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Ian "Marvin" Graye's Reviews > Ada or Ardor
Ada or Ardor
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by
Ian "Marvin" Graye's review
bookshelves: nabokov, re-read, read-2022, reviews, reviews-5-stars
Feb 24, 2011
bookshelves: nabokov, re-read, read-2022, reviews, reviews-5-stars
Read 2 times. Last read January 3, 2022 to January 11, 2022.
CRITIQUE:
Anti-terra-ist Science Fiction
Conceptually, at least, "Ada" bears many of the hallmarks of a science fiction or fantasy novel.
There are two worlds in the novel. One is Terra (which is analogous to our planet Earth). The other is Antiterra (aka Demonia), which is a version of our Earth, that Nabokov has adjusted, in order to suit his aesthetic purposes. It seems that, at least from the middle of the eighteenth century, Antiterra has changed more and more away from Terra (or our Earth).
This device allows Nabokov to conceive, imagine and write about personal and social behavior that would potentially be aberrant on Terra (or our Earth), but is either normal or condoned on Antiterra.
Terran norms and standards no longer apply. On Antiterra, "Terra [is] a myth, and all art a game."
The Aesthetics of Incest
Because this behavior (in the sexual sphere) involves incest (between minors, to start off with), Nabokov is able to maintain that it takes place only in/on Antiterra, not in/on Terra (our Earth). Thus, it occurs only in the imagination of the author, and the reader is excused or forgiven for reading and imagining it, in turn, as we must, on our Earth.
Theoretically, this allows the reader to embrace and enjoy the writing (including writing about incest) as if it were free from any social censure. Nabokov doesn't seem to be interested in assessing the relative validity of moral judgments, hence he has invented Antiterra purely so that he can write freely, and we can read freely, from an aesthetic point of view (i.e., without [moral] guilt or sensitivity).
This strategy is analogous to the game Nabokov played in "Lolita", in which he cast the reader in the role of a member of a jury, who had a legitimate interest in hearing (or reading) what would (and was) otherwise regarded as obscene, pornographic or just a "dirty book".
Nabokov's one overriding argument seems to be that art, and the realm of the imagination (at least a work of the imagination), should be allowed to prevail over morality, the law and "reality" (as we collectively perceive and define it).
Nabokov's Verbal Circus (Playing with Words)
Similarly, the adjustments that Nabokov makes to our world are comparable to the rearrangements that he makes with words when he creates an anagram out of their letters (e.g., Vivian Darkbloom = Vladimir Nabokov; scient = incest). He substitutes for one word (or one world), another word (or world) that is different, but looks familiar (i.e., it is, and must be, a word in use in our language, at least to play Scrabble or Flavita).
Thus, wordplay, yet again, is at the heart of what Nabokov achieves in "Ada". As was the case in "Pale Fire", there's a re-Zemblance between the world of language and the imagination (which consists of real words)(on the one hand), and the real world (on the other).
The Geography of Antiterra
Antiterra is dominated by a single land mass, which is a combination of Russia, North and South America (to the west), Africa (to the south), and Tartary (to the south and east). Russia seems to have joined America across the Arctic Circle. The combined space is occasionally referred to as Russamerica, although on the second last page of the novel, it's said that the principal part of the chronicle is "staged in a dream-bright America". Much of America has been settled by the ambitious Russian aristocracy and their serfs and servants.
New York City is known as Manhattan. Paris is called Lute. Van studies at Riverlane School and then Chose, which is the equivalent of Cambridge University (where Nabokov himself studied). The Veen family lives in Mayne (i.e., the Antiterran version of Maine).
The Vanada Connection
Nabokov describes this novel as both a "family chronicle" and, for Van if not also Ada, a "sentimental education", both accepted literary terms.
The ancestral motto of the family is, "As healthy a Veen as father has been."
But, within the first three chapters, it turns out that this is neither a normal family nor a conventional education.
Two brothers, Demon and Dan Veen, have married the twin sisters, Aqua and Marina Durmanov.
Aqua and Marina fall pregnant at the same time, although it's not clear whether it was widely known that Marina was pregnant. Aqua has been suffering from a mental illness for some time, and suffers a miscarriage. It turns out that Demon had been having an affair with Marina, and that he is the father of her child (Van). Demon and Marina decide to give their child to Aqua, so that she doesn't know that she has lost a child. (Aqua dies when Van is about 13.)
Marina subsequently has two daughters, Ada and Lucette (1), who Van initially believes are his first cousins, but later it's revealed to all that they are, in fact, at least half-siblings (Ada is probably Van's full sister).
Van and Ada first meet and fall in love, during the 1884 summer holidays at Ardis Hall/Manor (where their mother, Marina, lives), when Van is 14 and Ada is 11 1/2.
Time's Arrow Flies Towards Consummation
Within weeks of falling in love, Van contemplates the possibility of making love to/with Ada:
Van and Ada embark on what Van calls a "kissing phase". Their first kiss actually occurs in the company of a squirrel in a tree:
"Moments of Ravenous Ardor"
Details of their first love-making ("In order to explain, tactfully, tactually, she belly-danced against him, still more or less kneeling, her long hair getting in the way...[their reciprocal positions had become rather muddled by then]") are sketchily disguised by the editorial discussions between them decades (if not 80 years) later, when Van is writing his chronicle. Ada asks Van, "Why are you doing your best to transform our poetical and unique past into a dirty farce?"
For the want of more private alternatives, "they made love - mostly in glens and gullies...Their craving for each other grew unbearable if within a few hours it was not satisfied several times, in sun or shade, on roof or in cellar, anywhere. Despite uncommon resources of ardor, young Van could hardly keep pace with his pale little amorette (local French slang)."
The language with which this sexual activity is revealed is affectionate but erotic, without being prurient, vulgar or crude (though it's possible that the novel's Dr Lena Wien might aptly describe it as "onanistic voyeurism").
When they enquire about each other's faithfulness during their absences, Ada proclaims that "I'm physical, horribly physical..." Van confirms that, "Amorously, now, in her otherwise dolorous and irresolute adolescence, Ada was even more aggressive and responsive than in her abnormally passionate childhood."
In contrast, Van is virile, but sterile. He, presumably, presents no risk of inbreeding (which is surely one of the main reasons for the moral and legal condemnation of incest). You have to ask if Van or Ada is actually doing anything culpable.
Van seems to be incapable of resisting temptation ("he could never go without girl pleasure for more than forty-eight hours"), and frequently uses whores when they're apart (though he much prefers "a few moments of ravenous ardor in a ferny ravine", and his "strenuous Casanovanic nights", with Ada).
He longs for "the 'happy-forever' feeling at the end of never-ending fairy tales."
An orchid on the cover of the Penguin edition of "Ada" (at Nabokov's suggestion)
Years of Lost Life (and Loving)
Much like Proust, Nabokov is interested in the nature of time.
Van writes a book called "The Texture of Time", in which he debunks the idea of the passage of time, instead arguing that time is the gap or "interval between events". In the case of his romance with Ada, it represents the years of lost time between the times that they see each other and can make love (variously, nine and seventeen years).
His novel, "Ada", is a replica (or resurrection) of events that occurred in the past, at least as far as his memory or mind can reconstruct it:
Van uses the concept of the "deliberate present" to describe the nowness of Time:
Van then explains the purpose of his writing:
"Into the Finished Book"
So, this is a statement of Van's (and perhaps Nabokov's) intent.
However, in the manner of much post-modernist fiction, Nabokov's novel purports to be written by Van, corrected by Ada, edited by Ronald Oranger, and annotated by Vivian Darkbloom.
While the novel is primarily concerned with Van and Ada's separate and collective memories of their past (including both their childhood and their old age), it does speculate about their future and potential death. However, consistently with Nabokov's views on the future, he says only -
Thus, "Ada" not only details their romance, but it constitutes, and conveys them to, their next (fictional) life, which we could call "Nirvanada".
In the end, we readers can enjoy forever "the ample and delightful chronicle" of their love-affair, their rhapsodic passion, and the "happy-forever feeling of their never-ending fairy-tale".
"Ada" is "much, much, more" than a conventional family chronicle. It's a treatise on time and love, whether or not incest is involved.
FOOTNOTES:
(1) Lucette is a whole other story.
SCIENT VERSE:
Some Call This Sin
[Apologies to The Beatles]
Come on, come on now, and listen
You don't know what you've been missing,
When you see how her lips glisten,
You two'll be just cousins kissing.
Then you'll discover your cousin
Is really your sister Ada,
And you do something you mustn't,
With such furtive love and ardor.
Attic Obsession
At the start of this naughty rhyme,
We found a ladder she could climb.
I gazed up and thought I was lost,
Between her legs was darkly flossed.
Although these words might sound awkward,
Her rose bud looked like an orchid.
Entwined
[In the Words of Nabokov]
Thus a tendril climber
Coils round a column,
Swathing it tighter
And tighter,
Biting into its neck
Ever sweeter,
Then dissolving strength
In deep crimson softness.
SOUNDTRACK:
(view spoiler)
Anti-terra-ist Science Fiction
Conceptually, at least, "Ada" bears many of the hallmarks of a science fiction or fantasy novel.
There are two worlds in the novel. One is Terra (which is analogous to our planet Earth). The other is Antiterra (aka Demonia), which is a version of our Earth, that Nabokov has adjusted, in order to suit his aesthetic purposes. It seems that, at least from the middle of the eighteenth century, Antiterra has changed more and more away from Terra (or our Earth).
This device allows Nabokov to conceive, imagine and write about personal and social behavior that would potentially be aberrant on Terra (or our Earth), but is either normal or condoned on Antiterra.
Terran norms and standards no longer apply. On Antiterra, "Terra [is] a myth, and all art a game."
The Aesthetics of Incest
Because this behavior (in the sexual sphere) involves incest (between minors, to start off with), Nabokov is able to maintain that it takes place only in/on Antiterra, not in/on Terra (our Earth). Thus, it occurs only in the imagination of the author, and the reader is excused or forgiven for reading and imagining it, in turn, as we must, on our Earth.
Theoretically, this allows the reader to embrace and enjoy the writing (including writing about incest) as if it were free from any social censure. Nabokov doesn't seem to be interested in assessing the relative validity of moral judgments, hence he has invented Antiterra purely so that he can write freely, and we can read freely, from an aesthetic point of view (i.e., without [moral] guilt or sensitivity).
This strategy is analogous to the game Nabokov played in "Lolita", in which he cast the reader in the role of a member of a jury, who had a legitimate interest in hearing (or reading) what would (and was) otherwise regarded as obscene, pornographic or just a "dirty book".
Nabokov's one overriding argument seems to be that art, and the realm of the imagination (at least a work of the imagination), should be allowed to prevail over morality, the law and "reality" (as we collectively perceive and define it).
Nabokov's Verbal Circus (Playing with Words)
Similarly, the adjustments that Nabokov makes to our world are comparable to the rearrangements that he makes with words when he creates an anagram out of their letters (e.g., Vivian Darkbloom = Vladimir Nabokov; scient = incest). He substitutes for one word (or one world), another word (or world) that is different, but looks familiar (i.e., it is, and must be, a word in use in our language, at least to play Scrabble or Flavita).
Thus, wordplay, yet again, is at the heart of what Nabokov achieves in "Ada". As was the case in "Pale Fire", there's a re-Zemblance between the world of language and the imagination (which consists of real words)(on the one hand), and the real world (on the other).
The Geography of Antiterra
Antiterra is dominated by a single land mass, which is a combination of Russia, North and South America (to the west), Africa (to the south), and Tartary (to the south and east). Russia seems to have joined America across the Arctic Circle. The combined space is occasionally referred to as Russamerica, although on the second last page of the novel, it's said that the principal part of the chronicle is "staged in a dream-bright America". Much of America has been settled by the ambitious Russian aristocracy and their serfs and servants.
New York City is known as Manhattan. Paris is called Lute. Van studies at Riverlane School and then Chose, which is the equivalent of Cambridge University (where Nabokov himself studied). The Veen family lives in Mayne (i.e., the Antiterran version of Maine).
The Vanada Connection
Nabokov describes this novel as both a "family chronicle" and, for Van if not also Ada, a "sentimental education", both accepted literary terms.
The ancestral motto of the family is, "As healthy a Veen as father has been."
But, within the first three chapters, it turns out that this is neither a normal family nor a conventional education.
Two brothers, Demon and Dan Veen, have married the twin sisters, Aqua and Marina Durmanov.
Aqua and Marina fall pregnant at the same time, although it's not clear whether it was widely known that Marina was pregnant. Aqua has been suffering from a mental illness for some time, and suffers a miscarriage. It turns out that Demon had been having an affair with Marina, and that he is the father of her child (Van). Demon and Marina decide to give their child to Aqua, so that she doesn't know that she has lost a child. (Aqua dies when Van is about 13.)
Marina subsequently has two daughters, Ada and Lucette (1), who Van initially believes are his first cousins, but later it's revealed to all that they are, in fact, at least half-siblings (Ada is probably Van's full sister).
Van and Ada first meet and fall in love, during the 1884 summer holidays at Ardis Hall/Manor (where their mother, Marina, lives), when Van is 14 and Ada is 11 1/2.
Time's Arrow Flies Towards Consummation
Within weeks of falling in love, Van contemplates the possibility of making love to/with Ada:
"What Van experienced in those first strange days when she showed him the house - and those nooks in it where they were to make love so soon - combined elements of ravishment and exasperation. Ravishment - because of her pale, voluptuous, impermissible skin, her hair, her legs, her angular movements, her gazelle-grass odor, the sudden black stare of her wide-set eyes, the rustic nudity under her dress; exasperation - because between him, an awkward schoolboy of genius, and that precocious, affected, impenetrable child there extended a void of light and a veil of shade that no force could overcome and pierce."
Van and Ada embark on what Van calls a "kissing phase". Their first kiss actually occurs in the company of a squirrel in a tree:
"After the first contact, so light, so mute, between his soft lips and her softer skin had been established - high up in that dappled tree, with only that stray ardilla daintily leavesdropping - nothing seemed changed in one sense, all was lost in another..."
"Van would brush his lips against hers, teasing their burning bloom, back and forth, right, left, life, death, reveling in the contrast between the airy tenderness of the open idyll and the gross congestion of the hidden flesh."
"Moments of Ravenous Ardor"
Details of their first love-making ("In order to explain, tactfully, tactually, she belly-danced against him, still more or less kneeling, her long hair getting in the way...[their reciprocal positions had become rather muddled by then]") are sketchily disguised by the editorial discussions between them decades (if not 80 years) later, when Van is writing his chronicle. Ada asks Van, "Why are you doing your best to transform our poetical and unique past into a dirty farce?"
"You kissed and nibbled, and poked, and prodded, and worried me there so much and so often that my virginity was lost in the shuffle; but I do recall definitely that by midsummer the machine which our forefathers called 'sex' was working as smoothly as later..., darling."
For the want of more private alternatives, "they made love - mostly in glens and gullies...Their craving for each other grew unbearable if within a few hours it was not satisfied several times, in sun or shade, on roof or in cellar, anywhere. Despite uncommon resources of ardor, young Van could hardly keep pace with his pale little amorette (local French slang)."
The language with which this sexual activity is revealed is affectionate but erotic, without being prurient, vulgar or crude (though it's possible that the novel's Dr Lena Wien might aptly describe it as "onanistic voyeurism").
When they enquire about each other's faithfulness during their absences, Ada proclaims that "I'm physical, horribly physical..." Van confirms that, "Amorously, now, in her otherwise dolorous and irresolute adolescence, Ada was even more aggressive and responsive than in her abnormally passionate childhood."
In contrast, Van is virile, but sterile. He, presumably, presents no risk of inbreeding (which is surely one of the main reasons for the moral and legal condemnation of incest). You have to ask if Van or Ada is actually doing anything culpable.
Van seems to be incapable of resisting temptation ("he could never go without girl pleasure for more than forty-eight hours"), and frequently uses whores when they're apart (though he much prefers "a few moments of ravenous ardor in a ferny ravine", and his "strenuous Casanovanic nights", with Ada).
He longs for "the 'happy-forever' feeling at the end of never-ending fairy tales."
An orchid on the cover of the Penguin edition of "Ada" (at Nabokov's suggestion)
Years of Lost Life (and Loving)
Much like Proust, Nabokov is interested in the nature of time.
Van writes a book called "The Texture of Time", in which he debunks the idea of the passage of time, instead arguing that time is the gap or "interval between events". In the case of his romance with Ada, it represents the years of lost time between the times that they see each other and can make love (variously, nine and seventeen years).
His novel, "Ada", is a replica (or resurrection) of events that occurred in the past, at least as far as his memory or mind can reconstruct it:
"The Past, then, is a constant accumulation of images...
"It is now a generous chaos out of which the genius of total recall...can pick anything he pleases."
"Maybe the only thing that hints at a sense of Time is rhythm; not the recurrent beats of the rhythm but the gap between two such beats, the grey gap between black beats: the Tender Interval...
"The dim intervals between the dark beats have the feel of the texture of Time."
Van uses the concept of the "deliberate present" to describe the nowness of Time:
"The conscious construction of one, and the familiar current of the other give us three or four seconds that can be felt as nowness. This nowness is the only reality we know...Thus, in a quite literal sense, we may say that conscious human life lasts always only one moment, for at any moment of deliberate attention to our own flow of consciousness we cannot know if that moment will be followed by another..."
"If the Past is perceived as a storage of Time, and if the Present is the process of that perception, the future, on the other hand, is not an item of Time, has nothing to do with Time and with the dim gauze of its texture. The future is but a quack at the court of Chronos..."
Van then explains the purpose of his writing:
"My aim was to compose a kind of novella in the form of a treatise on the Texture of Time, an investigation of its veily substance, with illustrative metaphors gradually increasing, very gradually building up a logical love story, going from past to present, blossoming as a concrete story, and just as gradually reversing analogies and disintegrating again into bland abstraction."
"Into the Finished Book"
So, this is a statement of Van's (and perhaps Nabokov's) intent.
However, in the manner of much post-modernist fiction, Nabokov's novel purports to be written by Van, corrected by Ada, edited by Ronald Oranger, and annotated by Vivian Darkbloom.
While the novel is primarily concerned with Van and Ada's separate and collective memories of their past (including both their childhood and their old age), it does speculate about their future and potential death. However, consistently with Nabokov's views on the future, he says only -
"One can even surmise that if our time-racked, flat-lying couple ever intended to die they would die, as it were, into the finished book, into Eden or Hades, into the prose of the book or the poetry of its blurb."
Thus, "Ada" not only details their romance, but it constitutes, and conveys them to, their next (fictional) life, which we could call "Nirvanada".
In the end, we readers can enjoy forever "the ample and delightful chronicle" of their love-affair, their rhapsodic passion, and the "happy-forever feeling of their never-ending fairy-tale".
"Ada" is "much, much, more" than a conventional family chronicle. It's a treatise on time and love, whether or not incest is involved.
FOOTNOTES:
(1) Lucette is a whole other story.
SCIENT VERSE:
Some Call This Sin
[Apologies to The Beatles]
Come on, come on now, and listen
You don't know what you've been missing,
When you see how her lips glisten,
You two'll be just cousins kissing.
Then you'll discover your cousin
Is really your sister Ada,
And you do something you mustn't,
With such furtive love and ardor.
Attic Obsession
At the start of this naughty rhyme,
We found a ladder she could climb.
I gazed up and thought I was lost,
Between her legs was darkly flossed.
Although these words might sound awkward,
Her rose bud looked like an orchid.
Entwined
[In the Words of Nabokov]
Thus a tendril climber
Coils round a column,
Swathing it tighter
And tighter,
Biting into its neck
Ever sweeter,
Then dissolving strength
In deep crimson softness.
SOUNDTRACK:
(view spoiler)
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Reading Progress
Finished Reading
February 24, 2011
– Shelved
October 25, 2012
– Shelved as:
nabokov
January 3, 2022
–
Started Reading
January 3, 2022
– Shelved as:
re-read
January 11, 2022
– Shelved as:
read-2022
January 11, 2022
– Shelved as:
reviews
January 11, 2022
– Shelved as:
reviews-5-stars
January 11, 2022
–
Finished Reading
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![Keith [on semi hiatus]](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1541020315p1/84884940.jpg)
I'm ~4-5 novels in with Nabokov, can't wait until I reach this; King, Queen, Knave was astonishing, maybe my favourite so far.
Keith [on semi hiatus] wrote: "I'm ~4-5 novels in with Nabokov, can't wait until I reach this; King, Queen, Knave was astonishing, maybe my favourite so far."There's no method to my madness.
The only three Nabokov novels I have read are Ada, Lolita and King, Queen, Knave. A long time ago, all. Funny coincidence though. Actually I read Ada twice. A lot to say about that book. Your review, Ian, is very interesting.
Oh, I forgot to mention my long LOVE for Non Stop Erotic Caberet!
Carla Remy wrote: "The only three Nabokov novels I have read are Ada, Lolita and King, Queen, Knave. A long time ago, all. Funny coincidence though. Actually I read Ada twice. A lot to say about that book. Your revie..."Thanks, Carla.
This is my second time for Ada as well. The first time was a pretty tempestuous time of my life, and at the first attempt I only got about a third of the way through, before putting it aside, while I took a rest. I did resume and finish it.
I haven't read "King, Queen, Knave" yet, but I have read "Bend Sinister".
I'm hoping to finish my review today or tomorrow.
Carla Remy wrote: "Oh, I forgot to mention my long LOVE for Non Stop Erotic Cabaret!"The album is fantastic, as are the singles released around the same time (e.,g., "Torch" and "What").
I visited London in early 1982, when the album was everywhere. I remember walking through Soho at night, looking at the neon and sex shops (from the outside). They reminded me of the album cover.
That is very cool about being in London. A cool time in general.
I read Ada twice too. But twenty years ago. I remember loving it, but it being weirdly porny too. I should read it again as an adult (but that and everything else...).
Carla Remy wrote: "That is very cool about being in London. A cool time in general."It wasn't a cool time to be a worker or a unionist. There was a lot of strategic unemployment driven by Margaret Thatcher.
A great time for music though.
I first read this when I was 19 or 20, when I first read a lot of Nabokov, and probably fell in love with it for all the “wrong� or unintended reasons. I was a poor, foolish Lucette. Maybe. But I fell in love with it nonetheless and underlined and wrote out passages and my first copy is in tatters.I’ve read it 3 times since then, once with a group of friends, and I’ve never been able to shake the nostalgia of the first time or my attachment to it. I find it so beautiful, meaningful and subversive. It represents to me what I desire from reading and in no small way helped persuade me from my biology studies to literature. Not that you have to choose but that was my journey.
I’ve got the Brian Boyd book which I’ve dipped into but I look forward to applying due diligence the next time I read Ada.
Whew! I like what’s there so far and look forward to the full review. !
Kate wrote: "I first read this when I was 19 or 20, when I first read a lot of Nabokov, and probably fell in love with it for all the “wrong� or unintended reasons. I was a poor, foolish Lucette. Maybe. But I f..."Thanks, Kate.
I think I first read it in my late 20's. But I don't have any vivid memories of it. I enjoyed it much more this time.
This is my full review, unless I make any editorial additions or corrections.
/story/show/...