In VN's novel Lolita (1955) Humbert Humbert retrospectively calls his first road trip with Lolita across the USA "our first circle of paradise:"
There was the day, during our first trip - our first circle of paradise - when in order to enjoy my phantasms in peace I firmly decided to ignore what I could not help perceiving, the fact that I was to her not a boy friend, not a glamour man, not a pal, not even a person at all, but just two eyes and a foot of engorged brawn - to mention only mentionable matters. There was the day when having withdrawn the functional promise I had made her on the eve (whatever she had set her funny little heart ona roller rink with some special plastic floor or a movie matinee to which she wanted to go alone), I happened to glimpse from the bathroom, through a chance combination of mirror aslant and door ajar, a look on her face… that look I cannot exactly describe… an expression of helplessness so perfect that it seemed to grade into one of rather comfortable inanity just because this was the very limit of injustice and frustrationand every limit presupposes something beyond it - hence the neutral illumination. And when you bear in mind that these were the raised eyebrows and parted lips of a child, you may better appreciate what depths of calculated carnality, what reflected despair, restrained me from falling at her dear feet and dissolving in human tears, and sacrificing my jealousy to whatever pleasure Lolita might hope to derive from mixing with dirty and dangerous children in an outside world that was real to her. (2.32)
According to Humbert, he dwelled deep in his elected paradise - in a paradise whose skies were the color of hell-flames - but still a paradise:
Oh, do not scowl at me, reader, I do not intend to convey the impressin that I did not manage to be happy. Reader must understand that in the possession and thralldom of a nymphet the enchanted traveler stands, as it were, beyond happiness. For there is no other bliss on earth comparable to that of fondling a nymphet. It is hors concours, that bliss, it belongs to another class, another plane of sensitivity. Despite our tiffs, despite her nastiness, despite all the fuss and faces she made, and the vulgarity, and the danger, and the horrible hopelessness of it all, I still dwelled deep in my elected paradise - a paradise whose skies were the color of hell-flames - but still a paradise. (2.3)
In Dante's Divine Comedy (1308-21) Hell is depicted as nine concentric circles, and Paradise is depicted as a series of concentric spheres surrounding the Earth, consisting of the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, the Fixed Stars, the Primum Mobile and finally, the Empyrean (according to the Ptolemaic system of planetary motions, the earth is at the center of the universe, with the sun, moon, and planets revolving around it). 9 = 3 + 4 + 2 (the number 342 reappears in novel Lolita three times: 342 Lawn Street is the address of the Haze house in Ramsdale; 342 is Humbert's and Lolita's room in The Enchanted Hunters; between July 5 and November 18, 1949, Humbert registered, if not actually stayed, at 342 hotels, motels and tourist homes). "Key 342" (that Humbert clasps in his hairy fist in the lobby of the Enchanted Hunters) seems to hint not at the Earth, Mars and Venus (the third, the fourth and the second planet of the Solar System), but at Venus, the Sun and Mercury. Venus is the Roman goddess of love. The Greek and Roman god of the Sun, Apollo is also the god of poetry and sciences. Phoebus Apollo (Parnassius phoebus) is a swallowtail butterfly. A major god in Roman religion and mythology, one of the twelve Dii Consentes within the ancient Roman pantheon, Mercury also serves as the guide of souls to the underworld and the "messenger of the gods".
In one of his jingles Humbert compares Lolita to Poe's Vee and Dante’s Bea:
Oh, Lolita, you are my girl, as Vee was Poe’s and Bea Dante's, and what little girl would not like to whirl in a circular skirt and scanties? (1.25)
In Paradiso Dante, in his journey through Heaven, is guided by Beatrice, who symbolises theology. Allegorically, the poem represents the soul's ascent to God.