''Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle'' is a novel by
Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (russian: link=no, Владимир Владимирович Набоков ; 2 July 1977), also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin (), was a Russian-American novelist, poet, translator, and entomologist. Bo ...
published in 1969.
''Ada'' began to materialize in 1959, when
Nabokov
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (russian: link=no, Владимир Владимирович Набоков ; 2 July 1977), also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin (), was a Russian-American novelist, poet, translator, and entomologist. Bo ...
was flirting with two projects, "The Texture of Time" and "Letters from Terra." In 1965, he began to see a link between the two ideas, finally composing a unified novel from February 1966 to October 1968. The published cumulation would become his longest work. ''Ada'' was initially given a mixed reception. However, writing in ''
The New York Times Book Review
''The New York Times Book Review'' (''NYTBR'') is a weekly paper-magazine supplement to the Sunday edition of ''The New York Times'' in which current non-fiction and fiction books are reviewed. It is one of the most influential and widely rea ...
'', noted scholar
Alfred Appel Alfred Appel Jr. (January 31, 1934 – May 2, 2009) was an American professor, author and journal editor noted for his investigations into the works of Vladimir Nabokov, modern art, and jazz modernism. He edited ''The Annotated Lolita'', an edi ...
called it "a great work of art, a necessary book, radiant and rapturous," and said that it "provides further evidence that he is a peer of
Kafka
Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a German-speaking Bohemian novelist and short-story writer, widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of realism and the fantastic. It typ ...
,
Proust
Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust (; ; 10 July 1871 – 18 November 1922) was a French novelist, critic, and essayist who wrote the monumental novel ''In Search of Lost Time'' (''À la recherche du temps perdu''; with the previous Eng ...
and
Joyce."
Title
According to
David Eagleman
David Eagleman (born April 25, 1971) is an American neuroscientist, author, and science communicator. He teaches neuroscience at Stanford University and is CEO and co-founder of Neosensory, a company that develops devices for sensory substituti ...
, Nabokov named the title character in part after his favorite butterfly. An avid (and professional) collector of butterflies, Nabokov especially liked a particular species with yellow wings and a black body. As a
synesthete, he associated colors with each letter; ''A'' with yellow, and ''D'' with black. Thus he saw a reflection of his favorite butterfly (yellow-black-yellow) in the name "
Ada
Ada may refer to:
Places
Africa
* Ada Foah, a town in Ghana
* Ada (Ghana parliament constituency)
* Ada, Osun, a town in Nigeria
Asia
* Ada, Urmia, a village in West Azerbaijan Province, Iran
* Ada, Karaman, a village in Karaman Province, ...
." His character, Ada, wanted to be a
lepidopterist
Lepidopterology ()) is a branch of entomology concerning the scientific study of moths and the three superfamilies of butterflies. Someone who studies in this field is a lepidopterist or, archaically, an aurelian.
Origins
Post-Renaissance, t ...
.
"Ada" is also a pun, a homophone, for "Ardor." Marina, Ada's mother, pronounces her name with "long, deep" Russian "A"s, which is how a speaker of
non-rhotic
Rhoticity in English is the pronunciation of the historical rhotic consonant by English speakers. The presence or absence of rhoticity is one of the most prominent distinctions by which varieties of English can be classified. In rhotic variet ...
English would say the word "Ardor." Ada's name includes a play on (), Russian for ''Hell'', which (according to Rita Safariants) serves as a theme throughout the story.
Plot summary
''Ada'' tells the life story of a man named Van Veen, and his lifelong love affair with his sister Ada. They meet when she is eleven (soon to be twelve) and he is fourteen, believing that they are cousins (more precisely: that their fathers are cousins and that their mothers are sisters), and begin a sexual affair. They later discover that Van's father is also Ada's and her mother is also his. The story follows the various interruptions and resumptions of their affair. Both are wealthy, educated, and intelligent. The book itself takes the form of his memoir, written when he is in his nineties, punctuated with his own and Ada's marginalia, and in parts with notes by an unnamed editor, suggesting the manuscript is not complete.
The novel is divided into five parts, each shorter in length than the preceding one (Part Four being the only exception). As they progress chronologically, this structure evokes a sense of a person reflecting on his own
memories
Memory is the faculty of the mind by which data or information is encoded, stored, and retrieved when needed. It is the retention of information over time for the purpose of influencing future action. If past events could not be remembered, ...
, with an adolescence stretching out epically, and many later years simply flashing by.
Setting
The story takes place in the late nineteenth century on what appears to be an
alternative history
Alternate history (also alternative history, althist, AH) is a genre of speculative fiction of stories in which one or more historical events occur and are resolved differently than in real life. As conjecture based upon historical fact, alter ...
of Earth, which is called Demonia or Antiterra. Antiterra has the same geography and a largely similar history to that of Earth; however, it is crucially different at various points. For example, the United States includes all of the
Americas
The Americas, which are sometimes collectively called America, are a landmass comprising the totality of North and South America. The Americas make up most of the land in Earth's Western Hemisphere and comprise the New World.
Along with th ...
(which were discovered by African navigators). But it was also settled extensively by Russians, so that what we know as
western Canada
Western Canada, also referred to as the Western provinces, Canadian West or the Western provinces of Canada, and commonly known within Canada as the West, is a Canadian region that includes the four western provinces just north of the Canada ...
is a Russian-speaking province called "Estoty", and
eastern Canada
Eastern Canada (also the Eastern provinces or the East) is generally considered to be the region of Canada south of the Hudson Bay/Strait and east of Manitoba, consisting of the following provinces (from east to west): Newfoundland and Labrador, ...
a French-speaking province called "Canady". Russian, English, and French are all in use in North America. The territory which belongs to Russia in our world, and much of Asia, is part of an empire called
Tartary
Tartary ( la, Tartaria, french: Tartarie, german: Tartarei, russian: Тартария, Tartariya) or Tatary (russian: Татария, Tatariya) was a blanket term used in Western European literature and cartography for a vast part of Asia bounde ...
, while the word "Russia" is simply a "quaint synonym" for Estoty. The
British Empire
The British Empire was composed of the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. It began with the overseas possessions and trading posts esta ...
, which includes most or all of Europe and Africa, is ruled (in the nineteenth century) by a King Victor. A city named Manhattan takes the place of our universe's New York City. Aristocracy is still widespread, but some technology has advanced well into twentieth-century forms. Electricity, however, has been banned since almost the time of its discovery following an event referred to as "the L-disaster". Airplanes and cars exist, but television and telephones do not; their functions are served by similar devices powered by water. The setting is thus a complex mixture of Russia and America in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The belief in a "twin" world, Terra, is widespread on Antiterra as a sort of fringe religion or
mass hallucination. (The name "Antiterra" may be a back-formation from this; the planet is "really" called "Demonia".) One of Van's early specialties as a psychologist is researching and working with people who believe that they are somehow in contact with Terra. Terra's alleged history, so far as he states it, appears to be that of our world: that is, the characters in the novel dream, or hallucinate, about the real world.
The central characters are all members of the North American aristocracy, of mostly Russian and Irish descent. Dementiy ("Demon") Veen is first cousins with Daniel Veen. They
marry
Marriage, also called matrimony or wedlock, is a culturally and often legally recognized union between people called spouses. It establishes rights and obligations between them, as well as between them and their children, and between t ...
a pair of twin sisters, Aqua and Marina, respectively, who are also their second cousins. Demon and Aqua raise a son, Ivan (Van); Dan and Marina two daughters, Ada and Lucette. The story begins when Van, aged 14, spends a summer with his cousins, then 12 and 8. A rough idea of the years covered by each section is provided in brackets, below, however the narrator's thoughts often stray outside of the periods noted.
Part 1: 43 chapters ''(1863–1888)''
This part, which one critic called "the last 19th-century Russian novel", takes up nearly half the book. Throughout this part of the novel, the many passages depicting the blossoming of Van and Ada's love vary in rhythm, style and vocabulary—ranging from lustrous, deceptively simple yet richly sensual prose to leering and
Baroque
The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including t ...
satire of eighteenth-century pornography—depending on the mood Nabokov wishes to convey.
The first four chapters provide a sort of unofficial prologue, in that they move swiftly back and forth through the
chronology
Chronology (from Latin ''chronologia'', from Ancient Greek , ''chrónos'', "time"; and , '' -logia'') is the science of arranging events in their order of occurrence in time. Consider, for example, the use of a timeline or sequence of events. I ...
of the narrative, but mostly deal with events between 1863 and 1884, when the main thrust of the story commences. They depict Van and Ada discovering their true relationship, Demon and Marina's tempestuous affair, Marina's sister Aqua's descent into
madness and obsession with Terra and water, and Van's "first love", a girl he sees in an
antique
An antique ( la, antiquus; 'old', 'ancient') is an item perceived as having value because of its aesthetic or historical significance, and often defined as at least 100 years old (or some other limit), although the term is often used loosely ...
shop but never speaks to. Chapters 4 to 43 mostly deal with Van's adolescence, and his first meetings with his "cousin" Ada—focused on the two summers when he joins her (and her "sister" Lucette) at ''Ardis Hall'', their ancestral home, in 1884 and 1888.
In 1884 Van and Ada, age 14 and 12, fall passionately in love, and their affair is marked by a powerful sense of
romantic erotic
Eroticism () is a quality that causes sexual feelings, as well as a philosophical contemplation concerning the aesthetics of sexual desire, sensuality, and romantic love. That quality may be found in any form of artwork, including painting, scul ...
ism. The book opens with their discovery that they are in fact not cousins but brother and sister. The passage is notoriously difficult, more so as neither of them explicitly states the conclusion they have drawn (treating it as obvious), and it is only referred to in passing later in the text. Although Ada's mother keeps a wedding photo dated August 1871, eleven months before her birth, they find in a box in the attic a newspaper announcement dating the wedding to December 1871; and furthermore that Dan had been abroad since that spring, as proved by his extensive filmreels. Hence he is not Ada's father. Furthermore, they find an annotated flower album kept by Marina in 1869–70 which indicates, very obliquely, that she was pregnant and confined to a sanatorium at the same time as Aqua; that 99 orchids were delivered to Marina, from Demon, on Van's birthday; and that Aqua had a miscarriage in a skiing accident. It later transpires that Marina gave the child to her sister to replace the one she had lost—so she is in fact Van's mother—and that her affair with Demon continued until Ada's conception. This makes Lucette (Dan and Marina's child) the
uterine
The uterus (from Latin ''uterus'', plural ''uteri'') or womb () is the hollow organ, organ in the female reproductive system, reproductive system of most female mammals, including humans that accommodates the embryonic development, embryonic an ...
half-sister of both of them.
Van returns to Ardis for a second visit in the summer of 1888. The affair has become strained because of Van's suspicions that Ada has had another lover and the increasing intrusion of Lucette (their now-12-year-old half-sister) into their trysts (an intrusion that Van half-welcomes with conflicted feelings). This section ends with Van's discovery that Ada has in fact been unfaithful, and his flight from Ardis to exact
revenge
Revenge is committing a harmful action against a person or group in response to a grievance, be it real or perceived. Francis Bacon described revenge as a kind of "wild justice" that "does... offend the law ndputteth the law out of office." Pr ...
upon those "rivals" of whom he is aware: Phillip Rack, Ada's older and weak-charactered music teacher; and Percy de Prey, a rather boorish neighbour. Van is distracted by a chance altercation with a soldier named Tapper, whom he challenges to a duel and by whom he is wounded. In hospital he chances upon Phillip Rack, who is dying, and whom Van cannot bring himself to exact revenge upon. He then receives word that Percy de Prey has been shot and killed in Antiterra's version of the ongoing
Crimean War
The Crimean War, , was fought from October 1853 to February 1856 between Russia and an ultimately victorious alliance of the Ottoman Empire, France, the United Kingdom and Piedmont-Sardinia.
Geopolitical causes of the war included the de ...
. Van moves to live with Cordula de Prey, Percy's cousin, in her Manhattan apartment, whilst he fully recovers. They have a shallow physical relationship, which provides Van with respite from the emotional strain of his feelings for Ada.
Part 2: 11 chapters ''(1888–1893)''
Van spends his time developing his studies in
psychology
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...
, and visiting a number of the "Villa Venus" upper-class
brothels
A brothel, bordello, ranch, or whorehouse is a place where people engage in sexual activity with prostitutes. However, for legal or cultural reasons, establishments often describe themselves as massage parlors, bars, strip clubs, body rub pa ...
. In the autumn of 1892, Lucette, now having declared her love for Van, brings him a letter from Ada in which she announces she has received an offer of marriage from a wealthy Russian, Andrey
Vinelander. Should Van wish to invite her to live with him she will refuse the marriage offer. Van does so, and they commence living together in an apartment Van has purchased from Ada's old school-friend, and Van's former lover, Cordula de Prey.
In February 1893, their father, Demon, arrives with news that his cousin (Ada's supposed father, but actual stepfather) Dan has died following a period of exposure caused by running naked into the woods near his home during a terrifying
hallucinatory
A hallucination is a perception in the absence of an external stimulus that has the qualities of a real perception. Hallucinations are vivid, substantial, and are perceived to be located in external objective space. Hallucination is a combinatio ...
episode. Upon grasping the situation regarding Van and Ada, he tells Van that Ada would be happier if he "gave her up"—and that he would disown Van completely if he failed to do so. Van acquiesces, leaves, and attempts suicide, which fails when his gun fails to fire. He then leaves his Manhattan apartment and preoccupies himself with hunting down a former servant at Ardis, Kim Beauharnais, who had been
blackmail
Blackmail is an act of coercion using the threat of revealing or publicizing either substantially true or false information about a person or people unless certain demands are met. It is often damaging information, and it may be revealed to fa ...
ing them with photographic evidence of their affair, and beating him with an
alpenstock
An alpenstock (german: Alpen- "alpine" + "stick, staff") is a long wooden pole with an iron spike tip, used by shepherds for travel on snowfields and glaciers in the Alps since the Middle Ages. It is the antecedent of the modern ice axe.
Frenc ...
until he is blind.
Part 3: 8 chapters ''(1893–1922)''
With Ada having married Andrey Vinelander, Van occupies himself in traveling and his studies until 1901, when Lucette reappears in England. She has herself booked on the same transatlantic liner, the ''Admiral Tobakoff'', that Van is taking back to
America
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
. She attempts to
seduce
Seduction has multiple meanings. Platonically, it can mean "to persuade to disobedience or disloyalty", or "to lead astray, usually by persuasion or false promises".
Strategies of seduction include conversation and sexual scripts, paralingual ...
him on the crossing and nearly succeeds, but is foiled when Ada appears as an actress in the film, ''
Don Juan
Don Juan (), also known as Don Giovanni (Italian), is a legendary, fictional Spanish libertine who devotes his life to seducing women. Famous versions of the story include a 17th-century play, '' El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra'' ...
's Last Fling'', that they are watching together on the onboard cinema. Lucette consumes a number of
sleeping pill
Hypnotic (from Greek ''Hypnos'', sleep), or soporific drugs, commonly known as sleeping pills, are a class of (and umbrella term for) psychoactive drugs whose primary function is to induce sleep (or surgical anesthesiaWhen used in anesthesia ...
s and commits suicide by throwing herself from the ''Tobakoff'' into the
Atlantic
The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the " Old World" of Africa, Europe an ...
.
In March 1905, Demon dies in a plane crash.
Later in 1905, Ada and Andrey arrive in
Switzerland
). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...
. Van meets with them, and has an affair with Ada while pretending that they are engaged in uncovering Lucette's fortune, concealed in various hidden bank accounts. They formulate a plan for her to leave her husband and live with him. This is now considered possible due to the death of Demon. During their stay in
Switzerland
). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...
, however, Andrey falls ill with
tuberculosis
Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease usually caused by '' Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body. Most infections show no symptoms, in ...
, and Ada decides that she cannot abandon him until he has recovered. Van and Ada part, and Andrey remains ill for 17 years, at which point he dies. Ada then flies back to
Switzerland
). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...
to meet with Van.
Part 4: Not subdivided (i.e. 1 chapter) ''(1922)''
This part consists of Van's lecture on "The Texture of Time", apparently transcribed from his reading it into a
tape recorder
An audio tape recorder, also known as a tape deck, tape player or tape machine or simply a tape recorder, is a sound recording and reproduction device that records and plays back sounds usually using magnetic tape for storage. In its present- ...
as he drives across Europe from the Adriatic to meet Ada in Mont Roux, Switzerland, while she is on her way from America via Geneva. The transcription has then been edited to merge into a description of his and Ada's actual meeting, and then out again. This makes this part of the novel notably self-reflexive, and it is sometimes cited as the "difficult" part of the novel, some reviewers even stating that they wished
Nabokov
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (russian: link=no, Владимир Владимирович Набоков ; 2 July 1977), also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin (), was a Russian-American novelist, poet, translator, and entomologist. Bo ...
had "left it out". It could conversely be argued that it is one of the most potent evocations of one of the novel's central themes, the relation of personal experience of time to one's sense of being in and of the world. At the end of this section, Van and Ada are reunited and begin living together.
Part 5: 6 chapters ''(1922–1967)''
This section of the novel is set in 1967, as Van completes his memoirs as laid out in ''Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle''. He describes his contentment, such as it is, his relationship with his book, and the continuing presence and love of Ada. This is interspersed with remarks on pain and the ravages of time. Van and Ada have a conversation about death, and Van breaks off from correcting what he considers his essentially complete, but not yet fully polished, work. The book becomes increasingly distorted as Van and Ada merge into "Vaniada, Dava or Vada, Vanda and Anda".
Criticism and reception
Critics dispute whether Van and Ada die by suicide at the end, as the author says "if our time-racked flat-lying couple ever intended to die".
David Potter describes Van's narrated world in the memoir as "an unstable blending of contradictions, jarring fantastical elements, and hallucinated temporalities" over which Van is only partially in control. He argues that this is what makes the novel so notoriously difficult to interpret.
Garth Risk Hallberg
Garth Risk Hallberg (born November 1978) is an American author. His debut novel is '' City on Fire''.Brian Appleyard, "Manhattan Project", ''The Age'', "Good Weekend", pp. 20-22
Hallberg was born outside Baton Rouge, Louisiana and grew up in Gre ...
found the book challenging, but also acclaimed its prose and argued that Nabokov "manages a kind of
Proustian magic trick: he recovers, through evocation, the very things whose losses he depicts."
David Auerbach
David Auerbach is an American writer and former Microsoft and Google software engineer. He has written on a variety of subjects, including social issues and popular culture, the environment, computer games, philosophy and literature. His 2018 book ...
felt that both ''Ada'' and its lead characters were alienating, and believed that Nabokov knew readers would find them so. He considered Van Veen to be an
unreliable narrator
An unreliable narrator is a narrator whose credibility is compromised. They can be found in fiction and film, and range from children to mature characters. The term was coined in 1961 by Wayne C. Booth in ''The Rhetoric of Fiction''. While unrel ...
and speculates that much of the story is Van's fantasy, comparing Antiterra to the expressly fictional settings Nabokov created in ''
Invitation to a Beheading
''Invitation to a Beheading'' (russian: Приглашение на казнь, lit=''Invitation to an execution'') is a novel by Russian American author Vladimir Nabokov. It was originally published in Russian from 1935 to 1936 as a serial in '' ...
'', ''
Bend Sinister
In heraldry, a bend is a band or strap running from the upper dexter (the bearer's right side and the viewer's left) corner of the shield to the lower sinister (the bearer's left side, and the viewer's right). Authorities differ as to how mu ...
'' and ''
Pale Fire
''Pale Fire'' is a 1962 novel by Vladimir Nabokov. The novel is presented as a 999-line poem titled "Pale Fire", written by the fictional poet John Shade, with a foreword, lengthy commentary and index written by Shade's neighbor and academic col ...
''.
See also
*''
Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius
"Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" is a short story by the 20th-century Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges. The story was first published in the Argentinian journal '' Sur'', May 1940. The "postscript" dated 1947 is intended to be anachronistic, se ...
'' by
Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo (; ; 24 August 1899 – 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, as well as a key figure in Spanish-language and international literature. His best-known bo ...
*''
René
René ('' born again'' or ''reborn'' in French) is a common first name in French-speaking, Spanish-speaking, and German-speaking countries. It derives from the Latin name Renatus.
René is the masculine form of the name ( Renée being the femin ...
'', ''
Atala'', ''Romance à Hélène'' and ''
Mémoires d'Outre-Tombe
''Mémoires d'Outre-Tombe'' () is the memoir of François-René de Chateaubriand (1768–1848), collected and published posthumously in two volumes in 1849 and 1850, respectively. Chateaubriand, a writer, politician, diplomat and historian, rema ...
'' by
Chateaubriand
*''
The Man in the High Castle
''The Man in the High Castle'' (1962), by Philip K. Dick, is an alternative history novel wherein the Axis Powers won World War II. The story occurs in 1962, fifteen years after the end of the war in 1947, and depicts the political intrigues be ...
'' (1962) by
Philip K. Dick
*''
The Ambidextrous Universe'' by
Martin Gardner
Martin Gardner (October 21, 1914May 22, 2010) was an American popular mathematics and popular science writer with interests also encompassing scientific skepticism, micromagic, philosophy, religion, and literatureespecially the writings of Lewis ...
Notes
Further reading
*Cangogni, Annapaola (1995) ''Nabokov and Chateaubriand'', in Vladimir E. Alexandrov (1995) ''The Garland Companion to Vladimir Nabokov''
"Vladimir Nabokov, Science Fiction Writer"by Ted Gioia (Conceptual Fiction)
External links
AdaOnline"combines the text of Vladimir Nabokov's longest and richest novel, in one frame, and in another, annotations and fore- and afternotes to each chapter, hyperlinked to each other and to a third frame incorporating supplementary materials, especially pictorial illustrations and a list of verbal and thematic motifs in the novel".
*
is an attempt at cataloguing and providing, when available, public-domain internet versions of the numerous texts to which Nabokov alluded in ''Ada.''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ada Or Ardor: A Family Chronicle
1969 American novels
1969 science fiction novels
American alternate history novels
Novels by Vladimir Nabokov
Incest in fiction
Postmodern novels
McGraw-Hill books