After three years of unsuccessful investigations Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Lolita, 1955) finally tracks down Clare Quilty (a playwright with whom Lolita escaped from the Elphinstone hospital) to Pavor Manor, a wooden house on Grimm Road:
A gas station attendant in Parkington explained to me very clearly how to get to Grimm Road. Wishing to be sure Quilty would be at home, I attempted to ring him up but learned that his private telephone had recently been disconnected. Did that mean he was gone? I started to drive to Grimm Road, twelve miles north of the town. By that time night had eliminated most of the landscape and as I followed the narrow winding highway, a series of short posts, ghostly white, with reflectors, borrowed my own lights to indicate this or that curve. I could make out a dark valley on one side of the road and wooded slopes on the other, and in front of me, like derelict snowflakes, moths drifted out of the blackness into my probing aura. At the twelfth mile, as foretold, a curiously hooded bridge sheathed me for a moment and, beyond it, a white-washed rock loomed on the right, and a few car lengths further, on the same side, I turned off the highway up gravelly Grimm Road. For a couple of minutes all was dank, dark, dense forest. Then, Pavor Manor, a wooden house with a turret, arose in a circular clearing. Its windows glowed yellow and red; its drive was cluttered with half a dozen cars. I stopped in the shelter of the trees and abolished my lights to ponder the next move quietly. He would be surrounded by his henchmen and whores. I could not help seeing the inside of that festive and ramshackle castle in terms of “Troubled Teens,” a story in one of her magazines, vague “orgies,” a sinister adult with penele cigar, drugs, bodyguards. At least, he was there. I would return in the torpid morning. (2.34)
Pavor Manor (House of Fear) brings to mind the pavor nocturnus (nocturnal fear) mentioned by Humbert earlier in his memoir:
Gentlemen of the jury! I cannot swear that certain motions pertaining to the business in hand - if I may coin an expression - had not drifted across my mind before. My mind had not retained them in any logical form or in any relation to definitely recollected occasions; but I cannot swearlet me repeatthat I had not toyed with them (to rig up yet another expression), in my dimness of thought, in my darkness of passion. There may have been timesthere must have been times, if I know my Humbertwhen I had brought up for detached inspection the idea of marrying a mature widow (say, Charlotte Haze) with not one relative left in the wide gray world, merely in order to have my way with her child (Lo, Lola, Lolita). I am even prepared to tell my tormentors that perhaps once or twice I had cast an appraiser’s cold eye at Charlotte’s coral lips and bronze hair and dangerously low neckline, and had vaguely tried to fit her into a plausible daydream. This I confess under torture. Imaginary torture, perhaps, but all the more horrible. I wish I might digress and tell you more of the pavor nocturnus that would rack me at night hideously after a chance term had struck me in the random readings of my boyhood, such as peine forte et dure (what a Genius of Pain must have invented that!) or the dreadful, mysterious, insidious words “trauma,” “traumatic event,” and “transom.” But my tale is sufficiently incondite already. (1.17)
In his story William Wilson (1842) E. A. Poe mentions the peine forte et dure ("hard and forceful punishment," a method of torture formerly used in the common law legal system, in which a defendant who refused to plead would be subjected to having heavier and heavier stones placed upon their chest until a plea was entered, or death resulted):
The school-room was the largest in the house -- I could not help thinking in the world. It was very long, narrow, and dismally low, with pointed Gothic windows and a ceiling of oak. In a remote and terror-inspiring angle was a square enclosure of eight or ten feet, comprising the sanctum, "during hours," of our principal, the Reverend Dr. Bransby. It was a solid structure, with massy door, sooner than open which in the absence of the "Dominie," we would all have willingly perished by the peine forte et dure. In other angles were two other similar boxes, far less reverenced, indeed, but still greatly matters of awe. One of these was the pulpit of "the classical" usher, one of the "English and mathematical." Interspersed about the room, crossing and recrossing in endless irregularity, were innumerable benches and desks, black, ancient, and time-worn, piled desperately with much-bethumbed books, and so beseamed with initial letters, names at full length, meaningless gashes, grotesque figures, and other multiplied efforts of the knife, as to have entirely lost what little of original form might have been their portion in days long departed. A huge bucket with water stood at one extremity of the room, and a clock of stupendous dimensions at the other.
Humbert's pavor nocturnus brings to mind noktyurn (a nocturne) mentioned by Mayakovski (VN's "late namesake") in his poem A vy mogli by? ("Could You?" 1913):
Я сразу смазал карту будня,
плеснувши краску из стакана;
я показал на блюде студня
косые скулы океана.
На чешуе жестяной рыбы
прочёл я зовы новых губ.
А вы
ноктюрн сыграть
могли бы
на флейте водосточных труб?
I splattered the pattern of weekdays at once
with color splashed out from a glass;
I showed you, on a dish of aspic,
the slanting cheekbones of the ocean.
Upon the scales of a tin fish
I read the calls of new lips.
And how about you,
could you
play a nocturne
on a flute of drainpipes?
(tr. James H. McGavran)
In Levyi marsh ("Left March," 1918) Mayakovski mentions the law which for us Adam and Eve have left:
Разворачивайтесь в марше!
Словесной не место кляузе.
Тише, ораторы!
Ваше
слово,
товарищ маузер.
Довольно жить законом,
данным Адамом и Евой.
Клячу историю загоним.
Левой!
Левой!
Левой!
About turn! March!
Away with a talk-show.
Silence, you speakers!
Comrade Mauser,
you
have the floor.
Down with the law which for us
Adam and Eve have left.
We'll ruin the jade of the past.
Left!
Left!
Left!
(tr. A. Vagapov)
Planning to marry Charlotte (Lolita's mother), Humbert compares himself to 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 he makes Quilty read out loud Humbert compares himself to Adam and mentions 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 sentencein 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.
I asked him if he had anything serious to say before dying. The automatic was again ready for use on the person. He looked at it and heaved a big sigh.
“Now look here, Mac,” he said. “You are drunk and I am a sick man. Let us postpone the matter. I need quiet. I have to nurse my impotence. Friends are coming in the afternoon to take me to a game. This pistol-packing face is becoming a frightful nuisance. We are men of the world, in everything - sex, free verse, marksmanship. If you bear me a grudge, I am ready to make unusual amends. Even an old-fashioned rencontre, sword or pistol, in Rio or elsewhere - is not excluded. My memory and my eloquence are not at their best today, but really, my dear Mr. Humbert, you were not an ideal stepfather, and I did not force your little protégé to join me. It was she made me remove her to a happier home. This house is not as modern as that ranch we shared with dear friends. But it is roomy, cool in summer and winter, and in a word comfortable, so, since I intend retiring to England or Florence forever, I suggest you move in. It is yours, gratis. Under the condition you stop pointing at me that [he swore disgustingly] gun. By the way, I do not know if you care for the bizarre, but if you do, I can offer you, also gratis, as house pet, a rather exciting little freak, a young lady with three breasts, one a dandy, this is a rare and delightful marvel of nature. Now, soyons raisonnables. You will only wound me hideously and then rot in jail while I recuperate in a tropical setting. I promise you, Brewster, you will be happy here, with a magnificent cellar, and all the royalties from my next playI have not much at the bank right now but I propose to borrowyou know, as the Bard said, with that cold in his head, to borrow and to borrow and to borrow. There are other advantages. We have here a most reliable and bribable charwoman, a Mrs. Vibrissa - curious name - who comes from the village twice a week, alas not today, she has daughters, granddaughters, a thing or two I know about the chief of police makes him my slave. I am a playwright. I have been called the American Maeterlinck. Maeterlinck-Schmetterling, says I. Come on! All this is very humiliating, and I am not sure I am doing the right thing. Never use herculanita with rum. Now drop that pistol like a good fellow. I knew your dear wife slightly. You may use my wardrobe. Oh, another thingyou 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 workdrop that gunwith 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 skiesdrop that gunand moreover I can arrange for you to attend executions, not everybody knows that the chair is painted yellow” (2.35)
The Barda Sea seems to hint at Ves' mir bardak (All the world is a brothel), a line in Mayakovski's poem Vse lyudi blyadi (All people are whores):
Все люди бляди,
Весь мир бардак!
Один мой дядя
И тот мудак.
All people are whores,
The whole world is a brothel!
My uncle alone…
But even he is a cretin.
Shakespeare (the Bard) said: “All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” Humbert finds out Clare Quilty's address from his uncle Ivor (the Ramsdale dentist). Humbert moves to America and meets Lolita, because his uncle, a great traveler in perfumes, left him inheritance. A cousin of Humbert's father, Humbert's uncle married Sybil, the elder sister of Humbert's mother:
My mother’s elder sister, Sybil, whom a cousin of my father’s had married and then neglected, served in my immediate family as a kind of unpaid governess and housekeeper. Somebody told me later that she had been in love with my father, and that he had lightheartedly taken advantage of it one rainy day and forgotten it by the time the weather cleared. I was extremely fond of her, despite the rigidity - the fatal rigidity - of some of her rules. Perhaps she wanted to make of me, in the fullness of time, a better widower than my father. Aunt Sybil had pink-rimmed azure eyes and a waxen complexion. She wrote poetry. She was poetically superstitious. She said she knew she would die soon after my sixteenth birthday, and did. Her husband, a great traveler in perfumes, spent most of his time in America, where eventually he founded a firm and acquired a bit of real estate. (1.2)
Pavor = povar (Russ., cook, chef). Pushkin's poem Zhaloba ("A Complaint," 1823) begins with the line Vash ded portnoy, vash dyadya povar ("Your grandfather is a tailor, your uncle is a chef"):
Ваш дед портной, ваш дядя повар,
А вы, вы модный господин —
Таков об вас народный говор,
И дива нет — не вы один.
Потомку предков благородных —
Увы, никто в моей родне
Не шьёт мне даром фраков модных
И не варит обеда мне.
Manor = roman (Russ., novel; romance).