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Fwd: Re: EDITOR's Query: ADA's variety acts
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----- Forwarded message from jansy@aetern.us -----
Date: Thu, 24 Mar 2005 15:37:07 -0300
From: Jansy Berndt de Souza Mello <jansy@aetern.us>
Reply-To: Jansy Berndt de Souza Mello <jansy@aetern.us>
Subject: Re: EDITOR's Query: ADA's variety acts
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum
Dear Don,
I hope the other messages on the mascodagama act have reached you.
VN´s various references to the Crimea ( here you mentioned Rita, a "Crimean
cabaret dancer") also suffer reversals , but I remember only one in
particular now.
It is not a "topbottom" transposal but as seen thru a mirror, when Demon held a
newspaper and approaching Van read "Crimea capitulates" in the mirror hanging
behind his father. The word "capitulate", itself, is suggestive ( reference to
caput/ head...)
Jansy
----- Original Message -----
From: D. Barton Johnson
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Sent: Thursday, March 24, 2005 3:03 PM
Subject: EDITOR's Query: ADA's variety acts
----- Original Message -----
From: D. Barton Johnson
Sent: Thursday, March 24, 2005 9:55 AM
Subject: circus acts query
I have been trying to determine whether the variety acts described below in
Nabokov's ADA are based on actual performances or are imaginary. No luck--in
part because I have no idea of how to approach the question. What such acts are
called? Have any of you seen such acts?
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FROM NABOKOV's NOVEL ADA.
The stage would be empty when the curtain went up; then, after five heartbeats
of theatrical suspense, something swept out of the wings, enormous and black, to
the accompaniment of dervish drums. The shock of his powerful and precipitous
entry affected so deeply the children in the audience that for a long time
later, in the dark of sobbing insomnias, in the glare of violent nightmares,
nervous little boys and girls relived, with private accretions, something
similar to the 'primordial qualm,' a shapeless nastiness, the swoosh of
nameless wings, the unendurable dilation of fever which came in a cavern draft
from the uncanny stage. Into the harsh light of its gaudily carpeted space a
masked giant, fully eight feet tall, erupted, running strongly in the kind of
soft boots worn by Cossack dancers. A voluminous, black shaggy cloak of the
burka type enveloped his silhouette inquiétante (according to a female Sorbonne
correspondent -- we've kept all those cuttings) from neck to knee or what
appeared to be those sections of his body. A Karakul cap surmounted his top. A
black mask covered the upper part of his heavily bearded face. The unpleasant
colossus kept strutting up and down the stage for a while, then the strut
changed to the restless walk of a caged madman, then he whirled, and to a clash
of cymbals in the orchestra and a cry of terror (perhaps faked) in the gallery,
Mascodagama turned over in the air and stood on his head.
In this weird position, with his cap acting as a pseudopodal pad, he jumped up
and down, pogo-stick fashion -- and suddenly came apart. Van's face, shining
with sweat, grinned between the legs of the boots that still shod his rigidly
raised arms. Simultaneously his real feet kicked off and away the false head
with its crumpled cap and bearded mask. The magical reversal 'made the house
gasp.' Frantic ('deafening,' 'delirious,' 'a veritable tempest of') applause
followed the gasp. He bounded offstage -- and next moment was back, now
sheathed in black tights, dancing a jig on his hands. pp. 183-4
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For the tango, which completed his number on his last tour, he was given a
partner, a Crimean cabaret dancer in a very short scintillating frock cut very
low on the back. She sang the tango tune in Russian:
Pod znóynïm nébom Argentínï,
Pod strástnïy góvor mandolinï
'Neath sultry sky of Argentina,
To the hot hum of mandolina
Fragile, red-haired 'Rita' (he never learned her real name), a pretty Karaite
from Chufut Kale, where, she nostalgically said, the Crimean cornel, kizil',
bloomed yellow among the arid rocks, bore an odd resemblance to Lucette as she
was to look ten years later. During their dance, all Van saw of her were her
silver slippers turning and marching nimbly in rhythm with the soles of his
hands. pp. 185
----- End forwarded message -----