In VN's novel Lolita (1955) Humbert Humbert's poem "Wanted" (composed in a madhouse near Quebec after Lolita was abducted from him) ends in the line "And the rest is rust and stardust" (an allusion to Hamlet's last words in Shakespeare's Hamlet, 5.2: "The rest is silence"):
Wanted, wanted: Dolores Haze.
Hair: brown. Lips: scarlet.
Age: five thousand three hundred days.
Profession: none, or "starlet."
Where are you hiding, Dolores Haze?
Why are you hiding, darling?
(I talk in a daze, I walk in a maze,
I cannot get out, said the starling).
Where are you riding, Dolores Haze?
What make is the magic carpet?
Is a Cream Cougar the present craze?
And where are you parked, my car pet?
Who is your hero, Dolores Haze?
Still one of those blue-caped star-men?
Oh the balmy days and the palmy bays,
And the cars, and the bars, my Carmen!
Oh Dolores, that juke-box hurts!
Are you still dancin', darlin'?
(Both in worn levis, both in torn T-shirts,
And I, in my corner, snarlin').
Happy, happy is gnarled McFate
Touring the States with a child wife,
Plowing his Molly in every State
Among the protected wild life.
My Dolly, my folly! Her eyes were vair,
And never closed when I kissed her.
Know an old perfume called Soleil Vert?
Are you from Paris, mister?
L’autre soir un air froid d’opéra m’alita:
Son félé - bien fol est qui s’y fie!
Il neige, le décor s’écroule, Lolita!
Lolita, qu’ai-je fait de ta vie?
Dying, dying, Lolita Haze,
Of hate and remorse, I'm dying.
And again my hairy fist I raise,
And again I hear you crying.
Officer, officer, there they go-
In the rain, where that lighted store is!
And her socks are white, and I love her so,
And her name is Haze, Dolores.
Officer, officer, there they are-
Dolores Haze and her lover!
Whip out your gun and follow that car.
Now tumble out, and take cover.
Wanted, wanted: Dolores Haze.
Her dream-gray gaze never flinches.
Ninety pounds is all she weighs
With a height of sixty inches.
My car is limping, Dolores Haze,
And the last long lap is the hardest,
And I shall be dumped where the weed decays,
And the rest is rust and stardust.
In the Russian Lolita (1967) VN renders "rust and stardust" as rzha i roy zvyozdnyi:
Ищут, ищут Долорес Гейз:
Взор дымчатый тверд. Девяносто
Фунтов всего лишь весит она
При шестидесяти дюймах роста.
Икар мой хромает, Долорес Гейз,
Путь последний тяжел. Уже поздно.
Скоро свалят меня в придорожный бурьян,
А все прочее - ржа и рой звездный.
Rzha i roy zvyozdnyi brings to mind Ni mol' bichuema, ni rzha (may neither moth, nor rust be chastised), a line in the last stanza of VN's Universitetskaya poema ("The University Poem," 1927):
И это всё. Довольно, звуки,
довольно, муза. До разлуки
прошу я только вот о чём:
летя, как ласточка, то ниже,
то в вышине, найди, найди же
простое слово в мире сём,
всегда понять тебя готовом;
и да не будет этим словом
ни моль бичуема, ни ржа;
мгновеньем всяким дорожа,
благослови его движенье,
ему застыть не повели;
почувствуй нежное вращенье
чуть накренившейся земли.
And that is all. Farewell, dear sounds,
farewell, fair muse.
Before our parting I ask only one thing:
as you fly, swallow-like,
now lower, now high,
find one plain word within this world,
always swift to understand you,
and may neither moth, nor rust
be chastised by this word;
cherishing each instant,
blessing each motion,
do not allow it to freeze still,
perceive the delicate rotation
of the slightly tilted earth. (63)
In the New Testament (Matthew 6: 20) Jesus says: "Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal." Humbert's constant companion after Lolita's escape from (or, rather, death in) the Elphinstone hospital, Rita compares herself to "a God-damn mulberry moth:"
She was twice Lolita’s age and three quarters of mine: a very slight, dark-haired, pale-skinned adult, weighing a hundred and five pounds, with charmingly asymmetrical eyes, and angular, rapidly sketched profile, and a most appealing ensellure to her supple back - I think she had some Spanish or Babylonian blood. I picked her up one depraved May evening somewhere between Montreal and New York, or more narrowly, between Toylestown and Blake, at a darkishly burning bar under the sign of the Tiger-moth, where she was amiably drunk: she insisted we had gone to school together, and she placed her trembling little hand on my ape paw. My senses were very slightly stirred but I decided to give her a try; I did – and adopted her as a constant companion. She was so kind, was Rita, such a good sport, that I daresay she would have given herself to any pathetic creature or fallacy, an old broken tree or a bereaved porcupine, out of sheer chumminess and compassion.
When I first met her she had but recently divorced her third husband – and a little more recently had been abandoned by her seventh cavalier servant – the others, the mutables, were too numerous and mobile to tabulate. Her brother was – and no doubt still is – a prominent, pasty-faced, suspenders-and-painted-tie-wearing politician, mayor and boaster of his ball-playing, Bible-reading, grain-handling home town. For the last eight years he had been paying his great little sister several hundred dollars per month under the stringent condition that she would never never enter great little Grainball City. She told me, with wails of wonder, that for some God-damn reason every new boy friend of hers would first of all take her Grainball-ward: it was a fatal attraction; and before she knew what was what, she would find herself sucked into the lunar orbit of the town, and would be following the flood-lit drive that encircled it “going round and round,” as she phrased it, “like a God-damn mulberry moth.” (2.26)
In Boris Lavrenyov's novel Sorok pervyi ("The Forty-First," 1924) Commissar Evsyukov calls Lieutenant Govorukha-Otrok (a White Army officer) "Ty, mol' belaya (You, White moth):"
Вскинулись на Евсюкова поручичьи ультрамариновые шарики.
Ухмыльнулся поручик, шаркнул ножкой.
- Monsieur Евсюков?.. Оч-чень рад познакомиться! К сожалению, не имею полномочий от моего правительства на дипломатические переговоры с такой замечательной личностью.
Веснушки Евсюкова стали белее лица. При всем отряде в глаза смеялся над ним поручик.
Комиссар вытащил наган.
- Ты, моль белая! Не дури! Или выкладай, или пулю слопаешь!
Поручик повел плечом.
- Балда ты, хоть и комиссар! Убьешь - вовсе ничего не слопаешь!
Комиссар опустил револьвер и чертыхнулся.
- Я тебя гопака плясать заставлю, сучье твое мясо. Ты у меня запоешь, - буркнул он.
Поручик так же улыбался одним уголком губ.
Евсюков плюнул и отошел.
- Как, товарищ комиссар? В рай послать, что ли? - спросил красноармеец.
Комиссар почесал ногтем облупленный нос.
- Не... не годится. Это заноза здоровая. Нужно в Казалинск доставить. Там с него в штабе все дознание снимут. - Куда ж его еще, черта, таскать? Сами дойдем ли?
- Афицерей, что ль, вербовать начали?
Евсюков выпрямил грудь и цыкнул:
- Твое какое дело? Я беру - я и в ответе. Сказал!
Обернувшись, увидел Марютку.
- Во! Марютка! Препоручаю тебе их благородие.
Смотри в оба глаза. Упустишь - семь шкур с тебя сдеру!
The lieutenant turned his ultramarine orbs on Yevsukov, smiled, and snapped his heels together.
“Monsieur Yevsukov? Cha-armed. Unfortunately, I have not been commissioned by my government to carry on diplomatic negotiations with anyone in so exalted a position.”
Even Yevsukov’s freckles went white. The man was laughing at him in front of the whole detachment. The commissar snapped out his revolver.
“Look here, you White moth! None of your lip! Either you spill your information or you swallow some lead.”
The lieutenant shrugged his shoulders. “If you kill me I won’t spill anything.”
The commissar lowered his gun with a curse. ‘You'll sing another tune before I’m through with you,’ he said.
The lieutenant went on smiling with one corner of his mouth.
Yevsukov spat and walked away. “Are we to send him to Heaven, Comrade Commissar?” asked one of the Red Army men.
The commissar scratched his peeling nose with a finger-nail. ‘Won't do,” said he. “He’s a big cheese, he is. We've got to deliver him to Kazalinsk. They'll get his secret out of him there all right.”
“You mean, drag him along with us? Lucky if we make it ourselves.”
“So we're recruiting White officers now!”
Yevsukov snapped erect.
"Mind your own business,” he shouted. “I’m taking him, and I answer for it. Shut up.”
As he turned round, his eyes lighted on Maryutka. “You’re the one in charge of His Highness, Maryutka. Keep your eyes peeled. I’ll skin you alive if you let him get away.” (Chapter 3 Concerning the inconvenience of travelling through the deserts of Central Asia without camels, with a reference to the sensation experienced by Columbus’ sailors)
"V ray poslat' chto li? (Are we to send him to heaven?)," a Red Army soldier's question, brings to mind V rayu my budem v myach igrat' (In heaven we shall be playing ball), a line in The University Poem:
Она лениво - значит, скверно -
играла; не летала серной,
как легконогая Ленглен.
Ах, признаюсь, люблю я, други,
на всем разбеге взмах упругий
богини в платье до колен!
Подбросить мяч, назад согнуться,
молниеносно развернуться,
и струнной плоскостью сплеча
скользнуть по темени мяча,
и, ринувшись, ответ свистящий
уничтожительно прервать,-
на свете нет забавы слаще...
В раю мы будем в мяч играть.
Her game was lazy – therefore, bad –
she played; she did not fly, chamois-like,
with the fleet foot of Lenglen.
Oh, I confess, my friends, I love
the stroke resilient at full tilt,
the goddess in a knee-length dress!
To toss the ball, to arch my back,
unwind like lightning,
with the stringed surface, from the shoulder
to skim the ball’s occiput,
and, lunging, the whistling return
to devastatingly cut short –
the world has not a sweeter pastime …
in heaven we shall be playing ball. (34)
The Russian word for "paradise, heaven," ray brings to mind John Ray, Jr. (the author of the Foreword to Humbert's manuscript). According to John Ray, Jr., Mrs. “Richard F. Schiller” (Lolita's married name) outlived Humbert by forty days and 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 the “real” people beyond the “true” story, a few details may be given as received from Mr. “Windmuller,” or “Ramsdale,” who desires his identity suppressed so that “the long shadow 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 publshed 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 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.).
Btw., in Chekhov's story Moya zhizn' ("My Life," 1896) Red'ka (Radish) says: Tlya est travu, rzha - zhelezo, a lzha - dushu! (Aphids consume grass, rust consumes iron, and lying the soul!):"
Окраска крыш, особенно с нашею олифой и краской, считалась очень выгодным делом, и потому этою грубой, скучной работою не брезговали даже такие хорошие мастера, как Редька. В коротких брючках, с тощими лиловыми ногами, он ходил по крыше, похожий на аиста, и я слышал, как, работая кистью, он тяжело вздыхал и говорил:— Горе, горе нам, грешным!
По крыше он ходил так же свободно, как по полу. Несмотря на то, что он был болен и бледен, как мертвец, прыткость у него была необыкновенная; он так же, как молодые, красил купол и главы церкви без подмостков, только при помощи лестниц, и веревки, и было немножко страшно, когда он тут, стоя на высоте, далеко от земли, выпрямлялся во весь свой рост и изрекал неизвестно для кого:
— Тля ест траву, ржа — железо, а лжа — душу!
Painting roofs, especially with our own oil and colours, was regarded as a particularly profitable job, and so this rough, dull work was not disdained, even by such good workmen as Radish. In short breeches, and wasted, purple-looking legs, he used to go about the roofs, looking like a stork, and I used to hear him, as he plied his brush, breathing heavily and saying: "Woe, woe to us sinners!"
He walked about the roofs as freely as though he were upon the ground. In spite of his being ill and pale as a corpse, his agility was extraordinary: he used to paint the domes and cupolas of the churches without scaffolding, like a young man, with only the help of a ladder and a rope, and it was rather horrible when standing on a height far from the earth; he would draw himself up erect, and for some unknown reason pronounce:
"Aphids consume grass, rust consumes iron, and lying the soul!" (Chapter 5)
In his memoir essay “On Chekhov” (that opens his book “At Cemeteries,” 1921) Vasiliy Nemirovich-Danchenko compares Chekhov’s laughter to luch v potyomkakh (a ray in the dark):
Смеялся он редко, но когда смеялся, всем становилось весело, точно луч в потёмках.
He laughed seldom, but when he laughed, everybody was merry, like a ray in the dark.