Alexey Sklyarenko: The sky was also heartless and dark, and her
[Lucette's] body, her head, and particularly those
damned thirsty trousers, felt clogged with Oceanus Nox, n, o, x.
(Ada, Part Three, 5). The chapter of
Byloe i dumy in which Herzen tells about the death of his mother and
son in a ship-wreck is entitled Oceano Nox
(1851).
JM: I've always puzzled about the black "Nox" that
clogged Lucette's movements. Your find seems to me to settle the matter quite
satisfactorily. Kudos!
In the latest Fall 2010 Nabokovian, in Brian Boyd's
"annotations to Ada" (199.25-26), he describes Ophelia's drowning,
when her "clothes spread wide,/ And mermaid-like they bore her up", "one of
Nabokov's favorite passages in Hamlet" Now quoting the
end of the passage (motif Ophelia): "..."But long it could not be/ Till
that her garments, heavy with their drink,/ Pulled the poor wretch from her
melodious lay/ To muddy death."
I wonder if its first lines (introduced into Bend Sinister, ch
7,118), when they describe a "willow grows aslant a brook/ That
shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream" (Boyd,199.25.26), may
be related to Lucette's "willow-green shorts" (BB, 198.11-12, motif
red-green; willow-green). I was unable to check "willow-green" on
line, though, but I'm neither an apt navigator nor a good swimmer...
Cf. http://www.ada.auckland.ac.nz/ada17ann.htm#493334 144.33:
sea-green eye: Green is
associated with Lucette (her eye color, her favorite clothes) and her envious
espials (“the keyhole turned an angry green,” 213.30-31; “while Lucette
considered with darkening green eyes,” 278.28-29); sea-green with her death in
the sea, and the movie that precedes the fatal Don Juan’s Last Fling,
“featuring a cruise to Greenland, with heavy seas in gaudy
technicolor” (487.18-19, italics added). MOTIF: green
[Lucette].
...............................................................................................................................................................
In his note 199.33 Boyd observes that "celestino" is an
"Invented trade name." Since the chapter "focuses on the comedy of change"
and Van is grappling with "an abundance of others, family and filmmakers," I was
wondering it the name could, in anyway, be related to a Brazilian singer
and minor actor, Vicente Celestino ( Mexican Pedro and Rio are mentioned in
Ch. 32), born in Rio, in 1894. Certainly the word "celestino" (sky-related) fits in well as a brand
name for swimming-pool chemicals. I find it hard to imagine Nabokov would have
heard of a Latin American sentimental Celestino..