Dear List,
 
I just re-read Nabokov's interview. BBC Television [1962] and was struck by a poem that VN wrote  &  where a boy and a girl burst into tears.
It made me think of a question VN asked in "ADA" ( the latter has been "answered" by several people, usually to point out a moral tale about Ada crying because she intuitively felt Van´s  seduction scheme, but I cannot agree with that).   
I wonder if anyone sees a special connection between what I now consider as two ineffable bursts into sorrowful bliss?
 
Excerpt from the interview:
"my favorite Russian poem is one that I happened to give to my main character in that novel (...) Which I wrote myself, of course; and now I'm wondering whether I might be able to recite it in Russian.
Let me explain it: there are two persons involved, a boy and a girl, standing on a bridge above the reflected sunset, and there are swallows skimming by, and the boy turns to the girl and says to her, "Tell me, will you always remember that swallow? - not any kind of swallow, not those swallows, there, but that particular swallow that skimmed by?" And she says, "Of course I will," and they both burst into tears. 

Odnazhdy my pod-vecher oba 

Stoyali na starom mostu. 

Skazhi mne, sprosil ya, do groba 

Zapomnish' von lastochku tu? 

I ty otvechala: eshchyo by! 

I kak my zaplakali oba, 

Kak vskriknula zhizn' na letu! 

Do zavtra, naveki, do groba, 

Odnazhdy na starom mostu . . .  "


excerpt from ADA: 
His reversed body gracefully curved, his brown legs hoisted like a Tarentine sail, his joined ankles tacking, Van gripped with splayed hands the brow of gravity, and moved to and fro, veering and sidestepping (...) but that summer afternoon, on the silky ground of the pineglade, in the magical heart of Ardis, under Lady Erminin’s blue eye, fourteen-year-old Van treated us to the greatest performance we have ever seen a brachiambulant give. Not the faintest flush showed on his face or neck! Now and then, when he detached his organs of locomotion from the lenient ground, and seemed actually to clap his hands in midair, in a miraculous parody of a ballet jump, one wondered if this dreamy indolence of levitation was not a result of the earth’s canceling its pull in a fit of absentminded benevolence.
Questions for study and discussion: 1...; 2...; 3. Why did Ada burst into tears at the height of Van’s performance?

Thank you,
Jansy