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Re: Demon & Demonia in Ada - Daedalus & Icarus - Devils
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A. Sklyarenko: Demon is the society nickname of Dementiy Dedalovich Veen, Van's and Ada's father who is linked to the eponymous hero of Lermontov's poem:
In his poem Nochnoe nebo tak ugryumo... ("The nocturnal sky is so gloomy..." 1865) Tyutchev compares sheetlightnings to deaf-mute demons talking to each other. Maximilian Voloshin is the author of Demony glukhonemye ("The Deaf-mute Demons," 1917) and Rus' glukhonemaya ("Deaf-mute Rus," 1918) [ ] he [VN] was familiar with this anthroposophic wisdom.// For the flight from Man (as Manhattan is shortened on Antiterra) to France Demon Veen wears a scarlet-silk-lined black cape (2.1). Icarus flew so high that his wings of wax melted from the heat of the sun, and he plunged to his death in the sea. Van's father perishes in a mysterious airplane disaster above the Pacific (3.7).//Ada's husband Andrey Vinelander calls Demon "Dementiy Labirintovich:" 'And then, one day, Demon warned me that he would not come any more if he heard again poor Andrey's poor joke (Nu i balagur-zhe vi, Dementiy Labirintovich) [ ]
Jansy Mello: In ADA, Dedalus has a brother named Ardelion. He fathered Dementiy (Demon) and Ardelion fathered Daniel. Van gained acces to a magicarpet through his uncle Dan, who kept it in the attic at Ardis ( The machine was given to "a boy on his twelfth birthday.") Apparently, Dedalus was not the one who originally owned, or invented, the flying device, inspite of his inept cheering on his grandson Van.
In Greek mythology, Daedalus is the architect who plotted the Minoic labyrinth and constructed a pair of wings for his son Icarus, as indicated by A.S. I haven't figured out the evasive links related to labyrinths, to Dementiy and Daniel, in relation to their fathers and the "jikkers" (some other hidden infidelity in the Veen lineage?)
1."The attic. This is the attic. Welcome to the attic. It stored a great number of trunks and cartons...Rolled up in its case was an old ‘jikker’ or skimmer, a blue magic rug with Arabian designs, faded but still enchanting, which Uncle Daniel’s father had used in his boyhood and later flown when drunk [ ] Van who loved that sport bribed a local mechanic to clean the thing, reload its hawking-tubes, and generally bring it back into magic order and many a summer day would they spend, his Ada and he, hanging over grove and river or gliding at a safe ten-foot altitude above surfaces of roads or roofs[ ]"
2. The pleasure of suddenly discovering the right knack of topsy turvy locomotion was rather like learning to man, after many a painful and ignominious fall, those delightful gliders called Magicarpets (or ‘jikkers’) that were given a boy on his twelfth birthday in the adventurous days before the Great Reaction — and then what a breathtaking long neural caress when one became airborne for the first time and managed to skim over a haystack, a tree, a burn, a barn, while Grandfather Dedalus Veen, running with upturned face, flourished a flag and fell into the horsepond.
A few quotes from "Pale Fire" related to Dedalus and labyrinths, with an implicit criticism to Aristoteles (or so it seems) aren't helpful to understand what is intended in "Ada".
"Aristotle! — Ah, there would be a man to talk with! What satisfaction to see him take, like reins from between his fingers, the long ribbon of man’s life and trace it through the mystifying maze of all the wonderful adventure.... The crooked made straight. The Daedalian plan simplified by a look from above — smeared out as it were by the splotch of some master thumb that made the whole involuted, boggling thing one beautiful straight line." (CK line 810: A web of sense)
I have no idea about how the Christian demons (related to Lucifer and his "Fall" after a rendering, in the King James version of the Bible, of a Hebrew word in the book of Isaiah 14:12 ) are linked to the protective "daemons"(daimons)* V.Nabokov's references to Dementyi's nickname, Demon, and his links to evil doings and to mythological Dedalus are quite a puzzle, as are his "angels,"** here unrelated to the splendorous entities described in his Russian short-stories.
.....................................................................................................
* Wikipedia: From Latin daemon (“genius, lar, guardian spirit”), from Ancient Greek ?????? (daimon, “dispenser, god, protective spirit”). [ ] "Christian tradition, influenced by the Jewish presentation of the passage of Isaiah as applicable to Satan, came to use the Latin word for "morning star", lucifer, as a proper name ("Lucifer") for Satan as Satan was before his fall. As a result, "Lucifer has become a by-word for Satan in the Church and in popular literature", as in Dante Alighieri's Inferno and John Milton's Paradise Lost. However, the Latin word lucifer kept its original positive sense for Christians [ ] and its appearance in the Easter Proclamation as a description of Jesus.
** - "Revelation can be more perilous than Revolution. Sick minds identified the notion of a Terra planet with that of another world and this ‘Other World’ got confused not only with the ‘Next World’ but with the Real World in us and beyond us. Our enchanters, our demons, are noble iridescent creatures with translucent talons and mightily beating wings; but in the eighteen-sixties the New Believers urged one to imagine a sphere where our splendid friends had been utterly degraded[ ] while on the opposite side of the cosmic lane a rainbow mist of angelic spirits, inhabitants of sweet Terra, restored all the stalest but still potent myths of old creeds...."
.
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In his poem Nochnoe nebo tak ugryumo... ("The nocturnal sky is so gloomy..." 1865) Tyutchev compares sheetlightnings to deaf-mute demons talking to each other. Maximilian Voloshin is the author of Demony glukhonemye ("The Deaf-mute Demons," 1917) and Rus' glukhonemaya ("Deaf-mute Rus," 1918) [ ] he [VN] was familiar with this anthroposophic wisdom.// For the flight from Man (as Manhattan is shortened on Antiterra) to France Demon Veen wears a scarlet-silk-lined black cape (2.1). Icarus flew so high that his wings of wax melted from the heat of the sun, and he plunged to his death in the sea. Van's father perishes in a mysterious airplane disaster above the Pacific (3.7).//Ada's husband Andrey Vinelander calls Demon "Dementiy Labirintovich:" 'And then, one day, Demon warned me that he would not come any more if he heard again poor Andrey's poor joke (Nu i balagur-zhe vi, Dementiy Labirintovich) [ ]
Jansy Mello: In ADA, Dedalus has a brother named Ardelion. He fathered Dementiy (Demon) and Ardelion fathered Daniel. Van gained acces to a magicarpet through his uncle Dan, who kept it in the attic at Ardis ( The machine was given to "a boy on his twelfth birthday.") Apparently, Dedalus was not the one who originally owned, or invented, the flying device, inspite of his inept cheering on his grandson Van.
In Greek mythology, Daedalus is the architect who plotted the Minoic labyrinth and constructed a pair of wings for his son Icarus, as indicated by A.S. I haven't figured out the evasive links related to labyrinths, to Dementiy and Daniel, in relation to their fathers and the "jikkers" (some other hidden infidelity in the Veen lineage?)
1."The attic. This is the attic. Welcome to the attic. It stored a great number of trunks and cartons...Rolled up in its case was an old ‘jikker’ or skimmer, a blue magic rug with Arabian designs, faded but still enchanting, which Uncle Daniel’s father had used in his boyhood and later flown when drunk [ ] Van who loved that sport bribed a local mechanic to clean the thing, reload its hawking-tubes, and generally bring it back into magic order and many a summer day would they spend, his Ada and he, hanging over grove and river or gliding at a safe ten-foot altitude above surfaces of roads or roofs[ ]"
2. The pleasure of suddenly discovering the right knack of topsy turvy locomotion was rather like learning to man, after many a painful and ignominious fall, those delightful gliders called Magicarpets (or ‘jikkers’) that were given a boy on his twelfth birthday in the adventurous days before the Great Reaction — and then what a breathtaking long neural caress when one became airborne for the first time and managed to skim over a haystack, a tree, a burn, a barn, while Grandfather Dedalus Veen, running with upturned face, flourished a flag and fell into the horsepond.
A few quotes from "Pale Fire" related to Dedalus and labyrinths, with an implicit criticism to Aristoteles (or so it seems) aren't helpful to understand what is intended in "Ada".
"Aristotle! — Ah, there would be a man to talk with! What satisfaction to see him take, like reins from between his fingers, the long ribbon of man’s life and trace it through the mystifying maze of all the wonderful adventure.... The crooked made straight. The Daedalian plan simplified by a look from above — smeared out as it were by the splotch of some master thumb that made the whole involuted, boggling thing one beautiful straight line." (CK line 810: A web of sense)
I have no idea about how the Christian demons (related to Lucifer and his "Fall" after a rendering, in the King James version of the Bible, of a Hebrew word in the book of Isaiah 14:12 ) are linked to the protective "daemons"(daimons)* V.Nabokov's references to Dementyi's nickname, Demon, and his links to evil doings and to mythological Dedalus are quite a puzzle, as are his "angels,"** here unrelated to the splendorous entities described in his Russian short-stories.
.....................................................................................................
* Wikipedia: From Latin daemon (“genius, lar, guardian spirit”), from Ancient Greek ?????? (daimon, “dispenser, god, protective spirit”). [ ] "Christian tradition, influenced by the Jewish presentation of the passage of Isaiah as applicable to Satan, came to use the Latin word for "morning star", lucifer, as a proper name ("Lucifer") for Satan as Satan was before his fall. As a result, "Lucifer has become a by-word for Satan in the Church and in popular literature", as in Dante Alighieri's Inferno and John Milton's Paradise Lost. However, the Latin word lucifer kept its original positive sense for Christians [ ] and its appearance in the Easter Proclamation as a description of Jesus.
** - "Revelation can be more perilous than Revolution. Sick minds identified the notion of a Terra planet with that of another world and this ‘Other World’ got confused not only with the ‘Next World’ but with the Real World in us and beyond us. Our enchanters, our demons, are noble iridescent creatures with translucent talons and mightily beating wings; but in the eighteen-sixties the New Believers urged one to imagine a sphere where our splendid friends had been utterly degraded[ ] while on the opposite side of the cosmic lane a rainbow mist of angelic spirits, inhabitants of sweet Terra, restored all the stalest but still potent myths of old creeds...."
.
Search archive with Google:
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Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/