Revisiting Ramsdale in 1952, Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Lolita, 1955) meets Mrs. Chatfield (whose daughter Phyllis was Lolita’s classmate in the Ramsdale school):
Feeling I was losing my time, I drove energetically to the downtown hotel where I had arrived with a new bag more than five years before. I took a room, made two appointments by telephone, shaved, bathed, put on black clothes and went down for a drink in the bar. Nothing had changed. The barroom was suffused with the same dim, impossible garnet-red light that in Europe years ago went with low haunts, but here meant a bit of atmosphere in a family hotel. I sat at the same little table where at the very start of my stay, immediately after becoming Charlotte’s lodger, I had thought fit to celebrate the occasion by suavely sharing with her half a bottle of champagne, which had fatally conquered her poor brimming heart. As then, a moon-faced waiter was arranging with stellar care fifty sherries on a round tray for a wedding party. Murphy-Fantasia, this time. It was eight minutes to three. As I walked though the lobby, I had to skirt a group of ladies who with mille grâces were taking leave of each other after a luncheon party. With a harsh cry of recognition, one pounced upon me. She was a stout, short woman in pearl-gray, with a long, gray, slim plume to her small hat. It was Mrs. Chatfield. She attacked me with a fake smile, all aglow with evil curiosity. (Had I done to Dolly, perhaps, what Frank Laselle, a fifty-year-old mechanic, had done o eleven-year-old Sally Horner in 1948?) Very soon I had that avid glee well under control. She thought I was in California. How was - ? With exquisite pleasure I informed her that my stepdaughter had just married a brilliant young mining engineer with a hush-hush job in the Northwest. She said she disapproved of such early marriages, she would never let her Phillys, who was now eighteen -
“Oh yes, of course,” I said quietly. “I remember Phyllis. Phyllis and Camp Q. Yes, of course. By the way, did she ever tell you how Charlie Holmes debauched there his mother’s little charges?”
Mrs. Chatfield’s already broken smile now disintegrated completely.
“For shame,” she cried, “for shame, Mr. Humbert! The poor boy has just been killed in Korea.”
I said didn’t she think “vient de,” with the infinitive, expressed recent events so much more neatly than the English “just,” with the past? But I had to be trotting off, I said. (2.33)
Humbert Humbert thinks of the French phrase vient de mourir. In his autobiography Speak, Memory (1951) VN describes his first erotic experience and quotes the words of his father, "Tolstoy vient de mourir:"
High-principled but rather simple Lenski, who was abroad for the first time, had some trouble keeping the delights of sightseeing in harmony with his pedagogical duties. We took advantage of this and guided him toward places where our parents might not have allowed us to go. He could not resist the Wintergarten, for instance, and so, one night, we found ourselves there, drinking ice-chocolate in an orchestra box. The show developed on the usual lines: a juggler in evening clothes; then a woman, with flashes of rhinestones on her bosom, trilling a concert aria in alternating effusions of green and red light; then a comic on roller skates. Between him and a bicycle act (of which more later) there was an item on the program called “The Gala Girls,” and with something of the shattering and ignominious physical shock I had experienced when coming that cropper on the rink, I recognized my American ladies in the garland of linked, shrill-voiced, shameless “girls,” all rippling from left to right, and then from right to left, with a rhythmic rising of ten identical legs that shot up from ten corollas of flounces. I located my Louise’s face—and knew at once that it was all over, that I had lost her, that I would never forgive her for singing so loudly, for smiling so redly, for disguising herself in that ridiculous way so unlike the charm of either “proud Creoles” or “questionable señoritas.” I could not stop thinking of her altogether, of course, but the shock seems to have liberated in me a certain inductive process, for I soon noticed that any evocation of the feminine form would be accompanied by the puzzling discomfort already familiar to me. I asked my parents about it (they had come to Berlin to see how we were getting along) and my father ruffled the German newspaper he had just opened and replied in English (with the parody of a possible quotation—a manner of speech he often adopted in order to get going): “That, my boy, is just another of nature’s absurd combinations, like shame and blushes, or grief and red eyes.” “Tolstoy vient de mourir,” he suddenly added, in another, stunned voice, turning to my mother.
“Da chto tï [something like “good gracious”]!” she exclaimed in distress, clasping her hands in her lap. “Pora domoy [Time to go home],” she concluded, as if Tolstoy’s death had been the portent of apocalyptic disasters. (Chapter Ten, 3)
Leo Tolstoy died on Nov. 7, 1910 (OS). Humbert Humbert was born in 1910, in Paris. Btw., in the Russian version (1967) of Lolita Gumbert Gumbert's sarcasm is much more venomous:
"В самом деле", сказал я (пользуясь дивной свободою, свойственной сновидениям). "Вот так судьба! Бедный мальчик пробивал нежнейшие, невосстановимейшие перепоночки, прыскал гадючьим ядом - и ничего, жил превесело, да ещё получил посмертный орденок. Впрочем, извините меня, мне пора к адвокату".
Stella Fantasia (Lolita’s classmate who marries Murphy) brings to mind Fet’s poem Quasi una fantasia (1889). Stella is Latin for “star” (note “stellar care” with which a moon-faced waiter is arranging fifty sherries on a round tray for the wedding party). The author of More i zvyozdy (“The Sea and the Stars,” 1859), Sredi zvyozd ("Among the Stars," 1876) and Ugasshim zvyozdam ("To the Extinguished Stars," 1890), Afanasiy Fet was a son of Afanasiy Shenshin (a Russian landowner) and Charlotte Becker (a German inn-keeper's daughter whose first husband was Johann Foeth). The maiden name of Charlotte Haze (Lolita's mother) is Charlotte Becker. The name of Lolita’s husband, Richard F. Schiller, seems to hint at Friedrich Schiller (a German poet, 1759-1805). Shilleru ("To Schiller," 1857) is a poem by Fet. In his poem K Morfeyu (“To Morpheus,” 1842) Fet mentions Diana polnaya nad detskoy kolybel'yu (the full Diana above an infant's cradle):
Люблю душистый сок твоих целебных трав,
Люблю твои уста, люблю твой кроткий нрав,
Диану полную над детской колыбелью,
В которой ты лежишь, предавшийся безделью,
И ложа тесноту, и трепетную тень,
И страстные слова, и сладостную лень.
In a poem that he composed for Rita Humbert Humbert mentions Diana (the Roman goddess of moon and of hunting):
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 part 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)
In the Russian Lolita "blood bath of trees" becomes palitra klyonov (a palette of maples):
Поразительный паразит пошел за Ритой в бар. С той грустной улыбкой, которая появлялась у неё на лице от избытка алкоголя, она представила меня агрессивно-пьяному старику, говоря, что он - запамятовала вашу фамилию, дорогуша - учился с ней в одной школе. Он дерзко попробовал задержать её, и в последовавшей потасовке я больно ушиб большой палец об его весьма твёрдую голову. Затем мне пришлось некоторое время прогуливать и проветривать Риту в раскрашенном осенью парке Зачарованных Охотников. Она всхлипывала и повторяла, что скоро, скоро я брошу её, как все в жизни её, и я спел ей вполголоса задумчивую французскую балладу и сочинил альбомный стишок ей в забаву:
Палитра клёнов в озере, как рана,
Отражена. Ведёт их на убой
В багряном одеянии Диана
Перед гостиницею голубой.
Она спросила: "Но почему голубой, когда она белая? Почему - Господи Боже мой..." - и зарыдала снова. Я решительно повел ее к автомобилю. Мы продолжали наш путь в Нью-Йорк, и там она опять зажила в меру счастливо, прохлаждаясь под дымчатой синевой посреди нашей маленькой террасы на тридцатом этаже. Замечаю, что каким-то образом у меня безнадежно спутались два разных эпизода - мое посещение Брайсландской библиотеки на обратном пути в Нью-Йорк и прогулка в парке на переднем пути в Кантрип, но подобным смешением смазанных красок не должен брезговать художник-мнемозинист.
In Moi vospominaniya (“My Reminiscences,” 1890) Fet speaks of the three Tolstoy brothers and mentions the basic type of maple leaves:
я убеждён, что основной тип всех трёх братьев Толстых тождествен, как тождествен тип кленовых листьев, невзирая на всё разнообразие их очертаний. И если бы я задался развить эту мысль, то показал бы, в какой степени у всех трёх братьев присуще то страстное увлечение, без которого в одном из них не мог бы проявиться поэт Л. Толстой. Разница их отношений к жизни состоит в том, с чем каждый из них уходил от неудавшейся мечты. Николай охлаждал свои порывы скептической насмешкой, Лев отходил от несбывшейся мечты с безмолвным укором, а Сергей - с болезненной мизантропией. Чем больше у подобных характеров первоначальной любви, тем сильнее хотя на время сходство с Тимоном Афинским.
According to Fet, the basic type of all three brothers Tolstoy is identical, just as the type of maple leaves, despite all variety of their outlines, is identical. Fet compares Sergey Tolstoy (Leo's elder brother) to Timon Afinskiy (Timon of Athens). In VN's novel Pale Fire (1962) John Shade borrowed the title of his poem from Shakespeare's Timon of Athens. Sybil Shade (the poet's wife) calls Kinbote (Shade's mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) "a parasite of genius." In the Russian Lolita Humbert Humbert calls Rita's former schoolmate porazitel'nyi parazit (a phenomenal parasite), and "the artist in recollection" becomes khudozhnik-mnemozinist (the artist-Mnemozynist). According to VN, he planned to entitle the British edition of his autobiography Speak, Mnemozyne.
At the beginning of Speak, Memory VN mentions the cradle rocking above an abyss:
The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. (Chapter One, 1)
At the beginning of Drugie berega (“Other Shores,” 1954), the Russian version of his autobiography, VN mentions seraya ot zvyozd dal’ (remote regions grey from the stars):
Сколько раз я чуть не вывихивал разума, стараясь высмотреть малейший луч личного среди безличной тьмы по оба предела жизни? Я готов был стать единоверцем последнего шамана, только бы не отказаться от внутреннего убеждения, что себя я не вижу в вечности лишь из-за земного времени, глухой стеной окружающего жизнь. Я забирался мыслью в серую от звёзд даль -- но ладонь скользила всё по той же совершенно непроницаемой глади. Кажется, кроме самоубийства, я перепробовал все выходы. Я отказывался от своего лица, чтобы проникнуть заурядным привидением в мир, существовавший до меня. Я мирился с унизительным соседством романисток, лепечущих о разных йогах и атлантидах. Я терпел даже отчёты о медиумистических переживаниях каких-то английских полковников индийской службы, довольно ясно помнящих свои прежние воплощения под ивами Лхассы. В поисках ключей и разгадок я рылся в своих самых ранних снах -- и раз уж я заговорил о снах, прошу заметить, что безоговорочно отметаю фрейдовщину и всю её тёмную средневековую подоплёку, с её маниакальной погоней за половой символикой, с её угрюмыми эмбриончиками, подглядывающими из природных засад угрюмое родительское соитие.
Over and over again, my mind has made colossal efforts to distinguish the faintest of personal glimmers in the impersonal darkness on both sides of my life. That this darkness is caused merely by the walls of time separating me and my bruised fists from the free world of timelessness is a belief I gladly share with the most gaudily painted savage. I have journeyed back in thought—with thought hopelessly tapering off as I went—to remote regions where I groped for some secret outlet only to discover that the prison of time is spherical and without exits. I have journeyed back in thought—with thought hopelessly tapering off as I went—to remote regions where I groped for some secret outlet only to discover that the prison of time is spherical and without exits. Short of suicide, I have tried everything. I have doffed my identity in order to pass for a conventional spook and steal into realms that existed before I was conceived. I have mentally endured the degrading company of Victorian lady novelists and retired colonels who remembered having, in former lives, been slave messengers on a Roman road or sages under the willows of Lhasa. I have ransacked my oldest dreams for keys and clues—and let me say at once that I reject completely the vulgar, shabby, fundamentally medieval world of Freud, with its crankish quest for sexual symbols (something like searching for Baconian acrostics in Shakespeare’s works) and its bitter little embryos spying, from their natural nooks, upon the love life of their parents. (Chapter One, 1)
Seraya ot zvyozd dal’ (remote regions grey from the stars) brings to mind Mona Dahl (Lolita's friend at Beardsley school) and Gray Star, a settlement in the remotest Northwest where Lolita (Mrs. “Richard F. Schiller”) dies:
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. (John Ray, Jr.’s Foreword)
Mr. “Windmuller,” of “Ramsdale,” is a lawyer with whom Humbert Humbert made an appointment before going down for a drink in the bar (where he meets Mrs. Chatfield). The second appointment made by Humbert Humbert is with Ivor Quilty (the Ramsdale dentist, Clare’s uncle). Describing his interview with Dr. Quilty, Humbert Humbert mentions “the cradle of rosy anticipation:”
A white-smocked, gray-haired man, with a crew cut and the big flat cheeks of a politician, Dr. Quilty perched on the corner of his desk, one foot dreamily and seductively rocking as he launched on a glorious long-range plan. He would first provide me with provisional plates until the gums settled. Then he would make me a permanent set. He would like to have a look at that mouth of mine. He wore perforated pied shoes. He had not visited with the rascal since 1946, but supposed he could be found at his ancestral home, Grimm Road, not far from Parkington. It was a noble dream. His foot rocked, his gaze was inspired. It would cost me around six hundred. He suggested he take measurements right away, and make the first set before starting operations. My mouth was to him a splendid cave full of priceless treasures, but I denied him entrance.
“No,” I said. “On second thoughts, I shall have it all done by Dr. Molnar. His price is higher, but he is of course a much better dentist than you.”
I do not know if any of my readers will ever have a chance to say that. It is a delicious dream feeling. Clare’s uncle remained sitting on the desk, still looking dreamy, but his foot had stopped push-rocking the cradle of rosy anticipation. On the other hand, his nurse, a skeleton-thin, faded girl, with the tragic eyes of unsuccessful blondes, rushed after me so as to be able to slam the door in my wake. (2.33)
Luch being Russian for “ray,” maleyshiy luch lichnogo (the faintest of personal glimmers) that VN tried to distinguish in the impersonal darkness on both sides of his life brings to mind John Ray, Jr. (the author of the Foreword to Humbert Humbert’s manuscript). In his poem Izmuchen zhizn’yu, kovarstvom nadezhdy… (“By life tormented, and by cunning hope…” 1864) Fet says that he gazes direct iz vremeni v vechnost' (from time into eternity) and mentions kazhdyi luch, plotskoy i besplotnyi (every ray, embodied or ethereal):
Измучен жизнью, коварством надежды,
Когда им в битве душой уступаю,
И днём и ночью смежаю я вежды
И как-то странно порой прозреваю.
Ещё темнее мрак жизни вседневной,
Как после яркой осенней зарницы,
И только в небе, как зов задушевный,
Сверкают звёзд золотые ресницы.
И так прозрачна огней бесконечность,
И так доступна вся бездна эфира,
Что прямо смотрю я из времени в вечность
И пламя твоё узнаю, солнце мира.
И неподвижно на огненных розах
Живой алтарь мирозданья курится,
В его дыму, как в творческих грезах,
Вся сила дрожит и вся вечность снится.
И всё, что мчится по безднам эфира,
И каждый луч, плотский и бесплотный,-
Твой только отблеск, о солнце мира,
И только сон, только сон мимолетный.
И этих грез в мировом дуновенье
Как дым несусь я н таю невольно,
И в этом прозренье, н в этом забвенье
Легко мне жить и дышать мне не больно.
By life tormented, and by cunning hope,
When my soul surrenders in its battle with them,
Day and night I press my eyelids closed
And sometimes I'm vouchsafed peculiar visions.
The gloom of quotidian existence deepens,
As after a bright flash of autumn lightning,
And only in the sky, like a call from the heart,
The stars' golden eyelashes sparkle.
And the flames of infinity are so transparent,
And the entire abyss of ether is so close,
That I gaze direct from time into eternity
And recognize your flame, universal sun.
Motionless, encircled by fiery roses,
The living altar of the cosmos smolders
And in its smoke, as in creative slumber,
All forces quiver, eternity's a dream.
And all that rushes through the abyss of ether,
And every ray, embodied or ethereal,-
Is but your reflection, O universal sun,
It is but a dream, but a fleeting dream.
Through the worldly breath of these reveries
I fly like smoke, involuntarily disperse,
And in this vision, in this delerium,
I can live with ease and breathe without pain.
Time and eternity in Fet's poem bring to mind "the prison of time" and "the free world of timelessness" mentioned by VN in Speak, Memory. In the updated version of my previous post, “Gray Star, John Ray, Jr. & Dolores Haze in Lolita; prison of time in Speak, Memory,” I suggest that VN's novels (including Lolita, Pale Fire and Ada) are an attempt to escape from the prison of time and enjoy the free world of timelessness still in one's lifetime. This is merely a short version (because it is unlikely that anybody will read the full one to the end).
Humbert Humbert becomes Charlotte Haze's lodger and falls in love with her daughter, because on the eve of his arrival in Ramsdale McCoo's house burnt down. The girl with whom Fet was in love, Maria Lazich, died in a fire. Among Fet's poems inspired by his dead mistress is V tishi i mrake tainstvennoy nochi... ("In the darkness and still of a mysterious night..." 1864), the favorite poem of VN's father:
В тиши и мраке таинственной ночи
Я вижу блеск приветливый и милый,
И в звёздном хоре знакомые очи
Горят в степи над забытой могилой.
Трава поблекла, пустыня угрюма,
И сон сиротлив одинокой гробницы,
И только в небе, как вечная дума,
Сверкают звёзд золотые ресницы.
И снится мне, что ты встала из гроба,
Такой же, какой ты с земли отлетела,
И снится, снится: мы молоды оба,
И ты взглянула, как прежде глядела.
In the darkness and still of a mysterious night
I see a fond and welcoming spark,
From the chorus of spheres, familiar eyes
Shine upon a grave forgotten in the steppe.
The grass has faded, the desert is grim,
A lonely tomb dreams an orphan's dream,
And only in the sky, like an eternal idea,
The stars' golden eyelashes sparkle.
And I dream you've risen from the dead,
Unchanged since you departed the earth,
And I dream a dream: we both are young,
And you've looked at me as you did back then.
Fet's poems Izmuchen zhizn’yu, kovarstvom nadezhdy… and V tishi i mrake tainstvennoy nochi... have an epigraph from Arthur Schopenhauer:
Die Gleichmäβigkeit des Laufes der Zeit in allen Köpfen beweist mehr, als irgend etwas, das wir Alle in denselben Traum versenkt sind, ja daβ es
Ein Wesen ist, welches ihn träumt. (The evenness of the passage of time in all heads demonstrates more than anything else that we all are immersed in the same dream and that in fact it is one Being that dreams it.)
In his essay "On a Book Entitled Lolita" (1956) VN says that the name of the protagonist in his story Volshebnik ("The Enchanter," 1939), the Russian precursor to Lolita," was Arthur. At the end of VN's story "Arthur" (actually, the enchanter in VN's story remained nameless) throws himself under the wheels of a truck. In Tolstoy's novel Anna Karenin (1877) Anna throws herself under the wheels of a train. At the end of his novel Tolstoy mentions Mlechnyi put’ (the Milky Way):
Уже совсем стемнело, и на юге, куда он смотрел, не было туч. Тучи стояли с противной стороны. Оттуда вспыхивала молния и слышался дальний гром. Левин прислушивался к равномерно падающим с лип в саду каплям и смотрел на знакомый ему треугольник звёзд и на проходящий в середине его Млечный Путь с его разветвлением. При каждой вспышке молнии не только Млечный Путь, но и яркие звезды исчезали, но, как только потухала молния, опять, как будто брошенные какой-то меткой рукой, появлялись на тех же местах.
It was quite dark now, and in the south, where he was looking, there were no clouds. The storm had drifted on to the opposite side of the sky, and there were flashes of lightning and distant thunder from that quarter. Levin listened to the monotonous drip from the lime trees in the garden, and looked at the triangle of stars he knew so well, and the Milky Way with its branches that ran through its midst. At each flash of lightning the Milky Way, and even the bright stars, vanished, but as soon as the lightning died away, they reappeared in their places as though some hand had flung them back with careful aim. (Part Eight, chapter XIX)
Leo Tolstoy died at the railway station of Astapovo, in the stationmaster's house. In the English version of VN's story Vesna v Fial'te ("Spring in Fialta," 1936) the narrator learns about Nina's death in a car crash on the station platform of Mlech:
But the stone was as warm as flesh, and suddenly I understood something I had been seeing without understanding—why a piece of tinfoil had sparkled so on the pavement, why the gleam of a glass had trembled on a tablecloth, why the sea was a shimmer: somehow, by imperceptible degrees, the white sky above Fialta had got saturated with sunshine, and now it was sun-pervaded throughout, and this brimming white radiance grew broader and broader, all dissolved in it, all vanished, all passed, and I stood on the station platform of Mlech with a freshly bought newspaper, which told me that the yellow car I had seen under the plane trees had suffered a crash beyond Fialta, having run at full speed into the truck of a traveling circus entering the town, a crash from which Ferdinand and his friend, those invulnerable rogues, those salamanders of fate, those basilisks of good fortune, had escaped with local and temporary injury to their scales, while Nina, in spite of her long-standing, faithful imitation of them, had turned out after all to be mortal.
In VN’s story the name Fialta reminds the narrator of Yalta ("a lovely Crimean town"):
Я этот городок люблю; потому ли, что во впадине его названия мне слышится сахаристо-сырой запах мелкого, тёмного, самого мятого из цветов, и не в тон, хотя внятное, звучание Ялты; потому ли, что его сонная весна особенно умащивает душу, не знаю; но как я был рад очнуться в нём, и вот шлёпать вверх, навстречу ручьям, без шапки, с мокрой головой, в макинтоше, надетом прямо на рубашку!
I am fond of Fialta; I am fond of it because I feel in the hollow of those violaceous syllables the sweet dark dampness of the most rumpled of small flowers, and because the altolike name of a lovely Crimean town is echoed by its viola; and also because there is something in the very somnolence of its humid Lent that especially anoints one’s soul.
In Chekhov's story Dama s sobachkoy ("The Lady with the Little Dog," 1899) the action takes place in Yalta. The characters in Chekhov's play Vishnyovyi sad ("The Cherry Orchard," 1904) include Charlotta Ivanovna, a former circus actress who travels with her dog. In Speak, Memory VN says that the grandparents of Box II (the Nabokovs’ dachshund that followed his masters into exile) had been Dr. Anton Chekhov’s Quina and Brom. Charlotte Humbert dies under the wheels of a truck because of a neighbor's hysterical dog.
Posmertnyi ordenok (Charlie Holmes' postmortal decoration) mentioned by Gumbert Gumbert in the Russian Lolita brings to mind Chekhov's only ordenok (small decoration) that, as Hodasevich points out in his essay O Chekhove ("On Chekhov," 1929), the writer returned at the first opportunity:
Державин суров и строг, Чехов снисходителен. Державин упрям и сварлив, Чехов мягок, доброжелателен. Державин горд и честолюбив откровенно, даже до дикости; о себе он "мечтает":
Един есть Бог, един - Державин.
Чехов до той же крайности скромен: Толстой со слезами на глазах расхваливает его рассказ; Чехов краснеет, молчит, протирает пенсне и, наконец, говорит: "Там - опечатки"... Державин не стыдится гоняться за орденами; единственный орденок свой, звание почетного академика, Чехов при первом удобном случае возвращает обратно.
The name of Charlie's mother, Shirley Holmes (headmistress of camp Q.), hints at Sherlock Holmes (the private detective in the Conan Doyle stories). In his memoir essay O Chekhove (“On Chekhov”), the first one in his book Na kladbishchakh ("At Cemeteries," 1921), Vasiliy Nemirovich-Danchenko mentions a Russian lady (“one of our most furious compatriots”) whom he and Chekhov met in Nice and who preferred Sherlok Gol'ms (Sherlock Holmes) to Maupassant:
Я не могу забыть встречи в Ницце с одною из самых неистовых наших соотечественниц. На беду А. П. Чехова мы с ним как-то пошли завтракать в "Reserve". Я был ей накануне представлен. Она оказалась за соседним столом. Ей сказали, кто со мной, и вдруг, не успели мы ещё заказать себе, как она на всю залу мне:
-- C'est monsieur Tchekoff.
И произнесла, как будто забыла русские "ч" и "х" -- Tшekoff.
-- Alors presentez le moi, je veux faire sa connaissance... Пришлось представить. Какой-то недоносок рядом взбросил монокль в глаз и тоже: "Tiensi c'est monsieur Tchekoff" И французу около -- и француз-то был поганый с лакированной мордашкой и усами штопором: "Это русский писатель... Celebre!" И во все глаза на Антона Павловича... Дама, разумеется, захотела сейчас же поразить всех своей образованностью, и с места:
-- Ах, я так люблю писателей... У меня бывают... M-sieur Forcer... Вы его знаете, он в Petit Niçois Когда я приехала, он обо мне целую статью: La belle de Moscou... Хотите, я вас ему представлю? Скажите, М. Tшekoff, вы в каком роде пишете?.. Вот князь (кивок по направлению к своему кавалеру) уверяет, что вы почти русский Мопассан... C'est tres joli -- Maupassant... Хоть я больше люблю Шерлока Гольмса... У нас так не умеют. Я вашего Толстого не выношу, хоть он и граф... У него всё а la moujik... А что вы теперь творите? (Не пишете, а творите!)
И Чехов мрачно:
-- "Хороший тон" Германа Гоппе.
-- Это что же, роман?
-- Вроде...
Gadyuchiy yad (a viper's poison) with which Chalie Holmes sprinkled after popping the most delicate membranes (as Gumbert Gumbert puts it in the Russian Lolita) brings to mind Aksinya, in Chekhov’s story V ovrage (“In the Ravine,” 1900) Stepan Tsybukin's wife who is compared to gadyuka (a viper):
У Аксиньи были серые наивные глаза, которые редко мигали, и на лице постоянно играла наивная улыбка. И в этих немигающих глазах, и в маленькой голове на длинной шее, и в её стройности было что-то змеиное; зелёная, с жёлтой грудью, с улыбкой, она глядела, как весной из молодой ржи глядит на прохожего гадюка, вытянувшись и подняв голову.
Aksinya had naïve grey eyes which rarely blinked, and a naïve smile played continually on her face. And in those unblinking eyes, and in that little head on the long neck, and in her slenderness there was something snake-like; all in green but for the yellow on her bosom, she looked with a smile on her face as a viper looks out of the young rye in the spring at the passers-by, stretching itself and lifting its head. (chapter III)
When Humbert Humbert arrives in Camp Q, Charlie Holmes wears a green shirt:
I reached my destination around half past two; parked my car in a pine grove where a green-shirted, redheaded impish lad stood throwing horseshoes in sullen solitude; was laconically directed by him to an office in a stucco cottage; in a dying state, had to endure for several minutes the inquisitive commiseration of the camp mistress, a sluttish worn out female with rusty hair. Dolly she said was all packed and ready to go. She knew her mother was sick but not critically. Would Mr. Haze, I mean, Mr. Humbert, care to meet the camp counselors? Or look at the cabins where the girls live? Each dedicated to a Disney creature? Or visit the Lodge? Or should Charlie be sent over to fetch her? The girls were just finishing fixing the Dining Room for a dance. (And perhaps afterwards she would say to somebody or other: “The poor guy looked like his own ghost.”) (1.27)
In the Russian Lolita Barbara Burke (a girl in Camp Q who shared with Lolita her very special canoe) becomes Varvara. In Chekhov's story "In the Ravine" Varvara is Grigoriy Tsybukin's wife.
According to Humbert Humbert, Charlie Holmes "had as much sex appeal as a raw carrot:"
At first, Lo had refused “to try what it was like,” but curiosity and camaraderie prevailed, and soon she and Barbara were doing it by turns with the silent, coarse and surly but indefatigable Charlie, who had as much sex appeal as a raw carrot but sported a fascinating collection of contraceptives which he used to fish out of a third nearby lake, a considerably larger and more populous one, called Lake Climax, after the booming young factory town of that name. Although conceding it was “sort of fun” and “fine for the complexion,” Lolita, I am glad to say, held Charlie’s mind and manners in the greatest contempt. Nor had her temperament been roused by that filthy fiend. In fact, I think he had rather stunned it, despite the “fun.” (1.32)
In a letter of April 20, 1904, to his wife Chekhov compares life to a carrot:
Ты спрашиваешь: что такое жизнь? Это всё равно, что спросить: что такое морковка? Морковка есть морковка, и больше ничего неизвестно.
You ask "What is life?" That is the same as asking "What is a carrot?" A carrot is a carrot and we know nothing more.
In VN's play Sobytie ("The Event," 1938) the portrait painter Troshcheykin asks Antonina Pavlovna (Troshcheykin's mother-in-law whose name and patronymic hint at Chekhov), if she knows who else eats every morning, as she does, three fifths of a carrot:
Трощейкин. Кстати, Антонина Павловна, вы знаете, кто ещё, как вы, ест по утрам три пятых морковки?
Антонина Павловна. Кто?
Трощейкин. Не знаю, - я вас спрашиваю. (Act One)
When he compared life to a carrot, Chekhov had only two months of life. The action in VN's play takes place on Antonina Pavlovna's fiftieth birthday. It seems that Antonina Pavlovna has lived her life to three fifths. Fifty years being three fifths of her life, she will live about thirty three years more and die at eighty three. In a letter of July 6, 1898, to Sumbatov-Yuzhin Chekhov predicts not only the date, but also the circumstances of Yuzhin's death:
Будь здоров и благополучен и не бойся нефрита, которого у тебя нет и не будет. Ты умрёшь через 67 лет, и не от нефрита; тебя убьёт молния в Монте-Карло.
Don't be afraid of nephritis. You'll die in 67 years and not of nephritis; a lightning in Monte-Carlo will kill you.
According to Humbert Humbert, his mother died in a freak accident (picnic, lightning) when he was three (in 1913):
My very photogenic mother died in a freak accident (picnic, lightning) when I was three, and, save for a pocket of warmth in the darkest past, nothing of her subsists within the hollows and dells of memory, over which, if you can still stand my style (I am writing under observation), the sun of my infancy had set: surely, you all know those redolent remnants of day suspended, with the midges, about some hedge in bloom or suddenly entered and traversed by the rambler, at the bottom of a hill, in the summer dusk; a furry warmth, golden midges. (1.2)
In Pale Fire Kinbote quotes the words of Shade who listed Chekhov among Russian humorists:
Speaking of the Head of the bloated Russian Department, Prof. Pnin, a regular martinet in regard to his underlings (happily, Prof. Botkin, who taught in another department, was not subordinated to that grotesque "perfectionist"): "How odd that Russian intellectuals should lack all sense of humor when they have such marvelous humorists as Gogol, Dostoevski, Chekhov, Zoshchenko, and those joint authors of genius Ilf and Petrov." (note to Line 172)
In his lecture on chess Ostap Bender (the main character in Ilf and Petrov's "The Twelve Chairs" and "The Golden Calf") says that an opening is quasi una fantasia:
Предмет моей лекции — плодотворная дебютная идея. Что такое, товарищи, дебют и что такое, товарищи, идея? Дебют, товарищи, это quasi una fantasia. А что такое, товарищи, значит идея? Идея, товарищи, — это человеческая мысль, облечённая в логическую шахматную форму. Даже с ничтожными силами можно овладеть всей доской.
The subject of my lecture is 'A Fruitful Opening Idea'. "What, Comrades, is an opening? And what, Comrades, is an idea? An opening, Comrades, is quasi una fantasia. And what, Comrades, is an idea? An idea, Comrades, is a human thought moulded in logical chess form. Even with insignificant forces you can master the whole of the chessboard. (chapter 34 "The Interplanetary Chess Tournament")
Ostap's lecture on chess is a parody of Kataev's story Lektsiya Niagarova (“A Lecture of Niagarov,” 1926). Describing his first night with Lolita in The Enchanted Hunters, Humbert Humbert compares a neighbor's toilet to a veritable Niagara:
Every now and then, immediately east of my left ear (always assuming I lay on my back, not daring to direct my viler side toward the nebulous haunch of my bed-mate), the corridor would brim with cheerful, resonant and inept exclamations ending in a volley of good-nights. When that stopped, a toilet immediately north of my cerebellum took over. It was a manly, energetic, deep-throated toilet, and it was used many times. Its gurgle and gush and long afterflow shook the wall behind me. Then someone in a southern direction was extravagantly sick, almost coughing out his life with his liquor, and his toilet descended like a veritable Niagara, immediately beyond our bathroom. And when finally all the waterfalls had stopped, and the enchanted hunters were sound asleep, the avenue under the window of my insomnia, to the west of my wake-a staid, eminently residential, dignified alley of huge trees-degenerated into the despicable haunt of gigantic trucks roaring through the wet and windy night. (1.29)
The characters in Pale Fire include Andronnikov and Niagarin, the two Soviet experts hired by the new Zemblan government to find the crown jewels. In "The Twelve Chairs" the three main characters (Bender, Vorobyaninov and Father Fyodor) attempt to obtain jewelry hidden in a chair.
In the simultaneous chess match Ostap Bender sacrifices his queen to one of the Vasyuki enthusiasts:
Коварство гроссмейстера было несомненно. С необычайной легкостью и, безусловно, ехидничая в душе над отсталыми любителями города Васюки, гроссмейстер жертвовал пешки, тяжелые и легкие фигуры направо и налево. Обхаянному на лекции брюнету он пожертвовал даже ферзя. Брюнет пришел в ужас и хотел было немедленно сдаться, но только страшным усилием воли заставил себя продолжать игру.
With singular ease, and no doubt scoffing to himself at the backwardness of the Vasyuki enthusiasts, the Grossmeister sacrificed pawns and other pieces left and right. He even sacrificed his queen to the brown-haired fellow whose skill had been so belittled during the lecture. The man was horrified and about to resign; it was only by a terrific effort of will that he was able to continue. (chapter 34)
Playing chess with Gaston Godin, Humbert Humbert loses his queen and spends a dreary hour in achieving a draw:
Because it supposedly tied up with her interest in dance and dramatics, I had permitted Lo to take piano lessons with a Miss Emperor (as we French scholars may conveniently call her) to whose blue-shuttered little white house a mile or so beyond Beardsley Lo would spin off twice a week. One Friday night toward the end of May (and a week or so after the very special rehearsal Lo had not had me attend) the telephone in my study, where I was in the act of mopping up Gustave’s - I mean Gaston’s - king’s side, rang and Miss Emperor asked if Lo was coming next Tuesday because she had missed last Tuesday’s and today’s lessons. I said she would by all meansand went on with the game. As the reader may well imagine, my faculties were now impaired, and a move or two later, with Gaston to play, I noticed through the film of my general distress that he could collect my queen; he noticed it too, but thinking it might be a trap on the part of his tricky opponent, he demurred for quite a minute, and puffed and wheezed, and shook his jowls, and even shot furtive glances at me, and made hesitating half-thrusts with his pudgily bunched fingers - dying to take that juicy queen and not daring - and all of a sudden he swooped down upon it (who knows if it did not teach him certain later audacities?), and I spent a dreary hour in achieving a draw. (2.14)
In Speak, Memory VN mentions a simultaneous display in a Minsk café:
I had long wanted that particular species, and, when near enough, I struck. You have heard champion tennis players moan after muffing an easy shot. You may have seen the face of the world-famous grandmaster Wilhelm Edmundson when, during a simultaneous display in a Minsk café, he lost his rook, by an absurd oversight, to the local amateur and pediatrician, Dr. Schach, who eventually won. But that day nobody (except my older self) could see me shake out a piece of twig from an otherwise empty net and stare at a hole in the tarlatan. (Chapter Six, 4)
In Drugie berega the grandmaster loses his ferz' (queen), not rook:
Мы все видали лицо знаменитого гроссмейстера, вдруг подставившего ферзя местному любителю, Борису Исидоровичу Шаху. Но никто не присутствовал при том, как я вытряхивал веточку из сетки и глядел на дырку в кисее.
In the same chapter of his autobiography VN quotes Fet's poem Babochka ("The Butterfly," 1884):
Whence have I come and whither am I hasting
Do not inquire;
Now on a graceful flower I have settled
And now respire.
and Browning's poem "By the Fire-side:"
On our other side is the straight-up rock;
And a path is kept 'twixt the gorge and it
By boulder-stones where lichens mock
The marks on a moth, and small ferns fit
Their teeth to the polished block.
Describing his stay with Lolita in Elphinstone, Humbert Humbert “quotes” Browning’s poem Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister:
No doubt, I was a little delirious - and on the following day I was still a vibration rather than a solid, for when I looked out the bathroom window at the adjacent lawn, I saw Dolly’s beautiful young bicycle propped up there on its support, the graceful front wheel looking away from me, as it always did, and a sparrow perched on the saddle - but it was the landlady’s bike, and smiling a little, and shaking my poor head over my fond fancies, I tottered back to my bed, and lay as quiet as a saint
Saint, forsooth! While brown Dolores,
On a patch of sunny green
With Sanchicha reading stories
In a movie magazine
which was represented by numerous specimens wherever Dolores landed, and there was some great national celebration in town judging by the firecrackers, veritable bombs, that exploded all the time, and at five minutes to two p. m. I heard the sound of whistling lips nearing the half-opened door of my cabin, and then a thump upon it. (2.22)
and mentions “Ponderosa Lodge:”
Feeding my Carmencita well? Idly I glanced at the tray. On a yolk-stained plate there was a crumpled envelope. It had contained something, since one edge was torn, but there was no address on itnothing at all, save a phony armorial design with “Ponderosa Lodge” in green letters; thereupon I performed a chassé-croisé with Mary, who was in the act of bustling out againwonderful how fast they move and how little they do, those rumpy young nurses. She glowered at the envelope I had put back, uncrumpled.
“You better not touch,” she said, nodding directionally. “Could burn your fingers.”
Below my dignity to rejoin. All I said was:
“Je croyais que c’était un bill - not a billet doux.” Then, entering the sunny room, to Lolita: “Bonjour, mon petit.”
“Dolores,” said Mary Lore, entering with me, past me, though me, the plump whore, and blinking, and starting to fold very rapidly a white flannel blanket as she blinked: “Dolores, your pappy thinks you are getting letters from my boy friend. It’s me (smugly tapping herself on the small glit cross she wore) gets them. And my pappy can parlay-voo as well as yours.” (ibid.)
In the Russian Lolita "Ponderosa Lodge" becomes Ponderozovaya Sosna (Ponderosa Pine). In his poem Sosny (The Pine Trees,” 1854) Fet contrasts the virginal maple trees and weeping birch trees with the arrogant pine trees whose trezvyi vid (sober look) is to him unbearable:
Средь клёнов девственных и плачущих берёз
Я видеть не могу надменных этих сосен;
Они смущают рой живых и сладких грёз,
И трезвый вид мне их несносен.
В кругу воскреснувших соседей лишь оне
Не знают трепета, не шепчут, не вздыхают
И, неизменные, ликующей весне
Пору зимы напоминают.
Когда уронит лес последний лист сухой
И, смолкнув, станет ждать весны и возрожденья,-
Они останутся холодною красой
Пугать иные поколенья.
Roy zhivikh i sladkikh gryoz (a swarm of live and sweet dreams) in the poem's third line brings to mind Roy, Mona Dahl's boyfriend. When Humbert Humbert calls up Mona, her mother attends to the telephone and mistakes him for Roy:
I found Dolores Haze at the kitchen table, consuming a wedge of pie, with her eyes fixed on her script. They rose to meet mine with a kind of celestial vapidity. She remained singularly unruffled when confronted with my discovery, and said d’un petit air faussement contrit that she knew she was a very wicked kid, but simply had not been able to resist the enchantment, and had used up those music hours - O Reader, My Reader! - in a nearby public park rehearsing the magic forest scene with Mona. I said “fine”and stalked to the telephone. Mona’s mother answered: “Oh yes, she’s in” and retreated with a mother’s neutral laugh of polite pleasure to shout off stage “Roy calling!” and the very next moment Mona rustled up, and forthwith, in a low monotonous not untender voice started berating Roy for something he had said or done and I interrupted her, and presently Mona was saying in her humbles, sexiest contralto, “yes, sir,” “surely, sir” “I am alone to blame, sir, in this unfortunate business,” (what elocution! what poise!) “honest, I feel very bad about it”and so on and so forth as those little harlots say. (2.14)
As she speaks to Mona, Lolita mentions her sweater of virgin wool:
For a while, I endeavored to interest my senses in Mona Dahl who was a good deal around, especially during the spring term when Lo and she got so enthusiastic about dramatics. I have often wondered what secrets outrageously treacherous Dolores Haze had imparted to Mona while blurting out to me by urgent and well-paid request various really incredible details concerning an affair that Mona had had with a marine at the seaside. It was characteristic of Lo that she chose for her closest chum that elegant, cold, lascivious, experienced young female whom I once heard (misheard, Lo swore) cheerfully say in the hallway to Lo - who had remarked that her (Lo's) sweater was of virgin wool: "The only thing about you that is, kiddo . . ." (2.9)
At Ponderosa Lodge Clare Quilty (Lolita's lover who abducts her from the Elphinstone hospital) puts himself down in the motel-book Dr. Gratiano Forbeson:
I discovered at once that he had foreseen my investigations and had planted insulting pseudonyms for my special benefit. At the very first motel office I visited, Ponderosa Lodge, his entry, among a dozen obviously human ones, read: Dr. Gratiano Forbeson, Mirandola, NY. Its Italian Comedy connotations could not fail to strike me, of course. (2.23)
“Dr. Gratiano Forbeson” seems to blend Dottore Gratiano (a character in the Italian commedia dell’arte) with Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson (1853-1937), an English actor and theatre manager who was considered the finest Hamlet of the Victorian era. In the Russian Lolita “Dr. Gratiano Forbeson, Mirandola, NY” becomes “Adam N. Epilinter, Esnop, Illinoy:”
Я сразу установил, что наш бывший преследователь предвидел мои изыскания и подбросил мне на поживу ряд оскорбительных псевдонимов, каламбуров и прочих вывертов. В первом же мотеле, который я посетил - "Пондерозовая Сосна", - я нашёл, среди дюжины явно человеческих адресов, следующую мерзость: Адам Н. Епилинтер, Есноп, Иллиной. Мой острый глаз немедленно разбил это на две хамских фразы, утвердительную и вопросительную.
According to Gumbert Gumbert, his sharp eye immediately broke this merzost’ (piece of nastiness) in two khamskie frazy (rude phrases), of which the first was positive and the second interrogative:
Adam ne pil. Interesno, pil li Noy? (“Adam did not drink. One wonders if Noah did?”)
The adjective khamskiy (boorish) comes from Kham (Ham). In a letter of September 16, 1891, to Elena Shavrov Chekhov mentions Noah and says that writers must not imitate his son Ham:
У Ноя было три сына: Сим, Хам и, кажется, Афет. Хам заметил только, что отец его пьяница, и совершенно упустил из виду, что Ной гениален, что он построил ковчег и спас мир. Пишущие не должны подражать Хаму. Намотайте это себе на ус.
Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Ham only noticed that his father was a drunkard, and completely lost sight of the fact that he was a genius, that he had built an ark and saved the world. Writers must not imitate Ham, bear that in mind.
Humbert Humbert identifies himself as Adam:
So Humbert the Cubus schemed and dreamed – and the red sun of desire and decision (the two things that create a live world) rose higher and higher, while upon a succession of balconies a succession of libertines, sparkling glass in hand, toasted the bliss of past and future nights. Then, figuratively speaking, I shattered the glass, and boldly imagined (for I was drunk on those visions by then and underrated the gentleness of my nature) how eventually I might blackmail — no, that it too strong a word — mauvemail big Haze into letting me consort with the little Haze by gently threatening the poor doting Big Dove with desertion if she tried to bar me from playing with my legal stepdaughter. In a word, before such an Amazing Offer, before such a vastness and variety of vistas, I was as helpless as Adam at the preview of early oriental history, miraged in his apple orchard. (1.17)
In a poem that Clare Quilty is made to read out loud before his death Humbert Humbert says that he “stood Adam-naked before a federal law and all its stinging stars:
I decided to inspect the pistol - our sweat might have spoiled something - and regain my wind before proceeding to the main item in the program. To fill in the pause, I proposed he read his own sentence - in the poetical form I had given it. The term “poetical justice” is one that may be most happily used in this respect. I handed him a neat typescript.
“Yes,” he said, “splendid idea. Let me fetch my reading glasses” (he attempted to rise).
“No.”
“Just as you say. Shall I read out loud?”
“Yes.”
“Here goes. I see it’s in verse.
Because you took advantage of a sinner
because you took advantage
because you took
because you took advantage of my disadvantage…
“That’s good, you know. That’s damned good.”
…when I stood Adam-naked
before a federal law and all its stinging stars
“Oh, grand stuff!”
…Because you took advantage of a sin
when I was helpless moulting moist and tender
hoping for the best
dreaming of marriage in a mountain state
aye of a litter of Lolitas…
“Didn’t get that.”
Because you took advantage of my inner
essential innocence
because you cheated me
“A little repetitious, what? Where was I?”
Because you cheated me of my redemption
because you took
her at the age when lads
play with erector sets
“Getting smutty, eh?”
a little downy girl still wearing poppies
still eating popcorn in the colored gloam
where tawny Indians took paid croppers
because you stole her
from her wax-browed and dignified protector
spitting into his heavy-lidded eye
ripping his flavid toga and at dawn
leaving the hog to roll upon his new discomfort
the awfulness of love and violets
remorse despair while you
took a dull doll to pieces
and threw its head away
because of all you did
because of all I did not
you have to die
“Well, sir, this is certainly a fine poem. Your best as far as I’m concerned.”
He folded and handed it back to me. (2.35)