Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle

Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle is an utterly fabulous and fanciful amorous dystopia. Right from the start, with his trial balloon: “All happy families are more or less dissimilar; all unhappy ones are more or less alike,” Vladimir Nabokov reveals that his love story is a wickedly intelligent parody of everything, of all and sundry in the literary world and especially of \n  Leo Tolstoy\n with his disdainful arrogance of a falsely omniscient nobleman.

Paraphrasing Tolstoy's showy beginning of Anna Karenina: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” Vladimir Nabokov makes us aware that this ostentatious statement is just a hollow and preposterous generalization.

The baffling and brain-crushing conversation of two frivolous children smartly demonstrates that everything mocks everything else. Butterflies mock flowers and orchids mock butterflies. The absurd family tree mocks the genealogy of monarchs. Ada's supposed father’s death of exposure caused by running naked into the woods parodies the last days of Leo Tolstoy. Beating the blackmailer with an alpenstock mocks the Leon Trotsky’s murder. Ada’s husband contracting tuberculosis in Switzerland, of all places, is a jeering allusion to The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. Lucette’s suicide, while cruising on the transatlantic ship, the Tobakoff, is a funny reference to the catastrophic voyage of Titanic. And so on ad infinitum.

Everything mocks everything else and only time is unique. Time doesn’t stand still. Time is an omnipresent hunter and in the end it always tracks us down.

She was soon ready, and they kissed tenderly in their hallway, between the lift and the stairs, before separating for a few minutes. “Tower”, she murmured in reply to his questioning glance, just as she used to do on those honeyed mornings in the past, when checking up on happiness. “And you?”

“A regular ziggurat”

A book that commences with a pedigree of aristocratic-sounding Russian names might easily convey the impression that a classic family epic awaits the reader. However, that deceptive family tree is merely the starting point of the games Nabokov will play with the audience. Nabokov entices the reader into a captivating, magical dream world that is both abysmal and treacherous, filled with illusions and spiced with witty nods and parodic takes on esteemed world literature.

Ada is set on Antiterra, a distorted realm where Americans speak Russian and Time does not align with Earth time. Van and Ada Veen – who, according to the family tree, are cousins – are bright and beautiful teenagers when they embark on a passionate idyll during a long, languorous summer spent on the paradisiacal family estate Ardis. Soon, they uncover the truth that has been carefully hidden from them: in reality, they are brother and sister. Their unusual bond encounters numerous obstacles and leads to the tragic downfall of their "uterine" half-sister Lucette, who is also in love with Van. Through the memoirs of the now-aged Van, interwoven with Ada's comments, the bewildered reader discovers how their incestuous love endures through long years of separation, infidelity, frequent brothel visits, and Ada's marriage to another. Sinking into the surreal world of Ada – Nabokov’s longest work – requires time, but the persistent reader is rewarded with a multi-layered, exuberant, and high-flown novel. Anyone desiring to further delve into and explore all the literary and cultural references of the novel can spend many delightful hours on Adaonline, where Brian Boyd, Nabokov’s biographer, offers an elaborately annotated version of Ada.

One of the objects that instantly springs to mind when I cast my mind back to my childhood is a red rowboat precisely like the one in my avatar. This is no mere coincidence, of course, as the avatar originated as an attempt at a symbolic “self-portrait” based on personal memories. If there is any coincidence here, it lies in the fact that a red rowboat named Souvenance is a recurring memory for Van Veen, the narrator of Ada, or Ardor. I counted at least four mentions of that red rowboat with its mobile inlay of reflective ripples, and each time, I was whisked out of Nabokov’s story and into my own. Then I would discover that entire pages of Ada, or Ardor were a complete blank because I was remembering a different narrative.

Paying attention was a challenge throughout my reading, and for reasons other than memory triggers. In the beginning, I struggled to fully engage with the characters. Ada herself grated on me quite a bit (early Ada is an impossibly pedantic twelve-year-old), and whenever the narrative centered on her, my mind would wander. But then, as if Nabokov knew I’d had enough of Ada, she vanished from the narrative for a long stretch. In the last image we have of early Ada, she is standing against a tree, her shoulder blades pressed against the trunk, reminding us of a caterpillar clinging to the bark. The later Ada, often heard through letters, is a far more interesting character, as if she’d undergone some sort of metamorphosis since we last saw her. I realized that the picture we had of her in the early sections was the narrator’s version, inevitably colored by his obsessive love for her, whereas the Ada of the letters was a character speaking in her own voice for the first time.

There were many aspects of this book that I found fascinating, though the reading of it wore me out. I never wanted to stop reading it, but I did wish to move through the book more quickly, something I couldn’t do because Nabokov demands attention constantly, like a spoiled child. You can’t skim read; if you even attempt it, he punishes you by making you feel completely lost, so that you have to go back and reread what you’ve missed. Is it any wonder that it took me six weeks to get through it - no, that can’t be right, let me check my automnally tocking calendar. Ok, it took me exactly three Oknovber weeks, but they felt like six. That’s another coincidence: our varying perceptions of Time and the unreliability of memory are some of the themes in the book, and my having to go back in order to go forward is also fitting because the central twist seems to be “reversal” - back to front, inside out, upside down.

Ada or Ardor is a captivating family chronicle. It is penned in the third person by the heroic and central figure, van Veen. At the time of writing this column, he is almost 90 years old. When van Veen is 14, he will encounter an incredible estate, the Château d'Ardis near Ladore, which is a true childhood paradise. There, he will meet his cousins, Ada and Lucette. Ada and Van are two precocious children blessed with extraordinary intelligence. They will experience an intense and sensual passion that will endure throughout their lives.

Nabokov's style is truly extraordinary. Indeed, the novel in the third person often transitions to the first person, and Ada adds comments on the sidelines of the chronicle. The action takes place in an imaginary world, "Antiterra," a distorted reflection of the Earth; the names of places and people are humorously changed.

The Earth appears in the novel under the name of Terra, somewhat like Paradise, the existence of which certain sects believe. This Paradise is the exact reflection of the Earth. At best, Paradise constitutes a Purgatory. Van Veen will write a series of short stories on this subject, a book (the first of his writing career) that will not achieve great success. Additionally, the names of things are transformed into objects, each more whimsical than the others, invented. Besides, the college where Van studied is called Thing.

It is also a charming love story. Ada and Van, brother and sister, will be separated several times for long periods. Eventually, around their fiftieth birthday, they will spend the rest of their days traveling. Ada will film all kinds of butterflies, and Veen will write essays and other articles, notably on the Question of Time but also of Madness.

**CRITIQUE: Anti-terrorist Science Fiction**

Conceptually, at least, "Ada" exhibits numerous hallmarks of a science fiction or fantasy novel. There are two distinct worlds in the novel. One is Terra, which is analogous to our planet Earth. The other is Antiterra, also known as Demonia, a version of Earth that Nabokov has adjusted to suit his aesthetic purposes. It seems that, from the middle of the eighteenth century onwards, Antiterra has deviated more and more from Terra.

This device enables Nabokov to conceive, imagine, and write about personal and social behaviors that would potentially be aberrant on Terra but are either normal or condoned on Antiterra. Terran norms and standards no longer apply. On Antiterra, "Terra [is] a myth, and all art a game."

**The Aesthetics of Incest**

Because the behavior in question (in the sexual sphere) involves incest (initially between minors), Nabokov maintains that it occurs only on Antiterra, not on Terra. Thus, it exists only in the author's imagination, and the reader is excused or forgiven for reading and imagining it. Theoretically, this allows the reader to embrace and enjoy the writing, including that about incest, as if it were free from social censure. Nabokov appears uninterested in assessing the relative validity of moral judgments, having invented Antiterra so that he can write freely and we can read freely from an aesthetic perspective.

This strategy is similar to the game Nabokov played in "Lolita," where he cast the reader as a juror with a legitimate interest in hearing or reading what would otherwise be regarded as obscene or pornographic. Nabokov's overarching argument seems to be that art and the realm of the imagination should prevail over morality, the law, and "reality" as we perceive and define it.

**Nabokov's Verbal Circus (Playing with Words)**

Similarly, the adjustments Nabokov makes to our world are comparable to the rearrangements he makes with words when creating anagrams. He substitutes one word or world for another that is different yet familiar. Wordplay is thus at the heart of what Nabokov achieves in "Ada." As in "Pale Fire," there is a resemblance between the world of language and the imagination (consisting of real words) and the real world.

**The Geography of Antiterra**

Antiterra is dominated by a single land mass that combines Russia, North and South America, Africa, and Tartary. Russia seems to have joined America across the Arctic Circle, and the combined space is sometimes referred to as Russamerica. Much of America has been settled by the ambitious Russian aristocracy and their serfs and servants. New York City is known as Manhattan, Paris is called Lute, and Van studies at Riverlane School and then Chose, the equivalent of Cambridge University. The Veen family lives in Mayne.

**The Vanada Connection**

Nabokov describes this novel as both a "family chronicle" and, for Van if not also Ada, a "sentimental education." However, within the first three chapters, it becomes clear that this is neither a normal family nor a conventional education. Two brothers, Demon and Dan Veen, have married the twin sisters, Aqua and Marina Durmanov. Aqua and Marina fall pregnant at the same time, but Aqua suffers a miscarriage due to her mental illness. It turns out that Demon has been having an affair with Marina, and he is the father of her child, Van. Demon and Marina decide to give their child to Aqua so that she doesn't know she has lost a child. Marina subsequently has two daughters, Ada and Lucette, whom Van initially believes are his first cousins but later discovers are at least half-siblings. Van and Ada first meet and fall in love during the 1884 summer holidays at Ardis Hall.

**Time's Arrow Flies Towards Consummation**

Within weeks of falling in love, Van contemplates making love to Ada. Their relationship progresses, and they embark on what Van calls a "kissing phase." Their first kiss occurs in the company of a squirrel in a tree. Details of their first love-making are sketchily disguised by editorial discussions decades later. Their sexual activity is affectionate but erotic, without being prurient or vulgar. When they enquire about each other's faithfulness, Ada proclaims her physicality, and Van confirms her aggressiveness and responsiveness. In contrast, Van is virile but sterile, presenting no risk of inbreeding.
**Years of Lost Life (and Loving)**

Much like Proust, Nabokov is interested in the nature of time. Van writes a book called "The Texture of Time," in which he argues that time is the gap between events. In the case of his romance with Ada, it represents the years of lost time between their encounters. His novel, "Ada," is a replica of past events as far as his memory can reconstruct. Van uses the concept of the "deliberate present" to describe the nowness of time and explains the purpose of his writing as composing a novella in the form of a treatise on time, with a logical love story gradually building up and then disintegrating into abstraction.
**"Into the Finished Book"**

This is a statement of Van's (and perhaps Nabokov's) intent. However, in the manner of much post-modernist fiction, the novel purports to be written by Van, corrected by Ada, edited by Ronald Oranger, and annotated by Vivian Darkbloom. While the novel is primarily concerned with Van and Ada's memories of the past, it also speculates about their future and potential death. In the end, "Ada" not only details their romance but also constitutes and conveys them to their next fictional life, which we could call "Nirvanada." We readers can enjoy forever the "ample and delightful chronicle" of their love affair, their rhapsodic passion, and the "happy-forever feeling" of their never-ending fairy-tale. "Ada" is much more than a conventional family chronicle; it is a treatise on time and love, regardless of whether incest is involved.

Nabokov is truly an insane genius, perhaps one of the greatest and most convoluted minds in the realm of literature.

Arguably, he offers the only way to properly experience Russian literature, even for those who don't speak the language.

This family chronicle is both a heartache and a linguistic joy. I had an amazing time, even when I got lost while trying to follow Nabokov's complex thoughts.

Take this line for example: “But they are practically brother and sister," ejaculated Marina, thinking as many stupid people do that "practically" works both ways - reducing the truth of a statement and making a truism sound like the truth.”

I have a deep love for family chronicles, and this one by Nabokov is no exception. It weaves a tale that is both captivating and intellectually stimulating, leaving the reader in awe of his literary prowess.

I started reading this book in the Summer and ended up giving up. Fortunately, I didn't force myself to read it at that time.

Last week, I picked it up again and now, I truly loved it. I loved this book with all of its imperfections and all of the uncomfortable questions it poses.

I loved it and I can't stop thinking about it. It's amazing how my perception of the book changed the second time around. Maybe it was because I was in a different mindset or because I was more ready to embrace its flaws. Whatever the reason, I'm glad I gave it a second chance. This book has made me think deeply about many things and has challenged my beliefs and values. It's a book that I will definitely recommend to others.

I'm looking forward to reading more books by the same author and seeing what other wonderful stories they have to tell.

Ada (or Ardour) is a book of astonishing power. Nabokov, with the declared intention of seducing the reader, creates his own world, literally an Anti-Earth, Demonia, where the love story between Van and his sister Ada unfolds. As the reader delves deeper into this anti-world, the first pages seem strange and incomprehensible. Nabokov not only fails to clearly specify the reality in which the story takes place, initially leaving the geography and chronology rather disorienting, but also uses a highly personal language, a mixture of English, French, and Russian. The first page is an excellent summary of all that awaits us: Estoty, the Veen family, and an obsession with Tolstoy and especially Anna Karenina. Nabokov often returns to Anna Karenina, particularly the relationship between Anna and Vronsky, in a rather dismissive way. He does this because Anna-Vronsky is everything that Van-Ada do not want to be, and perhaps cannot be.

Let's try to put things in order. First, we start from the outermost layer. The novel, in itself, has a rather 19th-century story: two cousins, let's say, fall in love but cannot be together for family reasons. She will end up marrying someone else, and from time to time they will give in to infidelity. In addition, her sister is in love with him. Nabokov himself gives us a kind of prototype with the story of Van's (and Ada's) father and Ada's (and Van's) mother. A similar love, contrasted and giving in to which leads to tragedy (like Anna Karenina's love for Vronsky, let's say) is that of the 19th-century novel. But Nabokov, in addition to taking everything to an even more perverse level by making Ada and Van brother and sister (a paradoxically fundamental and useless choice, since they met only after ten years and have no real psychological weight on either of them, except in their inability to live their love publicly), makes their love pure ardour. What Anna Karenina rejects and what Tolstoy portrays as wrong, demeaning it, for Nabokov is the highest expression of man.

Ada (or Ardour) is also a novel about Time. Firstly, because it is a novel of memories, written by Van, almost a centenarian, who retraces his love story with Ada; but also because it is a novel about how to truly feel the present. The character of Van himself is obsessed with Time, to the extent of writing an essay on it, The Texture of Time. For Van, "our modest Present is, then, the span of time in which we are really and directly conscious, with the lingering freshness of the Past still perceived as part of its immediacy". This is what Ada calls Towers, and which she so desperately tries to stack one on top of the other. But this sensation of the Present is an almost impossible sensation to experience. Except, of course, when Van is with Ada. "That voice on the telephone [...] now formed the pivot of his deepest perception of tangible time, the glittering now that was the only reality in the texture of Time". At the moment when Van sets out to write his memories, he encloses his entire history with Ada in an eternal Present. The novel is the ardour of the Present.

Towards the end, Van, in order to sum up what he has written, states that these memories are 97% true and 3% plausible. Here, my hypothesis, completely useless, it should be clear, is that that 3% of plausibility is the Anti-Earth, Demonia. My hypothesis is that, in reality, Van and Ada have always lived on this earth (the very name, Anti-Earth, suggests that that is an emanation of this one, and not vice versa), and that, at the moment of writing their own story, their own Present, Van has decided to create a world of their own for him and Ada. The creation of a Vanadian world for their love. Just as with Time, so with Space. A hypothesis that doesn't change a damn thing, that is made up out of thin air, but that I really like.

The novel lives more in the moments than in the plot. This is for two reasons: firstly, because the plot, as well as being, as said, nothing too original, particularly derivative, is spread out for the reader from the beginning. Both through the family tree, rather rich in dates and spoilers (such as the fact that Ada will marry a guy, or the date of death of everyone except Ada and Van), and especially with the rather quick revelation that we are reading the memories of their love written by Van and corrected by Ada, while they are living old age together. Even the most tragic moments, when they are separated, the dramatic tension is quickly absorbed by the force of their ardour. Emblematic is the wonderful transition of a pistol into a comb that Van points at his head after losing (again) Ada. For Nabokov, as for Van, it doesn't matter to keep the reader on tenterhooks. What matters is to make the ardour, the force (force, it should be clear, not only emotional, but also physical. The novel is extremely material and sensual, eh), of the love between Van and Ada come alive. For this reason, he creates a world for them. A language for them. A time for them. It can be said that the six hundred pages of Ada (or Ardour) all take place in the time between two heartbeats.