In her class list at the Ramsdale school Dolores Haze (in VN's novel Lolita, 1955, Lolita’s full name) occupies a place between two Roses (Hamilton, Mary Rose and Honeck, Rosaline):
Thursday. We are paying with hail and gale for the tropical beginning of the month. In a volume of the Young People’s Encyclopedia, I found a map of the states that a child’s pencil had started copying out on a sheet of lightweight paper, upon the other side of which, counter to the unfinished outline of Florida and the Gulf, there was a mimeographed list of names referring, evidently, to her class at the Ramsdale school. It is a poem I know already by heart.
Angel, Grace
Austin, Floyd
Beale, Jack
Beale, Mary
Buck, Daniel
Byron, Marguerite
Campbell, Alice
Carmine, Rose
Chatfield, Phyllis
Clarke, Gordon
Cowan, John
Cowan, Marion
Duncan, Walter
Falter, Ted
Fantasia, Stella
Flashman, Irving
Fox, George
Glave, Mabel
Goodale, Donald
Green, Lucinda
Hamilton, Mary Rose
Haze, Dolores
Honeck, Rosaline
Knight, Kenneth
McCoo, Virginia
McCrystal, Vivian
McFate, Aubrey
Miranda, Anthony
Miranda, Viola
Rosato, Emil
Schlenker, Lena
Scott, Donald
Sheridan, Agnes
Sherva, Oleg
Smith, Hazel
Talbot, Edgar
Talbot, Edwin
Wain, Lull
Williams, Ralph
Windmuller, Louise
A poem, a poem, forsooth! So strange and sweet was it to discover this “Haze, Dolores” (she!) in its special bower of names, with its bodyguard of roses - a fairy princess between her two maids of honor. I am trying to analyze the spine-thrill of delight it gives me, this name among all those others. What is it that excites me almost to tears (hot, opalescent, thick tears that poets and lovers shed)? What is it? The tender anonymity of this name with its formal veil (“Dolores”) and that abstract transposition of first name and surname, which is like a pair of new pale gloves or a mask? Is “mask” the keyword? Is it because there is always delight in the semitranslucent mystery, the flowing charshaf, through which the flesh and the eye you alone are elected to know smile in passing at you alone? Or is it because I can imagine so well the rest of the colorful classroom around my dolorous and hazy darling: Grace and her ripe pimples; Ginny and her lagging leg; Gordon, the haggard masturbator; Duncan, the foul-smelling clown; nail-biting Agnes; Viola, of the blackheads and the bouncing bust; pretty Rosaline; dark Mary Rose; adorable Stella, who has let strangers touch her; Ralph, who bullies and steals; Irving, for whom I am sorry. And there she is there, lost in the middle, gnawing a pencil, detested by teachers, all the boys’ eyes on her hair and neck, my Lolita. (1.11)
The characters in Gaito Gazdanov's story Maître Ray (1931) that appeared in the Paris Russian-language review Chisla (Numbers, No. 5) include Mme Rose, a private club hostess nicknamed l'Hirondelle:
Наконец из боковой двери вышла женщина лет тридцати в сильно декольтированном платье: это была m-me Rose. Мэтр сразу узнал ее: два года тому назад в Париже она была арестована за шантаж одного крупного коммерсанта. Ее хорошо знали все посетители веселых мест Монмартра. Ее называли l'Hirondelle. Она вела достаточно легкомысленный образ жизни: танцевала в голом виде там, где это было возможно и допустимо, занималась сделками довольно специального характера и очень свободно смотрела на многие вещи. Она тоже помнила мэтра, который однажды предсказал ей смерть в нищете и все венерические болезни. Она подошла к нему и, вздернув его подбородок указательным пальцем с лакированным ногтем, высокомерно сказала:
– А, ты тоже здесь? Ты видишь? J'ai fait du chemin, moi. Ты помнишь, что ты мне предсказывал?
– Да, в том, что касается нищеты, я, по-видимому, ошибся, – ответил мэтр. – Mediant!
Она поговорила с ним несколько минут и отошла.
Since 1932 Gaito Gazdanov (a Russian émigré writer of Ossetian descent, 1903-1971) was a member of Severnaya Zvezda (the Northern Star), a Masonic Lodge to which Mark Aldanov (a Russian émigré writer of Jewish descent, 1886-1957) also belonged. 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 (Seraya Zvezda in the Russian Lolita, 1967), 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.
A playwright and pornographer whom Humbert murders for abducting Lolita from the Elphinstone hospital, Clare Quilty (the hero of Vivian Darkbloom's biography 'My Cue') brings to mind Claire, the title character of Gaito Gazdanov's novel Vecher u Kler (Evening at Claire's, 1930). In VN's story Tyazhyolyi dym ("Torpid Smoke," 1935) Gazdanov's novel is among the books that at one time or another had done Grisha’s heart good:
Он опять подвинулся к освещённому 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 своём); были и любимые, в разное время потрафившие душе, книги, "Шатёр" и "Сестра моя жизнь", "Вечер у Клэр" и "Bal du compte d'Orgel", "Защита Лужина" и "Двенадцать стульев", Гофман и Гёльдерлин, Боратынский и старый русский Бэдекер.
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’ stulyev (The Twelve Chairs), Hoffmann, Hölderlin, Baratynski, and an old Russian guidebook.
On the porch of The Enchanted Hunters (a hotel in Briceland where Humbert and Lolita spend their first night together) a stranger (Clare Quilty) tells Humbert that his child needs a lot of sleep and that sleep is a rose, as the Persians say:
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 do - all I would dare do - would 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)
Ray is one of the oldest cities in Iran (a country formerly known as Persia). In Gazdanov's story, Maître Ray is an agent of the French Sûreté Générale on a top-secret political mission to Moscow:
Мэтр Рай, француз, блондин с черными глазами и резким квадратным лицом, агент Sûreté Générale, был послан из Парижа в Москву по одному важному политическому делу. В те времена, о которых идет речь, ему было около тридцати лет; он давно уже окончил Парижский университет по юридическому факультету и около восьми лет занимался исключительно политическими предприятиями, приносившими большой доход и позволявшими ему, не имея личного состояния, жить довольно широко. Он пользовался репутацией одного из лучших агентов Франции; и слово «мэтр», которым его называли и на которое он имел право благодаря своему юридическому образованию, принимало довольно часто иной, более почтительный смысл: мэтр Рай действительно был головой выше всех своих коллег. Ему предстояла прекрасная карьера. Помимо чисто профессиональной ловкости, необходимой людям его ремесла, он был одарен многими другими способностями. Он бегло говорил на нескольких языках, понимал с полуслова то, что другим приходилось объяснять, никогда не срывался в своих опасных делах и был еще награжден необыкновенной удачей во всем, за что он брался. Говорили, что тень счастья следует за ним повсюду.
According to Humbert Humbert (whose "real" name seems to be John Ray, Jr.), as a boy he wanted to be a famous spy:
Annabel was, like the writer, of mixed parentage: half-English, half-Dutch, in her case. I remember her features far less distinctly today than I did a few years ago, before I knew Lolita. There are two kinds of visual memory: one when you skillfully recreate an image in the laboratory of your mind, with your eyes open (and then I see Annabel in such general terms as: “honey-colored skin,” “think arms,” “brown bobbed hair,” “long lashes,” “big bright mouth”); and the other when you instantly evoke, with shut eyes, on the dark inner side of your eyelids, the objective, absolutely optical replica of a beloved face, a little ghost in natural colors (and this is how I see Lolita).
Let me therefore primly limit myself, in describing Annabel, to saying she was a lovely child a few months my junior. Her parents were old friends of my aunt’s, and as stuffy as she. They had rented a villa not far from Hotel Mirana. Bald brown Mr. Leigh and fat, powdered Mrs. Leigh (born Vanessa van Ness). How I loathed them! At first, Annabel and I talked of peripheral affairs. She kept lifting handfuls of fine sand and letting it pour through her fingers. Our brains were turned the way those of intelligent European preadolescents were in our day and set, and I doubt if much individual genius should be assigned to our interest in the plurality of inhabited worlds, competitive tennis, infinity, solipsism and so on. The softness and fragility of baby animals caused us the same intense pain. She wanted to be a nurse in some famished Asiatic country; I wanted to be a famous spy. (1.3)
Annabel Lee (1849) is the last poem of E. A. Poe (an American poet, short story writer, editor, and critic, 1809-1849). Zametki ob Edgare Po, Gogole i Mopassane ("The Notes about Edgar Poe, Gogol and Maupassant," 1929) is an essay by Gaito Gazdanov. A French writer, Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893) was born on August 5, 1850. In the Russian Lolita, John Ray's Foreword to Humbert's manuscript is dated August 5, 1955:
Джон Рэй, д-р философии
Видворт, Массачусетс
5 августа 1955 года
Gaito Gazdanov's novel Prizrak Aleksandra Vol'fa ("The Spectre of Alexander Wolf," 1947) brings to mind Humbert Wolfe (1885-1940), an Italian-born English poet who died on his fifty-fifth birthday (January 5, 1940). Like Sebastian Knight (the title character of VN's novel The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, 1941), Gazdanov's Alexander Wolf is a White Russian who writes brilliant English prose.