Describing his reunion with Ada in December 1892, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) says that he underwent certain tests, and although pooh-poohing the symptom as coincidental, all the doctors agreed that Van might be a doughty and durable lover but could never hope for an offspring:
What laughs, what tears, what sticky kisses, what a tumult of multitudinous plans! And what safety, what freedom of love! Two unrelated gypsy courtesans, a wild girl in a gaudy lolita, poppy-mouthed and black-downed, picked up in a café between Grasse and Nice, and another, a part-time model (you have seen her fondling a virile lipstick in Fellata ads), aptly nicknamed Swallowtail by the patrons of a Norfolk Broads floramor, had both given our hero exactly the same reason, unmentionable in a family chronicle, for considering him absolutely sterile despite his prowesses. Amused by the Hecatean diagnose, Van underwent certain tests, and although pooh-poohing the symptom as coincidental, all the doctors agreed that Van Veen might be a doughty and durable lover but could never hope for an offspring. How merrily little Ada clapped her hands! (2.6)
Brother and sister, Van and Ada are the children of Demon Veen and Marina Durmanov. In his essay Byron (1910) Dmitri Merezhkovski (a Russian writer, 1865-1941) points out that Lord Byron (the father of Ada Byron) often referred to himself, in a half-mocking, half-serious manner, as the "offspring of a demon" or a "fallen spirit:"
«Я склонен считать себя порождением демона» (offspring of a demon), — говаривал он уже в зрелые годы полунасмешливо. «Такой падший дух, как я (fallen spirit)…»
Earlier in his essay Merezhkovski quotes Byron's words from a letter of April 6, 1819, to Mr. Murray (Byron's publisher), "I will battle my way against them all, like a porcupine:"
«Я люблю борьбу, я ее всегда любил, с детства» (Вальтер Скотту, 1822 г.). «Я буду продолжать мой путь, борясь со всеми, как дикобраз» (Мюррею, 1819).
Они могут мучить меня, но не могут покорить.
They may torture, but shall not subdue me. («Послание Августе», 1816).
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 Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Lolita, 1955), Rita (a girl whom Humbert picked up one depraved May evening in 1950) would have given herself to any pathetic creature or fallacy, an old broken tree or a bereaved porcupine, out of sheer chumminess and compassion:
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)
Tayna tryokh. Egipet i Vavilon ("The Secret of Three. Egypt and Babylon," 1925) is a book by Dmitri Merezhkovski. Konstantin Merezhkovski (Dmitri's elder brother, 1855-1921) is the author of Ray Zemnoy ili Son v zimnyuyu noch' ("The Earthly Paradise, or a Midwinter Night's Dream," 1903), an utopian novel set in the 27th century on a Polynesian island. On 9 January 1921 Constantine Mereschkowski (as he spelt his name) was found dead in his hotel room (in Hotel des Families in Geneva), having tied himself up in his bed with a mask which was supplied with an asphyxiating gas from a metal container. It appears that his suicide was directly connected to his paedophilic utoian beliefs (reflected in his novel) as well as his view that he was becoming too old and frail to continue his history of child abuse. The Earthly Paradise describes specially-bred castes of human including one of neotenized, sexualizing children prolonged into adult age - still displaying child-like features and behaviour - who were put to death at the age of 35, as they could not be happy in old age. Lord Byron died at age 36 on April 19, 1824, in Missolonghi, Greece, from a fever contracted while supporting the Greek War of Independence. Humbert Humbert (whose "real" name seems to be John Ray, Jr.) is 37 when he comes to Ramsdale (a small town in New England) and falls in love with twelve-year-old Dolores Haze.