Alexey Sklyarenko: "[
] the three looked like siblings, with the dead boy
providing a vivisectional alibi. (Ada, 2.7)."
Uncle Ivan's bayronka brings to mind Garol'dov plashch
(Childe Harold's mantle) flaunted by Onegin in Pushkin's novel in
verse:
who's he then? Can it be - an imitation,
an
insignificant phantasm, or else
a Muscovite in Harold's mantle,
a glossary
of other people's megrims,
a complete lexicon of words in vogue?...
Might
he not be, in fact, a parody? (EO, Seven: XXIV: 9-14)
Cheepy
(the guinea pig drawn by Robert Horn, a gifted but unprincipled artist) and
vivisection are mentioned at the beginning of VN's Camera Obscura (1932),[
]Kim Beauhernais ends up as a blind man.
Jansy Mello: A. Sklyarenko has offered very rich
and interesting images, correlations and riddles - Ivan's bayronka and
Harold's mantle, in EO; an allusion to Robert Horn and vivisection in
Camera Oscua; the protagonist becoming blind, like
the kirchen-boy and photographer Kim, in ADA
.
The enigmas persist... Who is Ada, what
do VN's blind men, associated to cameras and photographic revelations,
represent? What do the associated terms "vivisectional alibi"
mean?
Can it be that she has resolved the riddle?/Can it be that
"the word" is found?(EO, Seven, XXV 1-2):