The fact that ada is gen. sing. of
ad, Russian for "hell," is stressed in Ada: Aqua's last
note is signed "My sister's sister who teper' iz ada ('now is out of
hell')" (1.3). On the other hand, ada means "island" in many
Turkic languages (as I pointed out in previous posts, the place name Uzun Ada,
"long island," is mentioned and explained in Jules Verne's
novel Claudius Bombarnac). Now, Chekhov (one of whose
pennames was brat moego brata, "my brother's brother") is the author of
a side-splitting parody: "The Flying Islands (by Jules Verne)" (1883). One
of its three characters is William Bolvanius* (a woman-hater who was married
three times and therefore has three pairs of beautiful branchy antlers), the
late author of the forbidden pamphlet "The Way to Grind the Universe into
Dust and not to Perish at the Same Time" (the title that would sound
topical in the 1960s, when Ada was written).
As far as I know, there are no flying islands in J.
Verne (the author of "The Mysterious Island," 1874), but there is Laputa,
the flying island in J. Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726). In
Ada, Laputa is a freight airplane on which Ada's two
maids fly over from America to Europe with Ada's trunks (Part
Four).
*from bolvan, Russian for
"blockhead"
Alexey Sklyarenko