At the beginning of VN's novel Lolita (1955) Humbert Humbert calls Lolita "My sin, my soul:"
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. (1.1)
The Russian word for sin is grekh. In Russian we say: rad by v ray, da grekhi ne puskayut ("One would gladly go to heaven but one's sins do not let"). It corresponds to the English saying "the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak." "Rada by v ray, da grekhi ne puskayut (1864) is an essay by Ivan Aksakov (a Russian poet and writer, one of the leaders of the Slavophiles, Fyodor Tyutchev's son-in-law, 1823-1886) about the situation in which Russia found herself after the Emancipation reform of 1861. In the Enchanted Hunters (a hotel in Briceland where Humbert and Lolita spend their first night together) Lolita tells Humbert how she was seduced in Camp Q:
“Let us switch to Camp Q,” I said. And presently I got the whole story.
Barbara Burke, a sturdy blond, two years older than Lo and by far the camp’s best swimmer, had a very special canoe which she shared with Lo “because I was the only other girl who could make Willow Island” (some swimming test, I imagine). Through July, every morning - mark, reader, every blessed morning - Barbara and Lo would be helped to carry the boat to Onyx or Eryx (two small lakes in the wood) by Charlie Holmes, the camp mistress’ son, aged thirteen and the only human male for a couple of miles around (excepting an old meek stone-deaf handyman, and a farmer in an old Ford who sometimes sold the campers eggs as farmers will); every morning, oh my reader, the three children would take a short cut through the beautiful innocent forest brimming with all the emblems of youth, dew, birdsongs, and at one point, among the luxuriant undergrowth, Lo would be left as sentinel, while Barbara and the boy copulated behind a bush.
At first, Lo had refused “to try what it was like,” but curiosity and camaraderie prevailed, and soon she and Barbara were doing it by turns with the silent, coarse and surly but indefatigable Charlie, who had as much sex appeal as a raw carrot but sported a fascinating collection of contraceptives which he used to fish out of a third nearby lake, a considerably larger and more populous one, called Lake Climax, after the booming young factory town of that name. Although conceding it was “sort of fun” and “fine for the complexion,” Lolita, I am glad to say, held Charlie’s mind and manners in the greatest contempt. Nor had her temperament been roused by that filthy fiend. In fact, I think he had rather stunned it, despite the “fun.” (1.32)
Rada (fem. of rad, glad, happy; the only Russian adjective that exists only in the short form and is used as a predicat) and Barbara Burke bring to mind a regular radabarbára [full-blown handsome woman], as Krug's wife Olga is called in VN's novel Bend Sinister (1947):
“Landscapes as yet unpolluted with conventional poetry, and life, that self-conscious stranger, being slapped on the back and told to relax.” He had written this upon his return, and Olga, with devilish relish, had pasted into a shagreen album indigenous allusions to the most original thinker of our times. Ember evoked her ample being, her thirty-seven resplendent years, the bright hair, the full lips, the heavy chin which went so well with the cooing undertones of her voice—something ventriloquial about her, a continuous soliloquy following in willowed shade the meanderings of her actual speech. He saw Krug, the ponderous dandruffed maestro, sitting there with a satisfied and sly smile on his big swarthy face (recalling that of Beethoven in the general correlation of its rugged features)—yes, lolling in that old rose armchair while Olga buoyantly took charge of the conversation—and how vividly one remembered the way she had of letting a sentence bounce and ripple over the three quick bites she took at the raisin cake she held, and the brisk triple splash of her plump hand over the sudden stretch of her lap as she brushed the crumbs away and went on with her story. Almost extravagantly healthy, a regular radabarbára [full-blown handsome woman]: those wide radiant eyes, that flaming cheek to which she would press the cool back of her hand, that shining white forehead with a whiter scar—the consequence of an automobile accident in the gloomy Lagodan mountains of legendary fame. Ember could not see how one might dispose of the recollection of such a life, the insurrection of such a widowhood. With her small feet and large hips, with her girlish speech and her matronly bosom, with her bright wits and the torrents of tears she shed that night, while dripping with blood herself, over the crippled crying doe that had rushed into the blinding lights of the car, with all this and with many other things that Ember knew he could not know, she would lie now, a pinch of blue dust in her cold columbarium. (Chapter 3)
The main character in Bend Sinister, the philosopher Adam Krug is the author of the Komparatiwn Stuhdar en Sophistat tuen Pekrekh (The Philosophy of Sin):
Ember put down his pen again and sat lost in thought. He too had participated in that brilliant career. An obscure scholar, a translator of Shakespeare in whose green, damp country he had spent his studious youth — he innocently shambled into the limelight when a publisher asked him to apply the reverse process to the Komparatiwn Stuhdar en Sophistat tuen Pekrekh or, as the title of the American edition had it, a little more snappily, The Philosophy of Sin (banned in four states and a best seller in the rest). What a strange trick of chance — this masterpiece of esoteric thought endearing itself at once to the middle-class reader and competing for first honours during one season with that robust satire Straight Flush, and then, next year, with Elisabeth Ducharme's romance of Dixieland, When the Train Passes, and for twenty-nine days (leap year) with the book club selection Through Towns and Villages, and for two consecutive years with that remarkable cross between a certain kind of wafer and a lollipop, Louis Sontag's Annunciata, which started so well in the Caves of St Barthelemy and ended in the funnies. (Chapter 5)
Pekrekh seems to combine péché (sin in French) with grekh. La Pécheresse ("The Sinner," 1912) is a novel by Henri de Régnier (1864-1936); Greshnitsa ("The Sinner," 1857) is a poem about Maria Mgdalena by A. K. Tolstoy (1817-1875). A son-in-law of José-Maria de Heredia (1842-1905) and brother-in-law of Pierre Louÿs (1870-1925), Henri de Régnier was a friend of Stéphan Mallarmé (1842-98), an uncle of Krug's mother:
In the classroom where the final examination was being held, young Paduk, his sleek hair resembling a wig too small for his shaven head, sat between Brun the Ape and a lacquered dummy representing an absentee. Adam Krug, wearing a brown dressing gown, sat directly behind. Somebody on his left asked him to pass a book to the family of his right-hand neighbour, and this he did. The book, he noticed, was in reality a rosewood box shaped and painted to look like a volume of verse and Krug understood that it contained some secret commentaries that would assist an unprepared student's panic-stricken mind. Krug regretted that he had not opened the box or book while it passed through his hands. The theme to be tackled was an afternoon with Mallarmé, an uncle of his mother, but the only part he could remember seemed to be 'le sanglot dont j'étais encore ivre'. (Chapter 5)
Radabarbara brings to mind domusta barbarn kapusta (the ugliest wives are the truest), a saying quoted by Dr. Alexander (a character in Bend Sinister):
“Probably a slight exaggeration,” observed Dr. Alexander in the vernacular. “Various kinds of ugly rumours are apt to spread nowadays, and although of course domusta barbarn kapusta [the ugliest wives are the truest], still I do not think that in this particular case,” he trailed off with a pleasant laugh and there was another silence. (Chapter 3)
The Russian word for "cabbage," kapusta makes one think of "Mein Kohl ist sicher!" ("My cabbage is safe!"), the Peasant's exclamation in Wilhelm Busch's illustrated poem for children (collected in "Six Poems for Nephews and Nieces," 1870) Das Häschen ("The Little Hare"):
Das Häschen saß im Kohl
Und fraß und war ihm wohl.
Nicht weit auf einem Rasen
Geht ganz gemütlich grasen
Ein Lämmlein weiß und schön.
Da ist der böse Wolf gekommen
Und hat das Lämmlein mitgenommen;
Das Häslein hat's gesehn.
Das Häschen sprang und lief
Zum Bauer hin und rief:
"O weh, o weh!
He, Bauer, he!
Grad ist der böse Wolf gekommen
Und hat dein Lämmlein mitgenommen!"
Da nahm der Bauer Rüppel
Den dicken harten Knüppel,
Sprach: "Danke, lieber Hase!"
Und schlug ihn auf die Nase.
Dann spricht er mit Gekicher:
"Mein Kohl ist sicher!"
Und wer noch fragt,
Was dies besagt,
Ist offenbar
So klug, als wie das Häschen war.
Describing his first night with Lolita in The Enchanted Hunters, Humbert quotes his uncle Gustave's words sicher ist sicher (better safe than sorry):
Gentlewomen of the jury! Bear with me! Allow me to take just a tiny bit of your precious time. So this was le grand moment. I had left my Lolita still sitting on the edge of the abysmal bed, drowsily raising her foot, fumbling at the shoelaces and showing as she did so the nether side of her thigh up to the crotch of her panties - she had always been singularly absentminded, or shameless, or both, in matters of legshow. This, then, was the hermetic vision of her which I had locked in - after satisfying myself that the door carried no inside bolt. The key, with its numbered dangler of carved wood, became forthwith the weighty sesame to a rapturous and formidable future. It was mine, it was part of my hot hairy fist. In a few minutes - say, twenty, say half-an-hour, sicher ist sicher as my uncle Gustave used to say - I would let myself into that “342” and find my nymphet, my beauty and bride, imprisoned in her crystal sleep. Jurors! If my happiness could have talked, it would have filled that genteel hotel with a deafening roar. And my only regret today is that I did not quietly deposit key “342” at the office, and leave the town, the country, the continent, the hemisphere, - indeed, the globe - that very same night. (1.28)
Der böse Wolf (the angry wolf) in Wilhelm Busch's poem brings to mind Humbert Wolfe (an English poet who was born on January 5, 1885, in Milan and who died in 1940, on his fifty-fifth birthday, in London). Dolores Haze (Lolita's full name) was born on January 1, 1935. According to John Ray, Jr. (the author of the foreword to Humbert's manuscript), 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 “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.
But it seems that, actually, Lolita dies of ague in the Elphinstone hospital on July 4, 1949 (the American Independence Day), and everything what happens after her sudden death (Lolita's escape from the hospital with Quilty, 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.). The capital town of the book, Gray Star brings to mind "Slishkom star, chtoby rabotat', i slishkom beden, chtoby zhit' (Too old to work, and too poor to live)," the last words written by Konstantin Merezhkovski (1855-1921), the author of Ray Zemnoy ili Son v zimnyuyu noch' ("The Earthly Paradise, or a Midwinter Night's Dream," 1903), an utopian novel set in the 27th century on a Polynesian island. In 1914 Konstantin Merezhkovski (then a Professor of zoology and botany at the University of Kazan) was accused of pedophilia (he was incriminated in raping 26 little girls) and fled Russia. On 9 January 1921 Mereschkowski (as he spelt his surname) was found dead in his hotel room (in Hotel des Families in Geneva), having tied himself up in his bed with a mask which was supplied with an asphyxiating gas from a metal container. It appears that his suicide was directly connected to his paedophilic utoian beliefs (reflected in his novel) as well as his view that he was becoming too old and frail to continue his history of child abuse. Chto est' grekh ("What is Sin?" 1902) and Grekh ("Sin," 1938) are poems by Zinaida Hippius (the wife of Dmitri Merezhkovski, Konstantin's younger brother, the writer, 1865-1941):
Грех — маломыслие и малодеянье,
Самонелюбие — самовлюблённость,
И равнодушное саморассеянье,
И успокоенная упоённость.
Грех — легкочувствие и легкодумие,
Полупроказливость — полуволненье.
Благоразумное полубезумие,
Полувнимание — полузабвенье.
Грех — жить без дерзости и без мечтания,
Не признаваемым — и не гонимым.
Не знать ни ужаса, ни упования
И быть приемлемым, но не любимым.
К стыду и гордости — равнопрезрение…
Всему покорственный привет без битвы…
Тяжеле всех грехов — Богоубьение,
Жизнь без проклятия — и без молитвы.
Sin is modest thought and modest action,
Self-enamored self-disdain,
Apathetic self-diffusion,
And pacified intoxication.
Sin is unserious feeling, unserious thought,
Semi-mischievous semi-agitation.
Prudent semi-senselessness,
Semi-attention and semi-forgetfulness.
Sin is to live without daring or dreaming,
Neither esteemed nor persecuted.
Sin is to know neither horror nor hope
And to be accepted, but not loved.
Sin is an equi-disdain towards pride and shame…
A meek acceptance of all things, without a fight…
The gravest of all sins is Deicide:
A life devoid of curses and of prayers.
(tr. Mark Pettus)
И мы простим, и Бог простит.
Мы жаждем мести от незнанья.
Но злое дело – воздаянье
Само в себе, таясь, таит.
И путь наш чист, и долг наш прост:
Не надо мстить. Не нам отмщенье.
Змея сама, свернувши звенья,
В свой собственный вопьется хвост.
Простим и мы, и Бог простит,
Но грех прощения не знает,
Он для себя – себя хранит,
Своею кровью кровь смывает,
Себя вовеки не прощает –
Хоть мы простим, и Бог простит.
The poem's first and last lines, I my prostim, i Bog prostit ("And we will forgive, and God will forgive") and Khot' my prostim, i Bog prostit ("Although we will foregive, and God will forgive"), echo the last line of Konstantin Sluchevski's poem (VN's favorite Sluchevski poem) Upala molniya v ruchey ("The lightning fell into a brook," 1901), i ya proshchu, i ty prosti (and I shall pardon, and you pardon me too):
Упала молния в ручей.
Вода не стала горячей.
А что ручей до дна пронзён,
Сквозь шелест струй не слышит он.
Зато и молнии струя,
Упав, лишилась бытия.
Другого не было пути...
И я прощу, и ты прости.
Humbert's photogenic mother died in a freak accident (picnic, lightning) when Humbert was three:
I was born in 1910, in Paris. My father was a gentle, easy-going person, a salad of racial genes: a Swiss citizen, of mixed French and Austrian descent, with a dash of the Danube in his veins. I am going to pass around in a minute some lovely, glossy-blue picture-postcards. He owned a luxurious hotel on the Riviera. His father and two grandfathers had sold wine, jewels and silk, respectively. At thirty he married an English girl, daughter of Jerome Dunn, the alpinist, and granddaughter of two Dorset parsons, experts in obscure subjectspaleopedology and Aeolian harps, respectively. My very photogenic mother died in a freak accident (picnic, lightning) when I was three, and, save for a pocket of warmth in the darkest past, nothing of her subsists within the hollows and dells of memory, over which, if you can still stand my style (I am writing under observation), the sun of my infancy had set: surely, you all know those redolent remnants of day suspended, with the midges, about some hedge in bloom or suddenly entered and traversed by the rambler, at the bottom of a hill, in the summer dusk; a furry warmth, golden midges. (1.2)
In Chekhov’s novelette Drama na okhote (“The Shooting Party,” 1884) Olenka (a namesake of Krug's late wife) tells Kamyshev that her mother was killed by a thunderstorm and that people killed in thunderstorms or in war, and women who have died after a difficult labour, go to paradise:
— Вы боитесь грозы? — спросил я Оленьку.
Та прижала щеку к круглому плечу и поглядела на меня детски доверчиво.
— Боюсь, — прошептала она, немного подумав. — Гроза убила у меня мою мать... В газетах даже писали об этом... Моя мать шла по полю и плакала... Ей очень горько жилось на этом свете... Бог сжалился над ней и убил со своим небесным электричеством.
— Откуда вы знаете, что там электричество?
— Я училась... Вы знаете? Убитые грозой и на войне и умершие от тяжелых родов попадают в рай... Этого нигде не написано в книгах, но это верно. Мать моя теперь в раю. Мне кажется, что и меня убьет гроза когда-нибудь и что и я буду в раю... Вы образованный человек?
— Да...
— Стало быть, вы не будете смеяться... Мне вот как хотелось бы умереть. Одеться в самое дорогое, модное платье, какое я на днях видела на здешней богачке, помещице Шеффер, надеть на руки браслеты... Потом стать на самый верх Каменной Могилы и дать себя убить молнии так, чтобы все люди видели... Страшный гром, знаете, и конец...
— Какая дикая фантазия! — усмехнулся я, заглядывая в глаза, полные священного ужаса перед страшной, но эффектной смертью. — А в обыкновенном платье вы не хотите умирать?
— Нет... — покачала головой Оленька. — И так, чтобы все люди видели.
— Ваше теперешнее платье лучше всяких модных и дорогих платьев... Оно идет к вам. В нем вы похожи на красный цветок зеленого леса.
— Нет, это неправда! — наивно вздохнула Оленька. — Это платье дешевое, не может быть оно хорошим.
‘Are you afraid of thunderstorms?’ I asked Olenka.
She pressed her cheek to her round shoulder and looked at me with the trustfulness of a child.
‘Yes I am,’ she whispered after a moment’s thought. ‘My mother was killed by a storm. It was even in the papers… Mother was crossing an open field and she was crying. She led a really wretched life in this world. God took pity on her and killed her with his heavenly electricity.’
‘How do you know there’s electricity in heaven?’
‘I’ve learned about it. Did you know that people killed in storms or in war, and women who have died after a difficult labour, go to paradise! You won’t find that in any books, but it’s true. My mother’s in paradise now. I think that one day I’ll be killed in a storm and I too will go to paradise. Are you an educated man?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then you won’t laugh at me. Now, this is how I’d like to die. To put on the most fashionable, expensive dress – like the one I saw that rich, local landowner Sheffer wearing the other day – and deck my arms with bracelets… Then to stand on the very top of Stone Grave and let myself be struck by lightning, in full view of everyone. A terrifying thunderclap, you know, and then – the end!’
‘What a wild fantasy!’ I laughed, peering into those eyes that were filled with holy terror at the thought of a terrible but dramatic death. ‘So, you don’t want to die in an ordinary dress?’
‘No,’ replied Olenka, with a shake of the head. ‘To die, so that everyone can see me!’
‘The frock you’re wearing now is nicer than any fashionable and expensive dress. It suits you. It makes you look like a red flower from the green woods.’
‘No, that’s not true,’ Olenka innocently sighed. ‘It’s a cheap dress, it can’t possibly be nice.’ (chapter V)