----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, November 29, 2002 2:49 PM
Subject: Re: Fw: rainbows in ADA and in nature
Dear Alexey Sklyarenko,
A reference to
Sluchevski in the beginning of Ada gives little ground for the
understanding of an unconnected figure at the end. Violet Knox can be read in a
different key: as Nochnaia Fialka (the Nocturnal Violet, a poem by A.
Blok). After all, Ada calls her "Fialochka." A context that makes this
surmise plausible is given in S. Senderovich and Yelena Schvarts, "The Juice of
Three Oranges", Nabokov Studies 6.
Best.
Savely
Senderovich
Dear all,
I was finishing my long account of rainbows in
ADA late at night (well after 3 a. m.) the day before yesterday, so no wonder
that my tired brain has suggested some fantastic colors for a natural rainbow.
If I'm not mistaken again, violet, dark blue and blue are usually
beyond our visual perception in a rainbow, only the rest of the prismatic
spectrum being visible (still, I'm not quite sure about violet that sometimes
can be seen, I think, against the background of a somber thundercloud, gently
bordering green... not sure about it).
Nevertheless, I think that this curious slip
of my visual memory doesn't undermine my rainbow theory completely. "The prism
of his [Van's] mind" is another evidence that there can be here, at the end of
the first chapter, if not the accomplished rainbow, then a kind of
"chromatic scale" of colored allusions.
Note also that the name of Van's last
secretary, who types out ADA for him, Violet Knox, can be interpreted as "the
violet night". It is probably even darker than the "dark blue night" of
Sluchevski (for those, who still doubts that there is a reference to
Sluchevski here, I remind that the attic scene in ADA is a parody of a
similar scene in the beginning of Sluchevski's narrative long poem
Larchik, "A Little Casket". For many other allusions to Sluchevski in ADA,
see my VN Symposium paper soon to appear on the VN Museum Web
site).
Alexey Sklyarenko
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