NABOKV-L post 0016406, Tue, 20 May 2008 22:40:08 -0700

I think I can answer some of this. The thing they discover in a deeper layer of the past which is their "best find", the flower journal/album, definitely relates to the children's parentage. It is from the dated information they deduce when Marina birthed Van, and when Aqua had her accident which allowed Marina and her doctor to slip the child to Aqua as her own, since Marina was not married and didn't want the scandal of illegitimate motherhood. This is definitely better than the dated photo and the newspaper reproduction of the photo of Dan's and Marina's wedding, I believe, which doesn't jibe with Ada's birthdate, unless I have things mixed up. While the servants may have been speculating that Ada and van had the same father, it seems doubtful that Blanche had any idea of the extent of the baby switching. It's definitely debatable, but I don't think Ada's mention of Blanche's gossip creates any paradox. Before the album there was simply no
proof, which is not the same thing as the first time they might heard something of the sort. The bigger question I think, is whether or not they find what they think they find; there is a suggestion in one of Ada's editorial scribblings that it's not quite right for Van to allow himself to narrate events that he could not know, and that might not have even been true in the first place. Oneiric, I think she calls them. One little thing that's always niggled at me comes at the end of chapter five when Van has Marina watch the two children ascending stairs; she notes the way their hands touch the bannister with the same rythm and has a fleeting moment of worry that she dimisses as "old fashioned qualms." Which she apparently says outloud. How does Van know this? The whole scene in the attic, and the stylized way the children respond to their finds, reek of self myth-making on Van's part. Whatever happened in the attic, it seems hard not to think it
couldn't have really happened anything like the way Van narrates it. 



----- Original Message ----
From: jansymello <jansy@AETERN.US>
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Sent: Tuesday, May 20, 2008 12:05:39 PM
Subject: [NABOKV-L] [NABOKOV-LIST] [ Ada, or Ardor] siblings and their discoveries in the attic


Dear List,
Informations in "Ada, or Ardor" sometimes lead me into opposite lines of conjectures and often the paradox or the traps escape my conscious attention. Today I decided to share my curiosity with you and learn if other readers share this kind of puzzlement, or if it operates only with absendminded readers, like me.
 
It is well established that Van and Ada are brother and sister.
If anyone quizzed me about when and where they discovered that they were siblings, I'd answer that it happened while they were in Ardis, investigating together the attic.
We read, for example: " A girl was born on July 21, 1872, at Ardis, her putative father’s seat in Ladore County , and for some obscure mnemonic reason was registered as Adelaida. Another daughter, this time Dan’s very own, followed on January 3, 1876." (I wonder, though, why was  the "two kids’ best find" something that "came from another carton in a lower layer of the past."? Their "best find" in relation to what? Their parentage?)
We have the suggestion that this was the first time the two had confronted together the issue of their birthdates and fatherhood: "The two young discoverers of that strange and sickening treasure commented upon it as follows: ‘I deduce,’ said the boy, ‘three main facts: that not yet married Marina and her married sister hibernated in my lieu de naissance; that Marina had her own Dr Krolik, pour ainsi dire; and that the orchids came from Demon who preferred to stay by the sea, his dark-blue great-grandmother.’" Ada's words that comes right after, also states: " ‘I can add,’ said the girl, ‘that the petal belongs to the common Butterfly Orchis; that my mother was even crazier than her sister; and that the paper flower so cavalierly dismissed is a perfectly recognizable reproduction of [...] the Bear-Foot, B,E,A,R, my love, not my foot or yours, or the Stabian flower girl’s..."
 
And yet, in the next breath and line Ada adds: " — an allusion, which your father, who, according to Blanche, is also mine, would understand like this’ (American finger-snap)."
So we see that many servants, Blanche included -  and Ada herself - already knew of this little secret long before Ada and Van climbed up to the attic. It was clearly something that only Van ignored while he (as usual) went off onto a side issue ( which will never, really, be a "side issue" anyway). 
Did Ada's words, as they were placed in her mouth at that moment, reveal that there were never "two" discoverers of strange treasures but only one? It this a "delayed-action" information deliberately set by the narrator and to what purpose does it serve? 



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