Temo che molti piccoli dettagli di questo romanzo siano sfuggiti alla mia comprensione, ciò nonostante l’ho adorato con ardore.

Credo infatti che questo sia uno dei libri dalla scrittura più complessa ai quali mi sia mai avvicinata. Una scrittura magnifica, a dir poco (inchino a Nabokov fino a toccarmi gli stinchi con la fronte), che già avevo apprezzato fino all'innamoramento in Lolita. Ma qui viene adornata (e anche un po' appesantita, a onor del vero) con tanti orpelli. Talvolta li ho trovati ammirevoli, talaltra indecifrabili.

Ossia, oltre ai termini sconosciuti quasi ad ogni pagina (es. “mescolandosi granoblasticamente” dalla prima pagina; “clima alcionio” dalla seconda pagina - una bella passeggiatina nella mia ignoranza), ci sono costantemente citazioni, riferimenti ironici a personaggi reali e di finzione, giochi di parole. E neanche la metà vengono decifrati nelle note poste alla fine del volume. Molti li ho intuiti da sola, ma tantissimi altri sono rimasti per me avvolti nel mistero.

Ci sono addirittura frasi in codice da decifrare, come quelle a pagina 172. Fortunatamente poco dopo il codice ci viene spiegato e ho dovuto decriptare quelle poche parole. È stato divertente.

Di cosa parla Ada o ardore? Non scelgo mai i libri in base alla trama. Preferisco informarmi sulle atmosfere, sulla difficoltà o leggerezza, sui contenuti per tematiche. Ho preso questo libro soprattutto perché è Nabokov, ma anche perché mi piacevano il titolo e la copertina. Sapevo solo che era una cronaca familiare e una storia d’amore. Ebbene, è un'ucronia e soprattutto una storia d’amore incestuosa. Immaginate il mio stupore quando ho letto l’incipit:

«Tutte le famiglie felici sono più o meno diverse tra loro; le famiglie infelici sono tutte più o meno uguali» dice un grande scrittore russo al principio di un famoso romanzo [...].

Il celebre incipit di Anna Karenina viene ribaltato perché qui siamo su Antiterra. N. ha unito due idee diverse in un unico risultato. L’aspetto ucronico passa per lo più in secondo piano, mentre preponderante è la storia di Ada e Van.

Erotismo, poesia e sentimento si mescolano. Il narratore, Van a 97 anni, scrive in terza persona, ma ogni tanto se lo dimentica. E di tanto in tanto compaiono i commenti e le note a margine della Ada ultra novantenne. Le intenzioni di N. vengono svelate per bocca di Van sul finire del romanzo. Questo capitolo finisce così, coi puntini di sospensione di Ada.

Voto: 4.5. Da assaporare con lentezza.

This novel offers great satisfaction in two aspects.

On a grand scale, it generates aesthetic tension through its "alternative-worlds" setting. In the novel's own terminology, there is a tension between "Terra" and "Anti-Terra". This creates a sense of mystery and excitement, drawing the reader into a unique and imaginative world.

On a smaller scale, the book is filled with word plays and puns. These add an element of fun and playfulness to the story without detracting too much from the main line. They require the reader to be attentive and engaged, and can provide moments of惊喜 when grasped.

However, these properties also make the book a difficult read, especially for non-native English speakers. The ingenious command of the English language by a non-native English writer can be both impressive and bewildering.

On the plot level, there is a significant amount of inter-generation parallelism between the parent and children generations in the depicted family. Such constellations typically make their point not only through similarities but mainly through the differences that are revealed. This is also the case with "Ada". Although the main theme of the story - love - is universal, there are numerous details that caution the reader against taking anything at face value. After a first reading, it is difficult to make any substantial statements about the work on this level.

The essayistic part with philosophical reflections on time and space, which is inserted towards the end of the book, is a discussion with Bergson's views of time and culminates in the denial of the existence of a future, leaving only the present and past. Again, after a first reading, it is not yet clear whether this is a substantial contribution or simply a blown-up air balloon filled with trivial plain air.

A precious fabric in the loom, it is woven slowly and requires dedicated attention to detail.

When the art of weaving is completed, you can admire it, and only then can you fully understand its grandeur. The theme is a risky one, prone to various distractions and deviations, a blood-mimicking path. How Nambokov weaves the web of his story within 650 pages to describe a blood-mimicking path without any particular complexity is truly a demonstration of his high art.

A path of half a century without a trace of lyricism and emotions. A path that moves you in a unique way, namely only through the aesthetic approach of its author. Nambokov is an aesthete and he doesn't hide it. He reveals it with every word of his and waits to charm his reader precisely with this characteristic of his. He doesn't want a partner, he wants a follower of his endeavor.

Whether it charms you and you love it or you hate it. Obviously for me, the first is true.

Do I dare try this? It looks hard to understand. Disturbing subject too.

********************

On finishing: The book is truly amazing. There is absolutely no question about that! Did I love all of it? No. Sometimes I was completely lost, and that just isn’t fun. I didn't understand some lines, but that is due to my own lack of knowledge, not any fault of the book. Take note - the first four chapters are pretty much incomprehensible. Don't quit too soon. No other parts are this difficult.

Do I recommend it to all? Definitely not. Am I glad I read it? Absolutely! So who might like this book? People like me.....but I don't even know myself well. So who is that? I am going to try and explain the different aspects and themes of the book.

This is in fact a book of science fiction, and surprise, surprise, I think it is great. I don’t read science fiction! This proves there is an exception to every rule I make for myself. Let me explain. It is set in an imaginary world. Our "real" world exists too, as a twin world, or at least so some think. The history of our world is cleverly, perfectly intertwined with Nabokov’s invented world, but just little bits. The story is set in Nabokov's invented world Antiterra where both Americas are united under one ruler. The languages spoken are English, French and Russian. The British Empire exists too, ruled by a King Victor, but he controls all of Europe and Africa. Electricity? No, it isn't used; instead water is the energy source! This invented world is detailed so you understand how it functions. The inventions are consistently play-on-words. No telegrams, but “hydrograms” instead. Have you noted the name of the King? Victor, what else?! Nabokov plays with his readers through the objects, words and names he invents. In this book you are constantly playing with languages. Why is that word chosen? That is the question you repeatedly ask.

I’d like to call this a book of science fiction for intellectuals. There are two central characters - Van will become a psychologist and Ada a dramatist. Both are well educated. It starts when they are 14 and 12 respectively, in 1884. That is when the story really gets going. It is a “love-at-first-sight” love affair. Immediate attraction. They are cousins, but discover quickly they are in fact brother and sister. Lucette, their half-sister, is emotionally involved too. What we are reading is Van’s memoirs written when he is a nonagenarian, so in the 1960s. Ada’s notes and an unidentified editor are involved too. No wonder you are sometimes confused! The story isn’t just about love; it is filled with scientific minutia. Literary works pepper the writing. Plants and butterflies and bugs, diseases and anatomical body parts, books and authors and philosophical ideas of our world are all here in Nabokov’s invented world too. They are beautifully displayed …..and then playfully tweaked. When you follow the lines and get lost it is quite simply because you don't know enough! The whole book is a puzzle, a mystery, but one that has no final solution. It is a game to play for a while.

Sex is the central theme of the book, be it the copulation of animals, butterflies or people, but the tone of the writing changes, shifts, bounces to fit the message. Disturbing, gorgeous, erotic, sensual, amusing. There is incest and there is love. Aging and relationships too. Time - there is a whole section on time. Surprisingly, this section is not hard to understand. This is a perfect example of how the tone flips. I cannot think of another writer this talented.

Many lines are untranslated. To see the humor and Nabokov’s cleverness you must know languages. Or let’s put it this way, the more you know the more you will enjoy. My Latin is weak. I don’t know Russian; I bet I would have understood more if I did. An understanding of French is important for this book.

The audiobook is narrated by Arthur Morey. He uses one tone for all the females, but anyway you must always listen carefully to every single word so it doesn't matter. He reads slowly, which is essential. His French totally sucks. I cannot judge his Russian. You don't have to avoid the audiobook because of his narration.

So I have given you the themes. I have explained how Nabokov plays with words - English and French and Russian and Italian and German and Latin. The more you know the more you will understand. It is also helpful to have already read Speak, Memory. I must give this book five stars because I find it utterly amazing. It is not a book where you judge the thoughts presented, but rather a book to have fun with by exploring ideas. It is a mind-puzzle book, a book of word acrobatics.

Ada, the trees and the passions.

This book is absolutely a masterpiece.

Sometimes I had to stop and reread some passages to realize how well they had been written. It's not an easy read given the length of the book, but it was definitely worth it.

The story takes you on a journey through the lives of the characters, their loves, their losses, and their struggles. It's a story that makes you think about life, about what really matters, and about the power of love and forgiveness.

I found myself completely immersed in the world of the book, and I didn't want it to end. It's a story that will stay with me for a long time, and I would highly recommend it to anyone who loves a good read.

I lived on the pages of this unusual Basra book filled with the names of painters, artists, paintings, natural landscapes, butterflies, and beauty. I felt as if I was with them in the Garden of Eden and saw everything that happened. I couldn't prevent or turn a blind eye to what was happening for a long time. The story exhausted me, and I only blamed Nabokov for deceiving me with his tricky way, as he made me forget what usually makes me angry and bored and made me continue to wait and increase my eagerness to know what was happening next.

Reading it wasn't smooth, especially in the first chapters. It was as if Nabokov was saying, "Challenge yourselves to finish reading or decipher my complex codes, unless you are among those capable of art that suffers from minds and souls." I insisted on finishing the seven hundred and sixty-eight pages until reaching the last line with a big exclamation mark drawn on my face due to the great admiration for that unusual greatness that made me immerse myself in this fantasy and imagine myself standing on my head, walking with my hands parallel. For when he practiced his favorite sport, time and place would also change with me, and I would see what he wanted and saw from his perspective and enjoy.

Again, the beautiful and rich poor girl, how could I get out of your lives now or how did you get out after I got attached... Oh, Nabokov, you imprisoned me between the bars you attached to, so how to get out?

Ardis Hall - the Ardors and Arbors of Ardis - this is the leitmotiv rippling through Ada, an ample and delightful chronicle whose principal part is staged in a dream-bright America.

\\n  

For are not our childhood memories comparable to Vineland-born caravelles, indolently encircled by the white birds of dreams?

\\n This self-reflective commentary on the book we have just read is just one instance of the literary games Nabokov plays throughout this complex, challenging text. What really makes the book for me is the dazzling, extravagant, exuberance of the prose.

Imagine if Ovid, James Joyce, Proust and Salman Rushdie came together to pen a fiction... and Ada might be the result, fizzing with puns, wordplay, alliteration and textual paradox.

Have no doubt, this is wildly eccentric. From the fantasy worlds of Terra and Antiterra (which, personally, I merely ignored), to the neo-geography of an America which is half pre-Revolutionary Russia. Add in duels, suicides, pre-pubescent sexuality, blackmailing maids and lush brothels and you'll have a sense of the heady mix Nabokov pulls together.

There are many places where the story colludes with classic nineteenth-century Russian literature. Tolstoy is frequently name-checked and alluded to, but so is Pushkin and Tchaikovsky's operatic version of his Eugene Onegin. Only as soon as we recognise an allusion, Nabokov rips it away again, overturning and undermining as the twentieth century looks back at lost certainties.

With themes of childhood, memory, sexuality and time, the Proustian debt is clear, especially in the long section one as the aged Van Veen recalls his life, his text interrupted by the marginalia and comments of Ada.

This is not a book you can read casually. It's demanding of time and concentration, of literary knowledge and attention to the poetics of its prose - challenging, for sure, but also playful and brimming with vibrant, vivid life.

This book seems to go on forever. It is composed in a style of prose that is dense, erudite, alliterative, punsome, and even pore-clogging. The language used is so complex and elaborate that it requires a great deal of concentration to understand.

Moreover, every single character in the book, without any exception, speaks in a manner that closely resembles the late Henry James. Their dialogues are filled with long, convoluted sentences and a sophisticated vocabulary.

Reading this book can be a challenging and sometimes frustrating experience. However, for those who are willing to put in the effort, it may also offer a unique and rewarding literary journey. It forces the reader to slow down, analyze each sentence, and try to uncover the deeper meanings hidden within the text.

Nüktedan, snob, ukala, samimi, umursamaz, kederli, nostaljik... These are the adjectives that come to my mind for this book at the moment. I hadn't read Nabokov for a long time, but I had never read anything like this. Nabokov is a very talkative, very knowledgeable writer who overwhelms the reader with his literary knowledge, a smart and guiding writer. So guiding that while demolishing the tables they wrote, he makes you nod your head in agreement from the corner where you are sitting. Just as we accepted Humbert Humbert with understanding in Lolita, and as we digested Franz and Martha in Rua da Vile with "such things happen", in Ada and Van, it is read with the feeling that there is such a natural/right relationship and it must be lived. When it comes to taboo, Ada or Ardor is an incest story. As it is known, difficult love cannot be indestructible; Ada and Van are ready to merge with whatever comes their way, whoever comes their way, especially with each other from the beginning. And like all heartless people, they do what falls on them with an endless indifference.

Nabokov also vents his spleen with Freud through Van's mouth. Van is a psychiatrist who is not Freudian, and he entertains his students quite a bit by making fun of psychoanalysis in his lectures. A mind that does not fit into such a mold, and it was not to be expected that the most popular case of the era would remain indifferent to psychoanalysis anyway.

We cannot thank Fatih Özguven enough for the translation. As Orhan Pamuk also pointed out in the preface, to make this translation with all its jokes requires superior skill. Still, I think the lack of footnotes slowed down reading the book considerably. I tried to understand his important references with broken French. But I guess it could be tiring for a reader who doesn't know the language.

The first two hundred pages of this book are truly among my all-time favorite works by Nabokov. Ardis, that mythological Russo/American dacha, serves as the perfect greenhouse for Nab's diverse linguistic, intellectual, and erotic games.

However, after the compulsory exile from this paradise, a sense of repetitiveness starts to creep in, rather than a feeling of cumulative progression. The story seems to stall and not build as expected. Why is this the case? Among other reasons, Nabokov lacks the Tolstoyan ability to make a couple's ordinary, domestic existence captivating. He relies on literary tensions such as them being siblings, teenagers, or metaphysical twins, rather than uncovering and exploiting the mundane, prosaic, and yet utterly fascinating aspects of everyday life.

This, of course, is all outside-of-the-book criticism. Once you're inside the book, you couldn't care less about that sort of thing. You simply delight in observing all the things in the world that Nabokov's sentences transform into linguistic Faberge eggs. He belongs in the line of Aksakov, whom D.S. Mirsky described as "creamy" - except that Nab's writing has a ridiculously high SPF, perhaps 40 or 55. Even after hours of indulging in it, you still feel as if you're sweating paint.

Oh yeah, and of course Nabokov writes prose in the only way it should be written, which, in case you're wondering, is with ecstasy.

His words dance on the page, creating a vivid and enchanting world that draws you in and refuses to let go.

I truly don't fathom the excessive excitement surrounding this book. I loathed it. Seriously, I did.

In my entire life, I think I've only given up on 2 books. For some odd reason, I persevere with them, even when I'm not deriving any pleasure from reading. Don't question me as to why; it's just some strange quirk of mine. I always hold the belief that they will improve, but sometimes they don't. So, I endured Ada and foolishly bid farewell to numerous hours of my life that I can never regain.

While Lolita is one of my all-time favorite books, I discovered Ada to be a jumble of self-indulgent, pretentious drivel. I simply can't comprehend how this book is rated so highly by so many individuals. Could I have delved deeper and endeavored to perceive the widely venerated beauty and poetry in Nabokov's Ada? I highly doubt it. There was no hidden treasure to be unearthed.

I experienced confusion, annoyance, frustration, and a sense of being cheated. Few books have had such a profoundly negative influence on me.

Bah humbug to Ada and Van. I'll take Humbert Humbert any day.

Above all, a frankly delightful novel. Nabokov fills this book with an abundance of literary devices. There are puzzles to solve, puns that make you smile, doubling that adds depth, foreshadowing that keeps you on the edge of your seat, taboos that challenge your sensibilities, symbolism that enriches the story, parodies of other people's work and even his own, non-parodic references to his own work, subtle and not-so-subtle allusions to an alternate history, and loving descriptions of spaces. The list truly goes on.

It's no accident that the jacket summary emphasizes how Nabokov published this book shortly after turning 70. It seems as if he was determined to cram all his signatures into one last work before leaving this mortal coil. And this book is a hefty 200 pages longer than his next-longest novel. I wouldn't be surprised if his last two novels, Transparent Things and Look at the Harlequins! (I'm not counting The Original of Laura unless someone gives me a damn good reason to) are mere victory laps after this one.

Now, I’d like to dwell on that “almost.” For the first three hundred pages of this book, for reasons we’ll explore later, I thought this was finally the Nabokov book that could rival Pale Fire. However, there are parts where he loses me. While I initially enjoyed the alternate-history aspect, I'm not sure how much it truly added to the overall story. The Terra / Anti-Terra thing seems to overemphasize the doubling theme without delivering as much of a payoff as it perhaps should have. Similarly, the “memoirs-of-Van-Veen” angle doesn't quite work for me. The fact that Van is writing about himself in the third person is such a puzzling device, as if Nabokov is trying to have it both ways.

Let’s talk about what does work, and there's a lot of it. For starters, Nabokov handles the novel’s notorious incestuous theme with a light touch. The romance between Ada and Van is the plot, but he doesn't descend into the “hey can you believe I’m writing about this” territory that keeps Lolita, as fine a novel as it is, from reaching my personal most-exalted list. It's just one aspect of the novel, adding a darkly parodic layer to the comedy of manners that unfolds in the first half of the book. That first half, incidentally, had me convinced this was a masterpiece. It's so rich with puns, jokes, and subtle doubling that it's a joy to immerse oneself in. The language is beautiful, and the pacing is so leisurely that I can forget there's even a plot and just soak in the prose.

I don't think it ever quite reaches the same heights again. There are some truly incredible passages as the novel progresses. One character's arc comes to a bleak yet movingly written conclusion, and the infamous lecture on time is, in my opinion, pretty damn riveting. And those last few pages, when the book seems to melt away, are simply amazing. But he never quite sustains the brilliance, humor, and intricacies of the early sections. When Nabokov dwells on the family mansion at the beginning, it can seem a bit self-indulgent. When chapter five of section three is overloaded with cringe-worthy puns, jokes, and circumstances in just twenty pages (excluding the aforementioned resolution, which almost saves the whole chapter), it falls on the wrong side of the line.

But what the hell, right? I mean, not really what the hell, because when this book doesn't work, it really hurts. Still, I find most of Nabokov's work to be a strange combination of brilliant and cringy (aside from Pale Fire, which is practically perfect in every way). Nabokov wanted to give us the ultimate Nabokov experience, and I'd say he achieved it more successfully than perhaps even he realized. It's flawed, but it's also full of life. I say read it, but just be aware going in that there are some parts you'll have to struggle through.