Although I just reported a casual find, related to a couple of verses
in French I found in "Ada, or Ardor" - which I remembered from "Spring in
Fialta" - I hadn't realized then that it could bring useful
information to Nabokovians.
Perhaps there were books by Francis Marian Crawford that were read by
Nabokov! (some of Crawford's books were published in a collection for young
women, much like the one Uncle Ruka and VN enjoyed, this time from "La
Bibliothèque Rose.")
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Marion_Crawford
Francis Marion Crawford (August 2, 1854 – April 9, 1909) was an American
writer noted for his many novels, especially those set in Italy, and for his
classic weird ...
"As the evening shadows fell, Beatrice was seated at the piano in the
sitting-room playing softly to herself such melancholy music as she could
remember, which was not much. It gave her relief, however, for she could at
least try and express something of what would not and could not be put into
words. She was not a musician, but she played fairly well, and this evening
there was something in the tones she drew from the instrument which many a
musician might have envied. She threw into her touch all that she was suffering
and it was a faint satisfaction to her to listen to the lament of the sad notes
as she struck them and they rose and fell and died away. The door opened and San
Miniato entered. She heard his footstep and recognised it, and immediately she
struck a succession of loud chords and broke into a racing waltz tune. "You were
playing something quite different, when I came to the door," he said, sitting
down beside her [...] "Will you sing something to me?" he asked..."Oh yes,"
she replied with an alacrity that surprised him, "I feel rather inclined to
sing. Mamma," she cried, as the Marchesa entered the room, "I am going to sing
to my betrothed. Is it not touching?" ...The Marchesa smiled and sank into a
chair. Beatrice struck a few chords and then, looking at the Count with half
closed eyes, began to sing the pathetic little song of Chiquita.
"
On dit que l'on te marie
Tu sais que j'en vais
mourir--"
Her voice was very sweet and true and there was real
pathos in the words as she sang them. But as she went on, San Miniato noticed
first that she repeated the second line, and then that she sang all the
remaining melody to it, singing it over and over again with an amazing variety
of expression, angrily, laughingly, ironically and sadly. "--Tu sais que j'en
vais mourir!" She ended, with a strange burst of passion. She rose suddenly to
her feet and shut the lid down sharply upon the key-board. "How perfectly we
understand each other, do we not?" she said sweetly, a moment later, and meeting
San Miniato's eyes.[...] "
other links:
www.aolib.com/reader_15187_81.htm ;
www.ebooksread.com/.../f-marion-francis-mario.; arthursclassicnovels.com/crawford/15187-8.html -
.
More importantly, though, the reference to "Chiquita" aided me to find a
more important author. Alphonse Daudet. Besides Ada's
tormented exclamations in a direct quote from "Ay Chiquita," and the lines
in "Spsring in Fialta," the rather inexpressive singer in
Daudet's "Fromont and Risler" is named Sidonie.
There's a reference to a real Sidonie (Sidonie-Gabrielle
Colette)in the beginning of Ada: "In 1914 Germany invaded Belgium and the Americans tore up
Panama. In 1918 they and the French
defeated Germany while she
was busily defeating Russia (who had defeated her own
Tartars some time earlier). In Norway there was Siegrid Mitchel, in
America Margaret Undset, and in France, Sidonie Colette. In 1926 Abdel-Krim
surrendered, after yet another photogenic war, and the Golden Horde again
subjugated Rus "
Both Daudet (in "Sappho") and Colette wrote works
related to lesbian love, and this finds a place in Ada (there's Cordula,
Dorothy Vinelander, there's Pierre Louïs' "Bilitis"...).
Excerpt:"She was romance itself. In her mouth the words "love" and
"passion" seemed to have eighty syllables, she uttered them with so much
expression. Oh, expression! That was what Mistress Dobson placed before
everything, and what she tried, and tried in vain, to impart to her pupil. 'Ay
Chiquita,' upon which Paris fed for several seasons, was then at the height of
its popularity. Sidonie studied it conscientiously, and all the morning she
could be heard singing: "On dit que tu te maries, Tu
sais que j'en puis mourir."[They say that thou'rt to marry Thou know'st that I
may die.]
"Mouri-i-i-i-i-r!" the expressive Madame Dobson would interpose,
while her hands wandered feebly over the piano-keys; and die she would, raising
her light blue eyes to the ceiling and wildly throwing back her head. Sidonie
never could accomplish it. Her mischievous eyes, her lips, crimson with fulness
of life, were not made for such AEolian-harp sentimentalities. The refrains of
Offenbach or Herve, interspersed with unexpected notes, in which one resorts to
expressive gestures for aid, to a motion of the head or the body, would have
suited her better; but she dared not admit it to her sentimental
instructress."