Dear Nabokovians,
The 51st instalment of my Ada Annotations, to Part 2 Chapter 8 (the Ursus restaurant and the débauche à trois) is now available here (for IVNS members who have logged in). I'm afraid it seems to be the longest instalment yet, but it's a chapter particularly dense with allusions, obscurities, and layerings, even by Ada's standards.
This also means that Part 2 Chapter 6 (Ada's arrival at Van's Manhattan apartment) is now available at AdaOnline, with Part 2 Chapter 7 (the photo album), currently available here on this website, next in line.
Enjoy!
A special thanks to Stephen Blackwell and Diana Makhaldiani for their reliably regular, generous, and meticulous support. Steve found the translation of Blok's "V restorane" that I had taken from an internet version by a trio of American Slavists, and emended in the stanza most pertinent to the context in Ada, to be far too loose to satisfy his sense of Nabokovian rigor; he retranslated the poem with the help of his colleague Vadim Liapunov and myself. Diana offered many extremely fertile questions and suggestions and saved me from many inexactitudes.
Brian Boyd
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