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Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle

Published two weeks after his seventieth birthday, Ada, or Ardor is one of Nabokov's greatest masterpieces, the glorious culmination of his career as a novelist. It tells a love story troubled by incest. But more: it is also at once a fairy tale,

Characters

Vladimir Nabokov (18)Van Veen (2)

Was she really beautiful? Was she at least what they call attractive? She was exasperation, she was torture.

— Vladimir Nabokov, amazon.com

beauty Woman

I don’t know. I adore you. I shall never love anybody in my life as I adore you, never and nowhere, neither in eternity, nor in terrenity, neither in Ladore, nor on Terra, where they say our souls go.

— Vladimir Nabokov, amazon.com

Love I Love You

Dreamlined dash—

— Vladimir Nabokov, amazon.com

Alliterations

When we remember our former selves, there is always that little figure with its long shadow stopping like an uncertain belated visitor on a lighted threshold at the far end of an impeccably narrowing corridor.

— Vladimir Nabokov, amazon.com

Hallway of Memory Memory Recovering Your Past Finding Your Former Self The Impossibly Poetic Task of Remembering

A mist of brimming tears, agonies of un-resolvable adoration.

— Vladimir Nabokov, amazon.com

No End Desire All The Way Down

Bless the starling and damn the Stardust!

— Vladimir Nabokov, amazon.com

What It Feels Like To Wake Up From A Great Dream Waking Up From Good Dreams

It contained, perhaps, a glowworm of strange truth.

— Vladimir Nabokov, amazon.com

Huge If Statements

I’m all enchantment and ears.

— Vladimir Nabokov, amazon.com

Through Hearing Renew The World

Go on from here, Ada, please!

— Vladimir Nabokov, amazon.com

Ada

If we want life’s sundial to show its hand, we must always remember that the strength, the dignity, the delight of man is to spite and despise the shadows and stars that hide their secrets from us.

— Vladimir Nabokov, Van Veen, amazon.com

Shadows and Light

She was induced to conceal from him, the concealer, her awareness of what he concealed.

— Vladimir Nabokov, amazon.com

The Secret of Secrecy Love as Tension

Her charm was too compelling not to be tasted in secret and too sacred to be openly violated.

— Vladimir Nabokov, amazon.com

Limits Idols The Secret of Secrecy Desecration Bringing The High Low

We touch in silhouette.

— Vladimir Nabokov, amazon.com

Shadow of Memory

I’d like to taste the inside of your mouth.

— Vladimir Nabokov, Van Veen, amazon.com

Kissing Kisses Desire

Remembrance, like Rembrandt, is dark but festive.

— Vladimir Nabokov, amazon.com

Memory Time Nostalgia

That despair of desire.

— Vladimir Nabokov, amazon.com

Desire Lust

For the human brain can become the best torture house of all those it has invented, established and used in millions of years, in millions of lands, on millions of howling creatures.

— Vladimir Nabokov, amazon.com

Suffering Pain Brain

We simply speak with our wounds; wounds procreate.

— Vladimir Nabokov, amazon.com

wounds hurt Pain

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