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Transcript of the Ada Forum
Aug.-Sept. 2004

(Part I Ch. 20-21)

Brian Boyd and the Kyoto Reading Circle――――――――――――――――――――
What follows is an edited transcript of the Ada Forum, held August 18-September 20, 2004 on theinternet between the members of the Kyoto Reading Circle and Prof. Brian Boyd of Auckland University.
The object of the Forum was to have an informal discussion of the Kyoto Reading Circle’s “Annotations
to Ada (6)” for Chapters 20-21, published in Krug VI: 1.
The Forum, led by Akiko Nakata, was begun in the hope of not only hearing Prof. Boyd’s generous
responses to the Circle’s findings but also of delving deeper into the text and sharing whatever theparticipants found interesting, ranging freely into things Nabokovian. Discussions were again fruitfuland led this time to an interesting discovery of cultural differences between Brian Boyd and the Japaneseparticipators, for example, in responding to the phrase "tiger of happiness." Brian's response was
warmest on the Circle's finding the source of Nabokov's mud-blood rhyme in Robert Lowell's poem
"Colloquy in Black Rock" (see 127.31-33), which links to Brian's lecture, "Ada, The Bog and theGarden" that he gave in Kyoto last year. We are thankful to Brian for calling our attention to some minorerrors in the KRC Annotations which have been duly corrected. The page and number references to thetext, as in the Circle’s “Annotations to Ada” in Krug and Boyd’s “Annotations to Ada” in The
Nabokovian, are from the Vintage International edition. –Shoko Miura

8-30 Brian Boyd
How pleasant to respond to the latest discoveries of the ADA forum and to be able now to put faces to atleast seven of your names, and to imagine the room where I presume the deliberations again took place.
After 123.08:
BB: Are tigers especially associated with happiness in Chinese or Oriental lore? If not, this would notseem to me a particularly Chinese or Oriental motif.
After 124.32:
BB: Rinsing the dentures, though, is rather more repellent.
After 126.26-27:
BB: Nice link.

1After 127.02:
BB: Not really. She wonders for a moment, did she dream it all? The anxious glance is “foolish” because
it could give away too much to a less obtuse observer than Dan.
After 127.08:
BB: “Wet” meaning “Wrong; misguided; crazy; ‘off’” (Webster’s Second, adj., 11) is not archaic (anddespite Webster’s, not limited to the US).
After 127.12-14:
BB: ?? “His” “fast ablaze in her bedroom”? But it is she who says this.
After 127.31-33:
BB: Excellent find. The repeated “martyre,” an obsolete spelling, is curious. In Ada that spelling also
occurs once, in the “rue des Jeunes Martyres” (459.21) where Van finds Lucette at Ovenman’s, in thescene that imitates the Barton and Guester advertisement that imitates the Toulouse-Lautrec poster ofJane Avril at the Divan Japonais cabaret; as Boyd 1985/2001 129-31 and n., notes, that spelling indicatesin French a female martyr, Nabokov’s deliberate change from the “rue des Martyrs” of the cabaret andthe original poster, and another pointer to Lucette as martyr. Ada’s translation “Their fall is gentle” of
Coppée’s “Leur chute est lente” also links with the translation motif and its repeated pattern of the lossof flowers and leaves, associated especially with green-robed and not-deflowered Lucette (see Boyd1985/2001, 51-60); and the “mud”-Veen (Dutch marsh, swamp, bog) motif, especially associated with
Lucette and Lutèce or Paris as “Lutetia Parisiorum,” the mud town of the Parisii, as it was known by theRomans, is discussed in Boyd, “Ada, The Bog and the Garden,” Nabokov Studies 8 (2004) (the NSJ
lecture, it could be called).
After 128.34:
BB: I’m not sure what that “her chalk-white body; the story of “Pygmalion” (120.27) means. There’s no“Pygmalion” at 120.27.
After 129.24:
BB: For the first time, incidentally, I notice consciously the marvelous joke of Magicarpets being given
a boy on his twelfth birthday, in echo of the need to reach a certain age before being allowed to try for
an automobile licence, and of old ethnographic customs, as if this were a kind of Amerussian pubertal
initiation rite.
After 135.23:
BB: Unlikely to quote from a particular source. The devouring of males during or after intercourse by
the females of many species of insects and spiders is well known to naturalists.
After 137.11:
BB: I would say it is all but certain Nabokov exaggerated, especially since the Western unluckiness of13 somehow seems to reflect on the quality of the artwork, and on Daniel as its collector and its patientbut erroneous explicator.

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8-31 Akiko Nakata
After 123.08:>BB: Are tigers especially associated with happiness in Chinese or Oriental lore? If not, this would notseem to me a particularly Chinese or Oriental motif.
AN: As far as I know, tigers are not associated with happiness in Chinese or Oriental lore. We thought
the tiger introduced an Oriental motif to the chapter in which we would find more. If not, what could
the tiger be for?
After 124.32:>BB: Rinsing the dentures, though, is rather more repellent.
AN: Yes, if he took the dentures out of his mouth. As he rinses them "orally," there is no difference
for the other people.
After 127.12-14:>BB: ?? “His” “fast ablaze in her bedroom”? But it is she who says this.
AN: Right. I have just a hazy memory of it, but I think we meant "he was fast ablaze last night," didn'twe? Anyone who has a good memory, please help me.
After 128.34:>BB: I’m not sure what that “her chalk-white body; the story of “Pygmalion” (120.27) means. There’sno “Pygmalion” at 120.27.
AN: Right. I think it should be just "her chalk-white body" (120.27). "The story of Pygmalion" seems tohave slipped in.

9-1 Brian Boyd
"The tiger of happiness fairly leaped into being": this seems to me just a great image: an unexpectedcombination, tiger and happiness; but tigers are fierce, powerful, great leapers, and vividly colored: afierce, powerful happiness sprang up unexpectedly and vividly in his soul: something like that. Thanks
for forcing me to articulate this!

Even if Dan doesn't take his dentures out of his mouth, Van appears to be conscious of his swilling themaround the gap between palate and prosthesis; some people (perhaps not in Japan, where decorum isdifferent, but certainly in the West) do pop their dentures out of position, much to the annoyance ofothers, and Dan seems to be one of these.

9-2 Akiko Nakata
Thanks very much for the vivid, too vivid articulation. I did not imagine how unseemly Dan could rinse
his dentures. I still naively wonder if your description of tigers would not be applicable to jaguars or3

cheetahs. They are also fierce, powerful, great leapers, have a showy pattern--even if not so vivid incolor as tigers, and they would make an unexpected combination with happiness. I suspect that VN
chose a tiger for its exoticism. Another possible reason is that its marks look like bars. The tiger's marks
seem to me to parallel with the bars against which the caged birds (in China) knock themselves out in a"dreamlined dash." The tiger of happiness leaps into being while Van is reluctant to leave the vestiges ofa dream, on the other hand, the birds dashes outward half asleep and crash against the bars. Tiger, bars,dreams, dashes--they seem to me strangely connected with each other, and more strangely (because I do
not know the background) with China.

9-2 Brian Boyd
Cheetahs are fast but not powerful or fierce as big cats go; jaguars are lithe stalkers and pouncers rather
than mightily crashing leapers; and anyway all three are exotic to a European (or a New Zealander).

9-4 Akiko Nakata
Thank you, Brian, for clarifying the differences among the three felids. They are all exotic to a Japanesetoo, but tigers seem to me least exotic because China is one of their habitats. I thought VN would feelthe reverse (yes, they live in Siberia too, though).

9-6 Shoko Miura
I have comments on two points made by Brian.
(1) After 123.08:>BB: Are tigers especially associated with happiness in Chinese or Oriental lore? If not, this would notseem to me a particularly Chinese or Oriental motif.
Shoko: Although I thought Brian was right at first, I do think tigers are very Chinese or oriental because
it is the symbol of strength, just as lions are in the west. And why didn't Nabokov say, "The lion ofhappiness fairly leaped into being"? The tiger is one of the 12 signs of the Chinese (and Japanese) zodiac.
Tigers are a frequent subject of Chinese and Japanese paintings on screens and fusuma, or sliding doors,
because they express fierce energy, although I don't think I've seen them in Buddhist temples. I believe
they are secular, not religious, symbols.

(2) After 128.34:>BB: I’m not sure what that “her chalk-white body; the story of “Pygmalion” (120.27) means. There’sno “Pygmalion” at 120.27.
Shoko: Sorry. I'm sure it was I who slipped "Pygmalion" in and mixed someone else's notes with myown, because I found some scribbles in my book about it. The line reference is totally wrong. It shouldbe (129.5). But may I expand on it since it seems a bit too important to dismiss? The place where I found4

what I think is a hidden reference to Pygmalion is in the KRC annotations as follows:

129.5: live ivory accurately reproduced: Suggestive of the story of Pygmalion and the artist-artifact
theme.

I find that the tactile images of this chapter--"porcelain" (126.34), "ivory" (129.5)--and the color imagesof Ada's skin--"chalk white" (128.34), "translucently white-skinned" (126.33)--suggest the cold whitemarble sculpture of Galatea which Pygmalion turned into a living woman by his love and art. Van does
narrate Ada into life, as it were, when he tells of evoking the vision of Ada's pale limbs (129.1). Though"coldly telling himself that fact could never quite match fancy," he finally realizes that the real Ada isindeed more than a match for his fancy when he gets his "foreglimpse of live ivory accurately
reproduced." I thought the Pygmalion story lay behind this artist-artifact theme.

The phrase "live ivory" also suggests the paradoxical combination of living and dead matter, andtherefore the power of love that overcomes dead matter. Also, the quick vs. the dead contrast is found in
the hot-and-cold images throughout this chapter: besides the "fire" of the previous night, "blaze," "fastablaze," "oriflamme," Ada and then Van blushing and flushing, Van feeling a cool-down when Ada
shows him "the sharp petal of her tongue," Ada in her "sunbright" cotton frock, "Her hands were cold,
her neck was hot" (128.8), not to mention the mud-blood rhyme of Coppee's poem--mud suggestive ofdeath at the end of their "gentle fall" (though mud is linked to "fall into sexuality" in Boyd's Annotationsin The Nabokovian No. 49, p. 74) and blood, of course, of life. The mud-Veen link that Brianenlightened us on in his Kyoto lecture gives a panoramic dimension to all this. Am I "all wet," as Vanwould say?

9-13 Brian Boydtigers:
I grant you that tigers feature more in Eastern visual art than in Western, although in Persian, Indian,Indonesian art as much as in Chinese (and even in Chinese iconography, lions also have a very centralplace).

But in English “tiger” does not automatically trigger associations with China, or even Asia. Shakespeare,who (like everyone else in his time) had a dim idea of the geographical range of tigers in his day or in
the classical eras in which he often sets his stories, refers to “tiger” in 19 different works, or about half
the canon; and I can see in these references no geographical associations, only evocations of ravenous
ferocity and strength. One of his early images, “tiger’s heart wrapped in a woman’s hide,” in Titus
Andronicus, was famously used against him (“tiger’s heart wrapped in a player’s hide”) in an attack on5his supposed presumptuousness in the early 1590s (the passage from The Groatsworth of Wit istraditionally attributed to Robert Greene but now seems the work of Thomas Chettle). The most famous
image of a tiger in English literature, Blake’s “Tyger, tyger, burning bright / In the forests of the night,”
evokes no Asiatic or Chinese associations I can see, and British colonial experience and Kipling madeIndian tigers more familiar to Anglophone readers than any association between tigers and Chinese
iconography.

Pygmalion:
perhaps (though is it really appropriate to Van and Ada?). What I do notice for the first time is that “hisforeglimpse of live ivory” at 129.05 has a bizarre pre-echo of the iv in ivory and live, just as the “pictureof Ivory Revery” at 36.12 has a bizarre post-echo of the vory in “ivory” (as well as referring to dreams
that pass through the Gates of Ivory as being false dreams: see 36.12n.)

9-16 Shoko MiuraI think I've given a good example of the Japanese saying, "Get a sea bream with shrimp bait"--my small
comments landed a beautiful big fish. I especially admire Brian's discovery of the "ivory" echoes.
Perhaps tigers aren't so particularly Chinese for Nabokov. I think the other Chinese images in the chapter
which Akiko mentioned are strong enough to stand on their own, though.

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