Describing his life with Lolita, Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) says that he dwelled deep in his elected paradise - a paradise whose skies were the color of hell-flames - but still a paradise:
She had entered my world, umber and black Humberland, with rash curiosity; she surveyed it with a shrug of amused distaste; and it seemed to me now that she was ready to turn away from it with something akin to plain repulsion. Never did she vibrate under my touch, and a strident “what d’you think you are doing?” was all I got for my pains. To the wonderland I had to offer, my fool preferred the corniest movies, the most cloying fudge. To think that between a Hamburger and a Humburger, she would - invariably, with icy precision - plump for the former. There is nothing more atrociously cruel than an adored child. Did I mention the name of that milk bar I visited a moment ago? It was, of all things, The Frigid Queen. Smiling a little sadly, I dubbed her My Frigid Princess. She did not see the wistful joke.
Oh, do not scowl at me, reader, I do not intend to convey the impressin that I did not manage to be happy. Reader must understand that in the possession and thralldom of a nymphet the enchanted traveler stands, as it were, beyond happiness. For there is no other bliss on earth comparable to that of fondling a nymphet. It is hors concours, that bliss, it belongs to another class, another plane of sensitivity. Despite our tiffs, despite her nastiness, despite all the fuss and faces she made, and the vulgarity, and the danger, and the horrible hopelessness of it all, I still dwelled deep in my elected paradise - a paradise whose skies were the color of hell-flames - but still a paradise. (2.3)
The Earthly Paradise (1870) is an epic poem (a lengthy collection of retellings of various myths and legends from Greece and Scandinavia) by William Morris (an English textile designer, poet, artist, writer, and socialist activist, 1834-1896). On the other hand, Ray Zemnoy ili Son v zimnyuyu noch' ("The Earthly Paradise, or A Midwinter Night's Dream," 1903) is an utopian novel (set in the XXVIIth century) by Konstantin Merezhkovski (Dmitri's elder brother, 1855-1921). A Professor of zoology and botany in the University of Kazan who was accused of pedophilia (he was said to have raped 26 little girls), fled Russia in 1914 and, on January 9, 1921, committed suicide in Geneva, Konstantin Merezhkovski was nicknamed "the Russian Marquis de Sade." According to Clare Quilty (a playwright and pornographer whom Humbert murders for abducting Lolita from the Elphinstone hospital), he has made a private movie out of de Sade's Justine and other eighteenth-century sexcapades:
“My dear sir,” he said, “stop trifling with life and death. I am a playwright. I have written tragedies, comedies, fantasies. I have made private movies out of Justine and other eighteenth-century sexcapades. I’m the author of fifty-two successful scenarios. I know all the ropes. Let me handle this. There should be a poker somewhere, why don’t I fetch it, and then we’ll fish out your property.” (2.35)
Quilty is a coastal village in County Clare, Ireland. In a 1918 poem adressed to Zinaida Hippius (Dmitri Merezhkovski's wife) Alexander Blok (a Russian poet, 1880-1921) compares Hippius to a green-eyed naiad and mentions irlandskie skaly (the Irish rocks):
Женщина, безумная гордячка!
Мне понятен каждый ваш намек,
Белая весенняя горячка
Всеми гневами звенящих строк!
Все слова — как ненависти жала,
Все слова — как колющая сталь!
Ядом напоенного кинжала
Лезвее целую, глядя в даль...
Но в дали я вижу — море, море,
Исполинский очерк новых стран,
Голос ваш не слышу в грозном хоре,
Где гудит и воет ураган!
Страшно, сладко, неизбежно, надо
Мне — бросаться в многопенный вал,
Вам — зеленоглазою наядой
Петь, плескаться у ирландских скал.
Высоко — над нами — над волнами,—
Как заря над черными скалами —
Веет знамя — Интернацьонал!
In the poem's first stanza Blok mentions belaya vesennyaya goryachka (the vernal blue devils). It brings to mind goryachka drevnikh, as in the Russian Lolita (1967) VN renders "the 'ague' of the ancients:"
Я не люблю вас, доктор Блю, а почему вас не люблю, я сам не знаю, доктор Блю. Не сомневаюсь, что его ученость значительно уступала его репутации. Он уверил меня, что у нее "вирусная инфекция", и, когда я упомянул о ее недавней инфлуэнце, сухо сказал, что это другой микроб и что у него уже сорок таких пациентов на руках (все это звучит, конечно, как "горячка" у старых беллетристов).
Dr. Blue, whose learning, no doubt, was infinitely inferior to his reputation, assured me it was a virus infection, and when I alluded to her comparatively recent flu, curtly said this was another bug, he had forty such cases on his hands; all of which sounded like the “ague” of the ancients. (2.22)
It seems that Lolita dies of ague in the Elphinstone hospital, on July 4, 1949 - not in childbed in Gray Star, a settlement in the remotest Northwest, on Christmas Day 1952 (as John Ray, Jr. says in his Foreword to Humbert's manuscript). In the Russian Lolita the name of Clare Quilty's coathaur (who, according to John Ray, Jr., has written a biography, Kumir moy, to be published shortly), Vivian Darkbloom, becomes Vivian Damor-Blok. Ya nasadil moy svetlyi ray ("I planted my bright paradise," 1907) is a poem by Alexander Blok addressed to his mother. John Ray, Jr. seems to be Humbert Humbert's "real" name.