Describing Lolita's illness and hospitalization in Elphinstone (a small town in the Rocky Mountains), Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) mentions poor Bluebeard:
Poor Bluebeard. Those brutal brothers. Est-ce que tu ne m’aimes plus, ma Carmen? She never had. At the moment I knew my love was as hopeless as ever – and I also knew the two girls were conspirators, plotting in Basque, or Zemfirian, against my hopeless love. I shall go further and say that Lo was playing a double game since she was also fooling sentimental Mary whom she had told, I suppose, that she wanted to dwell with her fun-loving young uncle and not with cruel melancholy me. And another nurse whom I never identified, and the village idiot who carted cots and coffins into the elevator, and the idiotic green love birds in a cage in the waiting room – all were in the plot, the sordid plot. I suppose Mary thought comedy father Professor Humbertoldi was interfering with the romance between Dolores and her father-substitute, roly-poly Romeo (for you were rather lardy, you know, Rom, despite all that "snow" and "joy juice"). (2.22)
"Bluebeard" (Barbe bleue) is a French folktale, the most famous surviving version of which was written by Charles Perrault and first published by Claude Barbin in Paris in 1697 in Histoires ou contes du temps passé. The tale is about a wealthy man in the habit of murdering his wives and the attempts of the present one to avoid the fate of her predecessors.
Gilles de Rais, Baron de Rais (also spelt Retz; c. 1405 - 26 Oct. 1440), Joan of Arc's comrade-in-arms, Marshal of France and confessed child murderer, has inspired a number of artistic and cultural works. As early as the 15th century, the character appeared in a mystery play and a prose poem. He then underwent a long eclipse in cultural representations, before folklore transfigured him into Bluebeard.
In a performance that Humbert and Lolita saw at the Beardsley theater Vivian Darkbloom (Clare Quilty's coauthor, anagram of Vladimir Nabokov) played Joan of Arc:
The brakes were relined, the waterpipes unclogged, the valves ground, and a number of other repairs and improvements were paid for by not very mechanically-minded but prudent papa Humbert, so that the late Mrs. Humbert’s car was in respectable shape when ready to undertake a new journey.
We had promised Beardsley School, good old Beardsley School, that we would be back as soon as my Hollywood engagement came to an end (inventive Humbert was to be, I hinted, chief consultant in the production of a film dealing with “existentialism,” still a hot thing at the time). Actually I was toying with the idea of gently trickling across the Mexican border - I was braver now than last year - and there deciding what to do with my little concubine who was now sixty inches tall and weighed ninety pounds. We had dug out our tour books and maps. She had traced our route with immense zest. Was it thanks to those theatricals that she had now outgrown her juvenile jaded airs and was so adorably keen to explore rich reality? I experienced the queer lightness of dreams that pale but warm Sunday morning when we abandoned Professor Chem’s puzzled house and sped along Main Street toward the four-lane highway. My Love’s striped, black-and-white cotton frock, jauntry blue with the large beautifully cut aquamarine on a silver chainlet, which gemmed her throat: a spring rain gift from me. We passed the New Hotel, and she laughed. “A penny for your thoughts,” I said and she stretched out her palm at once, but at that moment I had to apply the breaks rather abruptly at a red light. As we pulled up, another car came to a gliding stop alongside, and a very striking looking, athletically lean young woman (where had I seen her?) with a high complexion and shoulder-length brilliant bronze hair, greeted Lo with a ringing “Hi!” - and then, addressing me, effusively, edusively (placed!), stressing certain words, said: “What a shame it was to tear Dolly away from the play - you should have heard the author raving about her after that rehearsal” “Green light, you dope,” said Lo under her breath, and simultaneously, waving in bright adieu a bangled arm, Joan of Arc (in a performance we saw at the local theatre) violently outdistanced us to swerve into Campus Avenue. (2.15)
Gille de Rais brings to mind John Ray, Jr. (the author of the Foreword to Humbert Humbert's manuscript). 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 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.).
Bluebeard's Russian name is Sinyaya Boroda. In "The Fragments of Onegin's Journey" Pushkin rhymes vecher siniy (the blue evening) with Rossini and compares Gioachino Rossini (an Italian composer, 1792-1868) to Orpheus (a legendary musician, prophet and poet):
Но уж темнеет вечер синий,
Пора нам в оперу скорей:
Там упоительный Россини,
Европы баловень ― Орфей.
Не внемля критике суровой,
Он вечно тот же, вечно новый,
Он звуки льёт ― они кипят,
Они текут, они горят,
Как поцелуи молодые,
Все в неге, в пламени любви,
Как зашипевшего аи
Струя и брызги золотые...
Но, господа, позволено ль
С вином равнять dо-rе-mi-sоl?
But darker grows already the blue evening.
Time to the opera we sped:
there 'tis the ravishing Rossini,
the pet of Europe, Orpheus.
Not harking to harsh criticism,
he is ever selfsame, ever new;
he pours out melodies, they seethe,
they flow, they burn
like youthful kisses,
all sensuousness, in flames of love,
like, at the fuzzing point, Ay's
stream and gold spurtles...
but, gentlemen, is it permitted
to equalize do-re-mi-sol with wine?
Humbert's visit to Coalmont (a town where Lolita lives with her husband, a brilliant young mining engineer) can be compared to Orpheus's descent to the land of the dead in an attempt to bring his wife Eurydice (a beautiful nymph) back to life.
Btw., Chekhov's humorous story Moi zhyony ("My Wives," 1885) is subtitled "A Letter to the Editorial Office of Raul Bluebeard."