Describing his stay with Lolita at Chestnut Court in Kasbeam, Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Lolita, 1955) quotes dear old Ronsard:
The girl I had seen on my way to town was now loaded with linen and engaged in helping a misshapen man whose big head and coarse features reminded me of the “Bertoldo” character in low Italian comedy. They were cleaning the cabins of which there was a dozen or so on Chestnut Crest, all pleasantly spaced amid the copious verdure. It was noon, and most of them, with a final bang of their screen doors, had already got rid of their occupants. A very elderly, almost mummy-like couple in a very new model were in the act of creeping out of one of the contiguous garages; from another a red hood protruded in somewhat cod-piece fashion; and nearer to our cabin, a strong and handsome young man with a shock of black hair and blue eyes was putting a portable refrigerator into a station wagon. For some reason he gave me a sheepish grin as I passed. On the grass expanse opposite, in the many-limbed shade of luxuriant trees, the familiar St. Bernard dog was guarding his mistress’ bicycle, and nearby a young woman, far gone in the family way, had seated a rapt baby on a swing and was rocking it gently, while a jealous boy of two or three was making a nuisance of himself by trying to push or pull the swing board; he finally succeeded in getting himself knocked down by it, and bawled loudly as he lay supine on the grass while his mother continued to smile gently at neither of her present children. I recall so clearly these miniatiae probably because I was to check my impressions so thoroughly only a few minutes later; and besides, something in me had been on guard ever since that awful night in Beardsley. I now refused to be diverted by the feeling of well-being that my walk had engendered - by the young summer breeze that enveloped the nape of my neck, the giving crunch of the damn gravel, the juice tidbit. I had sucked out at last from a hollowy tooth, and even the comfortable weight of my provisions which the general condition of my heart should not have allowed me to carry; but even that miserable pump of mine seemed to be working sweetly, and I felt adolori d’amoureuse langueur, to quote dear old Ronsard, as I reached the cottage where I had left my Dolores. (2.16)
In 1922 VN translated one of Ronsard’s Sonnets pour Hélène (1578), Quand vous serez bien vieille (“When you are very old”), into Russian:
Quand vous serez bien vieille, au soir à la chandelle,
Assise auprès du feu, dévidant et filant,
Direz chantant mes vers, en vous émerveillant :
«Ronsard me célébrait du temps que j’étais belle.»
Lors vous n’aurez servante oyant telle nouvelle,
Déjà sous le labeur à demi sommeillant,
Qui au bruit de Ronsard ne s’aille réveillant,
Bénissant votre nom de louange immortelle.
Je serai sous la terre, et fantôme sans os
Par les ombres myrteux je prendrai mon repos;
Vous serez au foyer une vieille accroupie,
Regrettant mon amour et votre fier dédain.
Vivez, si m’en croyez, n’attendez à demain:
Cueilllez dès aujourd’hui les roses de la vie.
Когда на склоне лет и в час вечерний, чарам
стихов моих дивясь и грезя у огня,
вы скажете, лицо над пряжею склоня:
весна моя была прославлена Ронсаром, --
при имени моём, служанка в доме старом,
уже дремотою работу заменя, --
очнётся, услыхав, что знали вы меня,
вы, -- озарённая моим бессмертным даром.
Я буду под землёй, и, призрак без костей,
покой я обрету средь миртовых теней.
Вы будете, в тиши, склонённая, седая,
жалеть мою любовь и гордый холод свой.
Не ждите -- от миртовых дней, цените день живой,
спешите розы взять у жизненного мая.
In his translation VN renders the phrase fantôme sans os as prizrak bez kostey (a ghost without bones). At the end of VN's story Istreblenie tiranov ("Tyrants Destroyed," 1936) the narrator calls himself prizrak bez kostey (“a boneless shadow”):
Смех, собственно, и спас меня. Пройдя все ступени ненависти и отчаяния, я достиг той высоты, откуда видно как на ладони смешное. Расхохотавшись, я исцелился, как тот анекдотический мужчина, у которого "лопнул в горле нарыв при виде уморительных трюков пуделя". Перечитывая свои записи, я вижу, что, стараясь изобразить его страшным, я лишь сделал его смешным,-- и казнил его именно этим-- старым испытанным способом. Как ни скромен я сам в оценке своего сумбурного произведения, что-то, однако, мне говорит, что написано оно пером недюжинным. Далёкий от литературных затей, но зато полный слов, которые годами выковывались в моей яростной тишине, я взял искренностью и насыщенностью чувств там, где другой взял бы мастерством да вымыслом. Это есть заклятье, заговор, так что отныне заговорить рабство может каждый. Верю в чудо. Верю в то, что каким-то образом, мне неизвестным, эти записи дойдут до людей, не сегодня и не завтра, но в некое отдалённое время, когда у мира будет денёк досуга, чтоб заняться раскопками,-- накануне новых неприятностей, не менее забавных, чем нынешние. И вот, как знать... допускаю мысль, что мой случайный труд окажется бессмертным и будет сопутствовать векам,-- то гонимый, то восхваляемый, часто опасный и всегда полезный. Я же, "тень без костей", буду рад, если плод моих забытых бессонниц послужит на долгие времена неким тайным средством против будущих тиранов, тигроидов, полоумных мучителей человека.
Laughter, actually, saved me. Having experienced all the degrees of hatred and despair, I achieved those heights from which one obtains a bird’s-eye view of the ludicrous. A roar of hearty mirth cured me, as it did, in a children’s storybook, the gentleman “in whose throat an abscess burst at the sight of a poodle’s hilarious tricks.” Rereading my chronicle, I see that, in my efforts to make him terrifying, I have only made him ridiculous, thereby destroying him — an old, proven method. Modest as I am in evaluating my muddled composition, something nevertheless tells me that it is not the work of an ordinary pen. Far from having literary aspirations, and yet full of words formed over the years in my enraged silence, I have made my point with sincerity and fullness of feeling where another would have made it with artistry and inventiveness. This is an incantation, an exorcism, so that henceforth any man can exorcise bondage. I believe in miracles. I believe that in some way, unknown to me, this chronicle will reach other men, neither tomorrow nor the next day, but at a distant time when the world has a day or so of leisure for archeological diggings, on the eve of new annoyances, no less amusing than the present ones. And, who knows — I may be right not to rule out the thought that my chance labor may prove immortal, and may accompany the ages, now persecuted, now exalted, often dangerous, and always useful. While I, a “boneless shadow,” un fantôme sans os, will be content if the fruit of my forgotten insomnious nights serves for a long time as a kind of secret remedy against future tyrants, tigroid monsters, half-witted torturers of man. (chapter 17)
“Tigroid monsters” bring to mind Felis tigris goldsmithi mentioned by HH at the beginning of the same chapter of Lolita:
I remember as a child in Europe gloating over a map of North America that had “Appalachian Mountains” boldly running from Alabama up to New Brunswick, so that the whole region they spanned - Tennessee, the Virginias, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine, appeared to my imagination as a gigantic Switzerland or even Tibet, all mountain, glorious diamond peak upon peak, giant conifers, le montagnard émigré in his bear skin glory, and Felis tigris goldsmithi, and Red Indians under the catalpas. That it all boiled down to a measly suburban lawn and a smoking garbage incinerator, was appalling. Farewell, Appalachia! Leaving it, we crossed Ohio, the three states beginning with “I,” and Nebraska - ah, that first whiff of the West! We traveled very leisurely, having more than a week to reach Wace, Continental Divide, where she passionately desired to see he Ceremonial Dances marking the seasonal opening of Magic Cave, and at least three weeks to reach Elphinstone, gem of a western State where she yearned to climb Red Rock from which a mature screen star had recently jumped to her death after a drunken row with her gigolo. (2.16)
Le Montagnard exilé (Combien j’ai douce souvenance) is a poem by Chateaubriand also known as Romance à Hélène. The first two lines of its final (fifth) sextet, “Oh! qui me rendra mon Hélène, / Et ma montagne et le grand chêne?”, are a leitmotif in VN’s novel Ada (1969).
Zaklyatie, zagovor (an incantation, an exorcism) mentioned by the narrator of “Tyrants Destroyed” brings to mind Khlebnikov’s poem Zaklyatie smekhom (“Incantation by Laughter,” 1908) and Alexander Blok’s cycle Zaklyatie ognyom i mrakom (“Incantation by Fire and Darkness,” 1907) in which tayna smekha (the secret of laughter) is mentioned. In the Russian version (1967) of Lolita the name of Clare Quilty’s coauthor, Vivian Darkbloom, becomes Vivian Damor-Blok. Damor may hint at Ronsard’s Amours (in which the phrase d’amoureuse langueur occurs several times, with slight variations).
In his poem Tam, gde zhili sviristeli (“There, where the waxwings lived,” 1908) Velimir Khlebnikov mentions besporyadok dikiy teney (a wild disorder of shadows):
Там, где жили свиристели,
Где качались тихо ели,
Пролетели, улетели
Стая лёгких времирей.
Где шумели тихо ели,
Где поюны крик пропели,
Пролетели, улетели
Стая лёгких времирей.
В беспорядке диком теней,
Где, как морок старых дней,
Закружились, зазвенели
Стая лёгких времирей.
Стая лёгких времирей!
Ты поюнна и вабна,
Душу ты пьянишь, как струны,
В сердце входишь, как волна!
Ну же, звонкие поюны,
Славу лёгких времирей!
At the beginning (and, presumably, at the end) of his (almost finished) poem John Shade (one of the three main characters in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) calls himself “the shadow of the waxwing:”
I was the shadow of the waxwing slain
By the false azure in the windowpane… (ll. 1-2)
I was the shadow of the waxwing slain
By its own double in the windowpane. [ll. 1000-1001]
Dvoynik (“The Double”) is a short novel (1846) by Dostoevski (whom Shade listed among Russian humorists) and a poem (1909) by Blok.
As he imagines his future life with Charlotte (Lolita's mother), Humbert Humbert feels a Dostoevskian grin on his lips:
After a while I destroyed the letter and went to my room, and ruminated, and rumpled my hair, and modeled my purple robe, and moaned through clenched teeth and suddenly - Suddenly, gentlemen of the jury, I felt a Dostoevskian grin dawning (through the very grimace that twisted my lips) like a distant and terrible sun. I imagined (under conditions of new and perfect visibility) all the casual caresses her mother's husband would be able to lavish on his Lolita. I would hold her against me three times a day, every day. All my troubles would be expelled, I would be a healthy man. "To hold thee lightly on a gentle knee and print on thy soft cheek a parent's kiss . . ." Well-read Humbert! (1.17)
In his diary (that he kept when he was Charlotte's lodger) HH quotes Ronsard and his friend Remy Belleau:
Friday. I wonder what my academic publishers would say if I were to quote in my textbook Ronsard’s “la vermeillette fente” or Remy Belleau’s “un petit mont feutré de mousse délicate, tracé sur le milieu d’un fillet escarlatte” and so forth. I shall probably have another breakdown if I stay any longer in this house, under the strain of this intolerable temptation, by the side of my darling - my darling - my life and my bride. Has she already been initiated by mother nature to the Mystery of the Menarche? Bloated feelings. The Curse of the Irish. Falling from the roof. Grandma is visiting. “Mr. Uterus [I quote from a girls’ magazine] starts to build a thick soft wall on the chance a possible baby may have to be bedded down there.” The tiny madman in his padded cell. (1.11)
Let me also draw your attention to the updated version of my previous post, “FELIS TIGRIS GOLDSMITHI IN LOLITA; FRAME HOUSE BETWEEN GOLDSWORTH AND WORDSMITH IN PALE FIRE.”