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Fwd: Re: VAn & ADA: true siblings/violet Knox Oranger
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EDNOTE. Forgive me if this has run before.
----- Forwarded message from chaiselongue@earthlink.net -----
Date: Mon, 19 Sep 2005 10:34:49 -0800
From: Carolyn Kunin <chaiselongue@earthlink.net>
Reply-To: Carolyn Kunin <chaiselongue@earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: VAn & ADA: true siblings/violet Knox Oranger
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum
Dear Penny McCarthy,
You are not the first to speculate on the possibility that Van and Ada are
not siblings. Claudia Ratazzi Papka came to that conclusion, and further
deduced that the only true brother-sister relationship existed between Van &
Lucette. She thought that it explained why Van avoided Lucette's bed & when
Lucette was forced into Vaniada's, he was impotent with her.
I have given up trying to understand Ada, but I do have a few suspicions.
One is that Van is the maddest of Nabokov's mad narrators. The other is that
Van has doubled, redoubled and trebled so many times over any possible
"reality" that lies behind it all, that I despair that it will be
recoverable.
Charles Nicol in his article on Ada in Nabokov's Fifth Arc started down this
path, but that was some years ago and the path seems otherwise abandoned.
I do have another suspicion that the key lies in that statement before the
text of the book begins about Mr & Mrs Oranger. I discovered yesterday that
her name, Violet Knox Oranger, appears also in the text of the book as a pun
in a sentence (in Part V, ch 4) that like so many in Ada, doesn't make any
sense:
Violet knocks [at the library door and lets in plump, short, bow-tied Mr]
Oranger ... "
Carolyn
p.s. Violet's "doll eyes" also perplexed me yesterday (she is "an enchanting
English blonde with doll eyes ...") and today I wonder if it links her to
the two Dollies - - Tolstoy's and "Daria (1825-1870), daughter of Mary
O'Reilly and Peter Zemski. Of course, she might actually only be a doll
after all. Who knows!
----- End forwarded message -----
----- Forwarded message from chaiselongue@earthlink.net -----
Date: Mon, 19 Sep 2005 10:34:49 -0800
From: Carolyn Kunin <chaiselongue@earthlink.net>
Reply-To: Carolyn Kunin <chaiselongue@earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: VAn & ADA: true siblings/violet Knox Oranger
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum
Dear Penny McCarthy,
You are not the first to speculate on the possibility that Van and Ada are
not siblings. Claudia Ratazzi Papka came to that conclusion, and further
deduced that the only true brother-sister relationship existed between Van &
Lucette. She thought that it explained why Van avoided Lucette's bed & when
Lucette was forced into Vaniada's, he was impotent with her.
I have given up trying to understand Ada, but I do have a few suspicions.
One is that Van is the maddest of Nabokov's mad narrators. The other is that
Van has doubled, redoubled and trebled so many times over any possible
"reality" that lies behind it all, that I despair that it will be
recoverable.
Charles Nicol in his article on Ada in Nabokov's Fifth Arc started down this
path, but that was some years ago and the path seems otherwise abandoned.
I do have another suspicion that the key lies in that statement before the
text of the book begins about Mr & Mrs Oranger. I discovered yesterday that
her name, Violet Knox Oranger, appears also in the text of the book as a pun
in a sentence (in Part V, ch 4) that like so many in Ada, doesn't make any
sense:
Violet knocks [at the library door and lets in plump, short, bow-tied Mr]
Oranger ... "
Carolyn
p.s. Violet's "doll eyes" also perplexed me yesterday (she is "an enchanting
English blonde with doll eyes ...") and today I wonder if it links her to
the two Dollies - - Tolstoy's and "Daria (1825-1870), daughter of Mary
O'Reilly and Peter Zemski. Of course, she might actually only be a doll
after all. Who knows!
----- End forwarded message -----