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Re: Yady Ady
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there actually is a heavy, very heavy theme of drugs, narcotics and poisonings in Ada. In fact both Marina and her daughter are serial poisoners. The family name provides one clue to this interpretation [see below].
Dear Carolyn,
I explore these possibilities in my article Yagody Ady i yady Yagody: Otravleniya u Nabokova i v Sovetskoy Rossii ("Ada's Berries and Yagoda's Poisons: the Poisonings in Nabokov and in Soviet Russia") available in Russian in Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/sklyarenko3.doc. At the time when I wrote it, I haven't read Gorky's story O tarakanakh ("On Cockroaches", 1926). Its hero as a child has cockroaches stuck in the treacle with which he smears the portraits of the tsars and ends up being poisoned (with the sweet Turkish delight) himself.
When he speaks of VN's anagramatic doubles, Stan K.-B. forgets about Baron Klim Avidov, Marina's former lover who gives her children the Flavita (=alfavit, Russian for "alphabet") set. In my opinion, the Flavita chapter (1.36) is central in ADA, because it hides the clue (klyuch ot kvartiry gde den'gi lezhat, "the key from the flat where money is stored", as Ostap Bender would say) to the whole novel. Also, I protest against the notion that my reading of ADA is a simplistic one. The tricks that my (or rather Nabokov's) letters of the alphabet perform are as difficult and artistic as Mascodagama's.
Thanks to Dieter Zimmer for telling the correct number of words in ADA.
Alexey Sklyarenko
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Dear Carolyn,
I explore these possibilities in my article Yagody Ady i yady Yagody: Otravleniya u Nabokova i v Sovetskoy Rossii ("Ada's Berries and Yagoda's Poisons: the Poisonings in Nabokov and in Soviet Russia") available in Russian in Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/sklyarenko3.doc. At the time when I wrote it, I haven't read Gorky's story O tarakanakh ("On Cockroaches", 1926). Its hero as a child has cockroaches stuck in the treacle with which he smears the portraits of the tsars and ends up being poisoned (with the sweet Turkish delight) himself.
When he speaks of VN's anagramatic doubles, Stan K.-B. forgets about Baron Klim Avidov, Marina's former lover who gives her children the Flavita (=alfavit, Russian for "alphabet") set. In my opinion, the Flavita chapter (1.36) is central in ADA, because it hides the clue (klyuch ot kvartiry gde den'gi lezhat, "the key from the flat where money is stored", as Ostap Bender would say) to the whole novel. Also, I protest against the notion that my reading of ADA is a simplistic one. The tricks that my (or rather Nabokov's) letters of the alphabet perform are as difficult and artistic as Mascodagama's.
Thanks to Dieter Zimmer for telling the correct number of words in ADA.
Alexey Sklyarenko
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/