Vladimir Nabokov

Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

Description

Please read Alexey Sklyarenko's annotations on Pale FireAda and other Nabokov works here.

By Alexey Sklyarenko, 29 May, 2025

The element that destroys Demon Veen (in VN’s novel Ada, 1969, Van’s and Ada’s father who perishes in a mysterious airplane disaster above the Pacific) is air:

 

Furnished Space, l’espace meublé (known to us only as furnished and full even if its contents be ‘absence of substance’ — which seats the mind, too), is mostly watery so far as this globe is concerned. In that form it destroyed Lucette. Another variety, more or less atmospheric, but no less gravitational and loathsome, destroyed Demon.

By Alexey Sklyarenko, 28 May, 2025

At breakfast after the Night of the Burning Barn (when Van and Ada make love for the first time) Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) says that Uncle Dan is all wet:

 

Meanwhile, Uncle Dan, in delayed action, chased an imaginary insect off his pate, looked up, looked around, and at last acknowledged the newcomer.

‘Oh yes, Ada,’ he said, ‘Van here is anxious to know something. What were you doing, my dear, while he and I were taking care of the fire?’

By Alexey Sklyarenko, 25 May, 2025

At the end of her letter to Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969), written a month before Demon's death in a mysterious airplane disaster above the Pacific, Ada (now married to Andrey Vinelander) mentions cretinous critics, especially lower-upper-middle-class Englishmen, who accuse Van's style of being ‘coy’ and ‘arch:’