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It seems some kind soul has posted the 1975 TV interview between
Bernard Pivot and VN on Youtube.
For the interest of the list, here is a link to the section that shows
VN discussing Ada, but somewhat obliquely, by talking about the
relationship between a magician's patter, slight of hand, and memory.
(I should imagine there is some sort of copyright violation in it
having been posted on YouTube, but putting that aside, here is the
link)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D24gkGNb2kI
As you can see from the right-hand side of the page, there are also
videos posted from elsewhere in the same interview, showing VN
discussing Lolita, and 'Languages'.
As the interview is in French, and the poster has thoughtfully
provided a mostly good translation within the 'comments section' of
the site. I've reproduced it below. I liked the closing aphorism.
(Of the three videos I link to the Ada video, and reproduce its
translation below, for no reason other than that is my favorite of VNs
novels).
I hope this is of interest to those who may not have had the chance to
see this interview before.
ADA
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V. Nabokov: I've talked of the first one, the smoothest, the most
fragile, the kindest, because Ada is far from kindness. I've talked of
the abyss of time that divides Humbert from Lolita. On the other hand,
the good reader of Ada won't find nothing morbid or strange in the
case of a 14 years old boy who falls for a girl, his playing mate.
B. Pivot: Now this is a trivial question, but it'll help us to
understand better "Ada or Ardor". This Ada is a cousin of the
notorious Lolita?
V. Navokov: No, Ada and Lolita aren't cousins. In the world of my
imagination, because Lolita's America is as imaginary as Ada's one,
the girls belong to different classes, they have different
intellectual grades.
It's true that this teenagers will go too far, and the fact that they
are brother and sister will provoke the objections that the moralist
will foresee.
B. Pivot: that Gilles Lapouge foresaw. He's a moralist.
G. Lapouge: No, I talked about joy.
V. Nabokov: That is, the morals, the joy. Which is not foreseen is
that after wretchedness and misery Ada and her lover will finish
joined together in the glory of an ideal old age, and a touch of
parody appears here and there, in the paradise.
There aren't so much puns. If you search, you'll find some, maybe one
or two have eluded me.
G. Lapouge: There is a code between the brothers.
V.Nabokov: These aren't puns.
G. Lapouge: And the pun "incest-insect", conscious?
V. Nabokov: They are puns between them.
B. Pivot: It isn't much in 500 pages.
V. Nabokov: They aren't puns of the author.
B. Pivot: We will talk.
V. Nabokov: We'll talk about it. I think that this touch of parody is
like a circus which always has a clown who stumbles between the
numbers of the acrobat and the illusionist. I don't know why I like so
much mirrors and mirages. But I know that when I was 10 I love magic
tricks. Magic at home with its tools: the hat with a double bottom,
the magic wand with the star, the card which changes into a pig head.
All came in a big box from Peto Store, Caravan Street, near Ciniselli
Circus, S. Petersburg. This exists still. Inside there was a magic
book that teached how to make disappear or change a coin between the
fingers. I tried to do this tricks in front of a mirror, as the book
advised: "Place yourself in front of a mirror". And my face, pale and
grave, reflected in the mirror, bored me.
I used a black mask that gave me a better face, but I could never
match the famous magician Mr. Merlin, who was invited to the
children's parties and I tried vainly to mimic his frivolous and
deceitful prattle, which my book wanted to recite for overshadowing my
sleight of hand. Frivolous and deceitful prattle: this is a deceitful
and frivolous definition of my work.
B. Pivot: You shouldn't say it!
V. Nabokov: But these studies of sleight of hand didn't last too much.
"Tragic" is a strong word, but there is something tragic in the
incident that made me leave that passion, relegate the box to the
lumber room with the dead toys and the broken puppets. In a Christmas
afternoon, the last party of the year, I couldn't avoid to watch
through a half-open door, one of the living gills of the world
literature...
B.Pivot: Are you thinking of "The Curious"* by Robbe-Grillet? [*Sorry,
I don't know the English title of the book]
V. Nabokov: Not only, there is an open door in that... to see how were
the preparations of Mr. Merlin number. I saw him opening a writing
desk to put inside quietly, openly, a paper flower. And the
familiarity of that gesture was ignoble compared with the charm of his
art.
I understood that, I knew whatever the crushed tail coat of a magician
hid and whatever a magician could do. That professional tie, a bad
faith tie, made me to reveal to a little cousin, Mara Jevuska, in
which hiding-place she would find the rose that Merlin would whisk
away in one of his tricks. In the critical moment, the little
traitress...
B. Pivot: The cousin?
V. Nabokov: White and with black hair, she pointed out the writing
desk, shouting: "My cousin has seen where did you hide it!" I was very
young, but I distinguished yet or I thought I distinguished the
outrageous expression which contracted the face of the wretched
magician. I tell this story to satisfy my perceptive -- I don't know
how to pronounce it -- critics, who say that in my novels the mirror
and the drama aren't far away from each other.
Because I must add: whe the drawer, which the children pointed out
mockingly, was opened, the flower wasn't inside. It was on my
neighbor's chair. Charming arrangement, the glory of chess.
B. Pivot: It's a beautiful story, lovely. V Nabokov, there is plenty
of eroticism in your work.
V. Nabokov: There is plenty of eroticism in the work of any novelist
of whom you can talk without laughing at. So called "eroticism" is
one of the arabesques of the novel's art.
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Yours,
Andy