Describing his visit to Ivor Quilty (the Ramsdale dentist), Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) mentally tells Clare Quilty (a playwright and pornographer whom Humbert murders for abducting Lolita from the Elphinstone hospital) “Réveillez-vous, Laqueue, il est temps de mourir! (Wake up, Laqueue, it is time to die!):"
Now that everything had been put out of the way, I could dedicate myself freely to the main object of my visit to Ramsdale. In the methodical manner on which I have always prided myself, I had been keeping Clare Quilty’s face masked in my dark dungeon, where he was waiting for me to come with barber and priest: “Réveillez-vous, Laqueue, il est temps de mourir! ” I have no time right now to discuss the mnemonics of physiognomization - I am on my way to his uncle and walking fast - but let me jot down this: I had preserved in the alcohol of a clouded memory the toad of a face. In the course of a few glimpses, I had noticed its slight resemblance to a cheery and rather repulsive wine dealer, a relative of mine in Switzerland. With his dumbbells and stinking tricot, and fat hairy arms, and bald patch, and pig-faced servant-concubine, he was on the whole a harmless old rascal. Too harmless, in fact, to be confused with my prey. In the state of mind I now found myself, I had lost contact with Trapp’s image. It had become completely engulfed by the face of Clare Quilty - as represented, with artistic precision, by an easeled photograph of him that stood on his uncle’s desk. (2.33)
A play on Cue (Clare Quilty's nickname) and la queue (the tail in French), Laqueue brings to mind Count Dmitri Khvostov (a poetaster, 1757-1835, whose surname comes from khvost, "tail," and whom Pushkin called "otets zubatykh golubey, the father of toothed doves") and Court Councillor Lakeyich, a character in Chekhov's humorous story Roman s kontrabasom ("Romance with a Double Bass," 1886). In VN's short novel Soglyadatay ("The Eye," 1930), Smurov (the boys' tutor) is reading this story to his pupils, when Kashmarin (Matilda's jealous husband) arrives and beats Smurov up. In Chekhov's story Romance with a Double Bass, Lakeyich (Princess Bibulov's fiancé) mentons a virtuoso violinist whom he met in Naples:
В это время на даче уже зажигали люстры и бра. Жених, надворный советник Лакеич, красивый и симпатичный чиновник ведомства путей сообщения, стоял посреди залы и, заложив руки в карманы, беседовал с графом Шпаликовым. Говорили о музыке.
— Я, граф, — говорил Лакеич, — в Неаполе был лично знаком с одним скрипачом, который творил буквально чудеса. Вы не поверите! На контрабасе... на обыкновенном контрабасе он выводил такие чертовские трели, что просто ужас! Штраусовские вальсы играл!
— Полноте, это невозможно... — усумнился граф.
— Уверяю вас! Даже листовскую рапсодию исполнял! Я жил с ним в одном номере и даже, от нечего делать, выучился у него играть на контрабасе рапсодию Листа.
— Рапсодию Листа... Гм!.. вы шутите...— Не верите? — засмеялся Лакеич. — Так я вам докажу сейчас! Пойдемте в оркестр!
Жених и граф направились к оркестру. Подойдя к контрабасу, они стали быстро развязывать ремни... и — о ужас!
In his Foreword to Humbert's manuscript John Ray, Jr. mentions Humbert's singing violin:
This commentator may be excused for repeating what he has stressed in his own books and lectures, namely that “offensive” is frequently but a synonym for “unusual;” and a great work of art is of course always original, and thus by its very nature should come as a more or less shocking surprise. I have no intention to glorify “H. H.” No doubt, he is horrible, is is abject, he is a shining example of moral leprosy, a mixture of ferocity and jocularity that betrays supreme misery perhaps, but is not conducive to attractiveness. He is ponderously capricious. Many of his casual opinions on the people and scenery of this country are ludicrous. A desperate honesty that throbs through his confession does not absolve him from sins of diabolical cunning. He is abnormal. He is not a gentleman. But how magically his singing violin can conjure up a tendresse, a compassion for Lolita that makes us entranced with the book while abhorring its author!
Humbert's friend and chess partner at Beardsley, Gaston Godin eventually gets involved in a sale histoire, in Naples of all places:
A word about Gaston Godin. The main reason why I enjoyed - or at least tolerated with relief - his company was the spell of absolute security that his ample person cast on my secret. Not that he knew it; I had no special reason to confide in him, and he was much too self-centered and abstract to notice or suspect anything that might lead to a frank question on his part and a frank answer on mine. He spoke well of me to Beardsleyans, he was my good herald. Had he discovered mes goûts and Lolita’s status, it would have interested him only insofar as throwing some light on the simplicity of my attitude towards him, which attitude was as free of polite strain as it was of ribald allusions; for despite his colorless mind and dim memory, he was perhaps aware that I knew more about him than the burghers of Beardsley did. He was a flabby, dough-faced, melancholy bachelor tapering upward to a pair of narrow, not quite level shoulders and a conical pear-head which had sleek black hair on one side and only a few plastered wisps on the other. But the lower part of his body was enormous, and he ambulated with a curious elephantine stealth by means of phenomentally stout legs. He always wore black, even his tie was black; he seldom bathed; his English was a burlesque. And, nonetheless, everybody considered him to be a supremely lovable, lovably freakish fellow! Neighbors pampered him; he knew by name all the small boys in our vicinity (he lived a few blocks away from me)and had some of them clean his sidewalk and burn leaves in his back yard, and bring wood from his shed, and even perform simple chores about the house, and he would feed them fancy chocolates, with real liqueurs inside - in the privacy of an orientally furnished den in his basement, with amusing daggers and pistols arrayed on the moldy, rug-adorned walls among the camouflaged hot-water pipes. Upstairs he had a studiohe painted a little, the old fraud. He had decorated its sloping wall (it was really not more than a garret) with large photographs of pensive André Gide, Tchaikovsky, Norman Douglas, two other well-known English writers, Nijinsky (all thighs and fig leaves), Harold D. Doublename (a misty-eyed left-wing professor at a Midwestern university) and Marcel Proust. All these poor people seemed about to fall on you from their inclined plane. He had also an album with snapshots of all the Jackies and Dickies of the neighborhood, and when I happened to thumb through it and make some casual remark, Gaston would purse his fat lips and murmur with a wistful pout “Oui, ils sont gentils. ” His brown eyes would roam around the various sentimental and artistic bric-a-brac present, and his own banal toiles (the conventionally primitive eyes, sliced guitars, blue nipples and geometrical designs of the day), and with a vague gesture toward a painted wooden bowl or veined vase, he would say “Prenez donc une de ces poires. La bonne dame d’en face m’en offre plus que je n’en peux savourer.” Or: “Mississe Taille Lore vient de me donner ces dahlias, belles fleurs que j’exècre .” (Somber, sad, full of world-weariness.)
For obvious reasons, I preferred my house to his for the games of chess we had two or three times weekly. He looked like some old battered idol as he sat with his pudgy hands in his lap and stared at the board as if it were a corpse. Wheezing he would mediate for ten minutes - then make a losing move. Or the good man, after even more thought, might utter: Au roi! With a slow old-dog woof that had a gargling sound at the back of it which made his jowls wabble; and then he would lift his circumflex eyebrows with a deep sigh as I pointed out to him that he was in check himself.
Sometimes, from where we sat in my cold study I could hear Lo’s bare feet practicing dance techniques in the living room downstairs; but Gaston’s outgoing senses were comfortably dulled, and he remained unaware of those naked rhythms - and-one, and-two, and-one, and-two, weight transferred on a straight right leg, leg up and out to the side, and-one, and-two, and only when she started jumping, opening her legs at the height of the jump, and flexing one leg, and extending the other, and flying, and landing on her toes - only then did my pale, pompous, morose opponent rub his head or cheek as if confusing those distant thuds with the awful stabs of my formidable Queen.
Sometimes Lola would slouch in while we pondered the board - and it was every time a treat to see Gaston, his elephant eye still fixed on his pieces, ceremoniously rise to shake hands with her, and forthwith release her limp fingers, and without looking once at her, descend again into his chair to topple into the trap I had laid for him. One day around Christmas, after I had not seen him for a fortnight or so, he asked me “Et toutes vos fillettes, elles vont bien?” from which it became evident to me that he had multiplied my unique Lolita by the number of sartorial categories his downcast moody eye had glimpsed during a whole series of her appearances: blue jeans, a skirt, shorts, a quilted robe.
I am loath to dwell so long on the poor fellow (sadly enough, a year later, during a voyage to Europe, from which he did not return, he got involved in a sale histoire, in Naples of all places!). I would have hardly alluded to him at all had not his Beardsley existence had such a queer bearing on my case. I need him for my defense. There he was devoid of any talent whatsoever, a mediocre teacher, a worthless scholar, a glum repulsive fat old invert, highly contemptuous of the American way of life, triumphantly ignorant of the English language - there he was in priggish New England, crooned over by the old and caressed by the young - oh, having a grand time and fooling everybody; and here was I. (2.6)
Gaston Godin has the same first name as Gaton Leroux (a French writer, 1868-1927), the author of Le Fantôme de l'Opéra ("The Phantom of the Opera," 1910). On the other hand, Gaston is an anagram of stogna (an archaic Russian word meaning "city streets and squares"). In his poem Vospominanie ("Remembrance," 1828) used by Chekhov as the epigraph to the last chapter of his story The Duel (1891) Pushkin mentions nemye stogny grada (the mute city squares):
Когда для смертного умолкнет шумный день,
И на немые стогны града
Полупрозрачная наляжет ночи тень
И сон, дневных трудов награда,
В то время для меня влачатся в тишине
Часы томительного бденья:
В бездействии ночном живей горят во мне
Змеи сердечной угрызенья;
Мечты кипят; в уме, подавленном тоской,
Теснится тяжких дум избыток;
Воспоминание безмолвно предо мной
Свой длинный развивает свиток;
И с отвращением читая жизнь мою,
Я трепещу и проклинаю,
И горько жалуюсь, и горько слезы лью,
Но строк печальных не смываю.
When din of day for mortals softly ends
And down on the mute city squares
The half-transparent shade of night descends
With slumber, balm of daylong cares,
Then, in the still for me the hours bring
Exhausting sleepless pains anew.
Searing in blank of night, the serpent's sting
Venoms my heart with acid rue.
Black fancies seethe, and floods of anguish blast
The corners of my burdened soul;
Without a sound, remembrance of things past
Unwinds to me her lengthy scroll.
Then reading with disgust the writ of years
I tremble, damn my every day,
Bawl bitter plaints, and bitterly shed tears
But wipe not one sad line away.
(tr. A. Z. Foreman)
The surname Godin makes one think of godina (year), an archaic word used by Pushkin in his poem Brozhu li ya vdol’ ulits shumnykh… (“Whether I wander along noisy streets,” 1829):
День каждый, каждую годину
Привык я думой провождать,
Грядущей смерти годовщину
Меж их стараясь угадать.
И где мне смерть пошлет судьбина?
В бою ли, в странствии, в волнах?
Или соседняя долина
Мой примет охладелый прах?
Each day each year
I have come to usher out in fancy,
Of my approaching death the anniversary
Intent to guess among them.
And where will fate send me death
In fight, in travel or in waves?
Or will the neighboring vale
accept my cold ashes?
In VN's novel Pnin (1957) Pnin tries to explain to the class Pushkin's poem:
On the chalk-clouded blackboard, which he wittily called the greyboard, he now wrote a date. In the crook of his arm he still felt the bulk of Zol. Fond Lit. The date he wrote had nothing to do with the day this was in Waindell: December, 26, 1829. He carefully drilled in a big white full stop, and added underneath: 3 .03 p. m. St Petersburg. Dutifully this was taken down by Frank Backman, Rose Balsamo, Frank Carroll, Irving D. Herz, beautiful, intelligent Marilyn Hohn, John Mead, Jr, Peter Volkov, and Allan Bradbury Walsh.
Pnin, rippling with mute mirth, sat down again at his desk: he had a tale to tell. That line in the absurd Russian grammar, 'Brozhu li ya vdol' ulits shumnykh (Whether I wander along noisy streets),' was really the opening of a famous poem. Although Pnin was supposed in this Elementary Russian class to stick to language exercises ('Mama, telefon! Brozhu li ya vdol' ulits shumnykh. Ot Vladivostoka do Vashingtona 5000 mil'.'), he took every opportunity to guide his students on literary and historical tours.
In a set of eight tetrametric quatrains Pushkin described the morbid habit he always had--wherever he was, whatever he was doing--of dwelling on thoughts of death and of closely inspecting every passing day as he strove to find in its cryptogram a certain 'future anniversary': the day and month that would appear, somewhere, sometime upon his tombstone.
"And where will fate send me", imperfective future, "death",' declaimed inspired Pnin, throwing his head back and translating with brave literality, '"in fight, in travel, or in waves? Or will the neighbouring dale"--dolina, same word, "valley" we would now say--"accept my refrigerated ashes", poussière, "cold dust" perhaps more correct. And though it is indifferent to the insensible body…"'
Pnin went on to the end and then, dramatically pointing with the piece of chalk he still held, remarked how carefully Pushkin had noted the day and even the minute of writing down that poem.
'But,' exclaimed Pnin in triumph, 'he died on a quite, quite different day! He died--' The chair back against which Pnin was vigorously leaning emitted an ominous crack, and the class resolved a pardonable tension in loud young laughter.
(Sometime, somewhere--Petersburg? Prague?--one of the two musical clowns pulled out the piano stool from under the other, who remained, however, playing on, in a seated, though seatless, position, with his rhapsody unimpaired. Where? Circus Busch, Berlin!) (Chapter Three, 3)
Rose Balsamo brings to mind Giuseppe Balsamo (Count Alessandro Cagliostro, 1743-1795), the hero of Alexandre Dumas's novel Joseph Balsamo (1853), the first novel in the tetralogy Mémoires d'un médecin. Quilty’s masked face brings to mind the Man in the Iron Mask (an unidentified prisoner of state during the reign of Louis XIV). A section of Alexander Dumas's novel The Vicomte of Bragelonne: Ten Years Later features this prisoner portrayed as Louis XIV's identical twin and forced to wear an iron mask.
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, 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.). A small town in the Rocky Mountains where Lolita dies, Elphinstone seems to hint at John Elphinstone (1722-85), a senior British naval officer who in the the battle of Chesma Bay (July 5-7, 1770) commanded the Russian rear guard. In the Post Scriptum to his poem Moya Rodoslovnaya ("My Pedigree," 1830) Pushkin mentions his maternal grandfather, Osip Abramovich Hannibal (1744-1806), a naval officer who participated in the battle of Chesma Bay:
Решил Фиглярин, сидя дома,
Что чёрный дед мой Ганнибал
Был куплен за бутылку рома
И в руки шкиперу попал.
Сей шкипер был тот шкипер славный,
Кем наша двигнулась земля,
Кто придал мощно бег державный
Рулю родного корабля.
Сей шкипер деду был доступен,
И сходно купленный арап
Возрос усерден, неподкупен,
Царю наперсник, а не раб.
И был отец он Ганнибала,
Пред кем средь чесменских пучин
Громада кораблей вспылала,
И пал впервые Наварин.
Решил Фиглярин вдохновенный:
Я во дворянстве мещанин.
Что ж он в семье своей почтенной?
Он?.. он в Мещанской дворянин.