The author of the Foreword to Humbert Humbert’s manuscript, John Ray, Jr. was awarded the Poling Prize for his modest work “Do the Senses make Sense?”:
“Lolita, or the Confession of a White Widowed Male,” such were the two titles under which the writer of the present note received the strange pages it preambulates. “Humbert Humbert,” their author, had died in legal captivity, of coronary thrombosis, on November 16, 1952, a few days before his trial was scheduled to start. His lawyer, my good friend and relation, Clarence Choate Clark, Esq., now of the District of Columbia bar, in asking me to edit the manuscript, based his request on a clause in his client’s will which empowered my cousin to use the discretion in all matters pertaining to the preparation of “Lolita” for print. Mr. Clark’s decision may have been influenced by the fact that the editor of his choice had just been awarded the Poling Prize for a modest work (“Do the Senses make Sense?”) wherein certain morbid states and perversions had been discussed.
In his recent post Alain Champlain points out that in VN’s entomological paper Some new or little known Nearctic Neonympha there are several references to Poling:
Neonympha dorothea edwardsi n. subsp.
[…]
Male, holotype, labelled: “Gila Co. Ariz. June 1902, O.C. Poling,” ex A.g. Weeks Coll., Museum of Comparative Zoology, Cambridge, Mass.;[…] Paratypes: 3 males “Gila Co. Ariz. June 1902, O.C. Poling,” ex A.G. Weeks Coll., Mus. Comp. Zool.;
(P 256)
Neonympha dorothea avicula n. subsp.
[…]
Fifteen smallish specimens, twelve males, three females (Carn. Mus.), from Paradise, Ariz. taken by Poling late in the season (August–October) represent a certain transition from edwardsi to avicula;
(PP 257-258)
Poling made his discoveries in Arizona (a state where VN worked on Lolita while on leave of absence from the university). Describing the first lap of his journey with Lolita across the USA, Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in Lolita, 1955) mentions Arizona and California:
At inspection stations on highways entering Arizona or California, a policeman’s cousin would peer with such intensity at us that my poor heart wobbled. “Any honey?” he would inquire, and every time my sweet fool giggled. (Part Two, chapter 2)
The question of a policeman’s cousin brings to mind pchyoly v ulye opustelom (bees in a deserted hive) mentioned by Gumilyov at the end of his poem Slovo (“The Word,” 1920):
В оный день, когда над миром новым
Бог склонял лицо своё, тогда
Солнце останавливали словом,
Словом разрушали города.
И орёл не взмахивал крылами,
Звёзды жались в ужасе к луне,
Если, точно розовое пламя,
Слово проплывало в вышине.
А для низкой жизни были числа,
Как домашний, подъяремный скот,
Потому что все оттенки смысла
Умное число передаёт.
Патриарх седой, себе под руку
Покоривший и добро и зло,
Не решаясь обратиться к звуку,
Тростью на песке чертил число.
Но забыли мы, что осиянно
Только слово средь земных тревог,
И в Евангелии от Иоанна
Сказано, что Слово это - Бог.
Мы ему поставили пределом
Скудные пределы естества.
И, как пчелы в улье опустелом,
Дурно пахнут мёртвые слова.
Then, when God bent His face
over the shining new world, then
they stopped the sun with a word,
a word burned cities to the ground.
When a word floated across the sky
like a rose-colored flame
eagles closed their wings, frightened
stars shrank against the moon.
And we creeping forms had numbers,
like tame, load-bearing oxen —
because a knowing number
says everything, says it all.
That grey-haired prophet, who bent
good and evil to his will,
was afraid to speak
and drew a number in the sand.
But we worry about other things, and forget
that only the word glows and shines,
and the Gospel of John
tells us this word is God.
We’ve surrounded it with a wall,
with the narrow borders of this world,
and like bees in a deserted hive
the dead words rot and stink.
(tr. Burton Raffel)
In his poem Moy al’bom, gde strast’ skvozit bez mery… (“My album where excessive passion shows through,” 1918) Gumilyov mentions Frisco (San-Francisco, a city in California) and togdashnie Ligei (the future Ligeias):
Мой альбом, где страсть сквозит без меры
В каждой мной отточенной строфе,
Дивным покровительством Венеры
Спасся он от ауто-да-фэ.
И потом — да славится наука! —
Будет в библиотеке стоять
Вашего расчетливого внука
В год две тысячи и двадцать пять.
Но американец длинноносый
Променяет Фриско на Тамбов,
Сердцем вспомнив русские березы,
Звон малиновый колоколов.
Гостем явит он себя достойным
И, узнав, что был такой поэт
Мой (и Ваш) альбом с письмом пристойным
Он отправит в университет.
Мой биограф будет очень счастлив,
Будет удивляться два часа,
Как осел, перед которым в ясли
Свежего насыпали овса.
Вот и монография готова,
Фолиант почтенной толщины:
«О любви несчастной Гумилева
В год четвёртый мировой войны».
И когда тогдашние Лигейи,
С взорами, где ангелы живут,
Со щеками лепестка свежее,
Прочитают сей почтенный труд,
Каждая подумает уныло,
Легкого презренья не тая:
« Я б американца не любила,
А любила бы поэта я».
In his poem Gumilyov says that in the year of grace 2025 his album will stand on the bookshelf of your thrifty grandson. Humbert hopes that Lolita (who was born on January 1, 1935) will live to the age of ninety (1935 + 90 = 2025):
In its published form, this book is being read, I assume, in the first years of 2000 A.D. (1935 plus eighty or ninety, live long, my love); and elderly readers will surely recall at this point the obligatory scene in the Westerns of their childhood. Our tussle, however, lacked the ox-stunning fisticuffs, the flying furniture. He and I were two large dummies, stuffed with dirty cotton and rags. It was a silent, soft, formless tussle on the part of two literati, one of whom was utterly disorganized by a drug while the other was handicapped by a heart condition and too much gin. When at last I had possessed myself of my precious weapon, and the scenario writer had been reinstalled in his low chair, both of us were panting as the cowman and the sheepman never do after their battle. (Part Two, chapter 35)
In his memoir essay "Gumilyov and Blok" (1931) Hodasevich says that on the eve of his arrest Gumilyov told him that he planned to live at least to the age of ninety:
Потом Гумилёв стал меня уверять, что ему суждено прожить очень долго — «по крайней мере до девяноста лет». Он все повторял:
— Непременно до девяноста лет, уж никак не меньше.
До тех пор собирался написать кипу книг. Упрекал меня:
— Вот, мы однолетки с вами, а поглядите: я, право, на десять лет моложе. Это все потому, что я люблю молодежь. Я со своими студистками в жмурки играю — и сегодня играл. И потому непременно проживу до девяноста лет, а вы через пять лет скиснете.
И он, хохоча, показывал, как через пять лет я буду, сгорбившись, волочить ноги, и как он будет выступать «молодцом».
According to John Ray, Jr., Mrs. Richard F. Schiller (Lolita's married name) died in childbed, giving birth to a stillborn girl, on Christmas Day 1952, in Gray Star, a settlement in the remotest North-West. At the end of his poem Novaya Amerika ("The New America," 1913) Alexander Blok mentions Ameriki novoy zvezda (a star of the New America). In the Russian version of Lolita (1967) the name of Clare Quilty's co-author, Vivian Darkbloom (anagram of Vladimir Nabokov), becomes Vivian Damor-Blok.
Ligeia (1838) is a story by E. A. Poe, a poet with whom Humbert often identifies himself. In Poe’s story the narrator loses two wives (Ligeia and Lady Rowena). Humbert’s first wife Valeria (who left her husband for Colonel Maximovich) dies of cancer in California, his second wife Charlotte (Lolita’s mother) dies under the wheels of a truck in Ramsdale.
“Mozhno li sochuvstvovat’ chuvstvam?”, the title of John Ray’s modest work in the Russian version of Lolita, brings to mind Gumilyov’s poem Shestoe chuvstvo (“The Sixth Sense,” 1920):
Прекрасно в нас влюблённое вино
И добрый хлеб, что в печь для нас садится,
И женщина, которою дано,
Сперва измучившись, нам насладиться.
Но что нам делать с розовой зарёй
Над холодеющими небесами,
Где тишина и неземной покой,
Что делать нам с бессмертными стихами?
Ни съесть, ни выпить, ни поцеловать.
Мгновение бежит неудержимо,
И мы ломаем руки, но опять
Осуждены идти всё мимо, мимо.
Как мальчик, игры позабыв свои,
Следит порой за девичьим купаньем
И, ничего не зная о любви,
Всё ж мучится таинственным желаньем;
Как некогда в разросшихся хвощах
Ревела от сознания бессилья
Тварь скользкая, почуя на плечах
Ещё не появившиеся крылья;
Так век за веком - скоро ли, Господь? -
Под скальпелем природы и искусства
Кричит наш дух, изнемогает плоть,
Рождая орган для шестого чувства.
Fine is the wine that loves us,
and the bread baked for our sake,
and the woman whom we are allowed to enjoy
after she has tortured us.
But sunset clouds, rose
in a sky turned cold,
calm like some other earth?
immortal poems?
All inedible, non-potable, un-kissable.
Time comes, time goes,
and we wring our hands
and never decide, never touch the circle.
Like a boy forgetting his games
and watching girls in the river
and knowing nothing but eaten
by desires stranger
Than he knows — like a slippery creature
sensing unformed wings
on its back and howling helpless
in the bushes and brambles — like hundred
Years after hundred years — how long, Lord,
how long ? — as nature and art
cut, and we scream, and slowly, slowly,
our sixth-sense organ is surgically born.
(tr. Burton Raffel)
I my lomaem ruki (and we wring our hands) in the third line of the third stanza of Gumilyov’s poem brings to mind Humbert’s gesture of despair after Charlotte told him that she was going to bundle off Lolita to St. Algebra:
“Ah,” said Mrs. Humbert, dreaming, smiling, drawing out the “Ah” simultaneously with the raise of one eyebrow and a soft exhalation of breath. “Little Lo, I’m afraid, does not enter the picture at all, at all. Little Lo goes straight from camp to a good boarding school with strict discipline and some sound religious training. And then - Beardsley College. I have it all mapped out, you need not worry.”
She went on to say that she, Mrs. Humbert, would have to overcome her habitual sloth and write to Miss Phalen’s sister who taught at St. Algebra. The dazzling lake emerged. I said I had forgotten my sunglasses in the car and would catch up with her.
I had always thought that wringing one’s hands was a fictional gesture - the obscure outcome, perhaps, of some medieval ritual; but as I took to the woods, for a spell of despair and desperate meditation, this was the gesture (“look, Lord, at these chains!”) that would have come nearest to the mute expression of my mood. (1.20)
The first line of Gumilyov’s poem, Prekrasno v nas vlyublyonnoe vino (Fine is the wine that is in love with us), reminds one of “a sip of forbidden Burgundy” mentioned by Humbert in the last chapter of Lolita:
The rest is a little flattish and faded. Slowly I drove downhill, and presently found myself going at the same lazy pace in a direction opposite to Parkington. I had left my raincoat in the boudoir and Chum in the bathroom. No, it was not a house I would have liked to live in. I wondered idly if some surgeon of genius might not alter his own career, and perhaps the whole destiny of mankind, by reviving quilted Quilty, Clare Obscure. Not that I cared; on the whole I wished to forget the whole mess - and when I did learn he was dead, the only satisfaction it gave me, was the relief of knowing I need not mentally accompany for months a painful and disgusting convalescence interrupted by all kinds of unmentionable operations and relapses, and perhaps an actual visit from him, with trouble on my part to rationalize him as not being a ghost. Thomas had something. It is strange that the tactile sense, which is so infinitely less precious to men than sight, becomes at critical moment our main, if not only, handle to reality. I was all covered with Quilty - with the feel of that tumble before the bleeding.
The road now stretched across open country, and it occurred to me - not by way of protest, not as a symbol, or anything like that, but merely as a novel experience - that since I had disregarded all laws of humanity, I might as well disregard the rules of traffic. So I crossed to the left side of the highway and checked the feeling, and the feeling was good. It was a pleasant diaphragmal melting, with elements of diffused tactility, all this enhanced by the thought that nothing could be nearer to the elimination of basic physical laws than deliberately driving on the wrong side of the road. In a way, it was a very spiritual itch. Gently, dreamily, not exceeding twenty miles an hour, I drove on that queer mirror side. Traffic was light. Cars that now and then passed me on the side I had abandoned to them, honked at me brutally. Cars coming towards me wobbled, swerved, and cried out in fear. Presently I found myself approaching populated places. Passing through a red light was like a sip of forbidden Burgundy when I was a child. Meanwhile complications were arising. I was being followed and escorted. Then in front of me I saw two cars placing themselves in such a manner as to completely block my way. With a graceful movement I turned off the road, and after two or three big bounces, rode up a grassy slope, among surprised cows, and there I came to a gentle rocking stop. A kind of thoughtful Hegelian synthesis linking up two dead women. (Part Two, chapter 36)
Two dead women linked up by a thoughtful Hegelian synthesis are Humbert’s photogenic mother (who died in a freak accident: picnic, lightning) and Lolita’s mother. Note the tactile sense and sight mentioned by Humbert. “The rest is a little flattish and faded” seems to hint at “the rest is silence,” Hamlet’s last words. The characters of Shakespeare’s play include the ghost of Hamlet’s father. According to John Ray, Jr., the caretakers of various cemeteries report that no ghosts walk.
In his postscript to Lolita, "On a Book entitled Lolita" (1956), VN mentions butterfly hunting and, among his headquarters, Portal, Arizona:
Every summer my wife and I go butterfly hunting. The specimens are deposited at scientific institutions, such as the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard or the Cornell University collection. The locality labels pinned under these butterflies will be a boon to some twenty-first-century scholar with a taste for recondite biography. It was at such of our headquarters as Telluride, Colorado; Afton, Wyoming; Portal, Arizona; and Ashland, Oregon, that Lolita was energetically resumed in the evenings or on cloudy days. I finished copying the thing out in longhand in the spring of 1954, and at once began casting around for a publisher.
In his poem Kak lyubil ya stikhi Gumilyova!.. ("How I loved the poems of Gumilyov!" 1972) VN mentions a heavenly butterfly:
Как любил я стихи Гумилева!
Перечитывать их не могу,
но следы, например, вот такого
перебора остались в мозгу:
«…И умру я не в летней беседке
от обжорства и от жары,
а с небесной бабочкой в сетке
на вершине дикой горы.»
How I loved the poems of Gumilyov!
Reread them I cannot,
But traces have stayed in my mind,
such as, on this think-through:
"...And I will die not in a summerhouse
from gluttony and heat,
but with a heavenly butterfly in my net
on the summit of some wild hill."