In my opinion Lucette is
not as frenziedly envious as many of you are trying to make
her behave. She´d have to suffer from "
erotomania" for this to make sense and nothing in her story, while still alive,
suggest this pathology.
She would also have to be a "young
martyr": pure and innocent and virginal. She has not had her hymen ruptured,
that´s true, but she is far from virginal and innocent in every other sense.
The littlle fey ( she was recovering from
a serious illness when Van first set his eyes on her and mistook her for
"Ardelia" ) golden-brown-russet-green child was a very normal little girl
in Ada I, but became a kind of masochistic young lady now associated with
"bears" ( attention to the sound of "urs" in her furs,
too ), soon transformed again into at least a
minute mermaid/undine floating in a bubble.
Despite VN´s apparently not mentioning
Jules Verne´s name, we find hints of Phileas Fogg and also,
although there are VN´s disparaging words on TSEliot he often, if
impatiently employs "the drowned Phoenician Sailor". But we don´t need
either Fogg or Phoenician sailors to reach Shakespeare´s " The Tempest", "
a pastoral play" and a "masque" and the lines: "...Those are pearls that were his eyes/Nothing of him that
doth fade/but that suffers a sea change/into something rich and strange…” —
William Shakespeare, “The Tempest.”
Lucette, i.e "small
light", after the "Terror on Terra" could be an
anticipation of certain "lights" from French "illuminism". She could also
represent the fallen angel from Paradise ( "Lucifer" ). She might also be a
jealous Juno watching over Jupiter Olorinus couplings with Leda but then she´d
have had to be Jupiter´s wife in the first place...
Boyd has connected
Lucette and Aqua by the phoetus sized rubber doll, but he has considered Lucette
as a kind of "substitute Van". Couldn´t we also think of her as having become
Aqua´s vengeful ghost watching over not Ada, but Marina?
It is exciting for me to watch
how VN´s novels and stories undergo actual and real changes whenever I read him
and therefore one of the points for my enjoyment with "ADA" comes from the
various "rich and strange" transformations he allows for without ever coming to
a definite authoritative solution but just as a spiraling state of
permanent metamorphosis.
Jansy
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, February 20, 2005 12:47
AM
Subject: Fwdthe mulberry bush, and
perhaps the walrus (Lucette & posthumous frenzy?)
----- Forwarded message from naiman@socrates.berkeley.edu
-----
Date: Sat, 19 Feb 2005 17:19:54
-0800
From: Eric Naiman <naiman@socrates.berkeley.edu>
>From
Eric Naiman:
In light of the earlier discussion of the mulberry soap,
it is worth
noticing its last usage in the novel:
A
boxwood-lined path, presided over by a nostalgic-looking
sempervirent
sequoia (which American visitors mistook for a "Lebanese
cedar"-if they
remarked it at all) took them to the absurdly misnamed rue
du Mûrier, where
a princely paulownia ("mulberry tree!" snorted Ada),
standing in state on
its incongruous terrace above a public W.C., was
shedding generously its
heart-shaped dark green leaves, but retained
enough foliage to cast
arabesques of shadow onto the south side of
its trunk.
We should definitely read this passage in keeping with Brian
Boyd's reading
of III.8 -- to note the presence of Lucette that seems to be
ignored by the
adulterous lovers. He points to the grebes with crests
seen a few pages
later as evidence of Lucette's continued existence
in the text. This
passage, with its reference to the mulberry and the
W.C. seems to refer to
that earlier bathing passage, and we should note the
generous leaf-dropping
that Boyd sees as a Lucette marker elsewhere in the
book. Note, too, that
Lucette -- or Van? -- gives this passage a
shimmer of indecency evident
once we see the reference to the earlier
passage. (boxwood-lined path,
l-eban-ese cedar, the mulberry
"standing in state" (as was the soap -- see
also the bawdy Malrow passage
on 377 where Van is cursing "the condition
in which the image of the
four embers of a vixen's cross had not solidly
put him": "One of the
synonyms of "condition" is "state," and the
adjective "human" may be
construed as "manly" etc.
I wonder about passages like this whether
they might not show that Lucette
has been unable to overcome her Ophelian
frenzy in death. If she is
responsible for that phallic walrus -- as
Boyd suggested in his recent post
-- and she is still obsessed with
mulberries standing in state, is her
generous "blessing" of Van and Ada's
reunin at Mon Trou as comforting an
ending as it might once have
seemed. Or might her "blessing" of Van and
Ada's reunion be even more
disturbing -- is she not ever-present, a kind of
necessary third, observing
the lovers just as she did earlier as a child.
If we accept the notion that
Lucette's ghost -- or else -- going back to
what Van tells the dying
Phillip -- pieces of Lucette -- bless or haunt the
period after her death
(including the writing of the entire manuscript)
don't we have to see the
novel as stating emphatically that yes, there is
lust after death, a kind
of disembodied existence where we will only have
words to play with and
will suffer the hell(?) of being continually aroused?
----- End
forwarded message -----
EDNOTE: From the ever fertile mind of Eric Naiman.
Malrow (Malraux) indeed! The
mulberry tie-in is intriguing and merits
investigation. Cf. those ginko leaves.
>From Eric Naiman:
In light of the earlier discussion of the
mulberry soap, it is worth noticing its last usage in the novel:
A boxwood-lined
path, presided over by a nostalgic-looking sempervirent sequoia (which
American visitors mistook for a "Lebanese cedar"-if they remarked it at all)
took them to the absurdly misnamed rue du Mûrier, where a princely paulownia
("mulberry tree!" snorted Ada), standing in state on its incongruous terrace
above a public W.C., was shedding generously its heart-shaped dark green
leaves, but retained enough foliage to cast arabesques of shadow onto the
south side of its trunk.
We should
definitely read this passage in keeping with Brian Boyd's reading of III.8 --
to note the presence of Lucette that seems to be ignored by the adulterous
lovers. He points to the grebes with crests seen a few pages later as evidence
of Lucette's continued existence in the text. This passage, with its reference
to the mulberry and the W.C. seems to refer to that earlier bathing passage,
and we should note the generous leaf-dropping that Boyd sees as a Lucette
marker elsewhere in the book. Note, too, that Lucette -- or Van? -- gives this
passage a shimmer of indecency evident once we see the reference to the
earlier passage. (boxwood-lined path, l-eban-ese cedar, the mulberry "standing
in state" (as was the soap -- see also the bawdy Malrow passage on 377 where
Van is cursing "the condition in which the image of the four embers of a
vixen's cross had not solidly put him": "One of the synonyms of "condition" is
"state," and the adjective "human" may be construed as "manly" etc.
I
wonder about passages like this whether they might not show that Lucette has
been unable to overcome her Ophelian frenzy in death. If she is responsible
for that phallic walrus -- as Boyd suggested in his recent post -- and she is
still obsessed with mulberries standing in state, is her generous "blessing"
of Van and Ada's reunin at Mon Trou as comforting an ending as it might once
have seemed. Or might her "blessing" of Van and Ada's reunion be even more
disturbing -- is she not ever-present, a kind of necessary third, observing
the lovers just as she did earlier as a child. If we accept the notion that
Lucette's ghost -- or else -- going back to what Van tells the dying Phillip
-- pieces of Lucette -- bless or haunt the period after her death (including
the writing of the entire manuscript) don't we have to see the novel as
stating emphatically that yes, there is lust after death, a kind of
disembodied existence where we will only have words to play with and will
suffer the hell(?) of being continually aroused?