Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0025951, Tue, 20 Jan 2015 19:33:29 -0500

Subject
Re: Darwin in Ada
Date
Body
VN dismissed Finnegans Wake as "one of the greatest failures in
literature,'' yet he seems to have set the board with a similar scrambled
word game in Ada. Asked why he had written the Wake the way he did, Joyce
replied, "To keep the critics busy for three hundred years." How long do
Nabokovians expect to be busy with Ada?

On Tue, Jan 20, 2015 at 3:56 PM, Nabokv-L <nabokv-l@utk.edu> wrote:

> Subject: [NABOKV-L] RES: [NABOKV-L] Darwin in Ada
> Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2015 13:55:06 +0000
> From: Fet, Victor <fet@marshall.edu>
> To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
>
> I am attempting to explore importance of Darwin in Ada and other VN
> writings (beyond Podvig/Glory).
>
>
> I am not specifically interested in "Scrabble approach", but noticed that
> both Demon and Dan Veen have nicknames starting with R, and thus abbreviate
> to D. "R". Veen, or in Russian transliteration, D. R. Vin. (English "R" is
> read as "ar"). Note hard "v" with which we Russians customarily replace "w"
> in spoken English (e.g. I live in Vest Wirginia).
>
>
> Their grandfather is Erasmus Veen, who is easily interpreted as Erasmus
> [Dar]vin.
>
>
> I wonder if anybody noticed this word play before. I welcome any advice on
> the subject.
>
>
> Van and Ada thus are not just "children of Demon" but also descendants of
> Darwin.
>
> "Descent with modification" is Darwin's original formula of evolutionary
> change. Anybody would agree that, in the case of Van and Ada, such
> modification, compared to direct ancestors, is profound. It will not be
> inherited, I am afraid.
>
>
> Victor Fet
>
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Search archive with Google:
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Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
AdaOnline: "http://www.ada.auckland.ac.nz/
The Nabokov Society of Japan's Annotations to Ada: http://vnjapan.org/main/ada/index.html
The VN Bibliography Blog: http://vnbiblio.com/
Search the archive with L-Soft: https://listserv.ucsb.edu/lsv-cgi-bin/wa?A0=NABOKV-L

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