According to John Ray, Jr. (in VN's novel Lolita, 1955, the author of the Foreword to Humbert Humbert's manuscript), Mrs. “Richard F. Schiller” (Lolita's married name) died in childbed, giving birth to a stillborn girl, on Christmas Day 1952, in Gray Star, a settlement in the remotest Northwest:
“Lolita, or the Confession of a White Widowed Male,” such were the two titles under which the writer of the present note received the strange pages it preambulates. “Humbert Humbert,” their author, had died in legal captivity, of coronary thrombosis, on November 16, 1952, a few days before his trial was scheduled to start. His lawyer, my good friend and relation, Clarence Choate Clark, Esq., now of the District of Columbia bar, in asking me to edit the manuscript, based his request on a clause in his client’s will which empowered my eminent cousin to use the discretion in all matters pertaining to the preparation of “Lolita” for print. Mr. Clark’s decision may have been influenced by the fact that the editor of his choice had just been awarded the Poling Prize for a modest work (“Do the Senses make Sense?”) wherein certain morbid states and perversions had been discussed.
My task proved simpler than either of us had anticipated. Save for the correction of obvious solecisms and a careful suppression of a few tenacious details that despite “H. H.”‘s own efforts still subsisted in his text as signposts and tombstones (indicative of places or persons that taste would conceal and compassion spare), this remarkable memoir is presented intact. Its author’s bizarre cognomen is his own invention; and, of course, this mask - through which two hypnotic eyes seem to glow - had to remain unlifted in accordance with its wearer’s wish. While “Haze” only rhymes with the heroine’s real surname, her first name is too closely interwound with the inmost fiber of the book to allow one to alter it; nor (as the reader will perceive for himself) is there any practical necessity to do so. References to “H. H.”‘s crime may be looked up by the inquisitive in the daily papers for September-October 1952; its cause and purpose would have continued to come under my reading lamp.
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.
The capital town of the book, Gray Star brings to mind "Slishkom star, chtoby rabotat', i slishkom bolen, chtoby zhit' (Too old to work, and too ill to live)," the last words written by Konstantin Merezhkovski (1855-1921), the author of Ray Zemnoy ili Son v zimnyuyu noch' ("The Earthly Paradise, or a Midwinter Night's Dream," 1903), an utopian novel set in the XXVIIth century. In 1914 Konstantin Merezhkovski (then a Professor of zoology and botany in the University of Kazan) was accused of pedophilia (he was incriminated in raping 26 little girls) and fled Russia. On 9 January 1921 Mereschkowski (as he spelt his surname) was found dead in his hotel room (in Hotel des Families in Geneva), having tied himself up in his bed with a mask which was supplied with an asphyxiating gas from a metal container. It appears that his suicide was directly connected to his paedophilic utoian beliefs (reflected in his novel) as well as his view that he was becoming too old and frail to continue his history of child abuse. As an atheist, his dreamed-of utopia was to be scientifically based, involving the evolution of a perfect human race of paedophiles held aloft by the enslavement of Africans, Asians, and others. The Earthly Paradise describes specially-bred castes of human including one of neotenized, sexualizing children prolonged into adult age - still displaying child-like features and behaviour - who were put to death at the age of 35, as they could not be happy in old age. Merezhkovski actively assisted the far-right Black Hundredist organisation the Kazan Department of the Union of Russian People, and provided secret assistance to the Ministry of Internal Affairs in hunting down Jews and supposed traitors.
The mask supplied with an asphyxiating gas from a metal container reminds one of "this mask - through which two hypnotic eyes seem to glow" (as John Ray, Jr. calls HH's bizarre cognomen). The Mask of the Red Death (1842) is a story by E. A. Poe (1809-1849), the writer whose last poem Annabel Lee (1849) is alluded to at the beginning of Humbert's manuscript. The Russian title of Poe's story, Maska krasnoy smerti, makes one think of the Russian saying na miru i smert' krasna, which corresponds to the English "two in distress make trouble less" and which literally means "in the world even death is beautiful." It seems that Lolita actually dies of ague in the Elphinstone hospital on July 4, 1949, and the rest (Lolita's escape from the hospital with Quilty, Humbert's affair with Rita, Lolita's marriage and pregnancy, and the murder of Quilty) was invented by Humbert Humbert (whose "real" name is John Ray, Jr.).
In the Russian Lolita (1967) John Ray's Foreword to Humbert's manuscript is dated July 5, 1955. Konstantin Merezhkovski was born on August 4, 1855. In 1955 Rita (Humbert constant companion who was born in 1920 and who, according to John Ray, Jr., has recently married the proprietor of a hotel in Florida) would be thirty-five. Merezhkovski's Earthly Paradise describes specially-bred castes of human including one of neotenized, sexualizing children prolonged into adult age - still displaying child-like features and behaviour - who were put to death at the age of 35, as they could not be happy in old age. A constant companion (as Humbert calls Rita) may hint at Constantine Merezhkovski (as he spelt his first name). At the beginning of his manuscript Humbert calls Lolita "my sin, my soul:"
Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. (1.1)
Chto est' grekh ("What is Sin?" 1902) and Grekh ("Sin," 1938) are poems by Zinaida Hippius (the wife of Dmitri Merezhkovski, Konstantin's younger brother, the writer, 1865-1941):
Грех — маломыслие и малодеянье,
Самонелюбие — самовлюблённость,
И равнодушное саморассеянье,
И успокоенная упоённость.
Грех — легкочувствие и легкодумие,
Полупроказливость — полуволненье.
Благоразумное полубезумие,
Полувнимание — полузабвенье.
Грех — жить без дерзости и без мечтания,
Не признаваемым — и не гонимым.
Не знать ни ужаса, ни упования
И быть приемлемым, но не любимым.
К стыду и гордости — равнопрезрение…
Всему покорственный привет без битвы…
Тяжеле всех грехов — Богоубьение,
Жизнь без проклятия — и без молитвы.
Sin is modest thought and modest action,
Self-enamored self-disdain,
Apathetic self-diffusion,
And pacified intoxication.
Sin is unserious feeling, unserious thought,
Semi-mischievous semi-agitation.
Prudent semi-senselessness,
Semi-attention and semi-forgetfulness.
Sin is to live without daring or dreaming,
Neither esteemed nor persecuted.
Sin is to know neither horror nor hope
And to be accepted, but not loved.
Sin is an equi-disdain towards pride and shame…
A meek acceptance of all things, without a fight…
The gravest of all sins is Deicide:
A life devoid of curses and of prayers.
(tr. Mark Pettus)
И мы простим, и Бог простит.
Мы жаждем мести от незнанья.
Но злое дело – воздаянье
Само в себе, таясь, таит.
И путь наш чист, и долг наш прост:
Не надо мстить. Не нам отмщенье.
Змея сама, свернувши звенья,
В свой собственный вопьется хвост.
Простим и мы, и Бог простит,
Но грех прощения не знает,
Он для себя – себя хранит,
Своею кровью кровь смывает,
Себя вовеки не прощает –
Хоть мы простим, и Бог простит.
In a poem that he makes Quilty read aloud before his death Humbert calls himself "a sinner:"
Because you took advantage of a sinner
because you took advantage
because you took
because you took advantage of my disadvantage… (2.35)
Zhitie velikogo greshnika ("The Life of a Great Sinner") is an unfinished, ambitious novel plan by Fyodor Dostoevski. Appended to Konstantin Merezhkovski's novel The Earthly Paradise is "The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor" (a philosophical story within a story from The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevski's last novel, 1880).