In 1959 Vladimir Nabokov was working on two projects: “The Texture of Time” and “Letters from Terra.” By 1965 he started to see the two ideas as compatible and finally produced Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle which was published in 1969. He and Aqua apparently have a son, Ivan (nicknamed Van), who is actually the son of Demon and Marina. Ada marries into a marriage of convenience with an American Rancher, Andrey Vinelander, at the age of 21. In 1884 Van and Ada, age 14 and 12, fall passionately in love, and their affair is marked by a powerful sense of romantic eroticism. He then leaves his Manhattan apartment and preoccupies himself with hunting down a former servant at Ardis, Kim Beauharnais, who had been blackmailing them with photographic evidence of their affair, and beating him with an alpenstock until he is blind. Ada tells the life story of a man named Van Veen, and his lifelong love affair with his sister Ada. Van returns to Ardis for a second visit in the summer of 1888. One Ardor coin can now be bought for $0.0557 or 0.00000535 […] Van meets with them, and together he and Ada formulate a plan for her to leave her husband and live with him. Ada's name includes a play on Ad (Ад), Russian for Hell, which (according to Rita Safariants) serves as a theme throughout the story. Van and Ada embark on their love affair on the family estate, Ardis, when Van is 14 years old and Ada is 12. Russian, English, and French are all in use in North America. They have a shallow physical relationship, which provides Van with respite from the emotional strain of his feelings for Ada. We use cookies to give you the best experience possible. 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. This is now considered possible due to the death of Demon. Thus he saw a reflection of his favorite butterfly (yellow-black-yellow) in the name Ada. The fertile Marina is also the mother of Demon’s other bastard child, Ada. With Ada having married Andrey Vinelander, Van occupies himself in traveling and his studies, until 1901 when Lucette reappears in England. 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. Later in 1905, Ada and Andrey arrive in Switzerland as part of a party engaged in uncovering Lucette's fortune, concealed in various hidden bank accounts. Diana from A Research Guide Don't know how to start your paper? Ada represents Nabokov’s private myth of human origins. The name of the estate, Ardis, brings to mind the expression ars gratis artis which means “art for art’s sake.” All of these ideas are at play in this book. However, with care and patience, there is much to be gained from taking on Nabokov’s work. We are then compelled to examine the nature of knowledge itself. ", "Vladimir Nabokov, Science Fiction Writer", "Vladimir Nabokov, Science Fiction Writer" by Ted Gioia (Conceptual Fiction)", https://infogalactic.com/w/index.php?title=Ada_or_Ardor:_A_Family_Chronicle&oldid=3139762, All articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases, Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases from September 2009, Articles with unsourced statements from June 2014, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, About Infogalactic: the planetary knowledge core. Though the novel is posed as a simple memoir, it is fraught with complications, twists, erudite references, puns which cut across multiple languages, and dislocations of time and space. During their stay in Switzerland, however, Andrey falls ill with tuberculosis, and Ada decides that she cannot abandon him until he has recovered. The novel contains genealogies, dramatic romances, and duels. At this point Van and Ada are free to live there lives together. The first four chapters provide a sort of unofficial prologue, in that they move swiftly back and forth through the chronology of the narrative, but mostly deal with events between 1863 and 1884, when the main thrust of the story commences. Van and Ada live in the upper world of Terra. Still in all, the novel does offer us a tale of love, however problematic this love may be. By clicking "Log In", you agree to our terms Dementiy ("Demon") Veen is first cousins with Daniel Veen. They realize that working together can reconcile them to the lost time. 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 episode.