Describing the method of his work, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions Marx père, the popular author of 'historical' plays:
Van Veen [as also, in his small way, the editor of Ada] liked to change his abode at the end of a section or chapter or even paragraph, and he had almost finished a difficult bit dealing with the divorce between time and the contents of time (such as action on matter, in space, and the nature of space itself) and was contemplating moving to Manhattan (that kind of switch being a reflection of mental rubrication rather than a concession to some farcical 'influence of environment' endorsed by Marx père, the popular author of 'historical' plays), when he received an unexpected dorophone call which for a moment affected violently his entire pulmonary and systemic circulation. (2.5)
Karl Marx’s Eleventh Thesis on Feuerbach (used by Sergey Prokofiev in his Cantata for the 20th Anniversary of the October Revolution, Op. 74) reads: Die Philosophen haben die Welt nur verschieden interpretiert; es kommt darauf an, sie zu verändern ("Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it"). Prokofiev is the author of Romeo i Dzhulyetta (1935), a ballet based on Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet. “Marx père” also seems to hint at Shaxpere (as Shakespeare’s name is sometimes spelled), the author of history plays.
Marx has eleven theses on Feuerbach (the thesis quoted above is the last one). There are in Ada eleven main characters:
1 Van Veen
2 Ada Veen
3 Lucette Veen
4 Demon Veen
5 Marina Durmanov
6 Aqua Durmanov
7 Daniel Veen (Uncle Dan)
8 Andrey Vinelander (Ada’s husband)
9 Dorothy Vinelander (Ada’s sister-in-law)
10 Ronald Oranger (Ada’s grandson, the editor of Ada)
11 Violet Knox (Ada’s granddaughter who marries Ronald Oranger after Van’s and Ada’s death)
The children of Demon Veen and Marina Durmanov, Van and Ada are brother and sister (and life-long lovers). In “Ardis the First” Ada tells Van that twins or even siblings can’t marry, or will be jailed and "altered," if they persevere:
‘Don’t jingle them,’ she said, ‘we are watched by Lucette, whom I’ll strangle some day.’
They walked through a grove and past a grotto.
Ada said: ‘Officially we are maternal cousins, and cousins can marry by special decree, if they promise to sterilize their first five children. But, moreover, the father-in-law of my mother was the brother of your grandfather. Right?’
‘That’s what I’m told,’ said Van serenely.
‘Not sufficiently distant,’ she mused, ‘or is it?’
‘Far enough, fair enough.’
‘Funny — I saw that verse in small violet letters before you put it into orange ones — just one second before you spoke. Spoke, smoke. Like the puff preceding a distant cannon shot.’
‘Physically,’ she continued, ‘we are more like twins than cousins, and twins or even siblings can’t marry, of course, or will be jailed and "altered," if they persevere.’ (1.24)
Jailed people cannot change their abode. Interviewed in 1966 by Penelope Giliatt, VN says that, as a liberal, Kerenski (the head of the Provisional Government) could not just clap the Bolsheviks into jail:
“Pasternak?” I asked. At once he talked very fast. “Doctor Zhivago is false, melodramatic, badly written. It is false to history and false to art. The people are dummies. That awful girl is absurd. It reminds me very much of novels written by Russians of, I am ashamed to say, the gentler sex. Pasternak is not a bad poet. But in Zhivago he is vulgar. Simple. If you take his beautiful metaphors, there is nothing behind them. Even in his poems: What is that line, Vera? ‘To be a woman is a big step.’ It is ridiculous.” He laughed and looked stricken.
“This kind of thing recurs. Very typical of poems written in the Soviet era. A person of Zhivago’s class and his set, he wouldn’t stand in the snow and read about the Bolshevist regime and feel a tremendous glow. There was the liberal revolution at that time. Kerensky. If Kerensky had had more luck—but he was a liberal, you see, and he couldn’t just clap the Bolsheviks into jail. It was not done. He was a very average man, I should say. The kind of person you might find in the Cabinet of any democratic country. He spoke very well, with his hand in his bosom like Napoleon because it had almost been broken by handshakes."
On Demonia (aka Antiterra, Earth’s twin planet on which Ada is set) Pasternak’s novel Doctor Zhivago (1957) is known as Les Amours du Docteur Mertvago, a mystical romance written by a pastor (1.8), Mertvago Forever (2.5) and Klara Mertvago (2.7). The latter title brings to mind the Russian tongtwister Karl u Klary ukral korally, Klara u Karla ukrala klarnet (Karl stole from Klara her corals, Klara stole from Karl his clarinet).
In Zhizn' Chernyshevskogo ("The Life of Chernyshevski"), Chapter Four of VN's novel Dar ("The Gift," 1937), Fyodor Godunov-Cherdyntsev says that only the Marxists can still be interested in "this dead little book" (Chernyshevski's novel "What to Do?" written when the author was imprisoned in the Peter-and-Paul Fortress). As Vivian Darkbloom points out in his "Notes to Ada," zhiv means in Russian "alive" and mertv, "dead."
Les Amours du Docteur Mertvago bring to mind Les amours secrètes de Lénine : d'après les mémoires de Lise de K. (1937), a book by André Beucler and Grigoriǐ Aleksinskiǐ.
Btw., «11-й тезис» is a poem (https://www.google.ru/url?esrc=s&q=&rct=j&sa=U&url=https://victorfet.com/about/11-%25D0%25B9-%25D1%2582%25D0%25B5%25D0%25B7%25D0%25B8%25D1%2581/&ved=2ahUKEwiGu_-ImoL2AhWk_CoKHeWYC2IQFnoECAcQAg&usg=AOvVaw0RLW710UwkYueJ9JjaSdkL) by the Russian poet Nabokovian Victor Fet.