne's globetrotter who is mentioned in the very first chapter of Ada). On the other hand, Benten is mentioned in Ada, but on Antiterra it turns out to be a kerosene lamp's commercial name. Just before the start of a Flavita game (Flavita is the Antiterran version of Russian scrabble; FLAVITA = ALFAVIT, alfavit being Russian for "alphabet"), Ada says:
"I would much prefer the Benten lamp here but it is out of kerosin. Pet (addressing Lucette), be a good scout, call her - Good Heavens!" (1.36)
This game is played by Van, Ada and Lucette one August evening in 1884, soon after the night of the Burning Barn. The seven letters Ada has taken, S, R, E, N, O, K, I, and is sorting out in her spektrik (the little trough of japanned wood each player had before him; spektrik means "a little spectrum" in Russian) form the word she has just spoken. The miraculousness of this coincidence leaves us no time to wonder: why there is no kerosene in the lamp?
But once we have asked this question, we immediately realize that we know the answer. The kerosene from the Benten lamp, and possibly from all other kerosene lamps in the house, was used for setting the Barn on fire. Who were the arsonists? The good scout Kim and his 'gipsy' friends bribed by Ada, who correctly calculated that a night fire will attract the inhabitants of Ardis Hall and most of them will leave the house, which will allow her to spend a few romantically summer night hours with Van. In fact, she frankly confesses this to Van:
"I stayed at home on purpose, because I hoped you would too - it was a contrived coincidence." (1.19)
What Ada doesn't say, is that this coincidence was contrived - at least, partly - by her. Like Sasha Vinokurov in Gorky's story "The Fires" (Pozhary), she knows that "the fire is a spectacle that everybody enjoys and all people fly headlong to fire, as nocturnal butterflies do" (vse lyudi stremglav letyat na ogon', podobno babochkam nochnym; note the lyudi, which, I remind you, is also the name of the letter L in the old Russian alphabet; note that the word lyudi also occurs in Ada, in the phrase lyudi oglyadyvalis', "people looked back:" 1.29; finally, note that the surname Vinokurov comes from vinokur, "distiller"). No doubt Ada would also remember that Phileas Fogg, on his journey from New York, practically burns the ship on which he is crossing over in order to arrive at Queenstown, Ireland, in time to reach London via Dublin and Liverpool before the deadline. I think she would also know why the so-called Voron'ya slobodka ("Raven's nest") burnt down in Ilf and Petrov's "The Golden Calf." In fact, it seems to me that the mysterious Grandma who, according to Ada, "gets the Xmas card" (1.19) is no other than "no one's grandmother" (nich'ya babushka), one of the inhabitants of the trouble-making "Raven's nest," who lives in the attic (entresol), is afraid of electricity and uses a kerosene lamp (see my Russian note in Zembla http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/sklyarenko6.doc: "Poluchit li babushka rozhdestvenskuyu otkrytku, ili Otchego zagorelsya baronskiy ambar v Ade").
So, Ada doesn't seem to be "as pure as night sky" in the night of The Burning Barn; more likely, she "indulges in a cold game" with Van (of whom she already knows that he is her brother, while he still believes that she is his first cousin). This suggests that, by this time, she is not a virgin anymore, but, at best, "almost one" (as Blanche says of herself when she first meets Van), or a "demi-vierge" (as Ada later says of Lucette, alluding to the title of Marcel Prevost's novel). Van is not sure when he "deflowered" Ada (not in the night of the Burning Barn anyway), but it seems that Ada has lost her flower earlier, either to her nature teacher Dr. Krolik, or, more likely, to his brother, Karol, or Karapars, Krolik, a doctor of philosophy, born in Turkey (whose picture, taken by Kim, Van sees only eight years later: 2.7), and not to Van.
It remains to be said that:
a) KIM + L = LIK + M = KLIM = MILK (Klim is a male given name; cf. Baron Klim Avidov, who gave the Flavita set to Marina's children: 1.36; cf. "The Life of Klim Samgin," Gorky's last and largest novel; Lik is the eponymous hero of a Nabokov story, 1939; lik is Russian for "countenance;" "milk" is a liquid that one can drink but that is neither water, nor wine); BARON KLIM AVIDOV = VIVIAN DARKBLOOM = VLADIMIR NABOKOV
b) BENTEN + TAM-TAM + OH = BENTHAM + TEMNOTA (tam-tam is a kind of gong mentioned in the same Japanese chapter of JV's novel; tam is Russian for "there;" Bentham is the English jurist Jeremy Bentham, 1748-1832, who is mentioned in Pushkin's "Eugene Onegin," as one of the authors whom Onegin read; temnota is Russian for "darkness," a synonym of mrak; note that Kim, in another fire, is blinded by Van and is thus plunged into eternal darkness: 2.11).
c) ADA = AOUDA - OU (Aouda is a character in JV's novel, the young Parsi woman whom Fogg saves in India and whom he marries upon his return to London; ou is French for "or;" cf. "Ada ou l'ardeur;" note that Parsi = Paris)
d) Uncle Dan's Japanese valet is mentioned by Van in the Burning Barn chapter.
special greetings to the critics of my method,
Alexey Sklyarenko
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/
'Look, gipsies,' she whispered, pointing out at three shadowy forms - two men, one with a ladder, and a child or dwarf - circumspectly moving across the gray lawn. They saw the candle-lit window and decamped, the smaller one walking a reculons as if taking pictures. (1.19)
The child or dwarf in this company is certainly Kim Beauharnais, the kitchen boy and photographer at Ardis, who later blackmails Ada. As we have established, Kim = Mik = kimono - ono = mikado - ado. While the name Kim, of the eponymous little hero of Kipling's novel, 1900, set in India, points to India, the name Mik, of the eponymous little hero of Gumilyov's poem, 1918, set in Africa, points to Africa, the words "kimono" and "mikado" point to Japan. Both of them are mentioned and explained in the "Japanese" chapter of Jules Verne's novel "Around the World in Eighty Days" (1873). And so is Benten, the name of the see goddess on several Japanese islands and of the indigenous part of Yokohama visited by Passepartout, the valet of Phileas Fogg (Jules Verne's globetrotter who is mentioned in the very first chapter of Ada). On the other hand, Benten is mentioned in Ada, but on Antiterra it turns out to be a kerosene lamp's commercial name. Just before the start of a Flavita game (Flavita is the Antiterran version of Russian scrabble; FLAVITA = ALFAVIT, alfavit being Russian for "alphabet"), Ada says:
"I would much prefer the Benten lamp here but it is out of kerosin. Pet (addressing Lucette), be a good scout, call her - Good Heavens!" (1.36)
This game is played by Van, Ada and Lucette one August evening in 1884, soon after the night of the Burning Barn. The seven letters Ada has taken, S, R, E, N, O, K, I, and is sorting out in her spektrik (the little trough of japanned wood each player had before him; spektrik means "a little spectrum" in Russian) form the word she has just spoken. The miraculousness of this coincidence leaves us no time to wonder: why there is no kerosene in the lamp?
But once we have asked this question, we immediately realize that we know the answer. The kerosene from the Benten lamp, and possibly from all other kerosene lamps in the house, was used for setting the Barn on fire. Who were the arsonists? The good scout Kim and his 'gipsy' friends bribed by Ada, who correctly calculated that a night fire will attract the inhabitants of Ardis Hall and most of them will leave the house, which will allow her to spend a few romantically summer night hours with Van. In fact, she frankly confesses this to Van:
"I stayed at home on purpose, because I hoped you would too - it was a contrived coincidence." (1.19)
What Ada doesn't say, is that this coincidence was contrived - at least, partly - by her. Like Sasha Vinokurov in Gorky's story "The Fires" (Pozhary), she knows that "the fire is a spectacle that everybody enjoys and all people fly headlong to fire, as nocturnal butterflies do" (vse lyudi stremglav letyat na ogon', podobno babochkam nochnym; note the lyudi, which, I remind you, is also the name of the letter L in the old Russian alphabet; note that the word lyudi also occurs in Ada, in the phrase lyudi oglyadyvalis', "people looked back:" 1.29; finally, note that the surname Vinokurov comes from vinokur, "distiller"). No doubt Ada would also remember that Phileas Fogg, on his journey from New York, practically burns the ship on which he is crossing over in order to arrive at Queenstown, Ireland, in time to reach London via Dublin and Liverpool before the deadline. I think she would also know why the so-called Voron'ya slobodka ("Raven's nest") burnt down in Ilf and Petrov's "The Golden Calf." In fact, it seems to me that the mysterious Grandma who, according to Ada, "gets the Xmas card" (1.19) is no other than "no one's grandmother" (nich'ya babushka), one of the inhabitants of the trouble-making "Raven's nest," who lives in the attic (entresol), is afraid of electricity and uses a kerosene lamp (see my Russian note in Zembla http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/sklyarenko6.doc: "Poluchit li babushka rozhdestvenskuyu otkrytku, ili Otchego zagorelsya baronskiy ambar v Ade").
So, Ada doesn't seem to be "as pure as night sky" in the night of The Burning Barn; more likely, she "indulges in a cold game" with Van (of whom she already knows that he is her brother, while he still believes that she is his first cousin). This suggests that, by this time, she is not a virgin anymore, but, at best, "almost one" (as Blanche says of herself when she first meets Van), or a "demi-vierge" (as Ada later says of Lucette, alluding to the title of Marcel Prevost's novel). Van is not sure when he "deflowered" Ada (not in the night of the Burning Barn anyway), but it seems that Ada has lost her flower earlier, either to her nature teacher Dr. Krolik, or, more likely, to his brother, Karol, or Karapars, Krolik, a doctor of philosophy, born in Turkey (whose picture, taken by Kim, Van sees only eight years later: 2.7), and not to Van.
It remains to be said that:
a) KIM + L = LIK + M = KLIM = MILK (Klim is a male given name; cf. Baron Klim Avidov, who gave the Flavita set to Marina's children: 1.36; cf. "The Life of Klim Samgin," Gorky's last and largest novel; Lik is the eponymous hero of a Nabokov story, 1939; lik is Russian for "countenance;" "milk" is a liquid that one can drink but that is neither water, nor wine); BARON KLIM AVIDOV = VIVIAN DARKBLOOM = VLADIMIR NABOKOV
b) BENTEN + TAM-TAM + OH = BENTHAM + TEMNOTA (tam-tam is a kind of gong mentioned in the same Japanese chapter of JV's novel; tam is Russian for "there;" Bentham is the English jurist Jeremy Bentham, 1748-1832, who is mentioned in Pushkin's "Eugene Onegin," as one of the authors whom Onegin read; temnota is Russian for "darkness," a synonym of mrak; note that Kim, in another fire, is blinded by Van and is thus plunged into eternal darkness: 2.11).
c) ADA = AOUDA - OU (Aouda is a character in JV's novel, the young Parsi woman whom Fogg saves in India and whom he marries upon his return to London; ou is French for "or;" cf. "Ada ou l'ardeur;" note that Parsi = Paris)
d) Uncle Dan's Japanese valet is mentioned by Van in the Burning Barn chapter.
special greetings to the critics of my method,
Alexey Sklyarenko
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/