After murdering Quilty, Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Lolita, 1955) wonders if some surgeon of genius might not alter his own career, and perhaps the whole destiny of mankind, by reviving quilted Quilty, Clare Obscure:
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. (2.36)
Clare Obscure brings to mind Thor Lange’s poem Clair-Obscur (“Chiaroscuro”) translated into Russian by Balmont:
Застенчивая Ночь, твои немые ласки
Я с жадностью ловлю, ты нежно льнешь ко мне,
Ко мне, чья молодость - слова забытой сказки,
Кто счастье знал лишь миг, и то давно, во сне.
Люблю, люблю тебя. Чуть шепчущий и мглистый,
Твой тихий полумрак - приют от вечных бурь,
Меня пугает свет, мне страшен день лучистый,
Мне бездной кажется глубокая лазурь.
Да, я ночной цветок. Смотри, такой печальный.
О Ночь, возьми меня и дай мне мир вкусить, -
Пусть буду я всегда, как серафим опальный,
На розовых крылах сквозь сумерки скользить.
Serafim opal’nyi (a disgraced seraph) in the poem’s penultimate line brings to mind the seraphs mentioned by Humbert Humbert at the beginning of Lolita:
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)
In the novel’s Russian version (1967) Gumbert Gumbert (Humbert Humbert in Russian spelling) calls them Edgarovy serafimy (Edgar’s seraphs):
Уважаемые присяжные женского и мужеского пола! Экспонат Номер Первый представляет собой то, чему так завидовали Эдгаровы серафимы - худо осведомленные, простодушные, благороднокрылые серафимы... Полюбуйтесь-ка на этот клубок терний. (1.1)
In his poem Annabel Lee (1849) Edgar A. Poe mentions “the wingèd seraphs of Heaven.” 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 adds that tomorrow or the day after tomorrow he will start reading Poe:
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.
Chekhov’s letter to Balmont is dated January 1, 1902. Dolores Haze (Lolita’s full name) was born on January 1, 1935. In a letter of October 29, 1897, to Suvorin Chekhov (who stayed in Pension Russe in Nice) asks Suvorin to bring from Paris Le Rire, zhurnal s portretom Gumberta (the magazine issue with King Umberto’s portrait):
Привезите журнал «Le rire» с портретом Гумберта, если попадётся на глаза.
Bring the issue of Le Rire with Umberto’s portrait, if you catch sight of it.
A Danish poet and linguist, Thor Lange (1851-1915) lived in Russia since 1875. He has the same surname as Fritz Lange (1864-1952), a German orthopedic surgeon. The latter is almost a namesake of Fritz Lang (1890-1976), an Austrian-German-American film director, one of the best-known émigrés from Germany's school of Expressionism. Lang's most celebrated films include the groundbreaking futuristic Metropolis (1927). Clare Obscure brings to mind VN’s cinematic novel Camera Obscura (1933) translated into English by the author as Laughter in the Dark (1938). Fritz Lang was dubbed the "Master of Darkness" by the British Film Institute.
In Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night or What You Will (Act Five, scene 1) Sir Toby Belch mentions Dick surgeon:
DUKE ORSINO
How now, gentleman! how is't with you?
SIR TOBY BELCH
That's all one: has hurt me, and there's the end
on't. Sot, didst see Dick surgeon, sot?
CLOWN
O, he's drunk, Sir Toby, an hour agone; his eyes
were set at eight i' the morning.
Dick is the name of Lolita’s husband (Richard F. Schiller).
The Surgeon's Warning is a poem by Robert Southey.