Describing his childhood romance with Annabel Leigh, Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) mentions the plurality of inhabited worlds:
Annabel was, like the writer, of mixed parentage: half-English, half-Dutch, in her case. I remember her features far less distinctly today than I did a few years ago, before I knew Lolita. There are two kinds of visual memory: one when you skillfully recreate an image in the laboratory of your mind, with your eyes open (and then I see Annabel in such general terms as: “honey-colored skin,” “think arms,” “brown bobbed hair,” “long lashes,” “big bright mouth”); and the other when you instantly evoke, with shut eyes, on the dark inner side of your eyelids, the objective, absolutely optical replica of a beloved face, a little ghost in natural colors (and this is how I see Lolita).
Let me therefore primly limit myself, in describing Annabel, to saying she was a lovely child a few months my junior. Her parents were old friends of my aunt’s, and as stuffy as she. They had rented a villa not far from Hotel Mirana. Bald brown Mr. Leigh and fat, powdered Mrs. Leigh (born Vanessa van Ness). How I loathed them! At first, Annabel and I talked of peripheral affairs. She kept lifting handfuls of fine sand and letting it pour through her fingers. Our brains were turned the way those of intelligent European preadolescents were in our day and set, and I doubt if much individual genius should be assigned to our interest in the plurality of inhabited worlds, competitive tennis, infinity, solipsism and so on. The softness and fragility of baby animals caused us the same intense pain. She wanted to be a nurse in some famished Asiatic country; I wanted to be a famous spy.
All at once we were madly, clumsily, shamelessly, agonizingly in love with each other; hopelessly, I should add, because that frenzy of mutual possession might have been assuaged only by our actually imbibing and assimilating every particle of each other’s soul and flesh; but there we were, unable even to mate as slum children would have so easily found an opportunity to do. After one wild attempt we made to meet at night in her garden (of which more later), the only privacy we were allowed was to be out of earshot but not out of sight on the populous part of the plage. There, on the soft sand, a few feet away from our elders, we would sprawl all morning, in a petrified paroxysm of desire, and take advantage of every blessed quirk in space and time to touch each other: her hand, half-hidden in the sand, would creep toward me, its slender brown fingers sleepwalking nearer and nearer; then, her opalescent knee would start on a long cautious journey; sometimes a chance rampart built by younger children granted us sufficient concealment to graze each other’s salty lips; these incomplete contacts drove our healthy and inexperienced young bodies to such a state of exasperation that not even the cold blue water, under which we still clawed at each other, could bring relief.
Among some treasures I lost during the wanderings of my adult years, there was a snapshot taken by my aunt which showed Annabel, her parents and the staid, elderly, lame gentleman, a Dr. Cooper, who that same summer courted my aunt, grouped around a table in a sidewalk café. Annabel did not come out well, caught as she was in the act of bending over her chocolat glacé, and her thin bare shoulders and the parting in her hair were about all that could be identified (as I remember that picture) amid the sunny blur into which her lost loveliness graded; but I, sitting somewhat apart from the rest, came out with a kind of dramatic conspicuousness: a moody, beetle-browed boy in a dark sport shirt and well-tailored white shorts, his legs crossed, sitting in profile, looking away. That photograph was taken on the last day of our fatal summer and just a few minutes before we made our second and final attempt to thwart fate. Under the flimsiest of pretexts (this was our very last chance, and nothing really mattered) we escaped from the café to the beach, and found a desolate stretch of sand, and there, in the violet shadow of some red rocks forming a kind of cave, had a brief session of avid caresses, with somebody’s lost pair of sunglasses for only witness. I was on my knees, and on the point of possessing my darling, when two bearded bathers, the old man of the sea and his brother, came out of the sea with exclamations of ribald encouragement, and four months later she died of typhus in Corfu. (1.3)
In Anatole France's story La Fille de Lilith ("The Daughter of Lilith," 1887) the narrator says that his teacher was inclined to admit the plurality of inhabited worlds:
“You, Ary,” he said to me, “were my best pupil. Your quick intelligence was always in advance of the thought of the teacher. For that reason I at once became attached to you. I like a Christian to be daring. Faith should not be timid when unbelief shows an indomitable audacity. The Church nowadays has lambs only; and it needs lions. Who will give us back those learned fathers and doctors whose erudition embraced all sciences? Truth is like the sun; it requires the eye of an eagle to contemplate it.”
“Ah, M. Safrac, you brought to bear on all questions that daring vision which nothing dazzles. I remember that your opinions sometimes even startled those of your colleagues whom the holiness of your life filled with admiration. You did not fear new ideas. Thus, for instance, you were inclined to admit the plurality of inhabited worlds.”
The girl for whom Ary left his fiancée, Leila turns out to be a daughter of Lilith (Adam's first wife). Ary's teacher, M. Safrac asserts with absolute certainty that Adam (the first man) had two wives:
He paused, then he continued in a low voice and with a solemnity truly religious:
“I, Martial Safrac, unworthy priest, doctor of theology, submissive as an obedient child to the authority of our Holy Mother the Church, I assert with absolute certainty—yielding all due submission to our holy father the Pope and the Councils—that Adam, who was created in the image of God, had two wives, of whom Eve was the second.”
According to Humbert, he was perfectly capable of intercourse with Eve, but it was Lilith he longed for:
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)
In Anatole France's story, Leila leaves Ary by going back to Persia. The story ends as follows:
I implored Monsieur Safrac to listen to me a moment more.
“When she went away, my father, Leila left me a leaf of cypress on which certain characters which I cannot decipher had been traced with the point of a style. It seems to be a kind of amulet.”
Monsieur Safrac took the light film which I held out to him and examined it carefully.
“This,” he said, “is written in Persian of the best period and can be easily translated thus:
“THE PRAYER OF LEILA, DAUGHTER OF LILITH
“My God, promise me death, so that I may taste of life. My God, give me remorse, so that I may at last find happiness. My God, make me the equal of the daughters of Eve.”
On the porch of The Enchanted Hunters (a hotel in Briceland where Humbert and Lolita spend their first night together) a stranger (who seems to be Clare Quilty, a playwright and pornographer whom Humbert murders for abducting Lolita from the Elphinstone hospital) tells Humbert that his child needs a lot of sleep and that sleep is a rose, as the Persians say:
Suddenly I was aware that in the darkness next to me there was somebody sitting in a chair on the pillared porch. I could not really see him but what gave him away was the rasp of a screwing off, then a discreet gurgle, then the final note of a placid screwing on. I was about to move away when his voice addressed me:
“Where the devil did you get her?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I said: the weather is getting better.”
“Seems so.”
“Who’s the lassie?”
“My daughter.”
“You lie - she’s not.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I said: July was hot. Where’s her mother?”
“Dead.”
“I see. Sorry. By the way, why don’t you two lunch with me tomorrow. That dreadful crowd will be gone by then.”
“We’ll be gone too. Good night.”
“Sorry. I’m pretty drunk. Good night. That child of yours needs a lot of sleep. Sleep is a rose, as the Persians say. Smoke?”
“Not now.”
He struck a light, but because he was drunk, or because the wind was, the flame illumined not him but another person, a very old man, one of those permanent guests of old hotels - and his white rocker. Nobody said anything and the darkness returned to its initial place. Then I heard the old-timer cough and deliver himself of some sepulchral mucus. (1.28)
In Anatole France's story, Ary's school friend Paul d’Ervy met Leila in Constantinople:
He drew a chair to the fireplace, over which hung a crucifix, and invited me to be seated, and seating himself beside me he signed to me to speak. Outside the snow fell. I began as follows:
“My father, it is ten years ago since I left your care and entered the world. I have preserved my faith, but, alas, not my purity. But it is unnecessary to remind you of my life; you know it, you my spiritual guide, the only keeper of my conscience. Moreover, I am in haste to arrive at the event which has convulsed my being. Last year my family had decided that I must marry, and I myself had willingly consented. The young girl destined for me united all the advantages of which parents are usually in search. More than that, she was pretty; she pleased me to such a degree that instead of a marriage of convenience I was about to make a marriage of affection. My offer was accepted, and we were betrothed. The happiness and peace of my life seemed assured when I received a letter from Paul d’Ervy who had returned from Constantinople and announced his arrival in Paris. He expressed a great desire to see me. I hurried to him and announced my marriage. He congratulated me heartily.
“‘My dear old boy,’ he said, ‘I rejoice in your happiness.’
“I told him that I counted on him to be my witness and he willingly consented. The date of my wedding was fixed for May 15, and he was not obliged to return to his post until the beginning of June.
“‘How lucky that is,’ I said to him. ‘And you?’
“‘Oh, I,’ he replied, with a smile which expressed in turn joy and sorrow, ‘I—what a change! I am mad—a woman—Ary. I am either very fortunate or very unfortunate! What name can one give to a happiness gained by an evil action? I have betrayed, I have broken the heart of a good friend... I carried off—yonder—in Constantinople——”
M. Safrac interrupted me:
“My son, leave out of your narrative the faults of others and name no one.”
Monsieur Safrac is a curé in Artigues, a village in the region of the banks of the Garonne (near Bordeaux). On July 16, 1054, Cardinal Humbert of Silva Candida (c. 1000 to 1015 – 5 May 1061), a French papal legate (the envoy of Pope Leo IX), marched into Constantinople's Hagia Sophia during the Divine Liturgy and placed a papal bull excommunicating the Eastern Patriarch, Michael I Cerularius, directly onto the altar (the event that led to the East-West Schism). According to Humbert, in a moment of metaphysical curiosity, he had turned over a Protestant’s drab atheism for an old-fashioned popish cure:
At this solitary stop for refreshments between Coalmont and Ramsdale (between innocent Dolly Schiller and jovial Uncle Ivor), I reviewed my case. With the utmost simplicity and clarity I now saw myself and my love. Previous attempts seemed out of focus in comparison. A couple of years before, under the guidance of an intelligent French-speaking confessor, to whom, in a moment of metaphysical curiosity, I had turned over a Protestant’s drab atheism for an old-fashioned popish cure, I had hoped to deduce from my sense of sin the existence of a Supreme Being. On those frosty mornings in rime-laced Quebec, the good priest worked on me with the finest tenderness and understanding. I am infinitely obliged to him and the great Institution he represented. Alas, I was unable to transcend the simple human fact that whatever spiritual solace I might find, whatever lithophanic eternities might be provided for me, nothing could make my Lolita forget the foul lust I had inflicted upon her. Unless it can be proven to meto me as I am now, today, with my heart and by beard, and my putrefactionthat in the infinite run it does not matter a jot that a North American girl-child named Dolores Haze had been deprived of her childhood by a maniac, unless this can be proven (and if it can, then life is a joke), I see nothing for the treatment of my misery but the melancholy and very local palliative of articulate art. To quote an old poet:
The moral sense in mortals is the duty
We have to pay on mortal sense of beauty. (2.31)
In Anatole France's story, M. Safrac mentions the festival of our Lady of Mount Carmel:
He remained silent for a moment, then drawing a paper out of his pocket, he continued:
“Late last night, after having wished you good night, the postman, who had been delayed by the snow, brought me a very distressing letter. The senior vicaire informs me that my book has been a source of grief to Monseigneur, and has already overshadowed the spiritual joy with which he looked forward to the festival of our Lady of Mount Carmel. The work, he adds, is full of foolhardy doctrines and opinions which have already been condemned by the authorities. His Grace could not approve of such unwholesome lucubrations. This, then, is what they write to me. But I will relate your story to Monseigneur. It will prove to him that Lilith exists and that I do not dream.”
The Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel is celebrated on July 16. Anatole France (1844-1924) is the author of The Life of Joan of Arc (1908), a two-volume biography. In his philosopical essay Zhanna d'Ark (1938) Dmitri Merezhkovski (1865-1941) mentions France's book and says that France was a half-man, half-Godon:
Что такое наших дней Годоны, лучше всего можно судить по Анатолю Франсу в книге его: "Жизнь Жанны ", написанной в те самые дни, когда писал и Шарль Пэги "Таинство любви Жанны " и когда умирающей св. Терезе, будущей «Деве Окопов», снился вещий сон о Великой войне.
Франс — такой же чистейший француз, как Рабле и Вольтер, но вместе с тем и Годон чистейший — в родной земле чужеземец, уже коммунистам, а значит, и Второму и Третьему Интернационалу сочувствующий, мнимо или подлинно — это несущественно для Франса, потому что все в нем мнимо-подлинно: «есть как бы не есть».
Древних сатиров и фавнов недаром любит он с родственной нежностью: он и сам, как они, двуестественен — полубог, полузверь; в верхней половине тела — француз, человек; в нижней — Годон, Хвостатый.
Надо отдать справедливость гению Франса: первый понял он чудо годоновской незримости, первый обнажился перед всем миром с таким же невинным бесстыдством, как делывал это (о чем рассказывает сам) перед нимфами Булонского леса, где проходившие мимо лесные сторожа, узнавая в нем Академика, Бессмертного, скромно потупляли глаза. То же делает он и в книге о Жанне : так же перед Святою Девою обнажается, как перед теми лесными, грешными девами. (Chapter VI)
A historical, derogatory French nickname for the English, which originated during the Hundred Years' War from the frequent use of the English "God damn" curse, les Godons bring to mind Gaston Godin, Humbert's friend and chess partner at Beardsley who loves little boys and who ends up by getting involved in a sale histoire, in Naples of all places. Addio, Napoli (1891) is a poem by Merezhkovski.