Paramnesia, Anticipatory Memory, and Future Recollection in Ada

Abstract

David Potter takes the discussion of memory into a region in which it becomes merged with forgetting, by carefully investigating the phenomenon of paramnesia in 'Ada'. He begins with a close reading of a particularly mysterious passage in the novel, in which the narrator’s life seems to pass into death and back with suspiciously seamless flow, making the very act of remembrance appear as a ghostly activity, with false memories uncannily mimicking the real past. He continues to read 'Ada' “clinically,” finding other scenes marked by a paramnesiac “tang,” and proposing his interpretation of the novel based on Van’s propensity for this condition. Potter’s examination of the forms of memory (paramnesia, anticipatory memory, future recollection) in 'Ada' and Nabokov’s other texts makes clear the complexity of the issue and offers insights into Nabokovian games with time.

--Description from "Introduction" in Irena Księżopolska and Mikołaj Wiśniewski, eds. 'Vladimir Nabokov and the Fictions of Memory'. Warsaw: Fundacja Augusta hr. Cieszkowskiego, 2019.