Yesterday (Jan. 1) was also Van Veen's birthday.
Tomorrow (Jan. 3) is Lucette's birthday. Now it so happened that I was born (41
years ago) "between Van and Lucinda Veen." Because, in a sense, I too am
Nabokov's galley slave, may I suggest that Janaury 2 is henceforth celebrated as
"Skylark's Day"?
As a birthday present себе любимому ("to my beloved
self") I completed today two new versions (Russian & English) of my latest
(rather brilliant) essay, "The Red Flower of Evil in Nabokov's
Ada."* I hope to make them soon available to fellow
Nabokovians. (The Russian version that came out and faded in Topos is no longer
valid.)
To divert you a little:
Burning Barn + Rita =
burning bar + tiran
Rita + tiran + e = Antiterra +
i
Burning Barn - the Night
of the Burning Barn, the apotheosis of Ardis (1.19)
Rita - a character in
Lolita; a character in Ada
burning bar - "I picked
her [Rita] up one depraved May evening somewhere between Montreal and New York,
or more narrowly, between Toylestown and Blake, at a darkishly burning
bar under the sign of the Tiger-moth, where she was amiably drunk: she
insisted we had gone to school together, and she placed her trembling little
hand on my ape paw." (2.26) Btw., did anyone notice "Tolstoyan" in "Toylestown"
and Blake's Tiger?
tiran - Russ.,
tyrant; tiran = train
Antiterra (aka
Demonia) - Earth's twin planet on which Ada is set
*Incidentally, Aikhenvald speaks of the red flower
of evil in his essay on Garshin (included in "The Silhouettes of the Russian
Writers")
Happy VNew Year!
Alexey Sklyarenko