Describing his plans to marry Charlotte (Lolita's mother), Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Lolita, 1955) calls himself "Humbert the Cubus" (a play on "incubus," a word used by Humbert at the end of the preceding paragraph):
Humbert Humbert sweating in the fierce white light, and howled at, and trodden upon by sweating policemen, is now ready to make a further “statement” (quel mot!) as he turns his conscience inside out and rips off its innermost lining. I did not plan to marry poor Charlotte in order to eliminate her in some vulgar, gruesome and dangerous manner such as killing her by placing five bichloride-of-mercury tablets in her preprandial sherry or anything like that; but a delicately allied, pharmacopoeial thought did tinkle in my sonorous and clouded brain. Why limit myself to the modest masked caress I had tried already? Other visions of venery presented themselves to me swaying and smiling. I saw myself administering a powerful sleeping potion to both mother and daughter so as to fondle the latter though the night with perfect impunity. The house was full of Charlotte’s snore, while Lolita hardly breathed in her sleep, as still as a painted girl-child. “Mother, I swear Kenny never even touched me.” “You either lie, Dolores Haze, or it was an incubus.” No, I would not go that far.
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 The Theosophical Glossary (1892) Helena Blavatsky (a Russian and American mystic, the co-founder of the Theosophical Society, 1831-1891) explains what an incubus is:
Incubus (Latin) [from in upon + cub lie] The nightmare, regarded as an astral goblin which lies upon the sleeper. Modern medicine regards it as a subjective impression produced by physiological disorders, but we must take into account as well the lower strata of the astral light, teeming with soulless elementals as well as astral vampires or elementaries, ready to take advantage of unguarded and disordered conditions.
Also a goblin which, in medieval belief, holds sexual intercourse with human beings, a belief found elsewhere, as in India, where the term used is pisacha. Incubi are sometimes spoken of as of either sex, but properly succuba is used for the female. They are “Ghools, Vampires, and soulless Elementals; formless centres of Life, devoid of sense; in short, subjective protoplasms when left alone, but called into a definite being and form by the creative and diseased imagination of certain mortals” (TG 154). Thus it is the lustful imagination and vitality of the victim that gives these beings their power upon him; without that, they are powerless and not to be feared.
and who Adam and Lilith ("Humbert was perfectly capable of intercourse with Eve, but it was Lilith he longed for") were:
Adam (Hebrew) ’Ādām [from ’ādām to be red, ruddy] Used in Genesis for man, original mankind; the Qabbalah enumerates four Adams. The Archetypal or Heavenly Man (’Adam Qadmon) is the prototype for the second, androgyne Adam. From these two emanates the third Adam, preterrestrial and innocent, though still further removed from the divine prototype Adam Qadmon. The fourth Adam is “the Third Adam as he was after the Fall,” the terrestrial Adam of the Garden of Eden, our earthly sexual humanity (Qabbalah Myer 418).
With regard to the elohim bringing man forth “in their own image” (tselem), Blavatsky says: “The sexless Race was their first production, a modification of and from themselves, the pure spiritual existences; and this as Adam solus. Thence came the second Race: Adam-Eve or Jod-Heva, inactive androgynes; and finally the Third, or the ‘Separating Hermaphrodite,’ Cain and Abel, who produce the Fourth, Seth-Enos, etc.” (SD 2:134). Again, “finally, even the four ‘Adams’ (symbolizing under other names the four preceding races) were forgotten; and passing from one generation in to another, each loaded with some additional myths, got at last drowned in that ocean of popular symbolism called the Pantheons. Yet they exist to this day in the oldest Jewish traditions, as the Tzelem, ‘the Shadow-Adam’ (the Chhayas of our doctrine); the ‘model’ Adam, the copy of the first, and the ‘male and female’ of the exoteric genesis (chap. i); the third, the ‘earthly Adam’ before the Fall, an androgyne; and the Fourth — the Adam after his fall, i.e. separated into sexes, or the pure Atlantean. The Adam of the garden of Eden, or the forefather of our race — the fifth — is an ingenious compound of the above four” (SD 2:503). See also ‘OLAM; SEPHIRAH
Lilith (Hebrew) Līlīth [from layil night] In popular Jewish legend a female demon, commonly but erroneously supposed to be nocturnal, counterpart of the Babylo-Assyrian Lilit or Lilu. In Rabbinical writings Lilith is the first consort or wife of the mindless Adam, and it was from the snares of Eve-Lilith that the second Eve, the woman, become his savior (IU 2:445).
“The numberless traditions about Satyrs are no fables, but represent an extinct race of animal men. The animal ‘Eves’ were their foremothers, and the human ‘Adams’ their forefathers; hence the Kabalistic allegory of Lilith or Lilatu, Adam’s first wife, whom the Talmud describes as a charming woman, with long wavy hair, i.e., — a female hairy animal of a character now unknown, still a female animal, who in the Kabalistic and Talmudic allegories is called the female reflection of Samael, Samael-Lilith, or man-animal united, a being called Hayoh Bishah, the Beast or Evil Beast. (Zohar, ii, 255, 259). It is from this unnatural union that the present apes descended” (SD 2:262).
Lilith or the Liliths in the common Talmudic idea are nocturnal specters or female creatures usually appearing at night and haunting human beings. The Rabbis describe these entities as having the female form, as being elegantly dressed, and as lying in wait for children by night. These Jewish fables, which have direct reference to female elementaries and other denizens of the astral light, and correspond to the Roman and Greek empusas, stringes, and lamiae; the Arabian ghulah (masculine ghul), entities of monstrous character dwelling in the sandy deserts, awaiting men and destroying them if possible; and to the Hindu pramlocha, khados, and dakinis.
Cube Often mentioned as equivalent to the square, tetrad, or quaternary. The line, square, and cube represent three stages of matter, with the cube derived from the square in the same way as the square is derived from the line. A cube opened out gives a cross of six squares, four in the vertical line and three in the horizontal, one square being common to both, which is an emblem of the human being with his spiritual and material nature meeting at the intersection.
Humbert the Cubus brings to mind a tiger cub in the Persian saying quoted by Sherlock Holmes at the end of Conan Doyle's story A Case of Identity (1891):
'I cannot completely follow your reasoning in this case,' I said.
'Well, it was clear from the first, that Mr Hosmer Angel had a very good reason for his actions, and that the only man who could really profit from the situation was the stepfather: he wanted to keep the hundred pounds a year. Then it was very suggestive that Mr Windibank and Mr Hosmer Angel were never together, and so were the dark glasses, the soft voice and the moustache; they all suggested a disguise. The final point was the typed signature. This made me think that the handwriting of the man must be very familiar to Miss Sutherland, and that if she saw even a small portion of it, she would recognise it.'
'And how did you verify these ideas?' I asked.
'First I wrote to Mr Windibank's firm. 'In the letter I described Mr Angel after I had eliminated everything that could be a disguise, like the glasses, the moustache and the voice, and I asked them if they had an employee like that. They wrote back to me and said that I had described Mr James Windibank. Then I wrote to Mr Windibank to invite him here, and as I expected he typed his reply to me. Then I compared his letter with the letters of Mr Angel. Voila tout!'
'And Miss Sutherland?' I asked.
'If I tell her, she will not believe me,' replied Holmes. 'Maybe you remember this Persian saying, "It is dangerous to take a tiger cub from its mother, and it is dangerous to take a delusion from a woman.'" (Part II)
The Tyger (1794) is a poem by William Blake (an English poet, 1757-1827). William Blake died on August 12, 1827. Helena von Hahn (Mme Blavatsky's maiden name) was born on August 12, 1831.
On the pillared porch of The Enchanted Hunters (a hotel in Briceland where Humbert and Lolita spend their first night together) a stranger (who seems to be Clare Quilty) tells Humbert that his child needs a lot of sleep and that sleep is a rose, as the Persians say:
Suddenly I was aware that in the darkness next to me there was somebody sitting in a chair on the pillared porch. I could not really see him but what gave him away was the rasp of a screwing off, then a discreet gurgle, then the final note of a placid screwing on. I was about to move away when his voice addressed me:
“Where the devil did you get her?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I said: the weather is getting better.”
“Seems so.”
“Who’s the lassie?”
“My daughter.”
“You lie - she’s not.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I said: July was hot. Where’s her mother?”
“Dead.”
“I see. Sorry. By the way, why don’t you two lunch with me tomorrow. That dreadful crowd will be gone by then.”
“We’ll be gone too. Good night.”
“Sorry. I’m pretty drunk. Good night. That child of yours needs a lot of sleep. Sleep is a rose, as the Persians say. Smoke?”
“Not now.”
He struck a light, but because he was drunk, or because the wind was, the flame illumined not him but another person, a very old man, one of those permanent guests of old hotels - and his white rocker. Nobody said anything and the darkness returned to its initial place. Then I heard the old-timer cough and deliver himself of some sepulchral mucus. (1.28)