In VN’s novel Lolita (1955) Humbert Humbert would have never met Lolita, if the fire had not destroyed McCoo's house:
Upon signing out, I cast around for some place in the New England countryside or sleepy small town (elms, white church) where I could spend a studious summer subsisting on a compact boxful of notes I had accumulated and bathing in some nearby lake. My work had begun to interest me again – I mean my scholarly exertions; the other thing, my active participation in my uncle’s posthumous perfumes, had by then been cut down to a minimum.
One of his former employees, the scion of a distinguished family, suggested I spend a few months in the residence of his impoverished cousins, a Mr. McCoo, retired, and his wife, who wanted to let their upper story where a late aunt had delicately dwelt. He said they had two little daughters, one a baby, the other a girl of twelve, and a beautiful garden, not far from a beautiful lake, and I said it sounded perfectly perfect.
I exchanged letters with these people, satisfying them I was housebroken, and spent a fantastic night on the train, imagining in all possible detail the enigmatic nymphet I would coach in French and fondle in Humbertish. Nobody met me at the toy station where I alighted with my new expensive bag, and nobody answered the telephone; eventually, however, a distraught McCoo in wet clothes turned up at the only hotel of green-and-pink Ramsdale with the news that his house had just burned down - possibly, owing to the synchronous conflagration that had been raging all night in my veins. His family, he said, had fled to a farm he owned, and had taken the car, but a friend of his wife’s, a grand person, Mrs. Haze of 342 Lawn Street, offered to accommodate me. A lady who lived opposite Mrs. Haze’s had lent McCoo her limousine, a marvelously old-fashioned, square-topped affair, manned by a cheerful Negro. Now, since the only reason for my coming at all had vanished, the aforesaid arrangement seemed preposterous. All right, his house would have to be completely rebuilt, so what? Had he not insured it sufficiently? I was angry, disappointed and bored, but being a polite European, could not refuse to be sent off to Lawn Street in that funeral car, feeling that otherwise McCoo would devise an even more elaborate means of getting rid of me. I saw him scamper away, and my chauffeur shook his head with a soft chuckle. En route, I swore to myself I would not dream of staying in Ramsdale under any circumstance but would fly that very day to the Bermudas or the Bahamas or the Blazes. Possibilities of sweetness on technicolor beaches had been trickling through my spine for some time before, and McCoo’s cousin had, in fact, sharply diverted that train of thought with his well-meaning but as it transpired now absolutely inane suggestion. (1.10)
In a letter of May 7, 1902, to Balmont Chekhov thanks Balmont for his collection Goryashchie zdaniya (“Burning Buildings,” 1900), a copy that the author sent from Oxford to Yalta, and for the second volume of Calderon’s plays in Balmont’s translation:
«Горящие здания» и второй том Кальдерона получил и благодарю Вас безгранично. Вы знаете, я люблю Ваш талант, и каждая Ваша книжка доставляет мне немало удовольствия и волнения. Это, быть может, оттого, что я консерватор.
The author of Life is a Dream, Calderon famously said “When love is not madness it is not love.” Humbert comes to Ramsdale and falls in love with Lolita after spending some time in a lunatic asylum.
At the beginning of his manuscript Humbert calls Lolita “light of my life, fire of my loins” and mentions the seraphs:
Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.
She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.
Did she have a precursor? She did, indeed she did. In point of fact, there might have been no Lolita at all had I not loved, one summer, a certain initial girl-child. In a princedom by the sea. Oh when? About as many years before Lolita was born as my age was that summer. You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied. Look at this tangle of thorns. (1.1)
At the end of the same letter to Balmont Chekhov mentions kheruvimy i serafimy (cherubs and seraphs):
Будьте здоровы, да хранят Вас херувимы и серафимы. Пишите мне ещё, хоть одну строчку.
Humbert has in mind “the wingèd seraphs of Heaven” in E. A. Poe’s poem Annabel Lee (1849). In a letter of January 1, 1902, to Balmont Chekhov says that in his library there are two books by E. A. Poe in Balmont’s translation, Tainstvennye rasskazy (Tales of Mystery and Imagination) and Poe, Edgar, vol. 1 (Poems, Fairy Tales), and Calderon (the first volume):
Из Ваших книг у меня имеются: 1) «Под северным небом»; 2) Шелли, вып<уск> 2-й и 7-й (Ченчи); 3) «В безбрежности»; 4) «Тишина»; 5) Кальдерон, т. 1; 6) «Таинственные рассказы»; 7) По Эдгар, т. 1.
За книгу всей душой благодарю. Я теперь не работаю, а только читаю, и завтра-послезавтра примусь за Эдг. По.
January 1 is Lolita’s birthday.
In his poem A Dream within a Dream E. A. Poe says:
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.
In VN’s novel Camera Obscura (1933) Kretschmar (who believes that next moment he will make love to Magda) is in a blissful state, when one can sin sweetly and freely, because life is a dream:
Все было тихо, выжидательно тихо, казалось, что тишина не выдержит и вот-вот рассмеется. В пижаме и в мягких туфлях Кречмар бесшумно пошел по коридору. Странно сказать: страх рассеялся; кошмар теперь перешел в то несколько бредовое, но блаженное состояние, когда можно сладко и свободно грешить, ибо жизнь есть сон. Кречмар на ходу расстегнул ворот пижамы: все в нем содрогалось, – ты сейчас, вот сейчас будешь моей. Он тихо открыл дверь библиотечной и включил свет. «Магда, сумасшедшая», – сказал он жарким шепотом. Это была красная шелковая подушка с воланами, которую он сам же на днях принес, чтобы на полу, у низкой полки, просматривать фолианты. (chapter 10)
“Light of my life, fire of my loins brings to mind” brings to mind “star of my eyes, sun of my nature,” as Baudelaire (Poe’s French translator) calls his mistress in his poem Une Charogne (“A Carcass”):
— Et pourtant vous serez semblable à cette ordure,
À cette horrible infection,
Etoile de mes yeux, soleil de ma nature,
Vous, mon ange et ma passion!
— And yet you will be like this corruption,
Like this horrible infection,
Star of my eyes, sunlight of my being,
You, my angel and my passion!
(tr. W. Aggeler)
The poems in Balmont’s “Burning Buildings” include K Bodleru (“To Baudelaire”):
Как страшно-радостный и близкий мне пример,
Ты всё мне чудишься, о, царственный Бодлер,
Любовник ужасов, обрывов и химер!
Ты, павший в пропасти, но жаждавший вершин,
Ты, видевший лазурь сквозь тяжкий жёлтый сплин,
Ты, между варваров заложник-властелин!
Ты, знавший Женщину, как демона мечты,
Ты, знавший Демона, как духа красоты,
Сам с женскою душой, сам властный демон ты!
Познавший таинства мистических ядов,
Понявший образность гигантских городов,
Поток бурлящийся, рождённый царством льдов!
Ты, в чей богатый дух навек перелита
В одну симфонию трикратная мечта:
Благоухания, и звуки, и цвета!
Ты, дух блуждающий в разрушенных мирах,
Где привидения друг в друге будят страх,
Ты, чёрный, призрачный, отверженный монах!
Пребудь же призраком навек в душе моей,
С тобой дай слиться мне, о, маг и чародей,
Чтоб я без ужаса мог быть среди людей!
Baudelaire is the author of the inscriptions for Lola de Valence, a picture by Édouard Manet, and Le Tasse en prison, a picture by Eugène Delacroix. Humbert writes his Confessions in imprisonment.