In his foreword to Humbert Humbert's manuscript John Ray, Jr. (a character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) mentions Humbert's singing violin:
This commentator may be excused for repeating what he has stressed in his own books and lectures, namely that “offensive” is frequently but a synonym for “unusual;” and a great work of art is of course always original, and thus by its very nature should come as a more or less shocking surprise. I have no intention to glorify “H. H.” No doubt, he is horrible, is is abject, he is a shining example of moral leprosy, a mixture of ferocity and jocularity that betrays supreme misery perhaps, but is not conducive to attractiveness. He is ponderously capricious. Many of his casual opinions on the people and scenery of this country are ludicrous. A desperate honesty that throbs through his confession does not absolve him from sins of diabolical cunning. He is abnormal. He is not a gentleman. But how magically his singing violin can conjure up a tendresse, a compassion for Lolita that makes us entranced with the book while abhorring its author!
Humbert's singing violin brings to mind Chekhov's story Skripka Rotshil'da ("Rothschild's Violin," 1894). In Chekhov's story, Rothshild plays the flute in a Jewish orchestra:
Кроме мастерства, небольшой доход приносила ему также игра на скрипке. В городке на свадьбах играл обыкновенно жидовский оркестр, которым управлял лудильщик Моисей Ильич Шахкес, бравший себе больше половины дохода. Так как Яков очень хорошо играл на скрипке, особенно русские песни, то Шахкес иногда приглашал его в оркестр с платою по пятьдесят копеек в день, не считая подарков от гостей. Когда Бронза сидел в оркестре, то у него прежде всего потело и багровело лицо; было жарко, пахло чесноком до духоты, скрипка взвизгивала, у правого уха хрипел контрабас, у левого — плакала флейта, на которой играл рыжий тощий жид с целою сетью красных и синих жилок на лице, носивший фамилию известного богача Ротшильда. И этот проклятый жид даже самое веселое умудрялся играть жалобно. Без всякой видимой причины Яков мало-помалу проникался ненавистью и презрением к жидам, а особенно к Ротшильду; он начинал придираться, бранить его нехорошими словами и раз даже хотел побить его, и Ротшильд обиделся и проговорил, глядя на него свирепо:
— Если бы я не уважал вас за талант, то вы бы давно полетели у меня в окошке.
Потом заплакал. Поэтому Бронзу приглашали в оркестр не часто, только в случае крайней необходимости, когда недоставало кого-нибудь из евреев.
Apart from his trade, he got a small income from playing the violin. In their little town, at weddings, a Jewish orchestra would usually play. It was conducted by the tinsmith, Moisey Ilyich Shahkes, who took for himself more than half the fees. Since Yakov was such a good violin player, especially of Russian songs, Moisey occasionally invited him to join the band for a payment of half a rouble for the day, plus any gifts which the guests might give him. Whenever Bronze sat in the orchestra, he would first of all start to perspire and his face reddened. It was hot, there was a stifling smell of garlic, the violin squealed, in his right ear the double bass wheezed, in his left the flute moaned plaintively. This was played by a red haired emaciated Jew with a whole network of red and blue veins on his face. He bore the surname of that well known wealthy Jew Rothschild. And this damned Jew contrived to make even the most merry tune sound mournful. For no apparent reason, Yakov gradually became infected with a hatred and contempt of Jews, but especially for this Rothschild; he started to pick on him and abuse him with harsh words and once he even wanted to beat him. Rothschild took offence and told him, looking at him fiercely, "If I didn't respect you for your talent, then you would long ago have gone flying out of the window." Then he burst into tears. For this reason Bronze was not often asked to join the orchestra, except in cases of extreme necessity, when one of the Jews was not able to attend.
At the beginning of Griboedov's play in verse Gore ot uma ("Woe from Wit," 1824) Famusov (Sofia's father) famously says: To fleyta slyshitsya, to budto fortep'yano (Now it's a flute, now it's a piano). In the last line of his poem A vy smogli by? ("But Could You?", 1913) V. V. Mayakovski (1893-1930) mentions fleyta vodostochnykh trub (a drainpipe flute):
Я сразу смазал карту будня,
плеснувши краску из стакана;
я показал на блюде студня
косые скулы океана.
На чешуе жестяной рыбы
прочёл я зовы новых губ.
А вы
ноктюрн сыграть
могли бы
на флейте водосточных труб?
I blurred at once the map of humdrum,
by splashing colours like a potion;
I showed upon the dish of jelly
the slanted cheekbones of the ocean.
Upon the scales of metal fishes
I read the new lips’ attitude.
But could you
now
perform a nocturne
Just playing on a drainpipe flute?
(tr. D. Smirnov-Sadovsky)
Fleyta-pozvonochnik ("The Backbone Flute," 1915) is a poem by Mayakovski, VN's "late namesake" whose style VN parodies in his poem O pravitelyakh ("On Rulers," 1944). The ruler of Italy, King Humbert I of Italy (Umberto I) was assassinated on July 29, 1900, by the Italian-born anarchist Gaetano Bresci in Monza, near Milan. The monarch was shot multiple times with a revolver while entering his carriage after attending an athletic awards ceremony. Leo Tolstoy's essay Ne ubiy ("Thou Shalt Not Kill") was directly inspired by the assassination of King Humbert. VN's father Vladimir Dmitrievich died in an assassination.
Describing Lolita's keen interest in school dramatics, Humbert mentions the prevailing mood of “Cherry Orchard:”
By permitting Lolita to study acting I had, fond fool, suffered her to cultivate deceit. It now appeared that it had not been merely a matter of learning the answers to such questions as what is the basic conflict in “Hedda Gabler,” or where are the climaxes in “Love Under the Lindens,” or analyze the prevailing mood of “Cherry Orchard”; it was really a matter of learning to betray me. How I deplored now the exercises in sensual simulation that I had so often seen her go through in our Beardsley parlor when I would observe her from some strategic point while she, like a hypnotic subject of a performer in a mystic rite, produced sophisticated version of infantile make-believe by going through the mimetic actions of hearing a moan in the dark, seeing for the first time a brand new young stepmother, tasting something she hated, such as buttermilk, smelling crushed grass in a lush orchard, or touching mirages of objects with her sly, slender, girl-child hands. Among my papers I still have a mimeographed sheet suggesting:
Tactile drill. Imagine yourself picking up and holding: a pingpong ball, an apple, a sticky date, a new flannel-fluffed tennis ball, a hot potato, an ice cube, a kitten, a puppy, a horseshoe, a feather, a flashlight.
Knead with your fingers the following imaginary things: a piece of brad, india rubber, a friend’s aching temple, a sample of velvet, a rose petal.
You are a blind girl. Palpate the face of: a Greek youth, Cyrano, Santa Claus, a baby, a laughing faun, a sleeping stranger, your father. (2.20)
In Chekhov's play Vishnyovyi sad ("The Cherry Orchard," 1904) Charlotta Ivanovna (an excentric governess who was raised by a German lady after the death of her circus-performing parents) calls Pishchik "Guter Mensch, aber schlechter Musikant (a good man, but bad musician):"
Шарлотта (подает Пищику колоду карт). Вот вам колода карт, задумайте какую-нибудь одну карту.
Пищик. Задумал.
Шарлотта. Тасуйте теперь колоду. Очень хорошо. Дайте сюда, о мой милый господин Пищик. Ein, zwei, drei! Теперь поищите, она у вас в боковом кармане…
Пищик (достает из бокового кармана карту). Восьмерка пик, совершенно верно! (Удивляясь.) Вы подумайте!
Шарлотта (держит на ладони колоду карт, Трофимову). Говорите скорее, какая карта сверху?
Трофимов. Что ж? Ну, дама пик.
Шарлотта. Есть! (Пищику.) Ну? Какая карта сверху?
Пищик. Туз червовый.
Шарлотта. Есть!.. (Бьет по ладони, колода карт исчезает.) А какая сегодня хорошая погода!
Ей отвечает таинственный женский голос, точно из-под пола: «О да, погода великолепная, сударыня».
Вы такой хороший мой идеал…
Голос: «Вы сударыня, мне тоже очень понравился».
Начальник станции (аплодирует). Госпожа чревовещательница, браво!
Пищик (удивляясь). Вы подумайте! Очаровательнейшая Шарлотта Ивановна… я просто влюблен…
Шарлотта. Влюблен? (Пожав плечами.) Разве вы можете любить? Guter Mensch, aber schlechter Musikant.
Трофимов (хлопает Пищика по плечу). Лошадь вы этакая…
CHARLOTTA. [Gives a pack of cards to PISHCHIK] Here's a pack of cards, think of any one card you like.
PISHCHIK. I've thought of one.
CHARLOTTA. Now shuffle. All right, now. Give them here, oh my dear Mr. Pischin. Ein, zwei, drei! Now look and you'll find it in your coat-tail pocket.
PISHCHIK. [Takes a card out of his coat-tail pocket] Eight of spades, quite right! [Surprised] Think of that now!
CHARLOTTA. [Holds the pack of cards on the palm of her hand. To TROFIMOV] Now tell me quickly. What's the top card?
TROFIMOV. Well, the queen of spades.
CHARLOTTA. Right! [To PISHCHIK] Well now? What card's on top?
PISHCHIK. Ace of hearts.
CHARLOTTA. Right! [Claps her hands, the pack of cards vanishes] How lovely the weather is to-day. [A mysterious woman's voice answers her, as if from under the floor, "Oh yes, it's lovely weather, madam."] You are so beautiful, you are my ideal. [Voice, "You, madam, please me very much too."]
STATION-MASTER. [Applauds] Madame ventriloquist, bravo!
PISHCHIK. [Surprised] Think of that, now! Delightful, Charlotte Ivanovna . . . I'm simply in love. . . .
CHARLOTTA. In love? [Shrugging her shoulders] Can you love? Guter Mensch aber schlechter Musikant.
TROFIMOV. [Slaps PISHCHIK on the shoulder] Oh, you horse! (Act Three)
According to Pishchik, his late father, a joker, used to say, talking of his ancestors, that the ancient stock of the Simeonov-Pishchiks was descended from the horse that Caligula (the third Roman emperor, AD 12 - AD 41) made a senator. While Pishchik (a careless landowner who constantly borrows who can think only of money) brings to mind Pisky (Lolita's hometown in the Midwest), Charlotta Ivanovna is a namesake of Lolita's mother, Charlotte Haze, née Becker. According to John Ray, Jr., “Haze” only rhymes with the heroine’s real surname. In Chekhov's humorous story Loshadinaya familiya ("A Horsey Name," 1885) the faith healer's name turns out to be Ovsov ("Mr. Oats"), Mr. Hayes in Constance Garnett's English version. In the same Act Three of Chekhov's play The Cherry Orchard, the Station Master recites Greshnitsa ("The Sinner Woman," 1857), a narrative poem by A. K. Tolstoy (1817-1875). At the beginning of his poem Tolstoy mentions zvon lyutney i kimvalov grokhot (the clangor of lutes and the crash of cymbals):
Народ кипит, веселье, хохот,
Звон лютней и кимвалов грохот,
Кругом и зелень, и цветы,
И меж столбов, у входа дома,
Парчи тяжелой переломы
Тесьмой узорной подняты;
Чертоги убраны богато,
Везде горит хрусталь и злато,
Возниц и коней полон двор;
Теснясь за трапезой великой,
Гостей пирует шумный хор,
Идет, сливаяся с музыкой,
Их перекрестный разговор. (1)
In the first line of her sonnet The Two Musicians (1893) Henrietta Cordelia Ray (a black American poet, 1852-1916) says that Love plays a lute, and Thought an organ grand:
Love plays a lute, and Thought an organ grand
These tones are stately, those a restless strain,
Seeming by cadenced joy to measure pain,
And capture Fancy by the soft airs fanned.
Thought sends his paeans thrilling through the land;
The worshipers that bow before his fane
Find rest in contemplation, spirit-gain
In sweetest harmonies. Yon rapturous band,
Kneeling to catch the music of the lute,
Have yearning in their eyes, yet something there
That baffles all our reas'ning ; is it peace,
Or only glances with beseeching mute?
Sometimes it deepens into holy prayer.
Enchanted Love! thy music never cease!
Enchanted Love brings to mind The Enchanted Hunters, a hotel in Briceland where Humbert and Lolita spend their first night together. "And capture Fancy by the soft airs fanned" (Line 4 of Henrietta Cordelia Ray's sonnet The Two Musicians) makes one think of Humbert's "You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style:"
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)
Grekh ("Sin," 1904) is a story by Mikhail Chekhov (Dr. Anton Chekhov's younger brother, 1865-1936) about a young woman whose newly-born boy was taken away from her by her greedy father-in-law and who was sent to the city as a wetnurse.
A fashionable playwright and pornographer whom Humbert murders for abducting Lolita from the Elphinstone hospital, Clare Quilty tells Humbert that he has been called the American Maeterlinck:
“Now look here, Mac,” he said. “You are drunk and I am a sick man. Let us postpone the matter. I need quiet. I have to nurse my impotence. Friends are coming in the afternoon to take me to a game. This pistol-packing face is becoming a frightful nuisance. We are men of the world, in everything - sex, free verse, marksmanship. If you bear me a grudge, I am ready to make unusual amends. Even an old-fashioned rencontre, sword or pistol, in Rio or elsewhere - is not excluded. My memory and my eloquence are not at their best today, but really, my dear Mr. Humbert, you were not an ideal stepfather, and I did not force your little protégé to join me. It was she made me remove her to a happier home. This house is not as modern as that ranch we shared with dear friends. But it is roomy, cool in summer and winter, and in a word comfortable, so, since I intend retiring to England or Florence forever, I suggest you move in. It is yours, gratis. Under the condition you stop pointing at me that [he swore disgustingly] gun. By the way, I do not know if you care for the bizarre, but if you do, I can offer you, also gratis, as house pet, a rather exciting little freak, a young lady with three breasts, one a dandy, this is a rare and delightful marvel of nature. 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)
A Belgian playwright, poet and essayist, Maurice Maeterlinck (1862-1949) is the author of Les aveugles ("The Blind," 1890). Slepoy muzykant ("The Blind Musician," 1886) is a short novel about a young pianist by Vladimir Korolenko (1853-1921). Korolenko (whose surname comes from korol', king in Russian) died on December 25, 1921, in Poltava. Poltava (1829) is a narrative poem by Pushkin (a poet who had African blood). According to John Ray, Jr., Mrs. “Richard F. Schiller” (Lolita's married name) died in childbed, giving birth to a stillborn girl, on Christmas Day 1952, in Gray Star, a settlement in the remotest Northwest:
For the benefit of old-fashioned readers who wish to follow the destinies of the “real” people beyond the “true” story, a few details may be given as received from Mr. “Windmuller,” or “Ramsdale,” who desires his identity suppressed so that “the long shadow 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 publshed 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.
But it seems that, actually, Lolita dies of ague on July 4, 1949, in the Elphinstone hospital. Everything what happens after her sudden death (Lolita's escape from the hospital, Humbert's affair with Rita, Lolita's marriage and pregnancy, and the murder of Clare Quilty) was invented by Humbert Humbert (whose "real" name is John Ray, Jr.). According to Lolita, Vivian Darkbloom (Clare Quilty's coauthor) has Negro blood:
Oh, disaster. Some confusion had occurred, she had misread a date in the Tour Book, and the Magic Cave ceremonies were over! She took it bravely, I must admit - and, when we discovered there was in kurortish Wace a summer theatre in full swing, we naturally drifted toward it one fair mid-June evening. I really could not tell you the plot of the play we saw. A trivial affair, no doubt, with self-conscious light effects and a mediocre leading lady. The only detail that pleased me was a garland of seven little graces, more or less immobile, prettily painted, bare-limbed - seven bemused pubescent girls in colored gauze that had been recruited locally (judging by the partisan flurry here and there among the audience) and were supposed to represent a living rainbow, which lingered throughout the last act, and rather teasingly faded behind a series of multiplied veils. I remember thinking that this idea of children-colors had been lifted by authors Clare Quilty and Vivian Darkbloom from a passage in James Joyce, and that two of the colors were quite exasperatingly lovely - Orange who kept fidgeting all the time, and Emerald who, when her eyes got used to the pitch-black pit where we all heavily sat, suddenly smiled at her mother or her protector.
As soon as the thing was over, and manual applause - a sound my nerves cannot stand - began to crash all around me, I started to pull and push Lo toward the exit, in my so natural amorous impatience to get her back to our neon-blue cottage in the stunned, starry night: I always say nature is stunned by the sights she sees. Dolly-Lo, however, lagged behind, in a rosy daze, her pleased eyes narrowed, her sense of vision swamping the rest of her senses to such an extent that her limp hands hardly came together at all in the mechanical action of clapping they still went through. I had seen that kind of thing in children before but, by God, this was a special child, myopically beaming at the already remote stage where I glimpsed something of the joint authors - a man’s tuxedo and the bare shoulders of a hawk-like, black-haired, strikingly tall woman.
“You’ve again hurt my wrist, you brute,” said Lolita in a small voice as she slipped into her car seat.
“I am dreadfully sorry, my darling, my own ultraviolet darling,” I said, unsuccessfully trying to catch her elbow, and I added, to change the conversation - to change the direction of fate, oh God, oh God: “Vivian is quite a woman. I am sure we saw her yesterday in that restaurant, in Soda pop.”
“Sometimes,” said Lo, “you are quite revoltingly dumb. First, Vivian is the male author, the gal author is Clare; and second, she is forty, married and has Negro blood.”
“I thought,” I said kidding her, “Quilty was an ancient flame of yours, in the days when you loved me, in sweet old Ramsdale.”
“What?” countered Lo, her features working. “that fat dentist? You must be confusing me with some other fast little article.”
And I thought to myself how those fast little articles forget everything, everything, while we, old lovers, treasure every inch of their nymphancy. (2.18)
Btw., Phyllis Chatfield (Lolita's classmate in Ramsdale school whose fussy mother Humbert meets on Sept. 24, 1952, when he revisits Ramsdale) brings to mind Phillis Wheatley (c. 1753 - 1784), an American writer who is considered the first African-American author of a published book of poetry (Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral by Phillis Wheatley, Negro Servant to Mr. John Wheatley, of Boston, in New England, 1773).
Dr. Blanche Schwarzmann and the explorer and psychoanalyst Melanie Weiss make one think of the black and white piano keys. A standard piano has 88 keys total, featuring 52 white keys and 36 black keys grouped into repeating octave patterns. Among the pseudonyms that Humbert had toyed with was Otto Otto. Otto means in Italian "eight." At Beardsley Lolita takes piano lessons with a Miss Emperor:
Because it supposedly tied up with her interest in dance and dramatics, I had permitted Lo to take piano lessons with a Miss Emperor (as we French scholars may conveniently call her) to whose blue-shuttered little white house a mile or so beyond Beardsley Lo would spin off twice a week. One Friday night toward the end of May (and a week or so after the very special rehearsal Lo had not had me attend) the telephone in my study, where I was in the act of mopping up Gustave’s - I mean Gaston’s - king’s side, rang and Miss Emperor asked if Lo was coming next Tuesday because she had missed last Tuesday’s and today’s lessons. I said she would by all means - and went on with the game. As the reader may well imagine, my faculties were now impaired, and a move or two later, with Gaston to play, I noticed through the film of my general distress that he could collect my queen; he noticed it too, but thinking it might be a trap on the part of his tricky opponent, he demurred for quite a minute, and puffed and wheezed, and shook his jowls, and even shot furtive glances at me, and made hesitating half-thrusts with his pudgily bunched fingers - dying to take that juicy queen and not daring - and all of a sudden he swooped down upon it (who knows if it did not teach him certain later audacities?), and I spent a dreary hour in achieving a draw. (2.14)
Lolita's hometown, Pisky seems to hint at the zodiac constellation Pisces, but it also brings to mind Milton Pinsky (a schoolboy at Beardsley who loves to talk about music).