Part III: 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. She attempts to seduce him on the crossing and nearly succeeds, but is foiled when Ada appears in the film, Don Juan’s Last Fling which they watch onboard. Lucette then consumes several sleeping pills and commits suicide by throwing herself from the Tobakoff into the Atlantic.
In March 1905, Demon dies in a plane crash. Later that year Ada and Andrey arrive in Switzerland. Van meets with them, and has an affair with Ada whilst pretending that they are engaged in uncovering Lucette’s fortune (supposedly concealed in various hidden bank accounts). They hatch a plot for her to abandon Andrey, a plan they now consider feasible due to Demon’s death. During their stay in Switzerland, however, Andrey falls ill with tuberculosis, 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 to meet with Van.
Part IV: Not subdivided (i.e. 1 chapter) (1922)
This part comprises Van’s lecture The Texture of Time, apparently transcribed from his reading it into a tape recorder as he drives across Europe from the Adriatic to meet Ada in Mont Roux, Switzerland while she herself is en route from America via Geneva. The transcription is then edited to merge into a description of his and Ada’s actual meeting, and then out again. This makes this part of the novel notoriously self-referential, and hence has been cited as the «difficult» part of the novel, to the extent that some reviewers stated that they wished Vladimir Nabokov had «left it out». It could conversely be argued that this is but one of the most potent evocations of one of the novel’s central themes: «…the interpenetration of ineffable romance and ineluctable reality.»
That said, Van and Ada ultimately reunite and begin living together.
Part V: VI 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 of, and his love for, Ada. This swan song 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 climaxes with Van and Ada merging into «Vaniada, Dava or Vada, Vanda and Anda».
Characters of the novel Ada or Ardor, A Family Chronicle
Van Veen (Ivan Dementevich Veen, b. January 1, 1870): the homophony of the name is perhaps a suggestion from the film Vanina Vanini by Roberto Rossellini. When Nabokov was teaching at Cornell University in Ithaca (New York), he had a colleague with the Dutch surname of Van Veen; both lived on Highland Road, Cayuga Heights, and the name was painted on the mailbox outside their house.
Ada (Adelaida Danilovna Veen, b. July 21, 1872): the heroine of the novel, lover of her cousin-brother Van, their love story will continue on and off until late in life; daughter of a film actress, she will follow in her mother’s footsteps. Like Marina, she has black hair and a fair complexion.
Marina Ivanovna Durmanov (1844–1900): Film actress. Having rejected the advances of Daniel Veen, preferring his more charming cousin Demon, she agrees to marry him when she is already pregnant with Ada: after a fiery month spent on vacation with Demon (during which she became pregnant), and faced with his refusal to divorce Aqua and marry her, she reconsiders her cousin’s marriage proposal.
Dementiy (Demon) Veen (1838–1905): Husband of Aqua Durmanova but in love with her sister, Marina. He is the father not only of Ada but also of Van. A shadow father, often absent, who imposes himself on Van with the example of a life devoted to pleasure.
Aqua Ivanovna Durmanov (1844–1883): sister of Marina, as her names clearly indicate: aquamarina. During a skiing accident in Ex-en-Valais, Switzerland, the 6-month-old fetus she is carrying is killed and her sister Marina offers to replace it with the son she gave birth to two weeks earlier; in reality Aqua’s madness does not even allow her to understand that she has miscarried.
Daniel (Dan) Veen (1838–1893): a dull and grumpy but wealthy man, Daniel marries Marina Durmanov and is the father of Lucette. He visits the estate of Ardis and has only the most perfunctory relationship with his family and children.
Lucette (Lucinda) Veen (1876–1901): Ada’s younger sister, inherited her father Daniel’s red hair and delicate complexion. From an early age she was in love with Van, and aware that he belonged sentimentally to her sister Ada.
M.lle Larivière (Belle): governess of Ada and Lucette, a regular guest at Ardis Hall, publishes novels under the pseudonym of Monparnasse.
Blanche: a good-looking maid at Ardis Hall, in love with Veen.
Cordula de Prey: Ada’s schoolmate, Percy’s cousin. Has an affair with Van, then marries Ivan Tobak.
Percy de Prey: neighbor of Ardis Hall, cousin of Cordula and always in love with Ada; she has given in to him a few times to console him after he was beaten by Van.
Bouteillan: French servant of Ardis Hall.
Philip Rack: German, Lucette Veen’s music teacher and Ada’s admirer.
Andrey Andreevich Vinelander (1865–1922): husband of Ada, Russian-American landowner.
Dorothy Vinelander: Andrey’s sister.
Violet Knox: Van Veen’s secretary, types up the manuscript of his memories.
Publication
The first fragments of the novel with the 8 chapters appeared in Playboy magazine (no. 4, 1969), and the complete novel was published in the US in May 1969 by McGraw-Hill Book Company. The British edition appeared in October of this year, published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson. In 1971, the «Penguin Books» series published Ada with footnotes by Vivian Darkbloom (a pseudonym and anagram of Vladimir Nabokov’s first and last name).
Translations
Nabokov considered translating Ada into Russian himself, as he had done previously with Lolita. This intention did not come to fruition, but the writer supervised several translations of Ada into foreign languages, including Italian. The German translators had to personally consult the author three times and allow him to check the accuracy of the translation by visiting him in Montreux, Switzerland. Nabokov also interfered with the French translation, introducing many small changes to the original and essentially creating his own version of Ada in French. The first translation was the Italian one, published in 1969.
Criticism and reception
The book was heavily promoted by McGraw-Hill, which contributed to its good sales results; Ada reached number four on The New York Times bestseller list, and reviews of it appeared on the front pages of major magazines.
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 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 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 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, Bend Sinister and Pale Fire.
Matthew Hodgart writing for The New York Review of Books appreciated Ada for its excellent erotic fragments and the novel’s linguistic layer.
Many critics have found autobiographical features in the novel, seeing the title character as a portrait of Véra Nabokov, the writer’s wife. Nabokov reacted very violently to such insinuations and warned authors against such criticism. Such a warning was received, among others, by Matthew Hodgart and John Updike.
Film adaptation
Already during its creation, the novel sparked the interest of filmmakers. Representatives of the film studios came to Nabokov to work out the details of the film adaptation of the not yet finished novel. One of them was Robert Evans of Paramount Pictures, who suggested to the author that Roman Polanski should handle the film adaptation of the work. Finally, in 1968, the film rights were purchased by Columbia Pictures for half a million dollars. Despite the acquisition of the rights to the novel for a film adaptation, the film was never made.
