In his Foreword to Humbert Humbert's manuscript John Ray, Jr. (a character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) mentions the monumental decision rendered December 6, 1933, by Hon. John M. Woolsey:
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.
On December 6, 1933, Judge Woolsey issued his decision. He ruled that James Joyce's novel Ulysses (1922) was not pornographic—that nowhere in it was the "leer of the sensualist". Acknowledging the "astonishing success" of Joyce's use of the stream of consciousness technique, the judge stated that the novel was serious and that its author was sincere and honest in showing how the minds of his characters operate and what they were thinking.
According to Humbert Humbert, he always admired l'œuvre ormonde du sublime Dublinois (the Ormond masterpiece of the great Dubliner):
Half a mile or so east of number fourteen, Thayer Street tangles with a private lane and a cross street; the latter leads to the town proper; in front of the first drugstore, I saw - with what melody of relief! - Lolita’s fair bicycle waiting for her. I pushed instead of pulling, pulled, pushed, pulled, and entered. Look out! some ten paces away Lolita, though the glass of a telephone booth (membranous god still with us), cupping the tube, confidentially hunched over it, slit her eyes at me, turned away with her treasure, hurriedly hung up, and walked out with a flourish.
“Tried to reach you at home,” she said brightly. “A great decision has been made. But first buy me a drink, dad.”
She watched the listless pale fountain girl put in the ice, pour in the coke, add the cherry syrup - and my heart was bursting with love-ache. That childish wrist. My lovely child. You have a lovely child, Mr. Humbert. We always admire her as she passes by. Mr. Pim watched Pippa suck in the concoction.
J’ai toujours admiré l’œuvre ormonde du sublime Dublinois. And in the meantime the rain had become a voluptuous shower. (2.14)
Earlier in the same chapter Humbert describes his quarrel with Lolita and mentions his neighbor, Miss Finton Lebone (prude and prurient Miss East):
With people in movies I seem to share the services of the machina telephonica and its sudden god. This time it was an irate neighbor. The east window happened to be agape in the living room, with the blind mercifully down, however; and behind it the damp black night of a sour New England spring had been breathlessly listening to us. I had always thought that type of haddocky spinster with the obscene mind was the result of considerable literary inbreeding in modern fiction; but now I am convinced that prude and prurient Miss East - or to explode her incognito, Miss Finton Lebone - had been probably protruding three-quarter-way from her bedroom window as she strove to catch the gist of our quarrel.
“…This racket… lacks all sense of…” quacked the receiver, “we do not live in a tenement here. I must emphatically…”
I apologized for my daughter’s friends being so loud. Young people, you know - and cradled the next quack and a half. (ibid.)
Miss East's name, Finton Lebone, seems to hint at Fontainebleau (a historical royal château, and a vast forest, southeast of Paris). In his story Sent-Emil'yonskaya tragediya ("The Tragedy of Saint-Emilion," 1937) Mark Aldanov (a Russian writer, 1886-1957, whom Nadezhda Teffi called "the Prince traveling incognito") mentions Fontainebleau:
Дом принадлежал в пору революции чиновнику Роберу Буке. Сам он временно находился в Фонтенбло; в доме жила его жена Тереза. Она была в свойстве с Гаде, но едва ли принадлежала к числу его друзей. Беглецы к ней и не обращались; ей стало известно об их бедственном положении случайно. Конечно, она знала, что люди, укрывающие государственных преступников, подлежат смертной казни. Это ее не остановило: госпожа Буке дала знать Гаде, что может укрыть его и его товарищей, если они согласятся поселиться в пещере. Они согласились с радостью. Беглецы прокрались ночью в дом и по колодцу спустились в пещеру. Госпожа Буке доставила им туда матрацы, одеяла, стол, стулья, фонарь (до нас дошла опись вещей, впоследствии в пещере найденных). Были у них и книги, и газеты. (II)
Тем временем над беглецами стряслась новая беда. Ее подробности в точности неизвестны, дошедшие до нас сведения несколько противоречивы. По-видимому, к Терезе Буке неожиданно приехал ее муж, проживавший в Фонтенбло. Разумеется, от него нельзя было скрыть, что в пещере сада живут опасные политические преступники. Робер Буке пришел в ужас: он нисколько не желал идти на эшафот без всякой вины и причины. Кажется, кто-то вдобавок грозил Терезе Буке доносом. Ей не оставалось ничего другого, как сообщить обо всем этом Гаде и его товарищам. (III)
The characters in Aldanov's story include Louvet (Jean-Baptiste Louvet de Couvray, 1760-1797), the author of Les Amours du chevalier de Faublas (1787-1790), a novel that was considered "pornographic" in Louvet's lifetime:
Другие были несколько менее известны. Луве, впрочем, пользовался громкой литературной славой как автор "Фоблаза". Этот роман в ту пору считался порнографическим: он "опозорил столетие", по словам строгого критика, проявлявшего значительно меньшую строгость в отношении самого себя. Книга на самом деле была всего лишь легкомысленная. Однако понятие "порнография" имеет смысл, меняющийся каждые 25--30 лет, в сравнение с "Любовником леди Чаттерлей" нашего современника Лоуренса "Фоблаз" не идет никак; если же судить по некоторым признакам, то в конце нашего века и похождения леди Чаттерлей будут казаться чем-то вроде тургеневской литературы. В оправдание Луве (для жирондистов вообще не очень типичного) скажем, что ему в пору создания "Фоблаза" было 27 лет; в частной же своей жизни он примеру своего героя отнюдь не следовал: это был лжеразвратник и кабинетный теоретик легкомыслия. (I)
Aldanov points out that, compared to Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928), Foublas is innocent and adds that, at the end of the 20th century, D. H. Lawrence's novel will probably be read as freely as Turgenev's writings. Describing his visit to Ramsdale in September 1952, Humbert mentions a Turgenev story, in which a torrent of Italian music comes from an open window:
Should I enter my old house? As in a Turgenev story, a torrent of Italian music came from an open window—that of the living room: what romantic soul was playing the piano where no piano had plunged and plashed on that bewitched Sunday with the sun on her beloved legs? (2.33)
Humbert has in mind Turgenev story’s Tri vstrechi (“The Three Meetings,” 1852):
Сердце во мне томилось неизъяснимым чувством, похожим не то на ожиданье, не то на воспоминание счастия; я не смел шевельнуться, я стоял неподвижно пред этим неподвижным садом, облитым и лунным светом и росой, и, не знаю сам почему, неотступно глядел на те два окна, тускло красневшие в мягкой полутени, как вдруг раздался в доме аккорд, — раздался и прокатился волною... Раздражительно звонкий воздух отгрянул эхом... я невольно вздрогнул. Вслед за аккордом раздался женский голос... Я жадно стал вслушиваться — и... могу ли выразить мое изумление?.. два года тому назад, в Италии, в Сорренто, слышал я ту же самую песню, тот же самый голос... Да, да...
Vieni, pensando a me segretamente... (chapter I)
The title character of D. H. Lawrence's novel, Lady Chatterley brings to mind Mrs. Chatfield, Phyllis' mother whom Humbert meets in Ramsdale:
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)
In the Russian Lolita (1967) Gumbert Gumbert's sarcasm is much more venomous:
"В самом деле", сказал я (пользуясь дивной свободою, свойственной сновидениям). "Вот так судьба! Бедный мальчик пробивал нежнейшие, невосстановимейшие перепоночки, прыскал гадючьим ядом - и ничего, жил превесело, да ещё получил посмертный орденок. Впрочем, извините меня, мне пора к адвокату".
Btw., Les Amours du Docteur Mertvago, a mystical romance by a pastor, in VN's novel Ada (1969) brings to mind Les Amours du chevalier de Faublas. In Chapter One (XII: 10) of Eugene Onegin Pushkin mentions Foblasa davniy uchenik (Faublas' disciple of long standing):
Как рано мог уж он тревожить
Сердца кокеток записных!
Когда ж хотелось уничтожить
Ему соперников своих,
Как он язвительно злословил!
Какие сети им готовил!
Но вы, блаженные мужья,
С ним оставались вы друзья:
Его ласкал супруг лукавый,
Фобласа давний ученик,
И недоверчивый старик,
И рогоносец величавый,
Всегда довольный сам собой,
Своим обедом и женой.
How early he already could disturb
the hearts of the professed coquettes!
Or when he wanted to annihilate
his rivals,
how bitingly he'd tattle!
What snares prepare for them!
But you, blest husbands,
you remained friends with him:
him petted the sly spouse,
Faublas' disciple of long standing,
and the distrustful oldster,
and the majestical cornuto,
always pleased with himself,
his dinner, and his wife.
In a 1923 letter to Bernard Berenson, Edith Wharton (an American writer and designer, 1862-1937) described James Joyce's Ulysses as "a turgid welter of pornography (the rudest schoolboy kind) & unformed & unimportant drivel. Until the raw ingredients of a pudding make a pudding, I shall never believe that the raw material of sensation & thought can make a work of art without the cook’s intervening."
"A turgid welter of pornography" brings to mind King Thurgus the Turgid, in VN's novel Pale Fire (1962) the grandfather of Charles the Beloved:
Thurgus the Third, surnamed the Turgid. K 's grandfather, d .1900 at seventy-five, after a long dull reign; sponge-bag-capped, and with only one medal on his Jaegar jacket, he liked to bicycle in the park; stout and bald, his nose like a congested plum, his martial mustache bristing with obsolete passion, garbed in a dressing gown of green silk, and carrying a flambeau in his raised hand, he used to meet, every night, during a short period in the middle-Eighties, his hooded mistress, Iris Acht (q. v.) midway between palace and theater in the secret passage later to be rediscovered by his grandson, 130. (Index)