Describing his life in Paris with Valeria (his first wife), Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) compares himself to Jean-Paul Marat (a French radical journalist, 1743-1793, who was stabbed in his bath by Charlotte Corday):
This state of affairs lasted from 1935 to 1939. Her only asset was a muted nature which did help to produce an odd sense of comfort in our small squalid flat: two rooms, a hazy view in one window, a brick wall in the other, a tiny kitchen, a shoe-shaped bath tub, within which I felt like Marat but with no white-necked maiden to stab me. We had quite a few cozy evenings together, she deep in her Paris-Soir, I working at a rickety table. We went to movies, bicycle races and boxing matches. I appealed to her stale flesh very seldom, only in cases of great urgency and despair. The grocer opposite had a little daughter whose shadow drove me mad; but with Valeria’s help I did find after all some legal outlets to my fantastic predicament. As to cooking, we tacitly dismissed the pot-au-feu and had most of our meals at a crowded place in rue Bonaparte where there were wine stains on the table cloth and a good deal of foreign babble. And next door, an art dealer displayed in his cluttered window a splendid, flamboyant, green, red, golden and inky blue, ancient American estampe - a locomotive with a gigantic smokestack, great baroque lamps and a tremendous cowcatcher, hauling its mauve coaches through the stormy prairie night and mixing a lot of spark-studded black smoke with the furry thunder clouds. (1.8)
In his essay Vanna Marata ("Marat's Bath Tub," 1932) Mark Aldanov points out that the bath tub in which Marat was assassinated had the form of sapog (a boot):
Зловещая ванна имеет форму сапога - теперь совершенно необычную, а в XVIII в. довольно распространенную. Все гравюры и картины революционной эпохи свидетельствуют о том, что "друг народа" был убит в ванне приблизительно такой формы. Однако лишь "приблизительно". (I)
and compares Charlotte Corday to staryi opytnyi okhotnik (an old experienced hunter):
В характере Шарлотты Корде нет ничего женского и, быть может, ничего человеческого. Это моральная геометрия, нам непонятная потому, что мы не привыкли подходить к людям с представлением о совершенных геометрических фигурах. Ей было 25 лет. Вся ее жизнь, кроме одной недели, никакого значения не имеет. Но зато та неделя, 11-17 июля 1793 г., имеет бессмертное историческое значение. Шарлотта Корде приехала из нормандского городка в Париж для того, чтобы убить Марата. Это была теорема. Она теорему доказала самым совершенным способом, обнаружив поразительные качества ума, решительности и присутствия духа. Эта девушка выследила и зарезала в ванне "друга народа" так же хладнокровно, как старый опытный охотник выслеживает и бьет в лесу опасного зверя. Из теоремы вытекали следствия: арест, суд, гильотина. Все это она приняла как неизбежное следствие теоремы, со столь же совершенным ясным спокойствием. Дело 13 июля 1793 г. есть высшее торжество спинозизма в той области, где, казалось бы, спинозизму нечего делать: в области политического террора. (III)
"An old experienced hunter" brings to mind The Enchanted Hunters (a hotel in Briceland where Humbert and Lolita spend their first together). In a little poem that he composed for Rita (a girl whom he picked up at a roadside bar somewhere between Montreal and New York) Humbert compares Picture Lake to a very blood bath of trees:
I went to find Rita who introduced me with her vin triste smile to a pocket-sized wizened truculently tight old man saying this was - what was the name again, son? - a former schoolmate of hers. He tried to retain her, and in the slight scuffle that followed I hurt my thumb against his hard head. In the silent painted park where I walked her and aired her a little, she sobbed and said I would soon, soon leave her as everybody had, and I sang her a wistful French ballad, and strung together some fugitive rhymes to amuse her:
The place was called Enchanted Hunters. Query:
What Indian dyes, Diana, did thy dell
endorse to make of Picture Lake a very
blood bath of trees before the blue hotel?
She said: “Why blue when it is white, why blue for heaven’s sake?” and started to cry again, and I marched her to the car, and we drove on to New York, and soon she was reasonably happy again high up in the haze on the little terrace of our flat. I notice I have somehow mixed up two events, my visit with Rita to Briceland on our way to Cantrip, and our passing through Briceland again on our way back to New York, but such suffusions of swimming colors are not to be disdained by the artist in recollection. (2.26)
There is place (cf. "The place was called Enchanted Hunters") in Laplace (Pierre-Simon Laplace, a French astronomer and mathematician, 1749-1827, whose surname was also spelled La Place), the author of the five-volume Celestial Mechanics, 1799-1825). Humbert's and Lolita's room in The Enchanted Hunters, 342 seems to hint at Earth, Mars and Venus (the third, the fourth and the second planet of the Solar System).
In "Marat's Bath Tub" Mark Aldanov mentions the fact that Charlotte Corday was a great-granddaughter of Corneille:
Шарлотта Корде была правнучка Корнеля, и все французские историки неизменно это подчеркивают. Ее ответы следователям и судьям дошли до нас не в газетных статьях и не в воспоминаниях современников, а в сухой, деловитой, фонографически точной передаче судебного протокола. И в самом деле, многие из этих ответов могли бы затмить знаменитейшие стихи ее предка. Корнель имел полную возможность оттачивать месяцами свои "Пусть он умрет". Шарлотта отвечала немедленно на вопросы, которых, естественно, не предвидела. "Кто внушил вам столько ненависти?" - "Мне чужой ненависти не требовалось, у меня было достаточно своей". Сила ответа именно в том, что она и не думала о корнелевских фразах, - так рисоваться почти невозможно. Самыми простыми, ясными словами она объясняла свою теорему Монтане и Фукье-Тенвилю; не ее вина и не ее заслуга в том, что эта теорема была так страшна. (IV)
A French dramatist, Pierre Corneille (1606-1684) is the author of Le Cid (1636), a five-act tragicomedy. Its characters include Chimène (Le Cid's lover). In her letter to Lolita Mona Dahl (Lolita's best friend at Beardsley) describes a stage performance of Clare Quilty's play The Enchanted Hunters and mentions Chimène:
With Lo’s knowledge and assent, the two post offices given to the Beardsley postmaster as forwarding addresses were P. O. Wace and P. O. Elphinstone. Next morning we visited the former and had to wait in a short but slow queue. Serene Lo studied the rogues’ gallery. Handsome Bryan Bryanski, alias Anthony Bryan, alias Tony Brown, eyes hazel, complexion fair, was wanted for kidnapping. A sad-eyed old gentleman’s faux-pas was mail fraud, and, as if that were not enough, he was cursed with deformed arches. Sullen Sullivan came with a caution: Is believed armed, and should be considered extremely dangerous. If you want to make a movie out of my book, have one of these faces gently melt into my own, while I look. And moreover there was a smudgy snapshot of a Missing Girl, age fourteen, wearing brown shoes when last seen, rhymes. Please notify Sheriff Buller.
I forget my letters; as to Dolly’s, there was her report and a very special-looking envelope. This I deliberately opened and perused its contents. I concluded I was doing the foreseen since she did not seem to mind and drifted toward the newsstand near the exit.
“Dolly-Lo: Well, the play was a grand success. All three hounds lay quiet having been slightly drugged by Cutler, I suspect, and Linda knew all your lines. She was fine, she had alertness and control, but lacked somehow the responsiveness, the relaxed vitality, the charm of my – and the author’s – Diana; but there was no author to applaud us as last time, and the terrific electric storm outside interfered with our own modest offstage thunder. Oh dear, life does fly. Now that everything is over, school, play, the Roy mess, mother’s confinement (our baby, alas, did not live!), it all seems such a long time ago, though practically I still bear traces of the paint.
“We are going to New York after tomorrow, and I guess I can’t manage to wriggle out of accompanying my parents to Europe. I have even worse news for you. Dolly-Lo! I may not be back at Beardsley if and when you return. With one thing and another, one being you know who, and the other not being who you think you know, Dad wants me to go to school in Paris for one year while he and Fullbright are around.
“As expected, poor Poet stumbled in Scene III when arriving at the bit of French nonsense. Remember? Ne manque pas de dire à ton amant, Chimène, comme le lac est beau car il faut qu’il t’y mène. Lucky beau! Qu’il t’y – What a tongue-twister! Well, be good, Lollikins. Best love from your Poet, and best regards to the Governor. Your Mona. P. S. Because of one thing and another, my correspondence happens to be rigidly controlled. So better wait till I write you from Europe.” (She never did as far as I know. The letter contained an element of mysterious nastiness that I am too tired today to analyze. I found it later preserved in one of the Tour Books, and give it here titre documentaire. I read it twice.) (2.19)
In the Russian Lolita (1967) Sheriff Buller becomes sherif Fisher:
С Лолитиного ведома и одобрения я перед отьездом велел бердслейскому почтмейстеру посылать наши письма до востребования сначала в Уэйс, а после пятнадцатого июня в Эльфинстон. На другое утро мы посетили Уэйский почтамт, где нам пришлось ждать в коротком, но медленном хвосте. Безмятежная Лолита стала изучать фотографии мошенников, выставленные в простенке. Красавец Анатолий Брянский, он же Антони Бриан, он же Тони Браун, глаза - карие, цвет лица - бледный, разыскивался полицией по обвинению в похищении дитяти. Faux pas пожилого господина с грустными глазами состояло в том, что он обжулил почтовое ведомство, а кроме того - точно этого не было достаточно, - он страдал неизлечимой деформацией ступней. Насупленный Сулливан подавался с предупреждением: вероятно, вооружен и должен считаться чрезвычайно опасным. Если вы хотите сделать из моей книги фильм, предлагаю такой трюк: пока я рассматриваю эти физиономии, одна из них тихонько превращается в моё лицо. А еще был залапанный снимок Пропавшей Девочки: четырнадцать лет, юбка в клетку и, в рифму, берет, обращаться к шерифу Фишеру, Фишерифу, Фишерифму.
The first novel of Aldanov's trilogy Klyuch ("The Key," 1929), Begstvo ("The Escape," 1932), Peshchera ("The Cave," 1936) begins with the murder of Fisher, a rich banker who loves little girls.