Sklyarenko:In my
yesterday's post I remembered the mention of New Amsterdam in Ada, but
forgot about the Old. Telling Van about her 'dramatic career', Ada says: "he [Bosch] too was hooted by hack hoods
in much older Amsterdams, and look how three hundred years later every Poppy
Group pup copies him! I still think I have talent, but then maybe I'm confusing
the right podhod (approach) with talent, which doesn't give a dry fig
for rules deduced from past art." (2.9)
JM: A.S dwelt on
"podhod + hood = pohod +
dohod", Klopots,
hlopoty... There are other interesting phonemes in the quote he
chose: several with "o" and "oo." followed by explosive "poppy...pup
copies."
I was
reminded of another sentence playing with "grope" and "groote" (which will
bring us back to Amsterdam or, at least, to things Dutch). There is
Uncle Dan, cartoonlike, in "an overstuffed chair...trying to read...an article
apparently devoted to oystering in a Dutch-language illustrated paper...but a
second later had to look up ‘groote,’ which he had been groping for when
disturbed. The simplicity of its meaning annoyed him."
Why do you
think that The Netherlands recurrently loom in "Ada," from the Veen surname to
Uncle Dan's Dutch picture collections? Decadence, neverlands, genitals, swamps,
old masters ... to me these are insufficient to explain the importance they seem
to have in the novel.
Changing subjects: I suggested that Kinbote
might be a character in charge of pulling in Nabokov's poem (ie, "Pale
Fire, by John Shade"), into a novel ("Pale Fire"). I imagined that
he'd need Gradus to help him to kill Shade to effect
its transition into "fiction."*
I tried to
find the author's name in connection to Gradus but, unlike Slyarenko,
there's always a remaining string of meaningless letters in my hand
( as when I
mix the letters in "Jakob Vinogradus" to find "Nabokov" - and there's
"i gradus" and an additional "y or j" from his
initials). After
all Gradus is also called Leningradus. He is attached to the
Soviets, and these are the real killers who transformed Sirin's
Russian poetry into something else, an echo, a
reflection**...
By inverting
the letters in "Jakob Gradus" we get to "Sudarg (of) Bokay," who created "a
triptych of bottomless light, a really fantastic mirror, signed with a diamond
by its maker."*** We know that a feigned remoteness, a false azure will
create John Shade's three "I" (the shadow, a smudge of ashen fluff, a life
that's can only exist in a mirrored sky...). Gradus also suffers
from a triptychal split ["Vinogradus had never seen such a display of
lightning, neither had Jacques d’Argus - or Jack Grey, for that matter (let
us not forget Jack Grey!)."] If Nabokov, by abandoning his Russian
poems and writing in English, suffered a "split", what would be the third
element, as the insistent image of "three" seems to
indicate?
...........................................................................................................................................................................
* His approach
synchronized with Shade’s work on Pale Fire. He stays for a while in Nice
(of all places!) and it's where he finds out about the
King's address. Killing John Shade, as it appears in the index, was his
"crowning blunder."
**
Jakob Gradus (variously Jack Degree, Jacques de
Grey, James de Gray ...Ravus, Ravenstone, d’Argus.) has "a morbid
affection for the ruddy Russia of the Soviet era, he contended that the real
origin of his name should be sought in the Russian word for grape, vinograd, to
which a Latin suffix had adhered, making it Vinogradus." He is also named
Leningradus and, although "the world needs Gradus"..."Gradus should not kill
kings. Vinogradus should never, never provoke God. Leningradus should not aim
his peashooter at people..."
*** Why did
Nabokov place "of" and bent in the middle his perfect
palindrome?