Dear List,

 

Still harping on "prison bars", Apes and art in LOLITA, I shifted to ADA :

 " Are we really free? Certain caged birds, say Chinese amateurs shaking with fatman mirth, knock themselves out against the bars (and lie unconscious for a few minutes) every blessed morning, right upon awakening, in an automatic, dream-continuing, dreamlined dash — although they are, those iridescent prisoners, quite perky and docile and talkative the rest of the time". ( 'Ada' )

 

Actually, I had been researching information on the "Mascodagama" act  and was led to explore another pen-name that Van had chosen: " Voltemand" , a courtier in Shakespeare´s "Hamlet".  I decided to check Voltemand´s lines and I discovered he only said one in the entire play, in Act 2, scene 2. 

 

This act 2/2 ( another two-two?)  seemed by itself very significant because there were exchanges bt. Van and Lucette at the "Voltemand Hall" when Van quoted a line from this same Act 2,scene 2 ( "whilst the machine is to him" ) and indirectly reassured Lucette of his love, like in Hamlet´s lines to Ophelia.  It is where in Hamlet we find references to betrayal, madness and the  "play scene" used by Hamlet to disturb King Claudius.

Shakespeare: "O dear Ophelia, I am ill at these numbers. I have not art to reckon my groans, but that I love thee best, O most best, believe it. adieu. Thine evermore, most dear lady, whilst this machine is to him”. Hamlet" (Act 2, Scene 2, Lines 128-132).

VN in "ADA": "I hope I’ve thoroughly got you mixed up, Van, because la plus laide fille au monde peut donner beaucoup plus qu’elle n’a, and now let us say adieu, yours ever.’

‘Whilst the machine is to him,’ murmured Van.

‘Hamlet,’ said the assistant lecturer’s brightest student."



I thought that I could bring this to our List because we were just talking about "prison bars" ( concerning "Lolita" and the Ape in the Jardin des Plantes that drew his prison bars )  and the idea of a "prison" is quite marked in this scene, too.

 

"Hamlet" (Act 2, Scene 2, Lines 128-132). 
HAMLET

Why, then, 'tis none to you; for there is nothing
either good or bad, but thinking makes it so: to me      (2.2.250)
it is a prison.
ROSENCRANTZ

Why then, your ambition makes it one; 'tis too
narrow for your mind.
HAMLET

O God, I could be bounded in a nut shell and count
myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I
have bad dreams.      (2.2.256)


I had been suggesting that an attempt to escape from madness is the result of a certain kind of  deluded artistic effort ( as it had been HH´s in "Lolita", perhaps also as Van´s "Mascodagama" act) . Young Van becan to practice his Mascodagama act because he felt his school was a prison:
Two years earlier, when about to begin his first prison term at the fashionable and brutal boarding school, to which other Veens had gone before him (as far back as the days ‘when Washingtonias were Wellingtonias’), Van had resolved to study some striking stunt that would give him an immediate and brilliant ascendancy...

Also Lucette had been placed into a "liquid prison" in her bath, when he tried to escape her vigilance and make love with Ada. 
Like Ophelia´s , Lucette´s love was also a prison and drove her to suicide ( and she also drowned like Ophelia ).: " The liquid prison was now ready and an alarm clock given a full quarter of an hour to live".
 
There are other references to "prison" in ADA that are linked to Lucette and Van´s exchanges in Voltemand Hall. This is brought about  by the letters in  scrabble and flavita games and prison, plus the quotation of "Hamlet":
 
1.‘Well,’ said Van, ‘you can always make a little cream, KREM or KREME — or even better — there’s KREMLI, which means Yukon prisons. Go through her ORHIDEYA.’

‘Through her silly orchid,’ said Lucette.

 
The link between Kremli & Yukon prisons, Voltemand Hall scene and Hamlet :

‘— I got stuck with six Buchstaben in the last round of a Flavita game. Mind you, I was eight and had not studied anatomy, but was doing my poor little best to keep up with two Wunderkinder. You examined and fingered my groove and quickly redistributed the haphazard sequence which made, say, LIKROT or ROTIKL and Ada flooded us both with her raven silks as she looked over our heads, and when you had completed the rearrangement, you and she came simultaneously, si je puis le mettre comme ça (Canady French), came falling on the black carpet in a paroxysm of incomprehensible merriment; so finally I quietly composed ROTIK (‘little mouth’) and was left with my own cheap initial. I hope I’ve thoroughly got you mixed up, Van, because la plus laide fille au monde peut donner beaucoup plus qu’elle n’a, and now let us say adieu, yours ever.’

‘Whilst the machine is to him,’ murmured Van.

‘Hamlet,’ said the assistant lecturer’s brightest student.

‘Okay, okay,’ replied her and his tormentor, ‘but, you know, a medically minded English Scrabbler, having two more letters to cope with, could make, for example, STIRCOIL, a well-known, sweat-gland stimulant, or CITROILS, which grooms use for rubbing fillies.’

 

Perhaps there are too many allusions, but I discovered another one through the idea of treason and deceit: 

In the Hamlet scene 2 we find also a reference to Pyrrhus and to the Trojan Horse and above we have the "stircoil used for rubbing fillies".

There are also  Hamlet´s words that he should turn  like a horse when it goes back to a place he had left,  turn like "mascodagama"?   

Jansy