Ada or the ardor is that what happens when someone like Vladimir Nabokov takes to the novel and to the last consequences something like "the style is the theme", his mantra par excellence. That the Russian tried to brand himself the most ambitious (and incestuous) book of his career (with readers and competitors) is seen shortly after beginning, when he reveals, in short, the ending: that this story of youthful love between brothers is being narrated by its protagonists from the future. We are very excited to write this analysis, synopsis and summary of one of the best books of the XNUMXth century.
? Review of Ada or the burning: we have incest
Sitting in rocking chairs. Ada and Van, eighty years later, very old lost and happily holding hands. This is how it starts Ada or the burning. This novel is about loving the words and the pictures that Nabokov paints with them, because its end is revealed as soon as it starts.
Two brothers who thought they were cousins fall in love. End of synopsis Ada or the ardor. We insist: it is not a spoiler. The author reveals it as soon as he begins the book.
Enrique Vila-Matas wrote the best thing that anyone has written about Ada or the ardor in a column titled of love published in El País in 2012:
Is it true that one is in love when one realizes that another person is unique? Here I would not know what to say. And is it true that we are only attracted to unhappy love stories? To this I can answer that it is a topic that novels like Ada or the ardor, by Nabokov, where the lovers are constantly intelligent and, on top of that, wildly happy, and we read the story with remarkable enthusiasm. Or not?
What the Catalan writer he forgot to mention is the large number of foreign cots visiting Van on all three occasions (of years duration) in which the loving brothers distance themselves. And the same, perhaps to a lesser extent, with Ada (that perhaps is important, Nabokov likes not to tell everything, as happens with the antlers that they unknowingly put on the protagonist of despair (his most underrated masterpiece) and which is never explicitly mentioned throughout the book to the delight-suspense of the attentive reader).
For the rest, yes, a story that is read with enthusiasm, but make no mistake: it is not an easy book.
? Nabokov writing style: background vs form
Nabokov is a guy who started out doing one thing and ended up doing the opposite. In his European stage he was still interested in the events of his books. The plot was not yet subrogated to the preciousness that would later plague all the prose of his American years. Background versus Form.
This tells it very well Raphael King at their Manual of Literature for Cannibals, a peculiar theoretical compendium (or a novel with which one learns, or an essay-novel...) where a literary war breaks out between the supporters of the "artistic novel" and those of the entertaining novel, respectively led by Javier Marias and Fernando Marias. A what to tell faced with a how to tell it.
speaking fast and well, Ada or the burning was Nabokov's last novel, since his relatives did the same thing to good old Vladimir as they did to Kafka: Deny his request not to publish his posthumous papers. There is no better way to continue publishing after death than to ask your trusted ones to burn everything.
Thus, 30 years after the father died, the son published that set of algos called Laura's original that has given so much to talk about and that two newscasts ago was used by Eduardo Lago for the plot of his I always knew I'd see you again, Aurora Lee, where a ghostwriter is asked for a report to figure out what kind of story the Russian was going to tell us in his unfinished book.
? Nabokov and Ada or the ardor: the fundamental importance of details
The style is the theme. And while it is. endless subordinates, drunkenness of parentheses that delve into trifles that have nothing (apparently) of importance and that at times they give you back the image of Nabokov's face, very serious, very arrogant, looking at us, poor mortals, looking at them, loutish writers, and saying: What, am I or am I not a pimp? Do I write or do I not write like the perfected Flaubert that I am?
Of course, trifles matter. The writer Flannery O'Connor gave a talk a long time ago entitled Nature and purpose of the narrative in which he spoke of Flaubert and said something wonderful and of great interest for this matter of minute detail. He first quotes a paragraph from Madame Bovary and then from O'Connor.
“He hit the keys with aplomb and walked up and down the entire keyboard without breaking. Shaken in this way, that old instrument, whose strings fluttered, could be heard across town if the window was open, and often the usher's clerk passing bareheaded and in striped slippers on the highway would stop to listen. listen to him, with his sheet of paper in hand.”
“[…] Regarding what happens to Emma in the rest of the novel, we can think that it does not matter if the instrument has strings that frise or if the writer wears striped slippers and has a sheet of paper in his hand , but Flaubert had to create a believable town in which to set Emma. It is necessary always to remember that the narrative writer is much less concerned with important ideas and overwhelming emotions than he is about putting striped slippers on the writers.
Ada or the burning is this throughout 500 pages of love, humor and eroticism, where we are not only told that the shoes have stripes, but also the color of the stripes, their texture, place of manufacture of the sole, latest trends in the footwear sector and habits and customs of the residents of the town where The cardboard with which the shoes are packed is manufactured.
As usual, the novel is full of puns (some untranslatable) and symbols, with characters like Demon, Aqua, Marina or the country house where the courtship takes place, which is equivalent to a kind of Garden of Eden. Ardor also refers to the "Russian-style pronunciation, with the deep, grave vowel" of Ada's name., as explained in the book itself (“which gave it a sound similar to that of the English word ardor”).
With this book it can happen to one like with the drawing on the cover of the pink edition of the compact Anagram: some days you will love it and another you will hate it (we recommend, by the way, this article on the colors of the Anagrama Compact collection). It is a book for which you have to be predisposed, well aware of what awaits you, not recommended for the deckchair on the beach, more for the stillness of the silent room and the phone off:
“Van, who fell asleep, went to bed shortly after “evening tea”, a summer snack, practically without tea, which was taken a few hours after dinner, and which seemed to Marina so natural and indispensable like the regular arrival of twilight before night.
Attention to the avalanche of details:
At Ardis Manor, that traditional Russian agape consisted of the prostokvasha, which the English governesses translated as curds-and-whey, and Mlle. Larivière by “lait caillé” (curdled milk), whose thin and creamy surface layer, Ada delicately but eagerly foamed (Ada: how many actions of yours can be qualified by those adverbs!) with the tip of the silver spoon, marked with his monogram, which he sucked with delight before attacking the more compact depths of the plate. To accompany the prostkvasha were peasant black bread, dark red klubnika (Fragaria elatior), and bright red large garden strawberries (the result of a cross between two other fragaria species).”