Describing his second road trip with Lolita across the USA, Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) mentions Kasbeam, a town where a very old barber gave him a very mediocre haircut:
That day or the next, after a tedious drive through a land of food crops, we reached a pleasant little burg and put up at Chestnut Court - nice cabins, damp green grounds, apple trees, an old swing - and a tremendous sunset which the tried child ignored. She had wanted to go through Kasbeam because it was only thirty miles north from her home town but on the following morning I found her quite listless, with no desire to see again the sidewalk where she had played hopscotch some five years before. For obvious reasons I had rather dreaded that side trip, even though we had agreed not to make ourselves conspicuous in any way - to remain in the car and not look up old friends. My relief at her abandoning the project was spoiled by the thought that had she felt I were totally against the nostalgic possibilities of Pisky, as I had been last year, she would not have given up so easily. On my mentioning this with a sigh, she sighed too and complained of being out of sorts. She wanted to remain in bed till teatime at least, with lots of magazines, and then if she felt better she suggested we just continue westward. I must say she was very sweet and languid, and craved for fresh fruits, and I decided to go and fetch her a toothsome picnic lunch in Kasbeam. Our cabin stood on the timbered crest of a hill, and from our window you could see the road winding down, and then running as straight as a hair parting between two rows of chestnut trees, towards the pretty town, which looked singularly distinct and toylike in the pure morning distance. One could make out an elf-like girl on an insect-like bicycle, and a dog, a bit too large proportionately, all as clear as those pilgrims and mules winding up wax-pale roads in old paintings with blue hills and red little people. I have the European urge to use my feet when a drive can be dispensed with, so I leisurely walked down, eventually meeting the cyclist - a plain plump girl with pigtails, followed by a huge St. Bernard dog with orbits like pansies. In Kasbeam a very old barber gave me a very mediocre haircut: he babbled of a baseball-playing son of his, and, at every explodent, spat into my neck, and every now and then wiped his glasses on my sheet-wrap, or interrupted his tremulous scissor work to produce faded newspaper clippings, and so inattentive was I that it came as a shock to realize as he pointed to an easeled photograph among the ancient gray lotions, that the mustached young ball player had been dead for the last thirty years. (2.16)
The Barber of Seville is a comedy (1775) by Pierre-Augustin de Beaumarchais (the author of The Marriage of Figaro, 1786, who is mentioned by Salieri and Mozart in Pushkin's little tragedy Mozart and Salieri, 1830) and an opera (1816) by Gioachino Rossini (a composer who is mentioned by Pushkin in "The Fragments of Onegin's Journey"). A huge St. Bernard dog with orbits like pansies brings to mind Joy, the hostess's St. Bernard in Igor Severyanin's Poeza o tysyacha pervom znakomstve (“A Poem about the Thousand and First Acquaintance,” 1914):
Лакей и сен-бернар — ах, оба баритоны! —
Встречали нас в дверях ответом на звонок.
Камелии. Ковры. Гостиной сребротоны.
Два пуфа и диван. И шесть безшумных ног.
Мы двое к ней пришли. Она была чужою.
Он знал ее, но я представлен в этот раз.
Мне сдержанный привет, и сен-бернару Джою
Уйти куда-нибудь и не мешать — приказ.
Салонный разговор, удобный для аббата,
Для доблестной ханжи и столь же для гетер.
И мы уже не мы: Альфред и Травиата.
И вот уже оркестр. И вот уже партер.
Так: входим в роли мы совсем непроизвольно.
Но режет сердце мне точеный комплимент.
Как больно говорить! Как нестерпимо больно,
Когда предвидишь вот любой, любой момент!
Все знаем наперед: и будет то, что смято
Когда-то, кем-то, как и где — не все равно ль?
И в ужасе, в тоске, — Альфред и Травиата, —
Мы шутим — как тогда! Лелея нашу боль…
In his "poeza" Igor Severyanin compares himself to Alfred (Alfredo Germont, the tenor romantic lead in Giuseppe Verdi's opera La Traviata, 1853), and his hostess to Violetta Valery (the Traviata). La Traviata was Lenin's favorite opera. Severyanin's Poem about the Thousand and First Acquaintance brings to mind "the township of Soda, pop. 1001" visited by Humbert and Lolita during their second road trip across the USA:
We had breakfast in the township of Soda, pop. 1001.
“Judging by the terminal figure,” I remarked, “Fatface is already here.”
“Your humor,” said Lo, “is sidesplitting, deah fahther.” (2.18)
In the Russian Lolita (1967) "Soda pop" becomes Ana nas:
Утренний завтрак мы ели в городе Ана, нас. 1001 чел.
«Судя по единице», заметил я, «наш толстомордик уже тут как тут».
«Твой юмор», сказала Лолита, «положительно уморителен, драгоценный папаша».
Ananasy v shampanskom ("Pinapples in Champagne," 1915) is a famous poem by Igor Severyanin:
Ананасы в шампанском! Ананасы в шампанском!
Удивительно вкусно, искристо и остро!
Весь я в чем-то норвежском! Весь я в чем-то испанском!
Вдохновляюсь порывно! И берусь за перо!
Стрекот аэропланов! Беги автомобилей!
Ветропросвист экспрессов! Крылолет буеров!
Кто-то здесь зацелован! Там кого-то побили!
Ананасы в шампанском — это пульс вечеров!
В группе девушек нервных, в остром обществе дамском
Я трагедию жизни претворю в грезофарс…
Ананасы в шампанском! Ананасы в шампанском!
Из Москвы — в Нагасаки! Из Нью-Йорка — на Марс!
Pineapples, pineapples — dipped in champagne!
Surprisingly tasty, sparkling, and keen!
I’m in something Norwegian! Something from Spain!
Madly inspired! I take up my pen!
The rattling of airplanes! The roaring of cars!
Wind-whistling trains! Wing-soaring yachts!
This one gets kisses! That one gets scars!
Champagne and pineapples — pulse of the night!
Among skittish maidens and stylish grandes dames
I’ll turn tragic life into fantasy-farce…
Pineapples, pineapples — dipped in champagne!
Nagasaki to Moscow! New York to Mars!
Madly inspired! I take up my pen!
The rattling of airplanes! The roaring of cars!
Wind-whistling trains! Wing-soaring yachts!
This one gets kisses! That one gets scars!
Champagne and pineapples — pulse of the night!
Among skittish maidens and stylish grandes dames
I’ll turn tragic life into fantasy-farce…
Pineapples, pineapples — dipped in champagne!
Nagasaki to Moscow! New York to Mars!
(tr. B. Dralyuk)