According to Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Lolita, 1955), he picked up Rita one depraved May evening somewhere between Montreal and New York, or more narrowly, between Toylestown and Blake, at a darkishly burning bar under the sign of the Tiger-moth:
She was twice Lolita’s age and three quarters of mine: a very slight, dark-haired, pale-skinned adult, weighing a hundred and five pounds, with charmingly asymmetrical eyes, and angular, rapidly sketched profile, and a most appealing ensellure to her supple back - I think she had some Spanish or Babylonian blood. I picked her up one depraved May evening somewhere between Montreal and New York, or more narrowly, between Toylestown and Blake, at a darkishly burning bar under the sign of the Tiger-moth, where she was amiably drunk: she insisted we had gone to school together, and she placed her trembling little hand on my ape paw. My senses were very slightly stirred but I decided to give her a try; I did – and adopted her as a constant companion. She was so kind, was Rita, such a good sport, that I daresay she would have given herself to any pathetic creature or fallacy, an old broken tree or a bereaved porcupine, out of sheer chumminess and compassion. (2.26)
A darkishly burning bar makes one think of Joan of Arc (Jeanne d'Arc, 1412-31), a patron saint of France who was burned at the stake in Rouen on May 30, 1431. In a letter of April 1882 to W. E. Henley R. L. Stevenson quotes Byron's words about Joan of Arc:
Byron not only wrote DON JUAN; he called Joan of Arc 'a fanatical strumpet.' These are his words. I think the double shame, first to a great poet, second to an English noble, passes words. Here is a strange gossip.
I am yours loquaciously, R. L. S.
My lungs are said to be in a splendid state. A cruel examination, an exaNIMation I may call it, had this brave result. TAIAUT! Hillo! Hey! Stand by! Avast! Hurrah!
In Canto the Sixth (LXII: 1) of Don Juan Byron compares women to porcupines:
And one by one her articles of dress
Were laid aside; but not before she offer'd
Her aid to fair Juanna, whose excess
Of modesty declined the assistance proffer'd:
Which pass'd well off -- as she could do no less;
Though by this politesse she rather suffer'd,
Pricking her fingers with those cursed pins,
Which surely were invented for our sins, --
Making a woman like a porcupine,
Not to be rashly touch'd. But still more dread,
Oh ye! whose fate it is, as once 't was mine,
In early youth, to turn a lady's maid; --
I did my very boyish best to shine
In tricking her out for a masquerade;
The pins were placed sufficiently, but not
Stuck all exactly in the proper spot.
According to Humbert, Rita would have given herself to any pathetic creature or fallacy, an old broken tree or a bereaved porcupine, out of sheer chumminess and compassion. In the next stanza of Don Juan (LXIII: 5) Byron mentions a tree:
But these are foolish things to all the wise,
And I love wisdom more than she loves me;
My tendency is to philosophise
On most things, from a tyrant to a tree;
But still the spouseless virgin Knowledge flies.
What are we? and whence came we? what shall be
Our ultimate existence? what's our present?
Are questions answerless, and yet incessant.
"What are we? and whence came we? what shall be / Our ultimate existence? what's our present?" brings to mind Paul Gauguin's painting Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? (1897-98) created in Tahiti (the largest island of the Windward group of the Society Islands in French Polynesia located in the central part of the Pacific Ocean). R. L. Stevenson (1850-94) spent the last years of his life and died on the island of Upolu (the second largest of the Samoan Islands in the Pacific Ocean). In an attempt to save his life, Clare Quilty offers Humbert his collection of erotic works and mentions the in folio de-luxe Bagration Island by the explorer and psychoanalyst Melanie Weiss:
“Now, soyons raisonnables. You will only wound me hideously and then rot in jail while I recuperate in a tropical setting. I promise you, Brewster, you will be happy here, with a magnificent cellar, and all the royalties from my next play - I have not much at the bank right now but I propose to borrow - you know, as the Bard said, with that cold in his head, to borrow and to borrow and to borrow. There are other advantages. We have here a most reliable and bribable charwoman, a Mrs. Vibrissa - curious name - who comes from the village twice a week, alas not today, she has daughters, granddaughters, a thing or two I know about the chief of police makes him my slave. I am a playwright. I have been called the American Maeterlinck. Maeterlinck-Schmetterling, says I. Come on! All this is very humiliating, and I am not sure I am doing the right thing. Never use herculanita with rum. Now drop that pistol like a good fellow. I knew your dear wife slightly. You may use my wardrobe. 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)
General Bagration was felled in the battle of Borodino (1812). Borodino (1837) is a poem by Lermontov. Lermontov (1814-41) is the author of Net, ya ne Bayron, ya drugoy ("No, I'm not Byron, I'm another," 1832):
Нет, я не Байрон, я другой,
Еще неведомый избранник,
Как он, гонимый миром странник,
Но только с русскою душой.
Я раньше начал, кончу ране,
Мой ум немного совершит;
В душе моей, как в океане,
Надежд разбитых груз лежит.
Кто может, океан угрюмый,
Твои изведать тайны? Кто
Толпе мои расскажет думы?
Я - или бог - или никто!
No, I'm not Byron, I’m another
yet unknown chosen man,
like him, a persecuted wanderer,
but only with a Russian soul.
I started sooner, I will end sooner,
my mind won’t achieve much;
in my soul, as in the ocean,
lies a load of broken hopes.
Gloomy ocean, who can
find out your secrets? Who
will tell to the crowd my thoughts?
Myself – or God – or none at all!
In Canto Two of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962) mentions Flemish hells with porcupines and things:
So why join in the vulgar laughter? Why
Scorn a hereafter none can verify:
The Turk's delight, the future lyres, the talks
With Socrates and Proust in cypress walks,
The seraph with his six flamingo wings,
And Flemish hells with porcupines and things?
It isn't that we dream too wild a dream:
The trouble is we do not make it seem
Sufficiently unlikely; for the most
We can think up is a domestic ghost. (ll. 221-230)
At the beginning of his manuscript Humbert mentions the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs (an allusion to a line in E. A. Poe's poem Annabel Lee, 1849):
Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.
She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.
Did she have a precursor? She did, indeed she did. In point of fact, there might have been no Lolita at all had I not loved, one summer, a certain initial girl-child. In a princedom by the sea. Oh when? About as many years before Lolita was born as my age was that summer. You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.
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)
Flemish hells (an allusion to Bosch's paintings) mentioned by Shade make one think of Vanessa van Ness (the maiden name of Annabel Leigh's mother):
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)
One of the most famous spies in history, Mata Hari (Margaretha Geertruida MacLeod, née Zelle, 1876-1917) was a Dutch exotic dancer and courtesan. Mata Hari means in Malay 'sun' (lit., 'eye of the day'). Byron's poem Sun of the Sleepless! (1815) was translated into Russian by VN. VN is the author of La bonne lorraine (1924), a poem about Joan of Arc:
Жгли англичане, жгли мою подругу,
на площади в Руане жгли ее.
Палач мне продал черную кольчугу,
клювастый шлем и мертвое копье.
Ты здесь со мной, железная святая,
и мир с тех пар стал холоден и прост:
косая тень и лестница витая,
и в бархат ночи вбиты гвозди звезд.
Моя свеча над ржавою резьбою
дрожит и каплет воском на ремни.
Мы, воины, летали за тобою,
в твои цвета окрашивая дни.
Но опускала ночь свое забрало,
и, молча выскользнув из лат мужских,
ты, белая и слабая, сгорала
в объятьях верных рыцарей твоих.