"Ada or Ardor"

Vladimir Nabokov is a renowned author, and his work "Ada or Ardor" is a masterpiece. Published by Editura Polirom, this book is a complex and multi-faceted exploration of love, desire, and time.

Nabokov skillfully weaves together multiple narrative strands, ranging from a Tolstoyan family chronicle to a science fiction novel. Through the passionate and forbidden love story between the main characters, Ada and Van, which begins in adolescence and spans decades of secret meetings, forced separations, betrayals, and reunions, Nabokov delves into the possibilities of consciousness, the nature of memory, and the essence of time.

Compared to "Lolita," "Ada" may not have achieved the same level of worldwide acclaim or引发 the same controversial discussions. However, it still maintains a certain delicacy and charm. It is a complicated and captivating work, with a powerful and intense quality that is both captivating and thought-provoking.

Like the rare species of butterfly that shares its name, Nabokov is a unique and precious presence in the world of literature. His work is beloved by many, and although he may have been an exile in some ways, he has managed to maintain his well-deserved reputation. #foxbooks #VladimirNabokov #citimpentruschimbare #adasauardoarea

Ada or Ardor is like many other family sagas in that it begins with a genealogical tree diagram. Here's the first joke: this book is not a family saga. Don't waste, as I did, time and effort in remembering the names and relationships. Just remember that Van and Ada are, legally, cousins, but biologically half-siblings. Lucette is Ada's sister and, therefore, also Van's half-sister. That's all. The bombardment of names and data at the start is terrifying and makes most people abandon the book (I thought about it too).

The book seemed to be a family saga because it starts off by misquoting the beginning of another family saga, "all happy families are more or less different; all unhappy families are more or less alike", but it doesn't just aim to mock Tolstoy's romance novel. We must also remember that we are in a dystopian land where a large part of the United States speaks Russian. From the very first lines, we dream of an American Tolstoy novel. These literary games (what would happen if we move this or that geographically or if this or that is written in another language) are quasi-infinite and chaotic.

We're not in Anna Karenina moving by train, nor are we in Lolita smoothly gliding along the roads of the United States; we're advancing uphill, climbing a hill to look for butterflies or orchids. It's close to Ulysses in the sense that it plays with the reader and is close to Finnegans Wake in terms of some neologisms from different languages. And in Antiterra (also called Demonia), where our protagonists live, it seems that the languages spoken by Vladimir Nabokov coexist: English, Russian, and a touch of Spanish and French. To this, we must add that Ada and Van are two incredibly erudite children and sometimes quote in Latin. All of this, I clarify, I love, but it's not what I thought I would find. I came for the morbid curiosity and left with a novel where sometimes philosophy is interwoven into the DNA of the novel, as happens with Thomas Mann.

Is there sex in this novel that is in the erotic section? Yes, a little and poetically. I imagine that Vladimir Nabokov was having breakfast one morning and read in a newspaper that feminists were complaining about giving sexual desire to a nymphet. Then Nabokov thought: I didn't do that, but nymphets do have sexual desire, look, I'm going to write about it. That's why I like Nabokov. Instead of being mean, he writes Ada or Ardor, where Ada is a nymphet with a sexual appetite for her brother Van, who, unlike the degenerate Humbert Humbert, is a boy of Ada's age and therefore scandalizes, but less so.

The novel is written as the draft of a novel by Van himself, a novel where he remembers his love life but with continuous philosophical reflections. In addition, Ada inserts some observations in parentheses. At first, it confuses us, but as we advance in the plot, little by little, we realize that we are facing a masterpiece.

(I had written up to here before finishing the book. At the end, Nabokov, as if to tell me that I didn't understand anything or that I understood it backwards, writes "butterflies and orchids", uniting what I was trying to separate above.)

I find the final chapters very powerful. I studied philosophy and didn't fully understand Van's ideas, but I do understand the feeling that inspires them: the chaos of memories from which we try to extract at least a shred of beauty. It's important if we take into account that it's one of Nabokov's last novels. This book is only my second Nabokov, and I don't encourage anyone to follow my path. This book should be left until the end, preferably when we feel that we're going to die. It's a testament, a beautiful, erudite, countercultural, pagan testament, all of life, life as a whole, in the kaleidoscope of blood/time.

Ada is truly a remarkable book that defies easy description.

Nabokov, the undisputed master of English prose, showcases his language skills and profound knowledge of European literary history to an extraordinary degree. The book is filled with an abundance of literary devices, including word-play, puzzles, allusions, hidden quotations, alliteration, and streams of consciousness. It also incorporates elements of history, science fiction, multiple languages such as French, Russian, and Latin, poetry, and catalogues of erotica.

The plot follows the love story of Ada and Van Veen, who are first cousins. Set in a parallel world called Antiterra, which has similarities and differences to Earth, the story spans their lives from adolescence to old age and death.

Despite its length (over 600 pages of dense text), Ada is well worth the time and effort. However, once you've read Nabokov, especially Ada, other novels may seem lackluster in comparison.

In conclusion, Ada is a literary masterpiece that leaves the reader in awe. I highly recommend it to all literature lovers, but be prepared to read it more than once to fully appreciate its depth and complexity.

It's truly an awesome book that I can't wait to re-read!

Stylistically and structurally, Ada is undoubtedly a masterpiece. Isn't that the joy of reading Nabokov anyway, the joy of watching a master at work? The seeming ease of his complicated prose is truly a wonder. His assimilation of polyglot, portmanteau words, anagrammatic tricks, haute vocabulary, allusion, and labyrinthine sentences is remarkable.

The first 200 or so pages of this book are absolutely hypnotizing. Ada is a parody of the modern novel, from Anna Karenina to Lolita, with Ulysses as its most obvious precedent. Both Ulysses and Ada are episodic and epic, moving in Aristotle's "epic time" and within the "perceived time" of each episode. Time is a crucial character in Ada, along with Van and Lucette. The structure of the novel reflects its subject matter, much like our perception of time changes as we age.

One interesting aspect of the book is its invocation of science fiction. The love story unfolds on an alternate Earth called Anti-Terra or Demonia, which has similarities and differences to our own world. This parallel world invokes the novel as a distinct entity, much like a creative work is a world of its own.

However, while the prose is masterful, the characters themselves are surprisingly monochromatic. Ada feels more like a virtuoso performance by Nabokov than a story driven by its characters. The novel is impressive in its conception and artfulness, but its emotional world is distancing. It is a great labyrinth constructed by a great master, but it lacks fully rounded characters.

In conclusion, Ada is a complex and fascinating work that showcases Nabokov's literary genius. However, its characters could have been more developed to create a more emotionally engaging story.

A good book with a precious style, provocative in its approach to incest, although extremely complex to read, with word games and constant references to the author's own world.

This book presents a unique and challenging reading experience. The precious style gives it an air of elegance and sophistication, while the provocative theme of incest adds a layer of controversy and intrigue. The complexity of the text, with its word games and constant references, requires the reader to be fully engaged and attentive, constantly deciphering and interpreting the author's intentions.

Despite its difficulties, this book offers a rich and rewarding exploration of the human psyche and the darker aspects of relationships. It forces the reader to confront uncomfortable emotions and ideas, and challenges our preconceived notions about love, family, and morality.

Overall, this is a book that will leave a lasting impression on the reader, both for its beauty and its boldness. It is a must-read for those who are looking for something different and are willing to engage with a text that is both intellectually stimulating and emotionally challenging.

“Maybe the only thing that hints at a sense of Time is rhythm; not the recurrent beats of the rhythm but the gap between two such beats, the gray gap between black beats: the Tender Interval.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle



\\n  Incest, a game the Whole Family Can Play, NOT by Milton's blind Bradley®. \\n

Part I:

In my twenties, I bought a whole collection of novels. Despite knowing the genius of the authors, I never felt quite ready to read them. It took me years to finally open these 'Infinite Jests', 'Recognitions', and 'Brothers Karamazov'. After reading 11 previous Nabokov novels, I was finally in the right place in my life to read 'Ada, or Ardor'. This novel is about so much more than a cousin/brother's love for his cousin/sister. It's about time, memory, and love. It's a romance of Tolstoy, Proust, and Time.

Part II:

The whole novel is like a giant painting. Nabokov unscrews all his en plein air oils and surrounds the canvas. He doesn't just paint one side; he wants to unwind and unroll the canvas, stretch it, and paint both front and back. He over-paints, squirting straight from the tube, and garishes the floor, garnishes the ceiling, and garlands the walls. Nabokov hides brilliant stories within stories.

Part III:

Reading Nabokov's great novels is like being alone in a beautiful park on a perfect day. Suddenly, your senses are overwhelmed by the smell, the touch, the dancing light, the flutterbytes, and the memory dumps of your past.

Part IV:

It's like an emotional contrast flush. Nabokov has warmed you instantly, philosophically, from head to foot.

Part V:

Reading never gets better than when Nabokov is on fire. His novels are a masterpiece of language, structure, and playfulness. They are a must-read for anyone who loves literature.

In a quote I just lifted like ten seconds ago from the homepage of Ada Online, a University of Auckland (!) online annotated copy, Nabokov says of the book 'My purpose is not to be facetiously flashy or grotesquely obscure but to express what I feel and think with the utmost truthfulness and perception.' I think I believe him.

Coming in the latter half of his career after a truly astonishing straight run of greatest hits spanning Lolita, Pnin, and Pale Fire, Ada is the final jewel in the crown. It is a deliciously long, extremely Nabokovian, almost perfect 300-something pages of his prose. Interspersed with genuinely intelligent (not moonlighting as such, cough cough Cartarescu) sort-of-digressions into the nature of time and its relationship to space, it's the sort of thing that devoted Nabokov fangirls such as myself actually, pardon the expression, cream themselves over!!!

He's inimitable. I found some parts cloying and stubbornly cruel to persons both fictional and real, but I can't criticise Ada with any real bite. With endless bilingual puns, literary references and pastiches, and the most disgustingly wrenching age-gap incest romance I think I am ever likely to find, the book is a dense foray into language and observation. Must reread once I can understand French. Our protagonists are maladjusted and filthy in a way that is distinctly Watersesque, while the prose is rich and sweet. Many sentences are puzzle boxes with compartments and subtleties you have to grope to find the catch to, and others are searing and vital. In his sick familial love triangle, Nabokov satirises and indicts and gives the odd affectionate stroke in his old virtuosic way.

Lucette is a character I will remember for a long time, the photo negative of edgy goth Ada. Every character that isn't one of the three siblings is bumbling or milquetoast or overblown or clownish or artlessly irritating, bringing Van, Ada, and Lucette into clear focus against the intricate but secondary backdrop of Estotiland's other sons and daughters - the whole thing is written in a suitable self-congratulatory tone, incestuous to itself in its insularity and denigration of anyone outside of the brother-sister-sister sex cult. Van's self-obsession is such that he pays close attention to and records the consistency of his own shit. Their relationship itself is dirty in a literal sense, Ada unbathed and fresh-smelling as the both of them spend a lot of time rolling around in groves and on the forest floor and such. Still, there's something compelling about them, I must be honest, if not their (conditional) loyalty to each other than their unquenchable and deeply unhealthy lust (something to be said about the rabbit theme). In Ada nothing is sacred, not the mandates of nature, decency, fidelity, religion, the grand old annals of literature, but everything is beautiful, polished and scrubbed to aesthetic perfection.

This doesn't beat out Lolita on its eternal little pedestal in my head but it is wonderful. I have put certainly more words than real or smart takes or thoughts into this review but hopefully you can take it as a disorganised-in-its-scope surplus of opinion and not a lack of critical skill. Love u Vlad.

If on Antiterra the same language is spoken as on Earth, then all I can say is:

\\n  Farewell, Ada!\\n

I no longer have any curiosity (patience) to find out what is being talked about in those 600 pages - at least not now. I have read difficult and strange books, but none like this. Every time you think you have understood something, you come across a passage thrown in just to shatter any certainty - and, frankly, I don't see the point. I know that Nabokov gives voice to immorality and is remarkable for his sophisticated and difficult style, but only up to a point, I say.

I read Lolita last year and I liked it - not the subject, but the way it was written. But here, it's like something else. It's as if Nabokov is laughing in your face and saying to you: "Come on, read, read... anyway you won't understand anything." And that's kind of how I feel. I have no desire now to stop, after almost every chapter, to rummage through articles just to understand what it's about.

Perhaps, on the day when I will be fed up with life, I will read a few more chapters or the whole book. :)))

N.B.: I gave 3 stars (the author's favorite number) just so I could write this review.

Zitat Markust Gasser in FAZ: Schlug man seinen Nabokov auf, las man zwar meist ein bisschen über dem eigenen Niveau, amüsierte sich jedoch trotzdem prächtig dabei: Nabokovs Shakespeare-Größe ermaß...()

This book is a monster. It is not at all kind to the reader. Demanding without nourishing. "Please take care of the 'understanding' of this text yourself. I don't care about you!" it seems to whisper to the reader. This is definitely true for the first thirty pages - after that, this attitude weakens a little. In this book, with its invented terms (here, no foreign language dictionary helps, but only the extensive annotation part by Dieter E. Zimmer at the end of the book, with a whopping 1300! annotations), its word games composed of several languages, alliterations, and allusions, the reader has a really hard time orienting himself.

However, if one does not let oneself be shaken off or thrown off by the text, one will be handsomely rewarded. One has to be a tenacious reader.

The best text on this book for me was written by Markus Gasser in the FAZ: "Einladung zur Peepshow auf Antiterra" from 17.12.2010 (http://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton...)

This book is definitely not a masterpiece and in its kind a solitary one. I have never read anything like it. Repulsively fascinating. Seldom have I had to spend three weeks reading time for a text with 823 pages. However, those were not my worst weeks of reading time. I have not yet put the book on the shelf because I still read individual passages randomly - with pleasure. A reading tip for brave readers and not a reading tip for those whose reading challenge provides for more than seventy books a year.

Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle isn't my top pick among Nabokov's works. However, a Nabokov is still a Nabokov. It's written with an otherworldly elegance. It seems to be fluent in more languages than one can imagine, is better read, dresses impeccably, enjoys finer cuisine, exercises regularly, dates those whom others are too shy to approach, never frets about money, is always in better health, and can hold its liquor better. In short, it is better than you and is well aware of it.

Apparently, Nabokov was engaged in two distinct projects. One was a lighthearted spoof of Proust, James, and other 19th-century writers with their overly long sentences. The other was his profound musings on Time and (damn) Space. Then, the brilliant idea struck him to combine all of it within a single volume. The outcome is a deliberately extended and minutely detailed novel about a prodigious brother and sister and their nearly century-long incestuous relationship on a parallel planet that (perhaps) coexists with ours.

I'm no puritan or prude. In fact, my artistic taste might suggest a certain perversion (an aesthetic one!). Although the sentences are skillfully crafted to describe the acrobatic underage escapades (Van and Ada Veen's illicit behavior starts at ages 15 and 12 respectively), they lack the fury and longing of Lolita or the madness and fetishism of Pale Fire. While those two masterpieces were all about momentum and suspense, wrapped in luxurious prose, Ada's prose is more contemplative, meandering, and leisurely.

But, of course, Nabokov is aware of this. And I grudgingly concede that he manages to bring all the excess together with a rather impressive dénouement that is part essay on memory and part metafictional extravaganza (this book is a complex web of subtle, intoxicating frameworks). Still, as I mentioned earlier, it's not my favorite Nabokov. It's recommended only for diehard Nabokov fans or those readers who enjoy their incest erotica written in elaborate, erudite, never-ending sentences and filled with pages and pages of thoughtful reflection on the nature of Time.

Perhaps the ultimate desert island book, one that can be read over and over.

You can tweak out the genealogies, luxuriating in the steamy, fumbling sex of pre-teens. Try to keep up with the uncles and dads via flashbacks. Be saddened by sickness, mind fevers, Hitler, and the just-bad-luck of Bojo Soviet Canada. Does this not make sense? Well, welcome welcome. And for my next trick, WALKING ON MY HANDS!

It's as if David Foster Wallace somehow was really born in St. Petersburg and fled in 1919. After peregrinating around Europe for 21 years, he finally escapes with his life to NYC. There, he takes up the study of the natural history of the Rockies and writing novels until into his 70's. That's what this novel is like.

Note: It is imperative to get the edition that has endnotes/appendix by Vivian Darkbloom. AND be sure and refer to the notes as you are reading. K? This unique book offers a complex and engaging reading experience that combines elements of family history, sexual exploration, historical events, and more. The vivid descriptions and intricate plot keep the reader hooked from start to finish. Whether you're a fan of David Foster Wallace or simply looking for a thought-provoking and entertaining read, this novel is sure to satisfy. So, grab a copy, settle in, and prepare to be transported to a world unlike any other.

Bellísimo!!! What magical landscapes and the descriptions... It seems like a fairytale, all full of flowers and butterflies, and that way of talking about love!

" Hammocks and honey. Eighty years later, Van still remembered, with the sharp freshness of the first joy, how he had fallen in love with Ada. Memory and imagination merged at the same starting point: the hammock of his adolescent dawns. At ninety-four years old, he still found pleasure in remembering that first summer of love not as a mere dream, but as a recapitulation of consciousness that helped him live in the gray hours that separated his fragile dream from the first daily pill."

"And that morning (like most mornings) he had the impression that he was arriving from a country infinitely more distant and gloomy than that from which Ada and the Sun came."

"Their common life was the antiphonal song of their first summer of 1884. She never refused to help him achieve the satisfaction [...] of a completely shared sunset."

There are parts that I have read a hundred times. It is an extremely intelligent book, too, with so many references. I loved that just a couple of days after seeing Chekhov's The Seagull, I read the allusion it makes to the work!!! And blessed adaonline that made the first very annotated part of the novel even more likable to me.

"Has there ever been a primitive form of time during which, for example, the past, not yet clearly differentiated from the present, let its forms and phantoms appear through a still soft, long and larval now?"

"Life, love, libraries, have no future."

I didn't want to like a Nabokov book so much, but what can we do.... it has been a beautiful reading.