There’s a correction I must make concerning Demon’s blood and frail Ruby Black and Lucette.

In BB’s annotations to Ada I came across the quote: "After her first battle with insanity at Ex en Valais she returned to America, and suffered a bad defeat, in the days when Van was still being suckled by a very young wet nurse, almost a child, Ruby Black, born Black, who was to go mad too: for (20.15) no sooner did all the fond, all the frail, come into close contact with him (as later Lucette did, to give another example) than they were bound to know anguish and calamity, unless strengthened by a strain of his father's demon blood." I had implied (trusting my memory alone) that Demon’s blood was responsible for Van’s harmful effect on Lucette and Ruby Black. Now I see that this item needs to be examined again.

Did Van harm his ‘mother’ Aqua, too? Why was Marina spared (she has no Demon blood in her veins, or…does she?). Quite confusing… (the theme relates to the emphasis on the quartet Demon,Marina, Ada and Van)

Btw: Were these two Ada references, elaborated by B.Boyd in Ada Online, interconnected, and why should it be the case? *
13.01-14.05: recalling Marina . . . muffled the receiver . . . 'Eve on the Clepsydrophone': Proust pervades Ada, especially in connection with jealousy, and especially in this chapter (see forenote). In this Parmigianino sketch that is about to arouse Demon's jealousy, Nabokov pays a curious double tribute to Proust.

Demon's affair with Marina prefigures Van's love for Ada a generation later, as Swann's jealous love for Odette in Proust prefigures Marcel's tormented love for Albertine, also a generation later. Like Demon, Swann is an art connoisseur, and he sees Odette in terms of an Italian Renaissance fresco: "elle frappa Swann par sa ressemblance avec cette figure de Zéphora, la fille de Jéthro, qu'on voit dans une fresque de la chapelle Sixtine" ("she struck Swann by her resemblance to the face of Zephora, Jethro's daughter, seen in a fresco in the Sistine Chapel" (Pléiade ed., I, 222). The fresco is by Botticelli.

14.18-19: Vatican, a Roman spa: the Vatican City, a source of holy water on earth, becomes a spa, a source of healing waters, on Antiterra.

.....................................................

* - I didn’t follow their leads in “Ada,” but merely isolated these two items from BB’s commentary.