-----Original Message-----
From: Bouazza, Abdellah
Sent: Wednesday, September 03, 2003 10:51 AM
To: 'Vladimir Nabokov Forum'
Subject: RE: ADA & Garbo

Dear Don,
 
Many thanks for this gem!
I haven't reread ADA for many years, but the chapter in question left a strong impression, and I always recall Cordula's "hair was of a neutral shade between dry straw and damp". As a matter of fact, as soon as my eyes saw the Anna Christie poster, before I started reading your note, my mind exclaimed, "that's Cordula!".
This goes once more to show that ADA, albeit Anti-Terran, has strong terrestrial links, as Boyd argued in January in connection with Bishop Vincent Veen, refuting Appel's claim VN "had cut himself off from the rich vein of American popular culture mined so colorfully in LOLITA"
 
Kind regards,
 
AB.
-----Original Message-----
From: D. Barton Johnson [mailto:chtodel@cox.net]
Sent: Saturday, August 30, 2003 9:07 PM
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Subject: ADA & Garbo

Ada, Cordula, & Greta Garbo
 
 
In Part I, chapter 27 of ADA, Van meets Cordula de Prey, Ada's 15 year-old schoolmate whom jealous Van suspects of being Ada's sexual partner.  The account, first of Van's meeting Cordula at a party and  again that evening  in a bookshop; then of his subsequent date with Ada (with Cordula as unwelcome chaperone) near the girls' boarding school, is rife with lesbian motifs. Among them is an allusion to Greta Garbo whose image is partly projected on both girls.
   
Cordula at the party is described  as wearing a "'garbotosh' (belted mackintosh) over her terribly unsmart turtle and held both hands deep in her pockets as she challenged his stare. Her bobbed hair was of a neutral shade between dry straw and damp. Her light blue eyes....".
 
Some months later,  Van and Ada (with chaperone Cordula) have a most unsatisfactory date on a rainy afternoon. Ada "sported a shiny black raincoat and a down-brimmed oilcloth hat as if someone was to be salvaged from the perils of life or the sea."
 
The Garbo image refers to her role in her first talking film, the 1930 "Anna Christie" based (fairly closely) on Eugene O'Neil's play. Garbo's  character, a  reformed prostitute and man-hater, has come home to her drunken Swedish father, the captain of a grungy coal barge  in New York harbor. Father and daughter have not seen each other since she  was five. In a fierce storm  at sea, they rescue a brash, handsome sailor. In the rescue scene, Anna appears in her oilskin slicker and hat. The slicker (sans hat but avec turtleneck) appears in the movie poster below. Note well VN's phrase "as if someone was to be salvaged from the perils ... of the sea."
Cordula not only wears the "garbotosh" but Anna's turtle neck sweater and has "bobbed hair .. of a neutral shade between dry straw and damp" as well as light blue eyes. This accords with Anna's bobbed hair and Garbo's real-life blonde hair and blue eyes (not evident in the black and white film. (But see the movie poster below.)
 
Rather than identifying the Garbo-Anna image with only one of his characters, VN assigns elements of it to both girls, drawing on both Garbo's dramatic role and Garbo herself. In fact, neither Ada nor Cordula bear much physical resemblance to Garbo or Anna. Narrator Van (and author VN) draw in these elements as part of Van's preoccupation with Cordula and Ada's lesbian relationship. The Garbo film has no suggestion that Anna  has lesbian inclinations. But Garbo herself was widely rumored to have lesbian lovers. The issue has been vigorous promoted by some feminist scholars and, most recently, by the publication of  the correspondence between Garbo and one of her alleged lovers,  who is the subject of a new biography entitled "'That Furious Lesian': The Story of Mercedes de Acosta" by Robert Schanke (Southern Illinois University Press, 2003 )($45).
 
VN was not, apparently, an admirer of  the heavily Freudian playwright O'Neil, a Nobel Prize winner in 1936. Although VN left no record of his opinion of "Anna Christie," he witheringly deconstructed "Mourning Becomes Electra" (and O'Neil himself) in his essay "The Tragedy of Tragedy."
 
                                                                                                                                                            D. Barton Johnson