In VN’s novel Lolita (1955) Lolita is sent by her mother to Camp Q where she is debauched by Charlie Holmes, the camp-mistress's son. Q in the camp's name is a qui pro quo (Lat., "who instead of whom," a bummel). Quo vadis? ("Whither goest thou?") are St. Peter's first words to the risen Christ during their encounter along the Appian Way. To Peter's question Christ replies: Romam eo iterum crucifigi ("I am going to Rome to be crucified again"). Peter then gains the courage to continue his ministry and returns to the city, where he is martyred by being crucified upside-down. Emperor Nero (r. 54-68 AD) blamed Christians for the Great Fire of Rome in 64 AD. In June, 1947, thirty-seven-year-old Humbert Humbert meets twelve-year-old Dolores Haze and falls in love with her, because on the eve McCoo's house was destroyed by fire. In September, 1952, when Humbert visits Lolita (now married to Dick Schiller) in Coalmont, she tells him that Duk Duk Ranch where she stayed with Clare Quilty (the playwright who abducted Lolita from the Elphinstone hospital) and his friends had burned to the ground.
Quo Vadis: A Narrative of the Time of Nero (1895-96) is a historical novel by Henryk Sienkiewicz (a Polish writer, 1846-1916). In his memoir essay Talks with Tolstoy (1901) included in his book Tolstoy and his Problems Aylmer Maude quotes Tolstoy's words about Sienkiewicz's novel. According to Tolstoy, in Quo Vadis the Christians are portrayed as too white and the pagans are portrayed as too black:
Сенкевич, говорит Толстой, всегда интересен, по слишком окрашен католицизмом. В «Quo vadis» христиане изображены слишком белыми, а язычники — слишком черными. На самом же деле эти две группы людей в какой-то мере смыкаются друг с другом, как это, несомненно, и имело место в реальной жизни, подобно тому, как в настоящее время преследуемые русские штундисты имеют много разновидностей и частично даже сливаются с православными <...>.
In an attempt to save his life Quilty (whom Humbert tracked down to his house near Parkington) tries to seduce Humbert with his collection of erotica and mentions the in folio de-luxe Bagration Island by the explorer and psychoanalyst Melanie Weiss (whose name suggests black and white colors):
“Oh, another thing - you are going to like this. I have an absolutely unique collection of erotica upstairs. Just to mention one item: the in folio de-luxe Bagration Island by the explorer and psychoanalyst Melanie Weiss, a remarkable lady, a remarkable work - drop that gun - with photographs of eight hundred and something male organs she examined and measured in 1932 on Bagration, in the Barda Sea, very illuminating graphs, plotted with love under pleasant skies - drop that gun - and moreover I can arrange for you to attend executions, not everybody knows that the chair is painted yellow -” (2.35)
Prince Bagration is a character in Tolstoy's novel Voyna i mir ("War and Peace," 1969). As pointed out by Marina Grishakova, Melanie Weiss is a cross between the two lady psychoanalysts - Melanie Klein and Marie Bonaparte. The latter is the author of a well-known study of the life and works of E. A. Poe (the author of Annabel Lee, a poem alluded to at the beginning of Lolita). The characters in "War and Peace" include Napoleon Bonaparte, the emperor of the French. General Bagration was felled in the battle of Borodino. Before the battle (Sept. 7, 1812) Napoleon (whose words are quoted by Tolstoy) said: "The chessmen are set up, the game will begin tomorrow!" Melanie Weiss and Dr. Blanche Schwarzmann make one think of white and black chessmen and white and black squares on a chessboard. In his essay Aylmer Maude compares his talks with Tolstoy to a good chess game:
В хорошей шахматной партии, когда играет знаток, есть логическая последовательность между ходами, так что даже самые неожиданные ходы имеют свою определенную цель. В этом ее отличие от дилетантских партий, где ходы следуют один за другим случайно, лишь изредка перемежаясь удачными идеями. Подобное же различие существует и между беседой с человеком, обладающим ясным представлением о цели жизни, и беседой с людьми, совершенно несведущими в этом вопросе.
Dr. Blanche Schwarzmann (a negative, as it were, of Melanie Weiss) is mentioned by John Ray, Jr., in his Foreword to Humbert's manuscript:
Viewed simply as a novel, “Lolita” deals with situations and emotions that would remain exasperatingly vague to the reader had their expression been etiolated by means of platitudinous evasions. True, not a single obscene term is to be found in the whole work; indeed, the robust philistine who is conditioned by modern conventions into accepting without qualms a lavish array of four-letter words in a banal novel, will be quite shocked by their absence here. If, however, for this paradoxical prude’s comfort, an editor attempted to dilute or omit scenes that a certain type of mind might call “aphrodisiac” (see in this respect the monumental decision rendered December 6, 1933, by Hon. John M. Woolsey in regard to another, considerably more outspoken, book), one would have to forego the publication of “Lolita” altogether, since those very scenes that one might inpetly accuse of sensuous existence of their own, are the most strictly functional ones in the development of a tragic tale tending unswervingly to nothing less than a moral apotheosis. The cynic may say that commercial pornography makes the same claim; the learned may counter by asserting that “H. H.”‘s impassioned confession is a tempest in a test tube; that at least 12% of American adult males - a “conservative” estimate according to Dr. Blanche Schwarzmann (verbal communication) - enjoy yearly, in one way or another, the special experience “H. H.” describes with such despare; that had our demented diarist gone, in the fatal summer of 1947, to a competent psycho-pathologist, there would have been no disaster; but then, neither would there have been this book.
and by Humbert in his diary:
Friday. I long for some terrific disaster. Earthquake. Spectacular explosion. Her mother is messily but instantly and permanently eliminated, along with everybody else for miles around. Lolita whimpers in my arms. A free man, I enjoy her among the ruins. Her surprise, my explanations, demonstrations, ullulations. Idle and idiotic fancies! A brave Humbert would have played with her most disgustingly (yesterday, for instance, when she was again in my room to show me her drawings, school-artware); he might have bribed her – and got away with it. A simpler and more practical fellow would have soberly stuck to various commercial substitutes – if you know where to go, I don’t. Despite my manly looks, I am horribly timid. My romantic soul gets all clammy and shivery at the thought of running into some awful indecent unpleasantness. Those ribald sea monsters. ‘Mais allez-y, allez-y!’ Annabel skipping on one foot to get into her shorts, I seasick with rage, trying to screen her.
Same date, later, quite late. I have turned on the light to take down a dream. It had an evident antecedent. Haze at dinner had benevolently proclaimed that since the weather bureau promised a sunny weekend we would go to the lake Sunday after church. As I lay in bed, erotically musing before trying to go to sleep, I thought of a final scheme how to profit by the picnic to come. I was aware that mother Haze hated my darling for her being sweet on me. So I planned my lake day with a view to satisfying the mother. To her alone would I talk; but at some appropriate moment I would say I had left my wrist watch or my sunglasses in that glade yonder - and plunge with my nymphet into the wood. Reality at this juncture withdrew, and the Quest for the Glasses turned into a quiet little orgy with a singularly knowing, cheerful, corrupt and compliant Lolita behaving as reason knew she could not possibly behave. At 3 a. m. I swallowed a sleeping pill, and presently, a dream that was not a sequel but a parody revealed to me, with a kind of meaningful clarity, the lake I had never yet visited: it was glazed over with a sheet of emerald ice, and a pockmarked Eskimo was trying in vain to break it with a pickax, although imported mimosas and oleanders flowered on its gravelly banks. I am sure Dr. Blanche Schwarzmann would have paid me a sack of schillings for adding such a libidream to her files. Unfortunately, the rest of it was frankly eclectic. Big Haze and little Haze rode on horseback around the lake, and I rode too, dutifully bobbing up and down, bowlegs astraddle although there was no horse between them, only elastic air - one of those little omissions due to the absentmindedness of the dream agent. (1.11)
In a letter of Feb. 28, 1867, to M. S. Bashilov (the author of illustrations to "War and Peace") Tolstoy criticizes Bashilov's drawing of Prince Bagration on horseback:
Тушин и артиллеристы очень хороши, хотя я Тушина и воображал молодым, но у вас прекрасно выражена в нем почтенная комичность. Багратион совсем не хорош. Черты должны быть грубее гораздо, потом не шапка, а картуз со смушками — это исторический костюм. Бурка всегда носится на боку — так что прореха над правым плечом. Посадка его, как грузина, должна быть непринужденная — немножко на боку с неупертыми в стремена ногами. Лошадь попроще и поспокойнее. Впрочем, это последнее о лошади я не знаю; но то, что я говорю о нем, на этом я настаиваю.
In the same letter Tolstoy praises Bashilov's drawing of Francis I (the first Emperor of Austria visited in Vienna by Prince Andrey Bolkonski, a character in Tolstoy's novel):
Импер[атор] Франц — прелесть, но к[нязь] Андрей немного слишком affecté. Впрочем, он и так хорош. Ежели вам под карандашом не попадет лучше выражения, то не портите это.
Dr. Blanche Schwarzmann (who would have paid Humbert a sack of schillings for adding his libidream to her files) is an Austrian author.
When Humbert revisits Ramsdale in 1952, Mrs. Chatfield (whose daughter Phyllis was Lolita’s classmate in the Ramsdale school) tells him that Charlie Holmes (who debauched Lolita in Camp Q) has just been killed in Korea:
Feeling I was losing my time, I drove energetically to the downtown hotel where I had arrived with a new bag more than five years before. I took a room, made two appointments by telephone, shaved, bathed, put on black clothes and went down for a drink in the bar. Nothing had changed. The barroom was suffused with the same dim, impossible garnet-red light that in Europe years ago went with low haunts, but here meant a bit of atmosphere in a family hotel. I sat at the same little table where at the very start of my stay, immediately after becoming Charlotte’s lodger, I had thought fit to celebrate the occasion by suavely sharing with her half a bottle of champagne, which had fatally conquered her poor brimming heart. As then, a moon-faced waiter was arranging with stellar care fifty sherries on a round tray for a wedding party. Murphy-Fantasia, this time. It was eight minutes to three. As I walked though the lobby, I had to skirt a group of ladies who with mille grâces were taking leave of each other after a luncheon party. With a harsh cry of recognition, one pounced upon me. She was a stout, short woman in pearl-gray, with a long, gray, slim plume to her small hat. It was Mrs. Chatfield. She attacked me with a fake smile, all aglow with evil curiosity. (Had I done to Dolly, perhaps, what Frank Laselle, a fifty-year-old mechanic, had done o eleven-year-old Sally Horner in 1948?) Very soon I had that avid glee well under control. She thought I was in California. How was - ? With exquisite pleasure I informed her that my stepdaughter had just married a brilliant young mining engineer with a hush-hush job in the Northwest. She said she disapproved of such early marriages, she would never let her Phillys, who was now eighteen -
“Oh yes, of course,” I said quietly. “I remember Phyllis. Phyllis and Camp Q. Yes, of course. By the way, did she ever tell you how Charlie Holmes debauched there his mother’s little charges?”
Mrs. Chatfield’s already broken smile now disintegrated completely.
“For shame,” she cried, “for shame, Mr. Humbert! The poor boy has just been killed in Korea.”
I said didn’t she think “vient de,” with the infinitive, expressed recent events so much more neatly than the English “just,” with the past? But I had to be trotting off, I said. (2.33)
Humbert thinks of the French phrase vient de mourir. In his autobiography Speak, Memory (1951) VN describes his first erotic experience and quotes the words of his father, "Tolstoy vient de mourir:"
High-principled but rather simple Lenski, who was abroad for the first time, had some trouble keeping the delights of sightseeing in harmony with his pedagogical duties. We took advantage of this and guided him toward places where our parents might not have allowed us to go. He could not resist the Wintergarten, for instance, and so, one night, we found ourselves there, drinking ice-chocolate in an orchestra box. The show developed on the usual lines: a juggler in evening clothes; then a woman, with flashes of rhinestones on her bosom, trilling a concert aria in alternating effusions of green and red light; then a comic on roller skates. Between him and a bicycle act (of which more later) there was an item on the program called “The Gala Girls,” and with something of the shattering and ignominious physical shock I had experienced when coming that cropper on the rink, I recognized my American ladies in the garland of linked, shrill-voiced, shameless “girls,” all rippling from left to right, and then from right to left, with a rhythmic rising of ten identical legs that shot up from ten corollas of flounces. I located my Louise’s face—and knew at once that it was all over, that I had lost her, that I would never forgive her for singing so loudly, for smiling so redly, for disguising herself in that ridiculous way so unlike the charm of either “proud Creoles” or “questionable señoritas.” I could not stop thinking of her altogether, of course, but the shock seems to have liberated in me a certain inductive process, for I soon noticed that any evocation of the feminine form would be accompanied by the puzzling discomfort already familiar to me. I asked my parents about it (they had come to Berlin to see how we were getting along) and my father ruffled the German newspaper he had just opened and replied in English (with the parody of a possible quotation—a manner of speech he often adopted in order to get going): “That, my boy, is just another of nature’s absurd combinations, like shame and blushes, or grief and red eyes.” “Tolstoy vient de mourir,” he suddenly added, in another, stunned voice, turning to my mother.
“Da chto tï [something like “good gracious”]!” she exclaimed in distress, clasping her hands in her lap. “Pora domoy [Time to go home],” she concluded, as if Tolstoy’s death had been the portent of apocalyptic disasters. (Chapter Ten, 3)
Leo Tolstoy died on Nov. 7, 1910 (OS). Humbert was born in 1910, in Paris. After parting with Mrs. Chatfield, Humbert goes to Jack Windmuller (the Ramsdale lawyer):
There were only two blocks to Windmuller’s office. He greeted me with a very slow, very enveloping, strong, searching grip. He thought I was in California. Had I not lived at one time at Beardsley? His daughter had just entered Beardsley College. And how was? I have all necessary information about Mrs. Schiller. We had a pleasant business conference. I walked out into the hot September sunshine a contented pauper. (2.33)
In his essay Aylmer Maude quotes Tolstoy's words about the eloquence of a celebrated lawyer:
Сходным образом дело обстояло и с красноречием. Однажды один из гостей Толстого заговорил об обаянии красноречия. «Да, — заметил Толстой, — но какая это опасная вещь? — и рассказал о том, как слушал в суде одного прославленного адвоката и как трудно было ему под влиянием продажного красноречия юриста остаться при своем мнении <...>.
The surname Windmuller brings to mind Don Quixote's fight with the windmills in Cervantes's novel. When Humbert was a boy, his father read to him Don Quixote and Les Miserables:
I grew, a happy, healthy child in a bright would of illustrated books, clean sand, orange trees, friendly dogs, sea vistas and smiling faces. Around me the splendid Hotel Mirana revolved as a kind of private universe, a whitewashed cosmos within the blue greater one that blazed outside. From the aproned pot-scrubber to the flanneled potentate, everybody liked me, everybody petted me. Elderly American ladies leaning on their canes listed towards me like towers of Pisa. Ruined Russian princesses who could not pay my father, bought me expensive bonbons. He, mon cher petit papa, took me out boating and biking, taught me to swim and dive and water-ski, read to me Don Quixote and Les Miserables, and I adored and respected him and felt glad for him whenever I overheard the servants discuss his various lady-friends, beautiful and kind beings who made much of me and cooed and shed precious tears over my cheerful motherlessness. (1.2)
Les Miserables (1862) is a novel by Victor Hugo. According to Aylmer Maude, Tolstoy's favorite novelists were Dickens and Victor Hugo:
Роман, говорит Толстой, как в Англии, так и во Франции в настоящее время стоит на гораздо более низком уровне по сравнению с тем временем, когда он был молод. Диккенс и Виктор Гюго были тогда в расцвете сил, а кого сегодня можно поставить рядом с ними? Они сознательно брали жизненно важные темы и разрабатывали их так, что читатели проникались их чувствами. Они взывали к жалости, сочувствию и состраданию, были заступниками бедных и угнетенных и выражали свое негодование по поводу укоренившегося зла так, что затрагивали сердца людей.
In his essay Seriya nedorazumeniy ("A Series of Misunderstandings," 1901) Rozanov speaks of Merezhkovski's interpretation of Tolstoy's religious and philosophical views and repeats the phrase qui pro quo three times. The surname Rozanov comes from rozan (obs., rose) and brings to mind "Sleep is a rose, as the Persians say" (Quilty's words to Humbert on the porch of The Enchanted Hunters):
I left the loud lobby and stood outside, on the white steps, looking at the hundreds of powdered bugs wheeling around the lamps in the soggy black night, full of ripple and stir. All I would doall I would dare dowould amount to such a trifle… Suddenly I was aware that in the darkness next to me there was somebody sitting in a chair on the pillared porch. I could not really see him but what gave him away was the rasp of a screwing off, then a discreet gurgle, then the final note of a placid screwing on. I was about to move away when his voice addressed me:
“Where the devil did you get her?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I said: the weather is getting better.”
“Seems so.”
“Who’s the lassie?”
“My daughter.”
“You lie - she’s not.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I said: July was hot. Where’s her mother?”
“Dead.”
“I see. Sorry. By the way, why don’t you two lunch with me tomorrow. That dreadful crowd will be gone by then.”
“We’ll be gone too. Good night.”
“Sorry. I’m pretty drunk. Good night. That child of yours needs a lot of sleep. Sleep is a rose, as the Persians say. Smoke?”
“Not now.”
He struck a light, but because he was drunk, or because the wind was, the flame illumined not him but another person, a very old man, one of those permanent guests of old hotelsand his white rocker. Nobody said anything and the darkness returned to its initial place. Then I heard the old-timer cough and deliver himself of some sepulchral mucus. (1.28)
In his essay Rozanov mention Marathon (a town in Greece) and Capua (a city in the region of Campania, 25 km north of Naples):
Переводчик "Дафниса и Хлои", автор "Воскресших богов", любитель Ницше и ни в каких идеях своих человек нимало не постный, г. Мережковский бросился грудью на Толстого, как эллин на варвара, с чистосердечной искренностью и большой художественной силой. Его дело, его право. Он вцепился в "не-делание", "не-женитьбу", мнимое "воскресение" и всяческую скуку и сушь Толстого последних лет. Опять -- его право, его дело. С этой точки зрения, но именно эллински-светлой, он вцепился в мрачно-скопческие, вечно ограничительные, везде отрицательные, нимало не творческие, не брызжущие жизнью, пустые и не рождающие движения Толстого последних лет. Толстой -- язычник старых дней, Толстой -- творец Наташи и Карениной, "Казаков" и "Детства и отрочества" был религиозен, потому что хотя и языческим способом, без отрицания материи и плоти, касался "миров иных"; а вот Толстой-христианин -- с покаянными плачами в "Смерти Ивана Ильича", "Крейцеровой сонате", "Воскресении", "Хозяине и работнике" -- никак не может прийти к Богу. Плотяной (да простят нам неуклюжее выражение) из плоти сотканный, Толстой -- религиозен; бесплотный -- не религиозен: вот довольно "эллинская" и во всяком случае любопытная мысль г. Мережковского. Ему, прямо через стол, горячо закивал головою известный славянофил, редактор "Благовеста" и "Русской Беседы" (двух умерших журналов), А.В. Васильев, человек очень начитанный в славяноведении, но едва ли отличающий Фемистокла от Мильтиада и Марафон от Капуи. Это согласие есть самый разительный пример начавшихся после доклада qui pro quo... Г. Мережковский почти ничего и не возражал своим оппонентам, так как вокруг него прямо поднялся лес неведомого в этих возражениях, не составлявших никакого резонанса его докладу.
In the battle of Marathon (490 BC) the citizens of Athens defeated the more numerous Persians who attempted to invade Greece. Gaston Godin (a professor of French at Beardsley with whom Humbert plays chess) gets involved in a sale histoire, in Naples of all places.