According to Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Lolita, 1955), it took him fifty-six days (eight weeks) to write Lolita:
When I started, fifty-six days ago, to write Lolita, first in the psychopathic ward for observation, and then in this well-heated, albeit tombal, seclusion, I thought I would use these notes in toto at my trial, to save not my head, of course, but my soul. In mind-composition, however, I realized that I could not parade living Lolita. I still may use parts of this memoir in hermetic sessions, but publication is to be deferred. (2.36)
Humbert receives a letter from Lolita on Sept. 22, 1952, visits her in Coalmont on the next day (Sept. 23), revisits Ramsdale (where he finds out Quilty's address) on Sept. 24, and murders Quilty on Sept. 25. There are fifty-two days between September 25 (the day of Humbert’s arrest) and December 16 (the day of Humbert’s death). 56 – 52 = 4. Chetyre dnya ("Four Days," 1877) is a story by Vsevolod Garshin. It is the tragedy of a man who killed. In March, 1888, Garshin committed suicide by throwing himself over the banisters from a staircase landing. Chekhov dedicated to the memory of Garshin his story Pripadok (“A Nervous Breakdown,” 1888). Its main character, the law student Vasiliev, suffers mental anguish after he was dragged by his friends on a tour of brothels. In Chekhov’s story the medical student sings from Dargomyzhsky’s opera The Mermaid (1855):
«Невольно к этим грустным берегам, — запел медик приятным тенором, — меня влечёт неведомая сила...»
— «Вот мельница... — подтянул ему художник. — Она уж развалилась...»
— «Вот мельница... Она уж развалилась...», — повторил медик, поднимая брови и грустно покачивая головою. Он помолчал, потёр лоб, припоминая слова, и запел громко и так хорошо, что на него оглянулись прохожие:
— «Здесь некогда меня встречала свободного свободная любовь...»
"Against my will an unknown force," hummed the medical student in his agreeable tenor, "has led me to these mournful shores."
"Behold the mill . . ." the artist seconded him, "in ruins now. . . ."
"Behold the mill . . . in ruins now," the medical student repeated, raising his eyebrows and shaking his head mournfully.
He paused, rubbed his forehead, trying to remember the words, and then sang aloud, so well that passers-by looked round:
"Here in old days when I was free,
Love, free, unfettered, greeted me." (chapter I)
Rusalka (“The Mermaid,” 1829) is an unfinished drama in blank verse by Pushkin (in 1942 VN wrote its conclusion, “The Final Scene of Pushkin’s Mermaid”). Nevol’no k etim grustnym beregam (Against my will to these sad shores) brings to mind Drugie berega (“Other Shores,” 1954), the Russian version of VN’s autobiography Speak, Memory (1951). The Russian title of VN’s autobiography hints at a line in Pushkin’s poem Vnov’ ya posetil (“I revisited again,” 1835): Inye berega, inye volny (Other shores, other waves). VN was born in 1899, a hundred years after Pushkin (who was born in 1799, in the reign of Paul I). The reign of Paul I lasted four years, four months and four days. In his first great ode, Vol’nost’ (“Liberty,” 1817), Pushkin describes the assassination of Paul I in March, 1801. In a letter of April 22-24, 1834, to his wife Pushkin says that he saw three tsars (Paul I, Alexander I and Nicholas I):
Видел я трех царей: первый велел снять с меня картуз и пожурил за меня мою няньку; второй меня не жаловал; третий хоть и упек меня в камер-пажи под старость лет, но променять его на четвертого не желаю; от добра добра не ищут.
I have seen three tsars: the first ordered my little cap to be taken off me and gave my nurse a scolding on my account; the second was not gracious to me; although the third has saddled me with being a Kammerpage close to my old age, I have no desire for him to be replaced by a fourth.
In his essay O Chekhove (“On Chekhov,” 1929) written for the twenty-fifth anniversary of Chekhov’s death Hodasevich contrasts Chekhov with Derzhavin (a poet who quarreled with three emperors and swore at Paul I, to his face, with an unprintable word) and points out that one of the two emperors during whose reign Chekhov wrote his stroies and plays did not even know that he had such a subject: Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, the doctor:
Державин суров и строг, Чехов снисходителен. Державин упрям и сварлив, Чехов мягок, доброжелателен. Державин горд и честолюбив откровенно, даже до дикости; о себе он "мечтает":
Един есть Бог, един - Державин.
Чехов до той же крайности скромен: Толстой со слезами на глазах расхваливает его рассказ; Чехов краснеет, молчит, протирает пенсне и, наконец, говорит: "Там - опечатки"... Державин не стыдится гоняться за орденами; единственный орденок свой, звание почетного академика, Чехов при первом удобном случае возвращает обратно. Державин ссорится с тремя императорами, он топочет ногами на Екатерину и в глаза обзывает грозного Павла таким словом, какого и напечатать нельзя. Один из двух императоров, при которых протекла творческая жизнь Чехова, даже не знал, что есть у него такой подданный: Антон Павлович Чехов, врач.
In his poem Zvyozdy (“The Stars,” 1925) Hodasevich mentions Den’ Chetvyortyi (Day Four) in which God created the stars:
Вверху — грошовый дом свиданий.
Внизу — в грошовом «Казино»
Расселись зрители. Темно.
Пора щипков и ожиданий.
Тот захихикал, тот зевнул…
Но неудачник облыселый
Высоко палочкой взмахнул.
Открылись темные пределы,
И вот — сквозь дым табачных туч —
Прожектора зеленый луч.
На авансцене, в полумраке,
Раскрыв золотозубый рот,
Румяный хахаль в шапокляке
О звездах песенку поет.
И под двуспальные напевы
На полинялый небосвод
Ведут сомнительные девы
Свой непотребный хоровод.
Сквозь облака, по сферам райским
(Улыбочки туда-сюда)
С каким-то веером китайским
Плывет Полярная Звезда.
За ней вприпрыжку поспешая,
Та пожирней, та похудей,
Семь звезд — Медведица Большая —
Трясут четырнадцать грудей.
И до последнего раздета,
Горя брильянтовой косой,
Вдруг жидколягая комета
Выносится перед толпой.
Глядят солдаты и портные
На рассусаленный сумбур,
Играют сгустки жировые
На бедрах Etoile d`amour,
Несутся звезды в пляске, в тряске,
Звучит оркестр, поет дурак,
Летят алмазные подвязки
Из мрака в свет, из света в мрак.
И заходя в дыру все ту же,
И восходя на небосклон, —
Так вот в какой постыдной луже
Твой День Четвертый отражен!..
Нелегкий труд, о Боже правый,
Всю жизнь воссоздавать мечтой
Твой мир, горящий звездной славой
И первозданною красой.
According to John Ray, Jr. (the author of the Foreword to Humbert’s manuscript), Mrs. “Richard F. Schiller” (Lolita’s married name) outlived Humbert by forty days and 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 the “real” people beyond the “true” story, a few details may be given as received from Mr. “Windmuller,” or “Ramsdale,” who desires his identity suppressed so that “the long shadow 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.
In his poem Pod zemlyoy (“In the Underground,” 1927) Hodasevich describes a man who, like Humbert, loves little girls:
Где пахнет чёрною карболкой
И провонявшею землёй,
Стоит, склоняя профиль колкий,
Пред изразцовою стеной.
Не отойдёт, не обернётся,
Лишь весь качается слегка,
Да как-то судорожно бьётся
Потёртый локоть сюртука.
Заходят школьники, солдаты,
Рабочий в блузе голубой -
Он всё стоит, к стене прижатый
Своею дикою мечтой.
Здесь создаёт и разрушает
Он сладострастные миры,
А из соседней конуры
За ним старуха наблюдает.
Потом в открывшуюся дверь
Видны подушки, стулья, стклянки.
Вошла - и слышатся теперь
Обрывки злобной перебранки.
Потом вонючая метла
Безумца гонит из угла.
И вот, из полутьмы глубокой
Старик сутулый, но высокий,
В таком почтенном сюртуке,
В когда-то модном котелке,
Идёт по лестнице широкой,
Как тень Аида, - в белый свет,
В берлинский день, в блестящий бред.
А солнце ясно, небо сине,
А сверху синяя пустыня...
И злость, и скорбь моя кипит,
И трость моя в чужой гранит
Неумолкаемо стучит.
VN translated into English Hodasevich's poem Obez'yana ("The Monkey," 1919). Obez'yana is Russian for both "monkey" and "ape." In his essay "On a Book Entitled Lolita" (1956) VN says that the initial shiver of inspiration for Lolita was prompted by a newspaper story about an ape in the Jardin des Plantes, who, after months of coaxing by a scientist, produced the first drawing ever charcooled by an animal:
The first little throb of Lolita went through me late in 1939 or early in 1940, in Paris, at a time when I was laid up with a severe attack of intercostal neuralgia. As far as I can recall, the initial shiver of inspiration was somehow prompted by a newspaper story about an ape in the Jardin des Plantes, who, after months of coaxing by a scientist, produced the first drawing ever charcooled by an animal: This sketch showed the bars of the poor creature’s cage. The impulse I record had no textual connection with the ensuing train of thought, which resulted, however, in a prototype of my present novel, a short story some thirty pages long. I wrote it in Russian, the language in which I had been writing novels since 1924 (the best of these are not translated into English, and all are prohibited for political reasons in Russia). The man was a central European, the anonymous nymphet was French, and the loci were Paris and Provence. I had him marry the little girl’s sick mother who soon died, and after a thwarted attempt to take advantage of the orphan in a hotel room, Arthur (for that was his name) threw himself under the wheels of a truck. I read the story one blue-papered wartime night to a group of friends — Mark Aldanov, two social revolutionaries, and a woman doctor; but I was not pleased with the thing and destroyed it sometime after moving to America in 1940.