Ada or Ardor - Vladimir Nabokov | Thoughts & Comments

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Ada or Ardor - Vladimir Nabokov
Thanks for checking out the video, let me know in the comments if you have any suggestions for further reading, or if you agreed/disagreed with anything I said.
Setting:
The story takes place in the late nineteenth century on what appears to be an alternative history of Earth, which is there 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 (which were discovered by African navigators). But it was also settled extensively by Russians, so that what we know as western Canada is a Russian-speaking province called "Estoty", and eastern Canada 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, while the word "Russia" is simply a "quaint synonym" for Estoty. The British Empire, 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.
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Пікірлер: 23
@42pyroboy
@42pyroboy 3 ай бұрын
I really appreciate the way Nabokov is able to build a world in the readers mind. The people and their surroundings are vivid and tangible. I appreciate the way he explores the darker desires of the mind. The pain of regret and loss leaves me feeling as is I lived the narrators heartache.
@cullaholme1149
@cullaholme1149 Жыл бұрын
I agree that this is Nabokov’s best. Just finished it today. So immersive, fun, dark, surreal and detailed
@maxvetter1336
@maxvetter1336 Жыл бұрын
Ada is marvelous and absolutely the most ambitious book I’ve read from Nabokov, but I think Lolita is still probably his best. There’s something so satisfying to me about a novel that can completely shatter the nature of fiction without ever explicitly trying to.
@readreadofficial
@readreadofficial Жыл бұрын
Completely agree! I think in my video on Pnin, I mention that I've come to feel Lolita is Nabokov's 'best novel', but Ada is the best 'Nabokov novel'.
@loveriku
@loveriku Жыл бұрын
This was lovely to watch. I have to admit I got swept up by the beautiful prose and language of this book and did not notice certain elements that you brought up, so thank you for pointing those out! Such as Antiterra and what that encompassed. I'm hoping to give it a reread with these in mind and see how it'll enhance my enjoyment of it
@vladasparrow8391
@vladasparrow8391 2 ай бұрын
It is very nice to hear your opinion about the book, which I really like. It seems to me that Van and Ada were no longer alive when they wrote this book. Sometimes it seemed that the "voices" of Aqua and Lucetta were heard in the book, although we know that everything is written by Van. This book is very interesting, I love it!)
@dabrowsa
@dabrowsa 4 ай бұрын
Ada is Nabokov's Finnegans Wake: it exhibits all the vices that Nabokov criticized in Joyce's similarly self-indulgent work. But it remains enthralling.
@leiasleeping1282
@leiasleeping1282 Жыл бұрын
I love this book as well. His books are so intricately structured, well written, sensual and weird and dark at the same time. Several of his books flows so easy and smooth they feel like movies, I’m puzzled why they are not adapted more often.
@havefunbesafe
@havefunbesafe 10 ай бұрын
Nice brother...subscribed.
@radiantchristina
@radiantchristina 10 ай бұрын
I really want to read his works. I hear fabulous things of his writing . I don't know why I keep putting him off.
@carriebrooks432
@carriebrooks432 Жыл бұрын
Great video, I had a question. The two major paternal figures living in the world of the book are Demon and Dan. Given the names and two natures of the two characters (one a lawyer the other old money) it seems to me that this is an allusion to another work of literature "the devil and Daniel Webster". That book, like dan and demons conflict, is about the conflict between a lawyer (whose a stand in for the new american man) and a prince (a stand in for old world aristocracy). If this is the case (that the naming of the two characters is an allusion to this other book) it could explain a variety of other themes and aspects of the world of the book, the Abraham Milton/Milton Abraham doubling specifically. Wanted to know if you or anyone else had any thoughts on this?
@subhajitbanerjee2821
@subhajitbanerjee2821 Жыл бұрын
Great great explanation just keep it up‼️ And one simple request, Please make the 144p & 240p quality available... Love from India 🇮🇳❤️
@readreadofficial
@readreadofficial Жыл бұрын
Hey, thanks for the comment! I think because I recorded it on a webcam I can't make the earlier videos 144p, but most of the later ones should have lower quality available.
@reaganwiles_art
@reaganwiles_art Жыл бұрын
There is a wonderful audio Pale Fire on KZfaq, was anyway, perfectly read and histrionized. I had read PF twice before listening. The audio is perfectly pitched and bafooned!
@jasonhorowitz9270
@jasonhorowitz9270 Жыл бұрын
For the Joycean echo of "pouting pensively, pensively caressing," you may want the end of "The Dead", with its "falling faintly throughout the universe and faintly falling..." As for Part I of the book being written and annotated during Ada and Van's youth, I'm not convinced. Many of the annotations are in "Ada's late hand"; the strongest textual counterargument is on p.15, with an annotation marked "Marginal jotting in Ada's 1965 hand; crossed out lightly in her latest wavering one." One thing I wonder about this book (having finished it recently), is really *why* it has been set on Antiterra, and especially why Nabokov choses to ban electricity. (Not why in the novel electricity was banned, but why Nabakov decided to include this element.) Is it just to make Antiterra both real and surreal, like a dream? To enrich the abstract meditations on the nature of Time by deliberately providing a world whose historical time cannot be placed-where, for instance, there are airplanes but no telephones? The other thing that strikes me about this novel, especially compared with Gravity's Rainbow, is, for all of its hyper-baroque complexity, how *simple* it really is. It's the story of siblings who fall in love and are kept apart by society and family until those families have died. Even Lolita and Pale Fire, even Pnin, doesn't have such a simple story at its core (at least for me). Thanks for the video!
@williamdrouin8063
@williamdrouin8063 Жыл бұрын
I always felt like it was a part of Nabokov's point. The way telling is as (or more) important than the thing itself. The story is complex because the way of telling it is. Form and content are one united thing. But I wouldn't say simple, it's ''deceptively simple'' like most of that universe.
@iancartier77
@iancartier77 2 ай бұрын
31:39 Sbrit' usï is not latin, its literally russian for what it says in the translation:)
@Azkahamm
@Azkahamm 8 ай бұрын
My favorite Nabokov. Strange, incestuous, science-fiction (sorta)
@reaganwiles_art
@reaganwiles_art Жыл бұрын
Annoying note?: Ada and ardor are homophones (in Russian and Brit. Eng.).
@iancartier77
@iancartier77 2 ай бұрын
No, they are not bro. It's just Nabokovian wordplay. Ada Ardor Ardis
@dominicgodfrey8015
@dominicgodfrey8015 Жыл бұрын
Hey 👋 fellow 1❤Sirin Heads up! 2024 Will be Nabokov's year. DJBBIC / Let me drop a bomb on you... Vladimir Nabokov constructed the -gry riddle #letthatsinkin ❤
@hughtierneytierney3585
@hughtierneytierney3585 3 ай бұрын
Starts off by pronouncing the title in a way that makes a nonsense of it! That is not encouraging as far as this analysis is concerned.
@brotherbuzz1070
@brotherbuzz1070 Жыл бұрын
I love this novel also.
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