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A review by emmaemmaemmaemma
Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle by Vladimir Nabokov
4.0
“Stay with me, girl," said Van, forgetting everything—pride, rage, the convention of everyday pity.
"I can't, I can't, I'll write you,' murmured my poor love in tears.”
I went into this book knowing two things.
1. It’s about an incestuous relationship.
2. You have to have a “lover’s patience” to appreciate it.
That second point is spot on. The character of Van, who is the in-fiction writer of this book, really enjoys philosophical tangents. Still, the patience was worth it for all the ways this book excels. It’s first strength is the barrage of beautiful imagery. A few examples follow:
“He accompanied his black double down the accessory spiral stairs leading to the library.” (about his shadow)
“He rinsed his dentures orally with a mouthful of coffee prior to swallowing it and the flavorous flotsam. (Gross but vivid)
“The sweet cousin sported a shiny black raincoat and a down-brimmed oilcloth hat as if somebody was to be salvaged from the perils of life or sea. A tiny round patch did not quite hide a pimple on one side of her chin. Her breath smelled of ether. Her mood was even blacker than his.
“Had they lived together these seventeen wretched years, they would have been spared the shock and the humiliation; their aging would have been a gradual adjustment, as imperceptible as Time itself.
Another strength of the book is Ada herself, who could have easily become a one dimensional object of Van’s desire, but is instead written with humor and vibrancy. She loves butterflies and botany, she’s bisexual and brilliant. And her bisexuality is not something written for Van’s enjoyment, but for hers. I often find myself put off by female characters written by men, but Ada is not an example of that.
“qu 'y puis-je? (What can I do?) Oh dear, don't ask me, there's a girl in my school who is in love with me,“
“What had she actually done with the poor worms, after Krolik's untimely end? "Oh, set them free" (big vague gesture), "turned them out, put them back onto suitable plants, buried them in the pupal state, told them to run along, while the birds were not looking- or alas, feigning not to be looking.” (This book is so playful, I love it. I love Ada Veen)
”And now,” said Ada, "Van is going to stop being vulgar—I mean, stop forever! Because I had and have and shall always have only one beau, only one beast, only one sorrow, only one joy.”
What adds even more depth is the playfulness the book takes with language. Nabokov achieves this in two main ways. First, in the use of codes, there’s an entire chapter devoted to decoding Van and Ada’s letters. The second way that Nabokov plays with language is in the consistent switching from English, to Russian, to French, to really, any language he pleases. This created a lovely sense of anticipation at times, when I had to stop and translate to learn what had just been said.
”Secondes pensées sont les bonnes” = Second thoughts are the good ones
”Partir c'est mourir un peu, et mourir c'est partir un peu trop.” = To leave is to die a little, and to die is to leave a
little too.
Ada and Van also both like to throw in editors notes in parenthesis. It makes the book read like a marked up manuscript at times, and brings a lot of joy to the story.
“Ada, doing her feminine best to restrain and divert her sobs by transforming them into emotional exclamations, pointed out some accursed insect that had settled on an aspen trunk. (Accursed? Accursed? It was the newly described, fantastically
rare vanessian, Nymphalis danaus.)”
(An example of the editors notes that really showcases a bit of Ada’s personality. I loved reading her notes since most of the story is told from Van’s perspective of events, and Ada loves to correct him.)
We can know the time, we can know a time. We can never know Time. Our senses are simply not meant to perceive it.
”When our lovers (you like the authorial possessive, don't you, Van?)”
(More lovely Ada. I’d like to read a book from her perspective.)
Finally, I want to end with a collection of quotes from across Van’s various philosophical musings. While they can drag on a bit (especially the strange tangents about alternative worlds) some of them are actually quite delightful to read.
”To be" means to know one "has been." “Not to be" implies the only "new" kind of (sham) time: the future.
”Thus, in a quite literal sense, we may say that conscious human life lasts always only one moment, for at any moment of deliberate attention to our own flow of consciousness we cannot know if that moment will be followed by another.”
”Nothing happened-or perhaps everything happened, and his destiny simply forked at that instant, as it probably does sometimes at night, especially in a strange bed, at stages of great happiness or great desolation, when we happen to die in our sleep, but continue our normal existence, with no perceptible break…”
”The awfulness of the situation is an abyss that grows deeper the more I think of it.”
”Each hoped to go first, so as to concede, by implication, a longer life to the other, and each wished to go last, in order to spare the other the anguish, or worries, of widowhood.”
"I can't, I can't, I'll write you,' murmured my poor love in tears.”
I went into this book knowing two things.
1. It’s about an incestuous relationship.
2. You have to have a “lover’s patience” to appreciate it.
That second point is spot on. The character of Van, who is the in-fiction writer of this book, really enjoys philosophical tangents. Still, the patience was worth it for all the ways this book excels. It’s first strength is the barrage of beautiful imagery. A few examples follow:
“He accompanied his black double down the accessory spiral stairs leading to the library.” (about his shadow)
“He rinsed his dentures orally with a mouthful of coffee prior to swallowing it and the flavorous flotsam. (Gross but vivid)
“The sweet cousin sported a shiny black raincoat and a down-brimmed oilcloth hat as if somebody was to be salvaged from the perils of life or sea. A tiny round patch did not quite hide a pimple on one side of her chin. Her breath smelled of ether. Her mood was even blacker than his.
“Had they lived together these seventeen wretched years, they would have been spared the shock and the humiliation; their aging would have been a gradual adjustment, as imperceptible as Time itself.
Another strength of the book is Ada herself, who could have easily become a one dimensional object of Van’s desire, but is instead written with humor and vibrancy. She loves butterflies and botany, she’s bisexual and brilliant. And her bisexuality is not something written for Van’s enjoyment, but for hers. I often find myself put off by female characters written by men, but Ada is not an example of that.
“qu 'y puis-je? (What can I do?) Oh dear, don't ask me, there's a girl in my school who is in love with me,“
“What had she actually done with the poor worms, after Krolik's untimely end? "Oh, set them free" (big vague gesture), "turned them out, put them back onto suitable plants, buried them in the pupal state, told them to run along, while the birds were not looking- or alas, feigning not to be looking.” (This book is so playful, I love it. I love Ada Veen)
”And now,” said Ada, "Van is going to stop being vulgar—I mean, stop forever! Because I had and have and shall always have only one beau, only one beast, only one sorrow, only one joy.”
What adds even more depth is the playfulness the book takes with language. Nabokov achieves this in two main ways. First, in the use of codes, there’s an entire chapter devoted to decoding Van and Ada’s letters. The second way that Nabokov plays with language is in the consistent switching from English, to Russian, to French, to really, any language he pleases. This created a lovely sense of anticipation at times, when I had to stop and translate to learn what had just been said.
”Secondes pensées sont les bonnes” = Second thoughts are the good ones
”Partir c'est mourir un peu, et mourir c'est partir un peu trop.” = To leave is to die a little, and to die is to leave a
little too.
Ada and Van also both like to throw in editors notes in parenthesis. It makes the book read like a marked up manuscript at times, and brings a lot of joy to the story.
“Ada, doing her feminine best to restrain and divert her sobs by transforming them into emotional exclamations, pointed out some accursed insect that had settled on an aspen trunk. (Accursed? Accursed? It was the newly described, fantastically
rare vanessian, Nymphalis danaus.)”
(An example of the editors notes that really showcases a bit of Ada’s personality. I loved reading her notes since most of the story is told from Van’s perspective of events, and Ada loves to correct him.)
We can know the time, we can know a time. We can never know Time. Our senses are simply not meant to perceive it.
”When our lovers (you like the authorial possessive, don't you, Van?)”
(More lovely Ada. I’d like to read a book from her perspective.)
Finally, I want to end with a collection of quotes from across Van’s various philosophical musings. While they can drag on a bit (especially the strange tangents about alternative worlds) some of them are actually quite delightful to read.
”To be" means to know one "has been." “Not to be" implies the only "new" kind of (sham) time: the future.
”Thus, in a quite literal sense, we may say that conscious human life lasts always only one moment, for at any moment of deliberate attention to our own flow of consciousness we cannot know if that moment will be followed by another.”
”Nothing happened-or perhaps everything happened, and his destiny simply forked at that instant, as it probably does sometimes at night, especially in a strange bed, at stages of great happiness or great desolation, when we happen to die in our sleep, but continue our normal existence, with no perceptible break…”
”The awfulness of the situation is an abyss that grows deeper the more I think of it.”
”Each hoped to go first, so as to concede, by implication, a longer life to the other, and each wished to go last, in order to spare the other the anguish, or worries, of widowhood.”