Mike Marcus: Alfred Appel Jr, in his
May 4 1969 review of Ada in the NYTimes, wrote [snip] The reviewer may
have been more perspicacious than perhaps he knew, since there are a number of
indications that when writing about Ardis, VN indeed had in mind the location
where Sir Philip Sidney's own 'Arcadia' was written in the late 1570's and
revised shortly thereafter -- Wilton House. This was the home of Sidney's
sister, Lady Mary Sidney Pembroke. The Latin word Ardis means arrowhead, and the
arrowhead -- in heraldic terms the "pheon azure", or azure broad arrow -- is the
outstanding feature of the Sidney coat of arms http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sydney.svg.
The very name Ardis seems not unrelated -- [Arc]Ardis /
Arcadia. There is what appears to be a rather obscure phrase in Ada that
confirms this identification with Wilton House. On p.376 of the first edition,
... we read that Van "(Yells down the 'cory door', as they called the long
second-floor passage at Ardis)". [snip] the name of the Greek tutor
was William Cory.[...]It may be worth pointing out that rumors of incest between
Philip Sidney and his sister Mary circulated in the 17th
century.
Jansy Mello: The "cory-door" link seems to be
promising. What a wonderful description of the ardis/arrowhead as a
heraldic "pheon azure" It seems to clarify a lot of items related to
Van's emphasis on "azure".
I always thought it strange that Van
regularly refers to his mother's accent when pronouncing certain words
(such as "Ada") and her use of peculiar expressions (the noise of ascending
stairs, for example). This is why, until now, the "cory-door" seemed to be
just an innoffensive wordplay, like the others - I'm not as sure of
this now!
It would be amazing if the link to Sir Philip Sidney
could be established through "Ardis/Arcadia" (there are other links
that point to Sidney, different from the one you mention)
There is another wordplay in ADA, now with "cora"
- whose sound relates to cory-door, namely "Cora Day" (a murderous
soprano, linked to "English blank-verse plays in Telluride) but the
complexity of the association still elludes me ( A murdering lady, Marat, French
Revolution, Opera, Plays, Telluride...) Van also jokes
about Cordula and Ada (he refers to them interchangeably as "Corada..."
and "Adula", probably suggesting a lesbian affair bt the two
girls)
A long shot: the connection from Cora Day (French
Revolution) to Corada, carries us to WWII because of the relation between
Cordula and Marlene Dietrich. What kind of connection and its meaning
remains a mystery to me...
