Describing his visit to Lolita (now big with child) in Coalmont, Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Lolita, 1955) says that the baby in Lolita’s womb was already dreaming of becoming a big shot and retiring around 2020 A. D.:
She closed her eyes and opened her mouth, leaning back on the cushion, one felted foot on the floor. The wooden floor slanted, a little steel ball would have rolled into the kitchen. I knew all I wanted to know. I had no intention of torturing my darling. Somewhere beyond Bill’s shack an afterwork radio had begun singing of folly and fate, and there she was with her ruined looks and her adult, rope-veined narrow hands and her goose-flesh white arms, and her shallow ears, and her unkempt armpits, there she was (my Lolita!), hopelessly worn at seventeen, with that baby, dreaming already in her of becoming a big shot and retiring around 2020 A. D. and I looked and looked at her, and knew as clearly as I know I am to die, that I loved her more than anything I had ever seen or imagined on earth, or hoped for anywhere else. She was only the faint violet whiff and dead leaf echo of the nymphet I had rolled myself upon with such cries in the past; an echo on the brink of a russet ravine, with a far wood under a white sky, and brown leaves choking the brook, and one last cricket in the crisp weeds… but thank God it was not that echo alone that I worshipped. What I used to pamper among the tangled vines of my heart, mon grand péché radieux, had dwindled to its essence: sterile and selfish vice, all that I canceled and cursed. You may jeer at me, and threaten to clear the court, but until I am gagged and half-throttled, I will shout my poor truth. I insist the world know how much I loved my Lolita, this Lolita, pale and polluted, and big with another’s child, but still gray-eyed, still sooty-lashed, still auburn and almond, still Carmencita, still mine; Changeons de vie, ma Carmen, allons vivre quelque part ou nous ne serons jamais séparés; Ohio? The wilds of Massachusetts? No matter, even if those eyes of hers would fade to myopic fish, and her nipples swell and crack, and her lovely young velvety delicate delta be tainted and torn – even then I would go mad with tenderness at the mere sight of your dear wan face, at the mere sound of your raucous young voice, my Lolita. (2.29)
Humbert hopes that Lolita’s child will be a boy. According to John Ray, Jr. (the author of the Foreword to Humbert’s manuscript), 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 Northwest:
For the benefit of old-fashioned readers who wish to follow the destinies of “real” people beyond the “true” story, a few details may be given as received from Mr. “Windmuller,” of “Ramsdale,” who desires his identity suppressed so that “the long shadows of this sorry and sordid business” should not reach the community to which he is proud to belong. His daughter, “Louise,” is by now a college sophomore. “Mona Dahl” is a student in Paris. “Rita” has recently married the proprietor of a hotel in Florida. Mrs. “Richard F. Schiller” died in childbed, giving birth to a stillborn girl, on Christmas Day 1952, in Gray Star, a settlement in the remotest Northwest. ‘Vivian Darkbloom’ has written a biography, ‘My Cue,’ to be published shortly, and critics who have perused the manuscript call it her best book. The caretakers of the various cemeteries involved report that no ghosts walk.
Humbert calls his criminal passion for Lolita mon grand péché radieux (my great radiant sin). In his poem Læti et Errabundi (“Happy and Wandering”) included in his collection Parallèlement (1889) Paul Veraline calls his past love (Arthur Rimbaud?) mon grand péché radieux:
On vous dit mort, vous. Que le Diable
Emporte avec qui la colporte
La nouvelle irrémédiable
Qui vient ainsi battre ma porte !
Je n'y veux rien croire. Mort, vous,
Toi, dieu parmi les demi-dieux !
Ceux qui le disent sont des fous.
Mort, mon grand péché radieux,
Tout ce passé brûlant encore
Dans mes veines et ma cervelle
Et qui rayonne et qui fulgore
Sur ma ferveur toujours nouvelle !
They say you’re dead – you! Devil
Take those hawkers of news,
Who beat on my door, repeating that evil
Irremediable word, whenever they choose!
I’ll not believe it. You, dead,
A god among demi-gods even!
Those who say it are mad,
Dead, you, my radiant sin,
All of our past still burning
In my mind, and in my veins;
You still shining, blazing;
My fervour, kindling again.
One of Verlaine's poems begins and ends in the lines:
Ô triste, triste était mon âme
À cause, à cause d'une femme.
Oh sad, sad was my soul
Because, because of a woman.
At the beginning of his manuscript Humbert calls Lolita “my sin, my soul:”
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. (1.1)
The title of Verlaine's poem Læti et Errabundi is an homage to Baudelaire, the author of Moesta et errabunda (“Grieving and Wandering”). "Light of my life, fire of my loins" seems to hint at etoile de mes yeux, soleil de ma nature, mon ange et ma passion (“star of my eyes, sun of my nature, my angel and my passion”), as in his poem Une Charogne (“A Carcass”) Baudelaire calls his mistress:
— 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)
Baudelaire is the author of the inscriptions for Lola de Valence, a picture by Édouard Manet, and and Le Tasse en prison, a picture by Eugène Delacroix. Humbert writes Lolita in legal captivity and dies on Nov. 16, 1952, a few days before his trial is scheduled to start. Lolita outlives Humbert only by forty days. In his poem O net, ne raskolduesh’ serdtsa ty… (“Oh no ! You cannot disenchant my heart...” 1912) Alexander Blok mentions his shade that will appear on the ninth and fortieth day after his death:
И тень моя пройдёт перед тобою
В девятый день, и в день сороковой -
Неузнанной, красивой, неживою.
Такой ведь ты искала? - Да, такой.
And suddenly you’ll see my shade appear
Before you on the ninth and fortieth day:
Unrecognized, handsome and drear,
The kind of shade you looked for, by the way!
In the first poem of his cycle Karmen ("Carmen," 1914), Kak okean menyaet tsvet ("Just as the ocean changes its color"), Blok mentions Carmencita (Humbert calls Lolita Carmencita):
Как океан меняет цвет,
Когда в нагромождённой туче
Вдруг полыхнет мигнувший свет, —
Так сердце под грозой певучей
Меняет строй, боясь вздохнуть,
И кровь бросается в ланиты,
И слёзы счастья душат грудь
Перед явленьем Карменситы.
In the seventh poem of Blok's cycle Zhizn’ moego priyatelya ("The Life of my Pal," 1915), Greshi, poka tebya volnuyut / tvoi nevinnye grekhi ("Do sin, while you innocent sins still excite you"), the devils speak:
Сверкнут ли дерзостные очи -
Ты их сверканий не отринь,
Грехам, вину и страстной ночи
Шепча заветное «аминь».
...И станешь падать — но толпою
Мы все, как ангелы, чисты,
Тебя подхватим, чтоб пятою
О камень не преткнулся ты...
Should the daring eyes sparkle at you,
do not reject their sparkling,
whispering "amen"
to sins, wine and the amorous night.
...And you'll begin to fall, but in a crowd
we all, pure as angels,
shall pick you up in order to prevent
you to stumble on the stone...
In VN's novel Transparent Things (1972) the invisible narrators who prevent Hugh Person (the protagonist who dies in a hotel fire) from falling down from the window of his hotel room seem to be the devils.