In VN’s novel Lolita (1955) Clare Quilty wants to smoke a Drome cigarette and “quotes” Kipling:
I slapped down his outstretched hand and he managed to knock over a box on a low table near him. It ejected a handful of cigarettes.
“Here they are,” he said cheerfully. “You recall Kipling: une femme est une femme, mais un Caporal est une cigarette? Now we need matches.”
“Quilty,” I said. “I want you to concentrate. You are going to die in a moment. The hereafter for all we know may be an eternal state of excruciating insanity. You smoked your last cigarette yesterday. Concentrate. Try to understand what is happening to you.”
He kept taking the Drome cigarette apart and munching bits of it. (2.35)
In the penultimate couplet of his poem The Betrothed (1886) Kipling says:
A million surplus Maggies are willing to bear the yoke;
And a woman is only a woman, but a good Cigar is a Smoke.
The Betrothed (“I Promessi sposi,” 1827) is a historical novel in three volumes by Alessandro Manzoni. In Chapter Eight (XXXV: 3) of Eugene Onegin Pushkin mentions Manzoni (one of the authors whom Onegin reads):
Стал вновь читать он без разбора.
Прочел он Гиббона, Руссо,
Манзони, Гердера, Шамфора,
Madame de Stael, Биша, Тиссо,
Прочел скептического Беля,
Прочел творенья Фонтенеля,
Прочел из наших кой-кого,
Не отвергая ничего:
И альманахи, и журналы,
Где поученья нам твердят,
Где нынче так меня бранят,
А где такие мадригалы
Себе встречал я иногда:
Е sempre bene, господа.
Again, without discrimination,
he started reading. He read Gibbon,
Rousseau, Manzoni, Herder,
Chamfort, Mme de Staël, Bichat, Tissot.
He read the skeptic Bayle,
he read the works of Fontenelle,
he read some [authors] of our own,
without rejecting anything —
the “almanacs” and the reviews
where sermons into us are drummed,
where I'm today abused so much
but where such madrigals addressed tome
I used to meet with now and then:
e sempre bene, gentlemen.
In his EO Commentary (vol. III, p. 219) VN points out that there is a canceled reading, “Lalande” (Joseph Jérôme Lefrançois de Lalande, 1732-1807, French astronomer), instead of “Manzoni,” in the fair copy. Mrs. Richard F. Schiller (Lolita’s married name) dies in childbed in Gray Star, a settlement in the remotest Northwest. The epigraph to VN’s novel Priglashenie na kazn’ (“Invitation to a Beheading,” 1935) is from Discours sur les ombres by the invented French thinker Pierre Delalande:
Comme un fou se croit Dieu
nous nous croyons mortels.
Delalande. Discours sur les ombre
In VN’s novel Dar (“The Gift,” 1937) Fyodor speaks of Alexander Yakovlevich Chernyshevski’s death and mentions the French thinker Delalande, the author of Discours sur les ombres:
Но был один человек, мнение которого Фёдор Константинович уже узнать не мог. Александр Яковлевич Чернышевский умер незадолго до выхода книги.
Когда однажды французского мыслителя Delalande на чьих-то похоронах спросили, почему он не обнажает головы (ne se de'couvre pas), он отвечал: я жду, чтобы смерть начала первая (qu'elle se de'couvre la premie`re). В этом есть метафизическая негалантность, но смерть большего не стоит. Боязнь рождает благоговение, благоговение ставит жертвенник, его дым восходит к небу, там принимает образ крыл, и склоненная боязнь к нему обращает молитву. Религия имеет такое же отношение к загробному состоянию человека, какое имеет математика к его состоянию земному: то и другое только условия игры. Вера в Бога и вера в цифру: местная истина, истина места. Я знаю, что смерть сама по себе никак не связана с внежизненной областью, ибо дверь есть лишь выход из дома, а не часть его окрестности, какой является дерево или холм. Выйти как-нибудь нужно, "но я отказываюсь видеть в двери больше, чем дыру да то, что сделали столяр и плотник" (Delalande, Discours sur les ombres p. 45 et ante). Опять же: несчастная маршрутная мысль, с которой давно свыкся человеческий разум (жизнь в виде некоего пути) есть глупая иллюзия: мы никуда не идем, мы сидим дома. Загробное окружает нас всегда, а вовсе не лежит в конце какого-то путешествия. В земном доме, вместо окна -- зеркало; дверь до поры до времени затворена; но воздух входит сквозь щели. "Наиболее доступный для наших домоседных чувств образ будущего постижения окрестности долженствующей раскрыться нам по распаде тела, это -- освобождение духа из глазниц плоти и превращение наше в одно свободное сплошное око, зараз видящее все стороны света, или, иначе говоря: сверхчувственное прозрение мира при нашем внутреннем участии" (там же, стр. 64). Но все это только символы, символы, которые становятся обузой для мысли в то мгновение, как она приглядится к ним...
But there was one man whose opinion Fyodor was no longer able to ascertain. Alexander Yakovlevich Chernyshevski had died not long before the book appeared.
When the French thinker Delalande was asked at somebody’s funeral why he did not uncover himself (ne se découvre pas), he replied: “I am waiting for death to do it first” (qu’elle se découvre la première). There is a lack of metaphysical gallantry in this, but death deserves no more. Fear gives birth to sacred awe, sacred awe erects a sacrificial altar, its smoke ascends to the sky, there assumes the shape of wings, and bowing fear addresses a prayer to it. Religion has the same relation to man’s heavenly condition that mathematics has to his earthly one: both the one and the other are merely the rules of the game. Belief in God and belief in numbers: local truth and truth of location. I know that death in itself is in no way connected with the topography of the hereafter, for a door is merely the exit from the house and not a part of its surroundings, like a tree or a hill. One has to get out somehow, “but I refuse to see in a door more than a hole, and a carpenter’s job” (Delalande, Discours sur les ombres, p. 45). And then again: the unfortunate image of a “road” to which the human mind has become accustomed (life as a kind of journey) is a stupid illusion: we are not going anywhere, we are sitting at home. The other world surrounds us always and is not at all at the end of some pilgrimage. In our earthly house, windows are replaced by mirrors; the door, until a given time, is closed; but air comes in through the cracks. “For our stay-at-home senses the most accessible image of our future comprehension of those surroundings which are due to be revealed to us with the disintegration of the body is the liberation of the soul from the eye-sockets of the flesh and our transformation into one complete and free eye, which can simultaneously see in all directions, or to put it differently: a supersensory insight into the world accompanied by our inner participation.” (Ibid. p. 64). But all this is only symbols—symbols which become a burden to the mind as soon as it takes a close look at them…. (Chapter Five)
The Chernyshevski couple, Alexander Yakovlevich and Alexandra Yakovlevna, have the same name and patronymic as goluboy vorishka (the bashful chiseller) and his wife in Ilf and Petrov’s novel Dvenadtsat’ stulyev (“The Twelve Chairs,” 1928):
Завхоз 2-го дома Старсобеса был застенчивый ворюга. Всё существо его протестовало против краж, но не красть он не мог. Он крал, и ему было стыдно. Крал он постоянно, постоянно стыдился, и поэтому его хорошо бритые щёчки всегда горели румянцем смущения, стыдливости, застенчивости и конфуза. Завхоза звали Александром Яковлевичем, а жену его – Александрой Яковлевной. Он называл её Сашхен, она звала его Альхен. Свет не видывал ещё такого голубого воришки, как Александр Яковлевич.
The Assistant Warden of the Second Home of Stargorod Social Security Administration was a shy little thief. His whole being protested against stealing, yet it was impossible for him not to steal. He stole and was ashamed of himself. He stole constantly and was constantly ashamed of himself, which was why his smoothly shaven cheeks always burned with a blush of confusion, shame, bashfulness and embarrassment. The assistant warden's name was Alexander Yakovlevich, and his wife's name was Alexandra Yakovlevna. He used to call her Sashchen, and she used to call him Alchen. The world has never seen such a bashful chiseller as Alexander Yakovlevich. (chapter VIII “The Bashful Chiseller”)
In Ilf and Petrov's novel Zolotoy telyonok ("The Golden Calf," 1931) Ostap Bender and Alexander Ivanovich Koreyko cross the desert on camels. The title of Ilf and Petrov's novel brings to mind E. A. Poe's story The Gold-Bug (1843). The characters in Poe’s story The Spectacles (1844) include Madame Eugenie Lalande. In 1835 Poe wrote a favorable review of Manzoni’s "Betrothed Lovers." In his novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (1837) Poe mentions the dromedary, or camel of the desert:
In a subsequent portion of this narrative I shall have frequent occasion to mention this species of tortoise. It is found principally, as most of my readers may know, in the group of islands called the Gallipagos, which, indeed, derive their name from the animal-the Spanish word Gallipago meaning a fresh-water terrapin. From the peculiarity of their shape and action they have been sometimes called the elephant tortoise. They are frequently found of an enormous size. I have myself seen several which would weigh from twelve to fifteen hundred pounds, although I do not remember that any navigator speaks of having seen them weighing more than eight hundred. Their appearance is singular, and even disgusting. Their steps are very slow, measured, and heavy, their bodies being carried about a foot from the ground. Their neck is long, and exceedingly slender; from eighteen inches to two feet is a very common length, and I killed one, where the distance from the shoulder to the extremity of the head was no less than three feet ten inches. The head has a striking resemblance to that of a serpent. They can exist without food for an almost incredible length of time, instances having been known where they have been thrown into the hold of a vessel and lain two years without nourishment of any kind-being as fat, and, in every respect, in as good order at the expiration of the time as when they were first put in. In one particular these extraordinary animals bear a resemblance to the dromedary, or camel of the desert. In a bag at the root of the neck they carry with them a constant supply of water. In some instances, upon killing them after a full year’s deprivation of all nourishment, as much as three gallons of perfectly sweet and fresh water have been found in their bags. Their food is chiefly wild parsley and celery, with purslain, sea-kelp, and prickly pears, upon which latter vegetable they thrive wonderfully, a great quantity of it being usually found on the hillsides near the shore wherever the animal itself is discovered. They are excellent and highly nutritious food, and have, no doubt, been the means of preserving the lives of thousands of seamen employed in the whale-fishery and other pursuits in the Pacific. (Chapter 12)
The entries from a comparatively recent (1946) Who's Who in the Limelight that Humbert finds in the prison library begin with "Pym, Roland:"
I had my little revenge in due time. A man from Pasadena told me one day that Mrs. Maximovich neé Zborovski had died in childbirth around 1945; the couple had somehow got over to California and had been used there, for an excellent salary, in a year-long experiment conducted by a distinguished American ethnologist. The experiment dealt with human and racial reactions to a diet of bananas and dates in a constant position on all fours. My informant, a doctor, swore he had seen with his own eyes obese Valechka and her colonel, by then gray-haired and also quite corpulent, diligently crawling about the well-swept floors of a brightly lit set of rooms (fruit in one, water in another, mats in a third and so on) in the company of several other hired quadrupeds, selected from indigent and helpless groups. I tried to find the results of these tests in the Review of Anthropology; but they appear not to have been published yet. These scientific products take of course some time to fructuate. I hope they will be illustrated with photographs when they do get printed, although it is not very likely that a prison library will harbor such erudite works. The one to which I am restricted these days, despite my lawyer’s favors, is a good example of the inane eclecticism governing the selection of books in prison libraries. They have the Bible, of course, and Dickens (an ancient set, N.Y., G.W. Dillingham, Publisher, MDCCCLXXXVII); and the Children’s Encyclopedia (with some nice photographs of sunshine-haired Girl Scouts in shorts), and A Murder Is Announced by Agatha Christie; but they also have such coruscating trifles as A Vagabond in Italy by Percy Elphinstone, author of Venice Revisited, Boston, 1868, and a comparatively recent (1946) Who’s Who in the Limelight - actors, producers, playwrights, and shots of static scenes. In looking through the latter volume, I was treated last night to one of those dazzling coincidences that logicians loathe and poets love. I transcribe most of the page:
Pym, Roland. Born in Lundy, Mass., 1922. Received stage training at Elsinore Playhouse, Derby, N.Y. Made debut in Sunburst. Among his many appearances are Two Blocks from Here, The Girl in Green, Scrambled Husbands, The Strange Mushroom, Touch and Go, John Lovely, I Was Dreaming of You.
Quilty, Clare, American dramatist. Born in Ocean City, N.J., 1911. Educated at Columbia University. Started on a commercial career but turned to playwriting. Author of The Little Nymph, The Lady Who Loved Lightning (in collaboration with Vivian Darkbloom), Dark Age, The strange Mushroom, Fatherly Love, and others. His many plays for children are notable. Little Nymph (1940) traveled 14,000 miles and played 280 performances on the road during the winter before ending in New York. Hobbies: fast cars, photography, pets.
Quine, Dolores. Born in 1882, in Dayton, Ohio. Studied for stage at American Academy. First played in Ottawa in 1900. Made New York debut in 1904 in Never Talk to Strangers. Has disappeared since in [a list of some thirty plays follows].
How the look of my dear love’s name even affixed to some old hag of an actress, still makes me rock with helpless pain! Perhaps, she might have been an actress too. Born 1935. Appeared (I notice the slip of my pen in the preceding paragraph, but please do not correct it, Clarence) in The Murdered Playwright. Quine the Swine. Guilty of killing Quilty. Oh, my Lolita, I have only words to play with! (1.8)
At the end of Poe’s Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (a novel that was translated into Russian by Balmont) vengeance is mentioned:
"I have graven it within the hills, and my vengeance upon the dust within the rock."
At the end of the Russian Lolita (1967) Gumbert Gumbert calls Quilty Kurilkuilty (“Smoquilty”) and Kler-Dromader (“Clare the Dromedary”):
Мелькнула досужая мысль, что, может быть, гениальный хирург изменит собственную карьеру и вместе с нею — как знать — всю судьбу человечества, тем, что воскресит Курилкуильти, Клэра-Дромадера.
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. (2.36)
“Clare Obscure” seems to hint at Clair-Obscur, a poem by Thor Lange (a Danish poet and linguist, 1851-1915, who lived in Russia since 1875) 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.
Balmont is the author of Budem kak solntse (“Let's Be Like the Sun,” 1903), a collection of poetry. In his poem “Wanted” (composed in a madhouse after Lolita was abducted from him by Quilty) Humbert mentions an old perfume called Soleil Vert (Green Sun):
My Dolly, my folly! Her eyes were vair,
And never closed when I kissed her.
Know an old perfume called Soleil Vert?
Are you from Paris, mister? (2.25)
An old perfume called Soleil Vert brings to mind the half of a Caporal Vert cigarette mentioned by VN in his autobiography Speak, Memory (1951):
Vladislav Hodasevich used to complain, in the twenties and thirties, that young émigré poets had borrowed their art form from him while following the leading cliques in modish angoisse and soul-reshaping. I developed a great liking for this bitter man, wrought of irony and metallic-like genius, whose poetry was as complex a marvel as that of Tyutchev or Blok. He was, physically, of a sickly aspect, with contemptuous nostrils and beetling brows, and when I conjure him up in my mind he never rises from the hard chair on which he sits, his thin legs crossed, his eyes glittering with malevolence and wit, his long fingers screwing into a holder the half of a Caporal Vert cigarette. There are few things in modern world poetry comparable to the poems of his Heavy Lyre, but unfortunately for his fame the perfect frankness he indulged in when voicing his dislikes made him some terrible enemies among the most powerful critical coteries. Not all the mystagogues were Dostoevskian Alyoshas; there were also a few Smerdyakovs in the group, and Hodasevich’s poetry was played down with the thoroughness of a revengeful racket. (Chapter Fourteen, 2)
According to Quilty, un Caporal est une cigarette. Hodasevich’s collection Tyazhyolaya lira (“Heavy Lyre,” 1923) brings to mind VN’s story Tyazhyolyi dym (“Torpid Smoke,” 1935) in which "The Twelve Chairs" and Gaito Gazdanov's novel Vecher u Kler ("Evening at Claire's," 1929) are mentioned:
Он опять подвинулся к освещенному столу, с надеждой вспомнив, что куда-то засунул забытую однажды приятелем коробочку папирос. Теперь уже не видно было блестящей булавки, а клеенчатая тетрадь лежала иначе, полураскрывшись (как человек меняет положение во сне). Кажется - между книгами. Полки тянулись сразу над столом, свет лампы добирался до корешков. Тут был и случайный хлам (больше всего), и учебники по политической экономии (я хотел совсем другое, но отец настоял на своем); были и любимые, в разное время потрафившие душе, книги, "Шатер" и "Сестра моя жизнь", "Вечер у Клэр" и "Bal du compte d'Orgel" ("Бал графа д'Оржеля" (франц.)), "Защита Лужина" и "Двенадцать стульев", Гофман и Гёльдерлин, Боратынский и старый русский Бэдекер. Он почувствовал, уже не первый,- нежный, таинственный толчок в душе и замер, прислушиваясь - не повторится ли? Душа была напряжена до крайности, мысли затмевались, и, придя в себя, он не сразу вспомнил, почему стоит у стола и трогает книги. Бело-синяя картонная коробочка, засунутая между Зомбартом и Достоевским, оказалась пустой. По-видимому, не отвертеться. Была, впрочем, еще одна возможность.
He examined again his lamp-lit island, remembering hopefully that he had put somewhere a pack of cigarettes which one evening a friend had happened to leave behind. The shiny safety pin had disappeared, while the exercise book now lay otherwise and was half-open (as a person changes position in sleep). Perhaps, between my books. The light just reached their spines on the shelves above the desk. Here was haphazard trash (predominantly), and manuals of political economy (I wanted something quite different, but Father won out); there were also some favorite books that at one time or another had done his heart good: Gumilyov’s collection of poems Shatyor (Tent), Pasternak’s Sestra moya Zhizn’ (Life, My Sister), Gazdanov’s Vecher u Kler (Evening at Claire’s), Radiguet’s Le Bal du Comte d’Orgel, Sirin’s Zashchita Luzhina (Luzhin’s Defense), Ilf and Petrov’s Dvenadtsat’ Stul’ev (Twelve Chairs), Hoffmann, Hölderlin, Baratynski, and an old Russian guidebook. Again that gentle mysterious shock. He listened. Would the thrill be repeated? His mind was in a state of extreme tension, logical thought was eclipsed, and when he came out of his trance, it took him some time to recall why he was standing near the shelves and fingering books. The blue-and-white package that he had stuck between Professor Sombart and Dostoyevski proved to be empty. Well, it had to be done, no getting out of it. There was, however, another possibility.