Annotations to Ada (7)Part I: Chapter 22 to 24
The Kyoto Reading Circle
The Kyoto Reading Circle is responsible for the annotations below. The following
are the members of the Kyoto Reading Circle: Chizuko Inoue, Gen’ichiro Itakura,
Satoko Ito, Izumi Matoba, Maya Minao, Shoko Miura, Yuriko Morita, Akiko Nakata,
Keiko Nishiyama, Sumi Ota, Tadashi Wakashima and Motoko Yoshikawa.
Page and line references are to the Vintage International edition.

Part I

Chapter 22

138.01: My sister: Repeated also in Blue Beard. Blue Beard is referred to in I. 27 and 29.
140.04: Which reminds us: Does "which" mean Vendange that relates to the vine motif
in art or Van and Ada's erotic experience while the other people are going out for theFestival? Cf. Brantôme’s works and the “tome”in his name remind Van and Ada of alicentious tome (140.05) in the Ardis library (Boyd).
140.23: Anyway (this may be purely a stylistic transition): Does the "stylistic" refer tothe style of narrative or the style of fine art?
141.13: a crescent eaten out of a vine leaf by a sphingid larva: The “crescent”is Van's exhausted
part. The images of a sphingid larva, on which Boyd annotates, are available from the site of "Iziko:Museums of Cape Town": http://www.museums.org.za/bio/insects/lepidoptera/sphingidae/ .
141.18: a Venetian blonde: is a pun on a Venetian blind and probably on a Veneziano'sblonde.

Part I

Chapter 23

143.20: conifers: later called "larches" (253)146.31: You are the ghost, old guide: "The place swarmed with ghosts!" (36.19) says Van
when he discovers his old French governess, Lariviere, at Ardis, at whose side Van sees
Lucette for the first time. As Van narrates, Lucette is a ghost, haunting his and Ada'smemory. Though she talks, as a guide to "that distant day," about the famous love storyof Peter Townsend and Princess Margaret, Van insists that their love does not belong tothe past.
146.33: But she is by my side: Van takes over Lucette's voice as the words reverberatewith the memory of Van and Ada's love story--"oaks" remind us of the "spreading oaktree"--le grand chêne--of the opening poem by Chateaubriand in Chapter 22 (138:12).

Part IChapter 24

147.1: Lettrocalamity (Vanvitelli's old joke!): There is no Giorgio Vanvitelli, an operasinger (147.17), but there is a Luigi Vanvitelli (1700-1770) who is a baroque Italian
sculptor, architect, engineer and painter, the son of the Dutch painter Gaspard VanWittel (1653-1736), but seems to be unrelated to the Lettrocalamity imagined here.
Soundwise, we can see that the "L" in "Lettrocalamity" suggests "Lucette" and"Vanvitelli"suggests"VanVeen".

Lettrocalamity,asNabokovnotes,

means"electromagnet," which refers to the casette tape recorder that Van and Ada would haveused had it not been forbidden. In Italian the word divides into "elettro" and "calamita"suggesting "electric calamity," the "L disaster" mentioned in Chapter 3 (17:1), thedetails of which are glossed over because it is "too well-known historically, and too
obscene spiritually, to be treated at length in a book addressed to young laymen andlemans--and not to grave men or gravemen" (17.3-5).
Diana and Acteon by Luigi Vanvitellic. 1770 (designed)
Marble, over life-sizeRoyal Residence, Caserta

147.1-13: (for it's quite a long sentence): The first sentence of this chapter is 13 lines
long.
148.1, 148.32:(Narrator. . .) (with several pauses): The would-be beginning andnarrator's comments to the tape if they had recorded their conversation then.
148.9: a stuffed Parluggian Owl: "Parluggian" is invented by Nabokov. Aegolius
funereus is the name Nabokov identified to his French translator. The "Boreal Owl" or"the Tengmalm's Owl" is its common name. Boreas is the Greek god of the north wind.
The word "Parluggian" has been discussed in NABOKV-L by several people:
1. Robert Cook: "Uggla" is of course "owl", cognate with the English word, withGerman "Eule" etc. "Parl-" suggests French "parler," and there are a few Swedish
words with that first element."（<rcook@rhi.hi.is>

Sat, 3 Feb 1996 14:58:12-0800entry in NABOKV-L)

2. Alexander Dolinin: "The name Luzhin, the landowner from Luga from whose
hothouses Hermann never steals peaches in the Russian version of Despair,various puns on Lugano in Ada and so on -- all these refer to Luga (adjective"luzhskii"), the river and the county (uezd) seat of Nabokov's summer paradise,about 20 miles from Rozhdestveno. The owl in question might then have a strong
resemblance (par(a)-) to owls common for the Luga region."(<dolinin@facstaff.wisc.edu>Sun, 4 Feb 1996 15:51:53 -0800 entry inNABOKV-L)
3. Don Barton Johnson: The Parluggian Owl (Aegolius funereus--as VN indicatedto his French translator) is indeed found in the area of the Nabokov family summer
homes and across Northern Russian and through to the East coast of Canada andoccasionally in winter along the Northern border of the Eastern U.S. and Canada.
Thus its range includes "Russian" Canady where Ardis Manor is located. A bit likeSpeak, Memory's famous Swallowtail that escapes from Vyra and is recaptured inColorado. (<NABOKV-L@UCSBVM.UCSB.EDU>Sun, 4 Feb 1996 15:51:53-0800)
4. Gennadi Barabtarlo: According to Liddell and Scott, aegolius is "an unknown
bird" mentioned by Pliny, a screeching owl of some description. In a sense, one
can say that that funereal mythic bird is a Terra-Latinized Sirin of sorts -- which
would only strengthen Professor Dolinin's "Luga" (or rather "near Luga", or"quasi-Luga") suggestion, with which I tend to agree.
(<gragb@mizzou1.missouri.edu>Thu, 8 Feb 1996 13:57:57 -0800)

Known as the Boreal owl in the U. S., the Boreal, or Tengmalm's Owl was firstclassified in 1758 by Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778), the Swedish naturalist, whodeveloped binomial nomenclature to classify and organise plants and animals.
"Funereus" comes from the Latin word for funeral. In North America, where it isknown as the Boreal Owl, it was named after the Greek god of the north wind, Boreas.
In other parts of the world, it is known as Tengmalms Owl. Other names for this Owl
are Richardson's Owl, Sparrow Owl, Partridge-haw and Pearl Owl (Finland).
Tengmalm's (Boreal) Owl
Aegolius funereus

148.12: "Don't jingle them": Ada tells Van not to jingle the empty beer bottles "left bysome dead gardener" because Lucette might be spying. The line refers back to the"empty little bottle" tinkling on the shelf and points to the guilt felt by Van and Ada
about Lucette. Also the keys Van was carrying figuratively evokes the keys to the "green
door against which they were to bang so often with boneless fists in their later separate
dreams" (148.29-30)
148.22: I saw that verse in small violet letters before you put it into orange ones: coloredalphabet recalling Nabokov's own chromesthesia (see Don Barton Johnson, "Alphabetic
Rainbows of Speak, Memory," Worlds in Regression: Some Novels of Vladimir Nabokov.
Ann Arbor, Michigan: Ardis Publishers, 1985. Like Nabokov, Ada also seems to have theability to see letters as having distinct colors. The entire book, Ada, also ranges fromviolet to orange. Violet, Van's typist, becomes Mrs. Oranger by marriage to the editor
and therefore becomes "visible." Violet is the extreme end of the rainbow; orange is more
visible, vivid.
148.29: (Van was already unlocking the door--the green door against which they were tobang so often): Green seems to be a thematic color that runs throughout the book. Thereis a possible link with O'Henry's story, "The Green Door." Green is most often relatedwith Lucette, who wears green, for whom Van and Ada feel guilt. In the previouschapter, Ada says to Lucette that she feels she was turning into a dragon, that thescales had begun to turn "green" (141:13). Other references to green in Ada, to mention
just a few that we have found, are as follows:
green bench (36.19) Mlle. Lariviere is first seen sitting on a green bench andwearing green spectacles.
a longgreen box (53.14)
Lucette is seen wearing her green nightgown (64.27))
green-harnessed horses (153.8)
Lucette in her green pajamas (229.13)
Lucette in her green swimsuit, erotically described, ready to seduce Van(478.20, 27)
149.11: milkmaid: A hint that Van at 10 has already begun his sexual education. Cf.
151:21-22.
149.21: one of his three tunes: Demon knows 3 tunes; Van knows only one, his school
song (cf.128:16).
149.22: camler: The cummerbunded Dutchman's mispronunciation of "gambler"
149.25: two vacant lots: A similar vacant lot with two tall buildings appears in "In
Aleppo Once . . ."--images by which VN treats an otherwise serious threat ofurbanization with a fairytale-like tone.
150.10: six one-window carrosses of pumpkin origin: A Cinderella reference to theorphan and one-time scullery maid at Ardis whom Marina discovers to be Demon'smistress.
150.16: mauve tower: See "mauve shades of Monsieur Proust," Chapter 8 (56:7). In VN's

Lectures on Literature, VN calls the mauve color, which runs throughout Remembranceof Things Past, "the very color of time" (Harcourt Brace, 1980, p. 241). "This rose-purplemauve, a pinkish lilac, a violet flush, is linked in European literature with certain
sophistications of the artistic temperament. It is the color of an orchid, Cattleyalabiata."

http://www.orchidworks.com/orchids/cattleya/july071.htm
150.22: massacred moles . . . probably pathological: Proust had a servant catch mice inorder to torture or kill them. According to André Gide, Proust, who took Gide to the site,
was sexually aroused when he saw mice cannibalized by hunger in a brothel. (See AndréGide. Ainsi soit-il, ou, les jeux sont faits. Paris: Gallimard, c1952, p. 151.)
According to J. E. Rivers in Proust & the Art of Love* (Columbia UP, 1980), pp.
77-78,We have also heard that Proust had rats brought to the brothel and pierced withhatpins in his presence (1) . . . . As for the rats, André Gide, Bernard Fay, and Bonide Castellane all reported that Proust confessed to them about his sadistic
experiments with rats. (2) And George Painter talks of being able to meet, in Paris
between the wars, "the very chauffeur who declared, with a proud and beaming
smile: 'It was who used to take the rats to Monsieur Marcel.'" (3)Rivers's references:(1) George D. Painter, Proust: The Later Years, (Boston: Little, 1959), pp. 268-70;
Maurice Sachs, Le Sabbat: Souvenirs d'une jeunesse orageuse (Paris: Corrêa, 1946), p.
285.
(2) Painter, 268.
(3) Céleste Albaret, Monsieur Proust, ed. Georges Belmont, (Paris: RobertLaffont-Opera Mundi, 1973), pp. 238-39.
Alain du Botton, in How Proust Can Change Your Life: Not a Novel (Vintage,1998), p. 58, explains as follows: "MICE: Proust has a terror of these. When Paris isbombed by the Germans in 1918, he confides that he is more terrified of mice than ofcannons.
151.5: numbering in raw-flesh red the white trunks of a row of young birches withRose's purloined lipstick: A reference to the garden of the Queen in Alice in Wonderland
where white roses are painted red. The rose motif is continued from the name of thescullery maid, described as "a lovely Irish wild rose" (150.26). Ada does this as "apreamble to a game she now could not remember." She tends to invent elaborate games
that mystify others, like the first game she proposes to play with Van when they firstmeet.
151.12: her crayon (tossed out by Marina . . .): Rose's lipstick expressing female
sexuality which, like the male counterpart in the terrier's hugging Dan's leg, is a part ofthe sexual education that the 6-year-old Ada and 8-year-old Van undergo in this scene.
151.13: k chertyam sobach'im, to hell's hounds: Cf. 23.11 where the same Russianphrase is translated as "to the devil." VN changes the translation because Rose's terrier"that had kept trying to hug Dan's leg" is the hell's hound in this very hellish scene.
151.26 Gran D. du Mont: Pun on the "Grandee," Marina's lover at the time. The letter
read aloud, "dee" and "deed" also means "damn" and "damned," inferred from thebeginning letter. Cf. 153.4: Marina was in Spain with her Grandee.
152.8: little "turrets" and little "barrels": Freudian male and female symbols. Lucettesings bagatelles about them and so is called "a macedoine of naivete and cunning."
152.5: handsome suntanned man with a black mustache: Quilty in Lolita, anothernympholept, also had a moustache.
152.7: Geneva's Manhattan Palace: Cf. Part III, Chapter 8 (508:2).
152.18: Ada only hoped the poor little thing would be as happy at Ada's age as Ada wasnow: This is 1884, Ada is 12. In Chapter 36, Lucette, 12, plays scrabble with Ada, 16,
but is not at all as happy as Ada is here.
153.4-13: matching memories: Cf. Sebastian Knight's novel, Success. Brian Boyd also
points out that VN had an intense personal interest in coincidences and fatal meetings
that brought together Vera and himself. Also in The Gift.
153.17: the maze of the past where the mirror-lined narrow paths not only tookdifferent turns, but used different levels: Time is conceived spatially, as in VN's
interpretation of Anna Karenina. Two levels of time, crossing paths but missing eachother because they proceed in different levels and speeds.
153.24-25: in the final tragic triumph of human cogitation: I am because I die: Cf. In his
dying moments, Mr. R in Transparent Things gains perfect understanding of life thatwould have filled a book of greatest revelation but realizes, "Fortunately for myself-esteem that book will not be written--not merely because a dying man cannot write
books but because that particular one would never express in one flash what can only beunderstood immediately." (Transparent Things, Ch. 21).
153.25: "But this," exclaimed Ada, "is certain, this is reality": Written by Ada, whoenjoys and deals more directly with life than philosophical Van.
153.28: (it will, it was): She can say, "It will," only because she knows "it was," having
lived through it. She is narrating both in the past, as Ada of 1884, and in the present, as
Ada in her nineties. "This has," Ada says, "all come together here." The paths made by
Van and Ada, no matter how twisted in space and time, have come to meet at one
decisive moment. But Ada knows "it was" all taken away. The awareness this line
brings is tragic, although Ada is merely playing with the convergence of the tenses.
153.32-33: 'in another part of the forest': Van already regards this forest philosophicallyas being both a temporal and spatial one, while Ada regards reality as something toenjoy. Cf."But, my love, my Van, I’m physical, horribly physical, I don’t know, I’
m frank,qu’y puis-je? " (I. 25)
154.1: I want to make sure of our whereabouts and whenabouts: Though Ada isunwilling to leave the special merging of space and time that they have arrived at, Vaninsists on the philosophical need for distinguishing time and space--anticipating hislifework, Texture of Time.
154.04: we: Note the use of first person plural, a novelistic convention.
154.14: a pretzel-string of old novels: Another mixing of the world of Van and Ada to thetradition of fiction (Cf. Van waylaying Ada on the stair landing in Chapter 20,127:
18-21). The coachman, the traktir-keeper and her son, the Gamlet itself come straightfrom old novels.
154:21-22: bitochki. Each devoured half a dozen of them: They each eat six because they
have enjoyed six love-makings. They pause for a last one "before reaching the darkness"(154:24). Hunger and sexual desire are treated as synonymous in this chapter.
154:26: lyrical coincidence: Marina and Mlle Lariviére are found drinking tea like thecoachman in the traktir. Drinking tea contrasts with the orgy of eating that Van andAda enjoy.
155:1: gloutonnerie impardonnable: Refers not only to the lust of Lariviére's"gentleman au cou rouge" but also to the "gluttony" of Van and Ada, especially Ada, whois voracious.
156.15-16: qu'on mette du beurre par-dessus toute cette pâte britannique, masseindigeste et immonde: Cf. ". . . little Miss Ada delicately but avidly (Ada, those adverbs
qualified many actions of yours!) . . . licked up, before attacking the more amorphousjunkety depths of the stuff" (I.7, p.47)

Note even here the use of "lait caillé" Cf.

"Sundaes cause acne. The excess of the oily substance called sebum which nourishes thehair follicles of the skin creates, when too profuse, an irritation that opens the way toinfection. But nymphets do not have acne although they gorge themselves on rich food"(I.11); "Lo, whose lovely prismatic entrails had already digested the sweetmeat, waslooking forward to a big meal and had begun to fidget"（Lolita I. 27).
155:25: "Only seven," replied Ada with a munch smile: Ada's secret joke for Van, who
has quickly retired from exhaustion. The number points to the times Van and Ada havemade love. Seven love-makings have "drained" Van "thoroughly."