In his poem “Wanted” composed in a madhouse after Lolita was abducted from him Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) mentions gnarled McFate:
Happy, happy is gnarled McFate
Touring the States with a child wife,
Plowing his Molly in every State
Among the protected wild life.
In the preceding stanza Humbert asks Lolita if she is still dancing:
Oh Dolores, that juke-box hurts!
Are you still dancin', darlin'?
(Both in worn levis, both in torn T-shirts,
And I, in my corner, snarlin').
Baudelaire’s poem Danse macabre (“The Dance of Death”) brings to mind President McAber mentioned by John Shade(the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962) at the beginning of Canto Three of his poem:
L'if, lifeless tree! Your great Maybe, Rabelais:
The grand potato.
I.P.H., a lay
Institute (I) of Preparation (P)
For the Hereafter (H), or If, as we
Called it--big if!--engaged me for one term
To speak on death ("to lecture on the Worm,"
Wrote President McAber).
You and I,
And she, then a mere tot, moved from New Wye
To Yewshade, in another, higher state. (ll. 501-509)
At the beginning of his poem Shade mentions that crystal land and the falling snow:
And how delightful when a fall of snow
Covered my glimpse of lawn and reached up so
As to make chair and bed exactly stand
Upon that snow, out in that crystal land!
Retake the falling snow: each drifting flake
Shapeless and slow, unsteady and opaque,
A dull dark white against the day's pale white
And abstract larches in the neutral light. (ll. 9-16)
In a conversation with Kinbote (Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) Shade uses the phrase “crystal to crystal:”
Despite a wobbly heart (see line 735), a slight limp, and a certain curious contortion in his method of progress, Shade had an inordinate liking for long walks, but the snow bothered him, and he preferred, in winter, to have his wife call for him after classes with the car. A few days later, as I was about to leave Parthenocissus Hall - or Main Hall (or now Shade Hall, alas), I saw him waiting outside for Mrs. Shade to fetch him. I stood beside him for a minute, on the steps of the pillared porch, while pulling my gloves on, finger by finger, and looking away, as if waiting to review a regiment: "That was a thorough job," commented the poet. He consulted his wrist watch. A snowflake settled upon it. "Crystal to crystal," said Shade. I offered to take him home in my powerful Kramler. "Wives, Mr. Shade, are forgetful." He cocked his shaggy head to look at the library clock. Across the bleak expanse of snow-covered turf two radiant lads in colorful winter clothes passed, laughing and sliding. Shade glanced at his watch again and, with a shrug, accepted my offer. (Foreword)
Shade's words seem to hint at the phrase in the burial prayer of the Catholics and Protestants: "earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust." At the end of his poem “Wanted” Humbert mentions stardust:
My car is limping, Dolores Haze,
And the last long lap is the hardest,
And I shall be dumped where the weed decays,
And the rest is rust and stardust.
Lolita's classmates at the Ramsdale school include Virginia McCoo, Vivian McCrystal and Aubrey McFate (1.11). In the penultimate stanza of Eugene Onegin (Eight: L: 12-14) Pushkin mentions dal' svobodnogo romana (the far stretch of a free novel) and magicheskiy kristal (a magic crystal):
Промчалось много, много дней
С тех пор, как юная Татьяна
И с ней Онегин в смутном сне
Явилися впервые мне -
И даль свободного романа
Я сквозь магический кристалл
Ещё не ясно различал.
Rushed by have many, many days
since young Tatiana, and with her
Onegin, in a blurry dream
appeared to me for the first time -
and the far stretch of a free novel
I through a magic crystal
still did not make out clearly.
Dal' svobodnogo romana brings to mind Mona Dahl (Lolita’s friend and confidant at Beardsley College). In the last stanza of EO (Eight: LI: 8) Pushkin says that fate has snatched much, much away:
Но те, которым в дружной встрече
Я строфы первые читал...
Иных уж нет, а те далече,
Как Сади некогда сказал.
Без них Онегин дорисован.
А та, с которой образован
Татьяны милый идеал...
О много, много рок отъял!
Блажен, кто праздник жизни рано
Оставил, не допив до дна
Бокала полного вина,
Кто не дочёл её романа
И вдруг умел расстаться с ним,
Как я с Онегиным моим.
But those to whom at amicable meetings
its first strophes I read -
"Some are no more, others are distant,"
as erstwhiles Sadi said.
Without them was Onegin's picture finished.
And she from whom was fashioned
the dear ideal of "Tatiana"...
Ah, much, much has fate snatched away!
Blest who left life's feast early,
not having to the bottom drained
the goblet full of wine;
who never read life's novel to the end
and all at once could part with it
as I with my Onegin.
Lolita (who outlives HH only by forty days and dies in childbed, giving birth to a stillborn girl, on Christmas Day 1952) leaves life's feast early, not having to the bottom drained the goblet full of wine. Gray Star (a settlement in the remotest Northwest where Lolita dies) brings to mind seraya ot zvyozd dal’ (remote regions grey from the stars) mentioned by VN at the beginning of Drugie berega (“Other Shores,” 1954), the Russian version of his autobiography Speak, Memory (1951):
Сколько раз я чуть не вывихивал разума, стараясь высмотреть малейший луч личного среди безличной тьмы по оба предела жизни? Я готов был стать единоверцем последнего шамана, только бы не отказаться от внутреннего убеждения, что себя я не вижу в вечности лишь из-за земного времени, глухой стеной окружающего жизнь. Я забирался мыслью в серую от звёзд даль -- но ладонь скользила всё по той же совершенно непроницаемой глади. Кажется, кроме самоубийства, я перепробовал все выходы. Я отказывался от своего лица, чтобы проникнуть заурядным привидением в мир, существовавший до меня. Я мирился с унизительным соседством романисток, лепечущих о разных йогах и атлантидах. Я терпел даже отчёты о медиумистических переживаниях каких-то английских полковников индийской службы, довольно ясно помнящих свои прежние воплощения под ивами Лхассы. В поисках ключей и разгадок я рылся в своих самых ранних снах -- и раз уж я заговорил о снах, прошу заметить, что безоговорочно отметаю фрейдовщину и всю её тёмную средневековую подоплеку, с её маниакальной погоней за половой символикой, с её угрюмыми эмбриончиками, подглядывающими из природных засад угрюмое родительское соитие.
Over and over again, my mind has made colossal efforts to distinguish the faintest of personal glimmers in the impersonal darkness on both sides of my life. That this darkness is caused merely by the walls of time separating me and my bruised fists from the free world of timelessness is a belief I gladly share with the most gaudily painted savage. I have journeyed back in thought—with thought hopelessly tapering off as I went—to remote regions where I groped for some secret outlet only to discover that the prison of time is spherical and without exits. I have journeyed back in thought—with thought hopelessly tapering off as I went—to remote regions where I groped for some secret outlet only to discover that the prison of time is spherical and without exits. Short of suicide, I have tried everything. I have doffed my identity in order to pass for a conventional spook and steal into realms that existed before I was conceived. I have mentally endured the degrading company of Victorian lady novelists and retired colonels who remembered having, in former lives, been slave messengers on a Roman road or sages under the willows of Lhasa. I have ransacked my oldest dreams for keys and clues—and let me say at once that I reject completely the vulgar, shabby, fundamentally medieval world of Freud, with its crankish quest for sexual symbols (something like searching for Baconian acrostics in Shakespeare’s works) and its bitter little embryos spying, from their natural nooks, upon the love life of their parents. (Chapter One, 1)
Luch being Russian for “ray,” maleyshiy luch lichnogo (the faintest of personal glimmers) that VN tried to distinguish in the impersonal darkness on both sides of his life brings to mind John Ray, Jr. (the author of the Foreword to Humbert's manuscript).
In his Notes to EO (Note 42) Pushkin quotes Vyazemski’s poem Stantsiya in which Vyazemski calls Russian winter “our McAdam or McEve:”
Дороги наши — сад для глаз:
Деревья, с дёрном вал, канавы;
Работы много, много славы,
Да жаль, проезда нет подчас.
С деревьев, на часах стоящих,
Проезжим мало барыша;
Дорога, скажешь, хороша —
И вспомнишь стих: для проходящих!
Свободна русская езда
В двух только случаях: когда
Наш Мак-Адам или Мак-Ева
Зима свершит, треща от гнева,
Опустошительный набег,
Путь окует чугуном льдистым,
И запорошит ранний снег
Следы ее песком пушистым.
Или когда поля проймет
Такая знойная засуха,
Что через лужу может вброд
Пройти, глаза зажмуря, муха.
Our roads are for the eyes a garden:
trees, ditches, and a turfy bank;
much toil, much glory,
but, sad to say, no passage now and then.
The trees that stand like sentries
bring little profit to the travelers;
the road, you'll say, is fine,
but you'll recall the verse: “for passers-by!”
Driving in Russia is unhampered
on two occasions only:
when our McAdam — or McEve — winter —
accomplishes, crackling with wrath,
its devastating raid
and with ice's cast-iron armors roads
while powder snow betimes
as if with fluffy sand covers the tracks;
or when the fields are permeated
with such a torrid drought
that with eyes closed a fly
can ford a puddle.
(The Station, by Prince Vyazemski)