"A formal photograph, on a separate page: Adochka, pretty and impure in her flimsy, and Vanichka in gray-flannel suit, with slant-striped school tie, facing the kimera (chimera, camera) side by side, at attention, he with the shadow of a forced grin, she, expressionless." ("Ada") Alexey Sklyarenko offers an interesting suggestion for "kimera" ("Kimera hints at Kim Beauharnais, the kitchen boy and photographer at Ardis who spies on Van and Ada and attempts to blackmail Ada.")
Every rereading of VN's writings, as expected, bring a renewed surprise. This time, in addition to pointing out Kim (the photographer at Ardis), passing through what we know about this mythical animal (cf. wiki: "The term chimera has come to describe any mythical or fictional animal with parts taken from various animals, or to describe anything composed of very disparate parts, or perceived as wildly imaginative or implausible"), moving beyond its metaphorical application by John Barth whose novel "Chimera" is composed of three loosely connected novellas ( Dunyazadiad, Perseid and Bellerophoniad), I had to stop at a curious information: Marina chose to have two of her children posing for a photograph and excluded Lucette, while comparing the couple with her brother Ivan, as pictured in an older photograph, thereby joining together a (chimeric?) third element:” Marina “had it framed and set up in her bedroom next to a picture of her brother at twelve or fourteen clad in a bayronka (open shirt) and cupping a guinea pig in his gowpen (hollowed hands); the three looked like siblings, with the dead boy providing a vivisectional alibi. (2.7)*
Why is Lucette absent from the collection of framed family photographs? Ivan’s open shirt indicates Byron - and sibling incest. **
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*- The two quotes from Ada were provided by A.Sklyarenko in his latest posting to the VN-L
** - Cf.wiki: “Augusta's half-brother, George Gordon, Lord Byron, didn't meet her until he went to Harrow School.[ ] Not having been brought up together they were almost like strangers to each other. But they got on well together and appear to have fallen in love with each other. When Byron's marriage collapsed and he sailed away from England never to return, rumours of incest, a very serious and scandalous offence, were rife [ ] There is some evidence to support the incest accusation. The Honourable Augusta Leigh's third daughter, born in spring of 1814, was christened Elizabeth Medora Leigh.A few days after the birth, Byron went to his sister's house Swynford Paddocks [ ]to see the child, and wrote, in a letter to Lady Melbourne, his confidante: "Oh, but it is not an ape, and it is worth while" (a child of an incestuous relationship was thought likely to be deformed).”
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