According to the protagonist of VN's novel Lolita (1955), Humbert Humbert tried hard to be good:
But let us be prim and civilized. Humbert Humbert tried hard to be good. Really and truly, he did. He had the utmost respect for ordinary children, with their purity and vulnerability, and under no circumstances would he have interfered with the innocence of a child, if there was the least risk of a row. But how his heart beat when, among the innocent throng, he espied a demon child, “enfant charmante et fourbe,” dim eyes, bright lips, ten years in jail if you only show her you are looking at her. So life went. Humbert was perfectly capable of intercourse with Eve, but it was Lilith he longed for. The bud-stage of breast development appears early (10.7 years) in the sequence of somatic changes accompanying pubescence. And the next maturational item available is the first appearance of pigmented pubic hair (11.2 years). My little cup brims with tiddles. (1.5)
It is the first time when the pseudonym Humbert Humbert appears in the strange pages received by John Ray, Jr. According to John Ray, Jr. (the author of the Foreword to Humbert's manuscript), Humbert Humbert had died in legal captivity, of coronary thrombosis, on November 16, 1952, a few days before his trial was scheduled to start:
“Lolita, or the Confession of a White Widowed Male,” such were the two titles under which the writer of the present note received the strange pages it preambulates. “Humbert Humbert,” their author, had died in legal captivity, of coronary thrombosis, on November 16, 1952, a few days before his trial was scheduled to start. His lawyer, my good friend and relation, Clarence Choate Clark, Esq., now of the District of Columbia bar, in asking me to edit the manuscript, based his request on a clause in his client’s will which empowered my eminent cousin to use the discretion in all matters pertaining to the preparation of “Lolita” for print. Mr. Clark’s decision may have been influenced by the fact that the editor of his choice had just been awarded the Poling Prize for a modest work (“Do the Senses make Sense?”) wherein certain morbid states and perversions had been discussed.
My task proved simpler than either of us had anticipated. Save for the correction of obvious solecisms and a careful suppression of a few tenacious details that despite “H. H.”‘s own efforts still subsisted in his text as signposts and tombstones (indicative of places or persons that taste would conceal and compassion spare), this remarkable memoir is presented intact. Its author’s bizarre cognomen is his own invention; and, of course, this mask - through which two hypnotic eyes seem to glow - had to remain unlifted in accordance with its wearer’s wish. While “Haze” only rhymes with the heroine’s real surname, her first name is too closely interwound with the inmost fiber of the book to allow one to alter it; nor (as the reader will perceive for himself) is there any practical necessity to do so. References to “H. H.”‘s crime may be looked up by the inquisitive in the daily papers for September-October 1952; its cause and purpose would have continued to come under my reading lamp.
For the benefit of old-fashioned readers who wish to follow the destinies of “real” people beyond the “true” story, a few details may be given as received from Mr. “Windmuller,” of “Ramsdale,” who desires his identity suppressed so that “the long shadows 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 published 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.
Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan on 16 November 1581 is a painting by Ilya Repin (a Russian realist painter, 1844-1930) made between 1883 and 1885. In his essay Zametki perevodchika ("Translator's Notes," 1957) VN mentions khudozhnik Repin ("the painter Repin," instead of starik Derzhavin, "aged Derzhavin") who noticed us (an allusion to the well-known lines in Chapter Eight, II: 3-4, of Pushkin's Eugene Onegin):
Художник Репин нас заметил:
Александр Бенуа остроумно сравнивал фигуру молодого Пушкина на исключительно скверной картине "Лицейский экзамен" (репродукция которой переползает из издания в издание полных сочинений Пушкина) с Яворской в роли Орлёнка. За эту картину Общество им. Куинджи удостоило Репина золотой медали и 3000 рублей, - кажется, главным образом потому, что на Репина "нападали декаденты".
VN quotes Alexander Benois (a Russian artist and memoirist, 1870-1960) who wittily compared the figure of young Pushkin in Repin's painting "The Lyceum Examination" to Rostand's l'Aiglon as played by Lydia Yavorski (born von Hübbenet, a Russian actress, 1871-1921). The stage name Yavorski comes from yavor (obs., white maple tree, sycamore). At the beginning of his poem Lilith (1928) VN mentions yavory i stavni (the sycamores and shutters):
Я умер. Яворы и ставни
горячий теребил Эол
вдоль пыльной улицы. Я шёл,
и фавны шли, и в каждом фавне
я мнил, что Пана узнаю:
"Добро, я, кажется, в раю".
I died. The sycamores and shutters
along the dusty street were teased
by torrid Aeolus. I walked,
and fauns walked, and in every faun
god Pan I seemed to recognize:
Good. I must be in Paradise.
VN's poem ends in the line "I ponyal vdrug, chto ya v adu (And all of a sudden realized that I was in Hell)." Describing his life with Lolita, Humbert says that he dwelled deep in his elected paradise - a paradise whose skies were the color of hell-flames - but still a paradise:
She had entered my world, umber and black Humberland, with rash curiosity; she surveyed it with a shrug of amused distaste; and it seemed to me now that she was ready to turn away from it with something akin to plain repulsion. Never did she vibrate under my touch, and a strident “what d’you think you are doing?” was all I got for my pains. To the wonderland I had to offer, my fool preferred the corniest movies, the most cloying fudge. To think that between a Hamburger and a Humburger, she would - invariably, with icy precision - plump for the former. There is nothing more atrociously cruel than an adored child. Did I mention the name of that milk bar I visited a moment ago? It was, of all things, The Frigid Queen. Smiling a little sadly, I dubbed her My Frigid Princess. She did not see the wistful joke.
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)
A line in VN's poem Lilith, "Dobro, ya, kazhetsya, v rayu (Good. I must be in Paradise)," brings to mind John Ray, Jr. On the other hand, it echoes "Dobro, stroitel’ chudotvornyi! (All right, you wondrous builder!)," poor Eugene's exclamation in Pushkin’s poem Mednyi vsadnik (“The Bronze Horseman,” 1833):
Кругом подножия кумира
Безумец бедный обошёл
И взоры дикие навёл
На лик державца полумира.
Стеснилась грудь его. Чело
К решётке хладной прилегло,
Глаза подёрнулись туманом,
По сердцу пламень пробежал,
Вскипела кровь. Он мрачен стал
Пред горделивым истуканом
И, зубы стиснув, пальцы сжав,
Как обуянный силой чёрной,
«Добро, строитель чудотворный! —
Шепнул он, злобно задрожав, —
Ужо тебе!..» И вдруг стремглав
Бежать пустился. Показалось
Ему, что грозного царя,
Мгновенно гневом возгоря,
Лицо тихонько обращалось…
И он по площади пустой
Бежит и слышит за собой —
Как будто грома грохотанье —
Тяжёло-звонкое скаканье
По потрясённой мостовой.
И, озарён луною бледной,
Простёрши руку в вышине,
За ним несётся Всадник Медный
На звонко-скачущем коне;
И во всю ночь безумец бедный,
Куда стопы ни обращал,
За ним повсюду Всадник Медный
С тяжёлым топотом скакал. (Part Two)
The Bronze Horseman is Falconet’s equestrian statue of Peter the First in St. Petersburg. VN's family estate Rozhdestveno in the Province of St. Petersburg was once the residence of Prince Alexis, Peter the First's eldest son who was martyred by his father. The place name Rozhdestveno comes from Rozhdestvo (Christmas). 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. But it seems that, actually, Lolita dies of ague in the Elphinstone hospital on July 4, 1949, and 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.).