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THOUGHTS: Iris Acht and Conan Doyle's Irene Adler
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In light of recent musings on the inspiration for Iris Acht, I thought I
would weigh in with some connections I discovered while investigating
N’s
engagement of Sherlock Holmes stories. When familiarizing myself with
the
Sherlock Holmes canon I made an immediate name association between Acht
and
the Conan Doyle character who comes closest to being Holmes’ love
interest,
Irene Adler.
Described as a “forgotten actress” (C. 130, 122) in the text, Iris
Acht’s
Index entry reads “celebrated actress, d. 1888, a passionate and
powerful
woman, favorite of Thurgus the Third,” and it cites her sudden death,
“officially by her own hand; unofficially, strangled in her dressing
room by
a fellow actor, a jealous young Gothlander, now, at ninety, the oldest,
and
least important, member of the Shadows group” (305).
Irene Adler’s first and only physical appearance in a Holmes story is in
1891’s “A Scandal in Bohemia.” The scandal is an illicit affair between
opera singer/actress Adler* and the King of Bohemia. Sherlock Holmes
“had
adopted a system of docketing all paragraphs concerning men and things,
so
that it was difficult to name a subject or a person on which he could
not at
once furnish information,” so when the king beseeches Holmes for help in
dealing with the matter, Holmes directs Watson to “kindly look her up in
my
index.” (all Conan Doyle quotes from “A Scandal in Bohemia”)
In Watson’s recounting of the story, he describes her as “the late Irene
Adler, of dubious and questionable memory.” Along with sharing initials
and
characteristics as both theatre performers and clandestine lovers of
foreign
kings in 1888, Adler and Acht are both dead by the time they appear in
their
respective stories. Moreover, they share certain character traits:
Acht is
“passionate and powerful,” and Adler is “has a soul of steel. She has
the
face of the most beautiful of women, and the mind of the most resolute
of men.”
Adler’s connection to the King of Bohemia also points to Zembla. K’s
commentary on the “Zemblan sample (‘silktail’), closely resembling a
waxwing
in shape and shade” (C.1-4, 73) alludes the Bohemian waxwing, the
sub-Arctic
counterpart to Shade’s cedar waxwing, for which silktail is another
name.
* In an early description Watson describes that Adler is an opera
singer,
but in a later letter to Holmes Adler notes, “But, you know, I have been
trained as an actress myself.”
Tiffany DeRewal
[EDNOTE. In a 1991 essay, "Purloined Letters: Poe, Doyle, Nabokov," I
link Conan Doyle's Irene Adler to the purloined-letter,
hide-in-plain-sight, and cherchez-la-femme themes of The Real Life of
Sebastian Knight -- including the telltale moment when VN's narrator
"resorts to an old Sherlock Holmes stratagem" while trying to determine
whether Lydia Bohemsky, a "Bohemian lady," had been Sebastian's mistress
(RLSK 153, 175). And in a 1992 note, "Postscript to a Purloined
Letter," I suggest that such references to Irene Adler may allude
obliquely to VN's own unsettling affair with Irina Guadinini. -- SES]
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would weigh in with some connections I discovered while investigating
N’s
engagement of Sherlock Holmes stories. When familiarizing myself with
the
Sherlock Holmes canon I made an immediate name association between Acht
and
the Conan Doyle character who comes closest to being Holmes’ love
interest,
Irene Adler.
Described as a “forgotten actress” (C. 130, 122) in the text, Iris
Acht’s
Index entry reads “celebrated actress, d. 1888, a passionate and
powerful
woman, favorite of Thurgus the Third,” and it cites her sudden death,
“officially by her own hand; unofficially, strangled in her dressing
room by
a fellow actor, a jealous young Gothlander, now, at ninety, the oldest,
and
least important, member of the Shadows group” (305).
Irene Adler’s first and only physical appearance in a Holmes story is in
1891’s “A Scandal in Bohemia.” The scandal is an illicit affair between
opera singer/actress Adler* and the King of Bohemia. Sherlock Holmes
“had
adopted a system of docketing all paragraphs concerning men and things,
so
that it was difficult to name a subject or a person on which he could
not at
once furnish information,” so when the king beseeches Holmes for help in
dealing with the matter, Holmes directs Watson to “kindly look her up in
my
index.” (all Conan Doyle quotes from “A Scandal in Bohemia”)
In Watson’s recounting of the story, he describes her as “the late Irene
Adler, of dubious and questionable memory.” Along with sharing initials
and
characteristics as both theatre performers and clandestine lovers of
foreign
kings in 1888, Adler and Acht are both dead by the time they appear in
their
respective stories. Moreover, they share certain character traits:
Acht is
“passionate and powerful,” and Adler is “has a soul of steel. She has
the
face of the most beautiful of women, and the mind of the most resolute
of men.”
Adler’s connection to the King of Bohemia also points to Zembla. K’s
commentary on the “Zemblan sample (‘silktail’), closely resembling a
waxwing
in shape and shade” (C.1-4, 73) alludes the Bohemian waxwing, the
sub-Arctic
counterpart to Shade’s cedar waxwing, for which silktail is another
name.
* In an early description Watson describes that Adler is an opera
singer,
but in a later letter to Holmes Adler notes, “But, you know, I have been
trained as an actress myself.”
Tiffany DeRewal
[EDNOTE. In a 1991 essay, "Purloined Letters: Poe, Doyle, Nabokov," I
link Conan Doyle's Irene Adler to the purloined-letter,
hide-in-plain-sight, and cherchez-la-femme themes of The Real Life of
Sebastian Knight -- including the telltale moment when VN's narrator
"resorts to an old Sherlock Holmes stratagem" while trying to determine
whether Lydia Bohemsky, a "Bohemian lady," had been Sebastian's mistress
(RLSK 153, 175). And in a 1992 note, "Postscript to a Purloined
Letter," I suggest that such references to Irene Adler may allude
obliquely to VN's own unsettling affair with Irina Guadinini. -- SES]
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm