----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday, July 28, 2003 7:39 AM
Subject: Re: Fw: response to Alexey Sklyareno's note on the name
Durmanov in ADA
Dear Carolyn,
I'm afraid that the title of Chekhov's (or Tchechoff's, as he is said to
have spelled his name abroad, 2.9) play, Chaika, doesn't really lurk in
"Tshchaikow" (a nice bunch of consonants), the author of the well-known
opera Onegin and Olga (1.25). But "Veen" can indeed lurk, as you have
pointed out to me, in vinovaty in the quoted passage from
Chaika that contains the word durman. In fact, I didn't
mention it in the hope that you would say it in your response.
I would like to expand a little on my previous comment and say that
there are direct reminiscences of four most famous plays by Chekhov in
Ada: The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, Three
Sisters and Cherry Orchard (in the chronological order). The
one concerning The Seagull is in Part One, chapter 39 (Ada's birthday
picknick in Ardis the Second):
"Van!" called Ada shrilly. "I want to say something to you,
Van, come here."
Dorn (flipping through a literary review, to
Trigorin): "Here, a couple of months ago, a certain article was printed... a
Letter from America, and I wanted to ask you, incidentally" (taking Trigorin by
the waist and leading him to the front of the stage), "because I'm very much
interested in that question..."
Those are Dorn's penultimate words in the play, with which he
addresses the belletrist Trigorin, before telling him, "sub
rosa," that Treplev has shot himself. After which the curtain falls.
I won't broach the question why this interpolation from The
Seagull is here and what does the allusion mean. Surely, it's not merely
the author's fad. Actually, it serves many purposes here. I shall confine myself
to saying that Nabokov wants us to reread the play; in fact, all four plays by
Chekhov that are referred to in Ada. If we do, among other things we
would discover in the very beginning of The Seagull what was the
source of Marina Durmanov's last name. And what's more, we discover the true
"literary context" of that character. If Ada is associated with many a
Turgenevian miss, Marina is a "Chekhovian lady," half-Arkadina, half-Ranevskaia.
And I think, it is because she is plunged back into her initial context, so to
say, that she shines in Four Sisters (even playing a doubly fictitious
character, i. e. a character that is absent from the original play). I
hope, I have formulated my argument a little more clearerly this time.
In conclusion, I would like to make a remark about the allusions in
Ada in general. They can sometimes mislead a reader, but they are never
"leading to nowhere" (at least, I know not of a single example of such allusion
in Ada, unless it is not "read into the book" by us, the inveterate TV
watchers). On the contrary, they all serve the purpose to set Antiterra, and its
ghost sibling-planet Terra (that shouldn't be confused with our Earth), spinning
and revolving round its own sun.
best regards,
Alexey
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday, July 28, 2003 4:12 AM
Subject: Fw: response to Alexey
Sklyareno's note on the name Durmanov in ADA
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, July 27, 2003 2:11 PM
Subject: response to Alexey's Durmanov
Dear Alexey,
I hope you will not mind if I share some information
with the List regarding the Russian word
"durman" since you are yourself
were the most generous source of that information.
Alexey & Brian
Boyd are correct to note that "durman" means an intoxicating, possibly
habit-forming drug, as in the apropos quote from Chekhov's Chaika (
which I also detected lurking in the odd spelling of Tschaikovsky somewhere in
Ada). But "durman" is also a particularly nasty plant, "datura
stramonium," which has been implicated as "zombie poson" in Haiti, and I
believe has implications in Ada (as the primary of "yady Ady"
[Ada's poisons]) as well.
Carolyn
p.s. Marina is not the only failed actress in Ada. Her daughter isn't
very
successful either. And come to think of it, Van turns out to be
something of
a mediocrity on the world stage as well.
---------------------------------------------------------
EDNOTE. I would add that the Russian root "dur'" also
supplies the common word for "Fool" (durak)--certainly an apt characterization
for Marina.