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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