JM: No. I simply cannot
"remove" the fact that Ada,Van and Lucette are
siblings...
J.A: Well, I understand what you mean,
but I'm talking about viewing the story from Van's perspective, an Antiterran
perspective.
JM: While I was checking about
siblings and cousins - and although Brian
Boyd indicated AdaOline (http://www.ada.auckland.ac.nz/) for
the Tolstoy references in the first paragraph* - I came across that
other one which hasn't yet been included in
AdaOnline.
There is an obvious structural symmetry in
the novel's beginnings and endings referencing Tolstoy, to shape the
"ouroborus" serpent from Alchemy.
I think that it indicates very clearly Tolstoy's second book to
reassert Van's boyhood with Ada, as seen from Lucette's
father's "fabulous estate," placed in Anti-terran "Arcadian
innocence." (ie: linking it to "otrochestvo"
[boyhood] and "fatherland" ["otechestvo"]**.
I quote:
"The end of an extraordinary
epoch coincides with Van’s no less extraordinary boyhood. Nothing in world
literature, save maybe [588.15] Tolstoy’s reminiscences, can vie in
pure joyousness and Arcadian innocence with the “Ardis” part of the book. On the
fabulous country estate of his art-collecting uncle, Daniel Veen, an ardent
childhood romance develops in a series of fascinating scenes between Van and
pretty Ada, a truly unusual gamine, [588.20] daughter of Marina, Daniel’s
stage-struck wife. That the relationship is not simply dangerous cousinage,
but possesses an aspect prohibited by law, is hinted in the very first
pages." (underlined by me).
With a little daring I also suggest that the
wordplay linking boyhood and fatherland (passing through Toslstoy's
early writings in Van Veen's late memoirs) indicates more than the jab
against translators (pointed out by Boyd and Connoly). It might serve as an
indication about the mood of VN's "Speak, Memory" (first
part).
What about VN's stressing the "aspect prohibited
by law" in VV's closing words? Would this be a very indirect defiance
concerning the Freudian oedipal developments?
..........................................................................................................................................................................
* - B.Boyd: 3.07-08:
Detstvo . . . Fatherland: Tolstoy's
semi-autobiographical novellas Detstvo (Childhood, pub. 1852),
Otrochestvo (Boyhood, pub. 1854) and Iunost' (Youth,
pub. 1857), first collected edition 1864, are here garbled and fused with
Turgenev's Ottsy i deti (Fathers and Children, usually
translated as Fathers and Sons) (see 3.03n and 105.26-27 and n)....Once
again the Russians mingling with Antiterra's Anglophones ensure a quicker if
less accurate translation than on earth. Brian adds another connection in
3.08: Childhood and
Fatherland: In light of the prominence of François-René de
Chateaubriand (1768-1848) throughout Ada [...]it seems more than
accidental that Childhood and Fatherland echoes the phrase "de
l'enfance et de la patrie" at the beginning of René (pub. 1802, in
Le Génie du christianisme), just where René introduces the subject of
his special closeness to his sister:...MOTIF: Chateaubriand.
**Julian Connoly
wrote: Early in his career Tolstoy wrote three works with the titles "Detstvo,"
"Otrochestvo," and "Iunost'", which translate as "Childhood," "Boyhood," and
"Youth." Nabokov deliberately mistranslates the word "otrochestvo"
[boyhood] as "fatherland," which, in Russian, is "otechestvo" a word that is
phonetically close to "otrochestvo." He may be getting in a subtle dig at poor
translators.
After all, for Van, Ada is the ultimate girl/woman. I think
it's meant to work a little like Lolita does; you're with Humbert long enough
that, even while you're rejecting his whole way of looking at love and Lolita,
part of you starts coping with it, weighing out his ideas about things, at least
partially, in his terms. For instance, the whole Gaston Godin character. He's a
mirror of Humbert, only instead of "nymphets" he likes "fauns". He's a character
who's only purpose is to make Humbert look better. In Humbert's universe, there
is a distinct difference between the two of them--even though, like Godin, he
likes sex with children, at least the children he (Humbert) likes are of the
opposite sex, and of course he's not as dumb as Godin, so we should therefore
sympathize more with him. Part of us may sort of buy into such specious
rhetoric, at least temporarily.
Something like this goes on in the
perverse world of Van's erotic canvas, don't you think? I know what you mean,
though, it wouldn't really be any more acceptable for Van to be with Lucette
instead of Ada, but I think part of him does, and Nabokov uses this as a weird
way to play what the reader thinks. A personal reaction: While I found Ada, the
character, rather charming during the first summer at Ardis (for me, the moment
Ada tosses a useless bureau knob out a window with a shrug is one of those
impetuous moments that gives her a joyful aliveness that has stayed with me),
but then in the second summer, and after that in an urban setting, Ada becomes
rather difficult to fathom in any ordinary fictional terms. This is a woman who
tells Van that he stimulated her to such an extent when they first became lovers
that when he dumped her she was so sexually frustrated she considered paying
some guy to service her; she began having relations with Lucette, even after
getting married; creepily, she instigated the menage a trois with Lucette. At
this point I started to wonder why exactly Van liked her so much (no wonder
Nabokov complained about Updike's review of the book). Lucette, as Nabokov
through Van describes her, is twice as beautiful, has more depth and is far more
sensitive than freaky old Ada. I found myself thinking, well since Van is just
so damned determined to be in a sordid incestuous relationship, he might as well
pick the better girl--yet it's Ada Van prefers. And I was kind of disappointed
by this! It's crazy, but that's what's so extraordinary and so maddening about
this fascinating book. Earlier, during the second Ardis summer, Van has a
marvelously evoked moment with Marina, where she tells him to stop turning
Lucette's head and tries to connect with him as a mother, knowing that there's
no real way to make up for what's happened. She seems alive and charming in a
way that Van's father, Demon, never does. And even though both Van and Ada
insist that she's really nothing more than a philistine dummy, I I understood
her at some level, felt for her; to me it was Demon who seemed like an empty and
sinister puppet. These kinds of reactions represent a subtle underlayer of the
experience of the book; obviously, because I don't accept Van's and Ada's
term--who could?--I'd be considered a dummy as well. This is a little
threatening, challenges one to try to grasp their sense of things, if only to
debate the characters' philosphy, which I presume is why an excellent reader
like Mary McCarthy disliked it so much (actually I think Boyd pointed this out
in his American Years bio). As in Lolita, before we know it, we've crossed all
kinds of lines and quite figure out when. In any case, Nabokov, sensing
this readerly reaction (a disapproval of Van's hostility to Marina) has Van tell
us he knows he ought to have cared more for Marina than Demon but that due to
the vagaries of individuals and geniuses, because life isn't deterministic, he
just didn't. (I wish I had time to track all this down in the book.) I think
this same thing is going with how he tries to deal with Lucette. Have I gotten
where I think I'm going yet?
P.S. I was the one who said Humbert
parodied Gone With The Wind, and yes, I meant the movie the movie not the book;
and Humbert does not mention it by name, merely describes the scene of a
southern Belle walking away from a plantation while her mammy leans out a second
story windoow carping at her, an early scene in the film.
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