In VN's novel Lolita (1955) the list of Lolita's classmates in Ramsdale school includes Sherva, Oleg:
Thursday. We are paying with hail and gale for the tropical beginning of the month. In a volume of the Young People’s Encyclopedia, I found a map of the states that a child’s pencil had started copying out on a sheet of lightweight paper, upon the other side of which, counter to the unfinished outline of Florida and the Gulf, there was a mimeographed list of names referring, evidently, to her class at the Ramsdale school. It is a poem I know already by heart.
Angel, Grace
Austin, Floyd
Beale, Jack
Beale, Mary
Buck, Daniel
Byron, Marguerite
Campbell, Alice
Carmine, Rose
Chatfield, Phyllis
Clarke, Gordon
Cowan, John
Cowan, Marion
Duncan, Walter
Falter, Ted
Fantasia, Stella
Flashman, Irving
Fox, George
Glave, Mabel
Goodale, Donald
Green, Lucinda
Hamilton, Mary Rose
Haze, Dolores
Honeck, Rosaline
Knight, Kenneth
McCoo, Virginia
McCrystal, Vivian
McFate, Aubrey
Miranda, Anthony
Miranda, Viola
Rosato, Emil
Schlenker, Lena
Scott, Donald
Sheridan, Agnes
Sherva, Oleg
Smith, Hazel
Talbot, Edgar
Talbot, Edwin
Wain, Lull
Williams, Ralph
Windmuller, Louise
A poem, a poem, forsooth! So strange and sweet was it to discover this “Haze, Dolores” (she!) in its special bower of names, with its bodyguard of roses - a fairy princess between her two maids of honor. I am trying to analyze the spine-thrill of delight it gives me, this name among all those others. What is it that excites me almost to tears (hot, opalescent, thick tears that poets and lovers shed)? What is it? The tender anonymity of this name with its formal veil (“Dolores”) and that abstract transposition of first name and surname, which is like a pair of new pale gloves or a mask? Is “mask” the keyword? Is it because there is always delight in the semitranslucent mystery, the flowing charshaf, through which the flesh and the eye you alone are elected to know smile in passing at you alone? Or is it because I can imagine so well the rest of the colorful classroom around my dolorous and hazy darling: Grace and her ripe pimples; Ginny and her lagging leg; Gordon, the haggard masturbator; Duncan, the foul-smelling clown; nail-biting Agnes; Viola, of the blackheads and the bouncing bust; pretty Rosaline; dark Mary Rose; adorable Stella, who has let strangers touch her; Ralph, who bullies and steals; Irving, for whom I am sorry. And there she is there, lost in the middle, gnawing a pencil, detested by teachers, all the boys’ eyes on her hair and neck, my Lolita. (1.11)
Sherva, Oleg seems to be a cross between Shervinski, a character in Mikhail Bulgakov's play Dni Turbinykh ("The Days of the Turbins," 1925) based on his earlier novel Belaya gvardiya ("The White Guard," 1925), with Prince Oleg, the legendary ruler of Novgorod and Kiev (d. 912). The action in Bulgakov's novel and play takes place in Kiev, in late 1918 and early 1919, at the height of the Russian Civil War. In Pushkin's poem Pesn' o veshchem Olege ("The Lay of the Wise Oleg,” 1822) a snake hides in the skull of Oleg's beloved horse and bites Oleg, killing him. In Zhizn' Chernyshevskogo ("The Life of Chernyshevski"), Part Four of VN's novel Dar ("The Gift," 1937), Fyodor Godunov-Cherdyntsev (the narrator and main character) mentions a crack in Chernyshevski's “materialism,” whence more than one snake was to slither and bite Chernyshevski (a radical critic, 1828-1889) during his life:
Для Чернышевского гений был здравый смысл. Если Пушкин был гений, рассуждал он, дивясь, то как истолковать количество помарок в его черновиках? Ведь это уже не «отделка», а черная работа. Ведь здравый смысл высказывается сразу, ибо знает, что хочет сказать. При этом, как человек, творчеству до смешного чуждый, он полагал, что «отделка» происходит «на бумаге», а «настоящая работа», т.е. составление общего плана – «в уме», – признак того опасного дуализма, той трещины в его «материализме», откуда выползла не одна змея, в жизни ужалившая его. Своеобразность Пушкина вообще внушала ему серьезные опасения. «Поэтические произведения хороши тогда, когда прочитав их, каждый (разрядка моя) говорит: да, это не только правдоподобно, но иначе и быть не могло, потому что всегда так бывает».
Chernyshevski equated genius with common sense. If Pushkin was a genius, he argued perplexedly, then how should one interpret the profusion of corrections in his drafts? One can understand some “polishing” in a fair copy but this was the rough work itself. It should have flowed effortless since common sense speaks its mind immediately, for it knows what it wants to say. Moreover, as a person ridiculously alien to artistic creation, he supposed that “polishing” took place on paper while the “real work”—i.e., “the task of forming the general plan”—occurred “in the mind”—another sign of that dangerous dualism, that crack in his “materialism,” whence more than one snake was to slither and bite him during his life. Pushkin’s originality filled him with fears. “Poetic works are good when everyone [my italics] says after reading them: yes, this is not only verisimilar, but also it could not be otherwise, for that’s how it always is.”
The surname Chernyshevski comes from chyornyi (black). Chyornyi chelovek ("The Black Man," 1925) is a poem by Sergey Esenin. In his poem (dated Nov. 14, 1925) Esenin several times mentions sentyabr' (September):
Друг мой, друг мой,
Я очень и очень болен.
Сам не знаю, откуда взялась эта боль.
То ли ветер свистит
Над пустым и безлюдным полем,
То ль, как рощу в сентябрь,
Осыпает мозги алкоголь.
My friend, my friend,
How sick I am. Nor do I know
Whence came this sickness.
Either the wind whistles
Over the desolate unpeopled field,
Or as September strips a copse,
Alcohol strips my brain.
(transl. Geoffrey Thurley)
The narrator and main character in Lolita, Humbert Humbert is drunk and is clad entirely in black when he goes to murder Clare Quilty (the playwright and pornographer who abducted Lolita from the Elphinstone hospital):
Master met me in the Oriental parlor.
“Now who are you?” he asked in a high hoarse voice, his hands thrust into his dressing-gown pockets, his eyes fixing a point to the northeast of my head. “Are you by any chance Brewster?”
By now it was evident to everybody that he was in a fog and completely at my so-called mercy. I could enjoy myself.
“That’s right,” I answered suavely. “Je suis Monsieur Brustère. Let us chat for a moment before we start.”
He looked pleased. His smudgy mustache twitched. I removed my raincoat. I was wearing a black suit, a black shirt, no tie. We sat down in two easy chairs.
“You know,” he said, scratching loudly his fleshy and gritty gray cheek and showing his small pearly teeth in a crooked grin, “you don’t look like Jack Brewster. I mean, the resemblance is not particularly striking. Somebody told me he had a brother with the same telephone company.” (2.35)
The (imaginary) murder of Quilty takes place on September 26, 1952. In an attempt to save his life Quilty tries to seduce Humbert with his collection of erotica and mentions the in folio de-luxe Bagration Island by the explorer and psychoanalyst Melanie Weiss:
“Oh, another thing - you are going to like this. I have an absolutely unique collection of erotica upstairs. Just to mention one item: the in folio de-luxe Bagration Island by the explorer and psychoanalyst Melanie Weiss, a remarkable lady, a remarkable work - drop that gun - with photographs of eight hundred and something male organs she examined and measured in 1932 on Bagration, in the Barda Sea, very illuminating graphs, plotted with love under pleasant skies - drop that gun - and moreover I can arrange for you to attend executions, not everybody knows that the chair is painted yellow -” (2.35)
The explorer and psychoanalyst Melanie Weiss (whose name suggests black and white colors) is a negative, as it were, of Dr. Blanche Schwarzmann whom John Ray, Jr. (Humbert Humbert's "real" name, incidentally) mentions in his Foreword to Humbert's manuscript:
Viewed simply as a novel, “Lolita” deals with situations and emotions that would remain exasperatingly vague to the reader had their expression been etiolated by means of platitudinous evasions. True, not a single obscene term is to be found in the whole work; indeed, the robust philistine who is conditioned by modern conventions into accepting without qualms a lavish array of four-letter words in a banal novel, will be quite shocked by their absence here. If, however, for this paradoxical prude’s comfort, an editor attempted to dilute or omit scenes that a certain type of mind might call “aphrodisiac” (see in this respect the monumental decision rendered December 6, 1933, by Hon. John M. Woolsey in regard to another, considerably more outspoken, book), one would have to forego the publication of “Lolita” altogether, since those very scenes that one might inpetly accuse of sensuous existence of their own, are the most strictly functional ones in the development of a tragic tale tending unswervingly to nothing less than a moral apotheosis. The cynic may say that commercial pornography makes the same claim; the learned may counter by asserting that “H. H.”‘s impassioned confession is a tempest in a test tube; that at least 12% of American adult males - a “conservative” estimate according to Dr. Blanche Schwarzmann (verbal communication) - enjoy yearly, in one way or another, the special experience “H. H.” describes with such despare; that had our demented diarist gone, in the fatal summer of 1947, to a competent psycho-pathologist, there would have been no disaster; but then, neither would there have been this book.
In his pocket diary Humbert describes his dream and mentions Dr. Blanche Schwarzmann who would have paid him a sack of schillings for adding such a libidream to her files:
Friday. I long for some terrific disaster. Earthquake. Spectacular explosion. Her mother is messily but instantly and permanently eliminated, along with everybody else for miles around. Lolita whimpers in my arms. A free man, I enjoy her among the ruins. Her surprise, my explanations, demonstrations, ullulations. Idle and idiotic fancies! A brave Humbert would have played with her most disgustingly (yesterday, for instance, when she was again in my room to show me her drawings, school-artware); he might have bribed her - and got away with it. A simpler and more practical fellow would have soberly stuck to various commercial substitutes - if you know where to go, I don’t. Despite my many looks, I am horribly timid. My romantic soul gets all clammy and shivery at the thought of running into some awful indecent unpleasantness. Those ribald sea monsters. “Mais allez-y, allez-y!” Annabel skipping on one foot to get into her shorts, I seasick with rage, trying to screen her.
Same date, later, quite late. I have turned on the light to take down a dream. It had an evident antecedent. Haze at dinner had benevolently proclaimed that since the weather bureau promised a sunny weekend we would go to the lake Sunday after church. As I lay in bed, erotically musing before trying to go to sleep, I thought of a final scheme how to profit by the picnic to come. I was aware that mother Haze hated my darling for her being sweet on me. So I planned my lake day with a view to satisfying the mother. To her alone would I talk; but at some appropriate moment I would say I had left my wrist watch or my sunglasses in that glade yonder - and plunge with my nymphet into the wood. Reality at this juncture withdrew, and the Quest for the Glasses turned into a quiet little orgy with a singularly knowing, cheerful, corrupt and compliant Lolita behaving as reason knew she could not possibly behave. At 3 a. m. I swallowed a sleeping pill, and presently, a dream that was not a sequel but a parody revealed to me, with a kind of meaningful clarity, the lake I had never yet visited: it was glazed over with a sheet of emerald ice, and a pockmarked Eskimo was trying in vain to break it with a pickax, although imported mimosas and oleanders flowered on its gravelly banks. I am sure Dr. Blanche Schwarzmann would have paid me a sack of schillings for adding such a libidream to her files. Unfortunately, the rest of it was frankly eclectic. Big Haze and little Haze rode on horseback around the lake, and I rode too, dutifully bobbing up and down, bowlegs astraddle although there was no horse between them, only elastic air - one of those little omissions due to the absentmindedness of the dream agent. (1.11)
The horses in Humbert's dream bring to mind "No primesh' ty smert' ot konya svoego (But you will die because of your horse)," the old wizard's words to Prince Oleg in Pushkin's poem.
On the other hand, the surname Sherva rhymes with sterva (bitch), a word used by Gumbert Gumbert in his diary with regard to his wife Sharlotta (Lolita's mother) in the Russian Lolita (1967):
Накануне я прекратил режим отчуждения, который я сам себе предписал, и сейчас я испустил веселый клик, возвещавший мое прибытие, одновременно отворяя дверь гостиной. Повернутая ко мне каштановым шиньоном над сливочно-белой шеей, в той же желтой блузке и тех же темно-красных штанах, которые были на ней в день нашей первой встречи, Шарлотта сидела в углу за письменным столиком и строчила письмо. Еще не выпустив ручку двери, я повторил свой приветственный возглас. Ее рука перестала писать. С секунду Шарлотта сидела неподвижно; затем она медленно повернулась на стуле, положив локоть на его выгнутую спинку. Ее лицо, искаженное тем, что она испытывала, не представляло собой приятного зрелища. Упираясь взглядом в мои ноги, она заговорила:
"Гнусная Гейзиха, толстая стерва, старая ведьма, вредная мамаша, старая... старая дура... эта старая дура все теперь знает... Она... она..."
Моя прекрасная обвинительница остановилась, глотая свой яд и слезы. Что именно Гумберт Гумберт сказал - или пытался сказать - не имеет значения. Она продолжала:
"Вы - чудовище. Вы отвратительный, подлый, преступный обманщик. Если вы подойдете ко мне, я закричу в окно. Прочь от меня!"
Тут опять, я думаю, можно пропустить то, что бормотал Г. Г.
"Я уеду сегодня же. Это все ваше. Но только вам не удастся никогда больше увидеть эту негодную девчонку. Убирайтесь из этой комнаты".
The day before I had ended the regime of aloofness I had imposed upon myself, and now uttered a cheerful homecoming call as I opened the door of the living room. With her ream-white nape and bronze bun to me, wearing the yellow blouse and maroon slacks she had on when I first met her, Charlotte sat at the corner bureau writing a letter. My hand still on the doorknob, I repeated my hearty cry. Her writing hand stopped. She sat still for a moment; then she slowly turned in her chair and rested her elbow on its curved back. Her face, disfigured by her emotion, was not a pretty sight as she stared at my legs and said:
“The Haze woman, the big bitch, the old cat, the obnoxious mamma, thethe old stupid Haze is no longer your dupe. She hasshe has…”
My fair accuser stopped, swallowing her venom and her tears. Whatever Humbert Humbert saidor attempted to sayis inessential. She went on:
“You’re a monster. You’re a detestable, abominable, criminal fraud. If you come nearI’ll scream out the window. Get back!”
Again, whatever H. H. murmured may be omitted, I think.
“I am leaving tonight. This is all yours. Only you’ll never, never see that miserable brat again. Get out of this room.” (1.22)
Sumasshedshaya sterva (the mad bitch), as Humbert calls her, Charlotte does not answer Humbert when he tells her that he made her a drink:
"Я приготовил тебе скотч".
Она не отозвалась, сумасшедшая стерва, и я поставил стаканы на буфет рядом с телефоном, который как раз зазвонил.
"Говорит Лесли - Лесли Томсон", - сказал Лесли Томсон, тот самый, который любил купаться на заре. - "Миссис Гумберт, сэр, попала под автомобиль, и вам бы лучше прийти поскорее".
Я ответил - может быть, не без раздражения - что моя жена цела и невредима, и все еще держа трубку, отпахнул толчком дверь и сказал:
"Вот он тут говорит, Шарлотта, что тебя убили".
Но никакой Шарлотты в гостиной не было.
“I have made you a drink,” I said.
She did not answer, the mad bitch, and I placed the glasses on the sideboard near the telephone, which had started to ring.
“Leslie speaking. Leslie Tomson,” said Leslie Tomson who favored a dip at dawn. “Mrs. Humbert, sir, has been run over and you’d better come quick.”
I answered, perhaps a bit testily, that my wife was safe and sound, and still holding the receiver, I pushed open the door and said:
“There’s this man saying you’ve been killed, Charlotte.”
But there was no Charlotte in the living room. (ibid.)
According to Vladimir Dahl (the lexicographer), sterva or stervo means "animal carcass" (one is reminded of the skull of Oleg's long dead horse).
Btw., Prince Georgiy Shervashidze (1846-1918) was the morganatic husband of the Russian Empress Maria Fyodorovna (the widowed mother of Nicholas II). Like General Pyotr Bagration (cf. the in folio de-lux Bagration Island mentioned by Quilty) and Soso Dzhugashvili (Joseph Stalin's real name), Prince Shervashidze was a Georgian.