In a poem that Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) makes Clare Quilty (the playwright who abducted Lolita from the Elphinstone hospital) read aloud before murdering him Humbert calls himself a sinner and compares himself to Adam (the first man):
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)
Adam der Erste ("Adam the First," 1844) is a poem by Heinrich Heine. In Zhizn' Chernyshevskogo ("The Life of Chernyshevski"), Part Four of VN's novel Dar ("The Gift," 1937), Fyodor mentions Vladislav Kostomarov, the translator of foreign poets who reported to his readers that Heine died an unrepentant sinner:
У нас есть три точки: Ч, К, П. Проводится один катет, ЧК. К Чернышевскому власти подобрали отставного уланского корнета Владислава Дмитриевича Костомарова, еще в августе прошлого года, в Москве, за тайное печатание возмутительных изданий разжалованного в рядовые, - человека с безуминкой, с печоринкой, при этом стихотворца: он оставил в литературе сколопендровый след, как переводчик иностранных поэтов. Проводится другой катет, КП. Писарев в "Русском Слове" пишет об этих переводах, браня автора за "драгоценная тиара занялась на нем как фара ("из Гюго") хваля за "простую и сердечную" передачу куплетов Бернса ("прежде всего, прежде всего да будут все честны... Молитесь все... чтоб человеку человек был брат прежде всего"), а по поводу того, что Костомаров доносит читателю, что Гейне умер нераскаянным грешником, критик ехидно советует "грозному обличителю" "полюбоваться на собственную общественную деятельность". Ненормальность Костомарова сказывалась в витиеватой графомании, в бессмысленном, лунатическом (даром, что на заказ) составлении подложных писем с нанизанными французскими фразами; наконец, в застеночной игривости: свои донесения Путилину (сыщику) он подписывал: "Феофан Отче-нашенко" или "Венцеслав Лютый". Да и был он действительно лют в своей молчаливой мрачности, фатален и лжив, хвастлив и придавлен. Наделенный курьезными способностями, он умел писать женским почерком, - сам объясняя это тем, что в нем "в полнолуние гащивает душа царицы Тамары". Множественность почерков в придачу к тому обстоятельству (еще одна шутка судьбы!), что его обычная рука напоминала руку Чернышевского, значительно повышала цену этого сонного предателя. Для косвенного подтверждения того, что воззвание "К барским крестьянам" написано Чернышевским, Костомарову было задано во-первых изготовить записочку, будто бы от Чернышевского, содержащую просьбу изменить одно слово в этом воззвании; а во-вторых - письмо (к "Алексею Николаевичу"), в котором находилось бы доказательство деятельного участия Чернышевского в революционном движении. То и другое Костомаров и состряпал. Подделка почерка совершенно очевидна в начале она еще старательна, но потом фальсификатору работа как бы надоела, и он торопится кончить: взять хотя бы слово "я", которое в подлинных рукописях Чернышевского кончается отводной чертой прямой и твердой, - даже слегка загибающейся в правую сторону, - а тут, в подложном письме, эта черта с какой-то странной лихостью загибается влево, к голове, словно буква козыряет.
We have three points: C, K, P. A cathetus is drawn, CK. To offset Chernyshevski, the authorities picked out a retired Uhlan cornet, Vladislav Dmitrievich Kostomarov, who the previous August in Moscow had been reduced to the ranks for printing seditious publications—a man with a touch of madness and a pinch of Pechorinism about him, and also a verse-maker: he left a scolopendrine trace in literature as the translator of foreign poets. Another cathetus is drawn, KP. The critic Pisarev in the periodical The Russian Word writes about these translations, scolding the author for “The magnificent tiara’s Coruscation like a pharos” [from Hugo], praising his “simple and heartfelt” rendering of some lines by Burns (which came out as “And first of all, and first of all / Let all men honest be / Let’s pray that man be to each man / A brother first of all… etc.), and in connection with Kostomarov’s report to his readers that Heine died an unrepentant sinner, the critic roguishly advises the “grim denouncer” to “take a good look at his own public activities.” Kostomarov’s derangement was evidenced in his florid graphomania, in the senseless somnambulistic (even though made-to-order) composition of counterfeit letters studded with French phrases; and finally in his macabre playfulness: he signed his reports to Putilin (a detective): Feofan Otchenashenko (Theophanus Ourfatherson) or Ventseslav Lyutyy (Wenceslaus the Fiend). And, indeed, he was fiendish in his taciturnity, funest and false, boastful and cringing. Endowed with curious abilities, he could write in a feminine hand—explaining this himself by the fact that he was “visited at the full moon by the spirit of Queen Tamara.” The plurality of hands he could imitate in addition to the circumstance (yet one more of destiny’s jokes) that his normal handwriting recalled that of Chernyshevski considerably heightened the value of this hypnotic betrayer. For indirect evidence that the appeal proclamation “To the Serfs of Landowners” had been written by Chernyshevski, Kostomarov was given, first, the task of fabricating a note, allegedly from Chernyshevski, containing a request to alter one word in the appeal; and, secondly, of preparing a letter (to “Aleksey Nikolaevich”) that would furnish proof of Chernyshevski’s active participation in the revolutionary movement. Both the one and the other were then and there concocted by Kostomarov. The forgery of the handwriting is quite evident: at the beginning the forger still took pains but then he seems to have grown bored by the work and to be in a hurry to get it over: to take but the word “I,” ya (formed in Russian script somewhat like a proofreader’s dele). In Chernyshevski’s genuine manuscripts it ends with an outgoing stroke which is straight and strong—and even curves a little to the right—while here, in the forgery, this stroke curves with a kind of queer jauntiness to the left, toward the head, as if the ya were saluting.
In Heine's poem Unvollkommenheit ("Imperfection," 1851) the last word is Seele (soul):
Nichts ist vollkommen hier auf dieser Welt.
Der Rose ist der Stachel beigesellt;
Ich glaube gar, die lieben holden Engel
Im Himmel droben sind nicht ohne Mängel.
Der Tulpe fehlt der Duft. Es heißt am Rhein:
Auch Ehrlich stahl einmal ein Ferkelschwein.
Hätte Lucretia sich nicht erstochen,
Sie wär’ vielleicht gekommen in die Wochen.
Häßliche Füße hat der stolze Pfau.
Uns kann die amüsant geistreichste Frau
Manchmal langweilen wie die Henriade
Voltaires, sogar wie Klopstocks Messiade.
Die bravste, klügste Kuh kein Spanisch weiß,
Wie Maßmann kein Latein — Der Marmorsteiß
Der Venus von Canova ist zu glatte,
Wie Maßmanus Nase viel zu ärschig platte.
Im süßen Lied ist oft ein saurer Reim,
Wie Bienenstachel steckt im Honigseim.
Am Fuß verwundbar war der Sohn der Thetis,
Und Alexander Dumas ist ein Metis.
Der strahlenreinste Stern am Himmelzelt,
Wenn er den Schnupfen kriegt, herunterfällt.
Der beste Äpfelwein schmeckt nach der Tonne,
Und schwarze Flecken sieht man in der Sonne.
Du bist, verehrte Frau, du selbst sogar
Nicht fehlerfrei, nicht aller Mängel bar.
Du schaust mich an — du fragst mich, was dir fehle?
Ein Busen, und im Busen eine Seele.
...You are, esteemed Lady, even you are
not faultless, not free from all defects.
You look at me - you ask me what you are missing?
A breast, and in the breast a soul.
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.
She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.
Did she have a precursor? She did, indeed she did. In point of fact, there might have been no Lolita at all had I not loved, one summer, a certain initial girl-child. In a princedom by the sea. Oh when? About as many years before Lolita was born as my age was that summer. You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied. Look at this tangle of thorns. (1.1)
In Russian dukh (spirit) and dusha (soul) are related words. In "The Life of Chernyshevski" Fyodor mentions Svyatoy Dukh (the Holy Ghost) that should be replaced with Zdravyi Smysl (the Common Sense):
Проследим и другую, тему "ангельской ясности". Она в дальнейшем развивается так: Христос умер за человечество, ибо любил человечество, которое я тоже люблю, за которое умру тоже. "Будь вторым Спасителем", советует ему лучший друг, -- и как он вспыхивает, робкий! слабый! (почти гоголевский восклицательный знак мелькает в его "студентском" дневнике). Но "Святой Дух" надобно заменить "Здравым Смыслом". Ведь бедность порождает порок; ведь Христу следовало сперва каждого обуть и увенчать цветами, а уж потом проповедовать нравственность. Христос второй прежде всего покончит с нуждой вещественной (тут поможет изобретенная нами машина). И странно сказать, но... что-то сбылось, -- да, что-то как будто сбылось. Биографы размечают евангельскими вехами его тернистый путь (известно, что чем левее комментатор, тем питает большую слабость к выражениям вроде "Голгофа революции"). Страсти Чернышевского начались, когда он достиг Христова возраста. Вот, в роли Иуды, -- Всеволод Костомаров; вот, в роли Петра -- знаменитый поэт, уклонившийся от свидания с узником. Толстый Герцен, в Лондоне сидючи, именует позорный столб "товарищем Креста". И в некрасовском стихотворении -- опять о Распятии, о том, что Чернышевский послан был "рабам (царям) земли напомнить о Христе". Наконец, когда он совсем умер, и тело его обмывали, одному из его близких эта худоба, эта крутизна рёбер, тёмная бледность кожи и длинные пальцы ног, смутно напомнили "Снятие со Креста", Рембрандта, что-ли.
Let us follow another theme—that of “angelic clarity.” This is how it develops subsequently: Christ died for mankind because he loved mankind, which I also love, for which I shall also die. “Be a second Savior,” his best friend advises him—and how he glows—oh, timid! Oh, weak! (an almost Gogolian exclamation mark appears fleetingly in his student diary). But the “Holy Ghost” must be replaced by “Common Sense.” Is not poverty the mother of vice? Christ should first have shod everybody and crowned them with flowers and only then have preached morality. Christ the Second would begin by putting an end to material want (aided here by the machine which we have invented). And strange to say, but… something came true—yes, it was as if something came true. His biographers mark his thorny path with evangelical signposts (it is well known that the more leftist the Russian commentator the greater is his weakness for expressions like “the Golgotha of the revolution”). Chernyshevski’s passions began when he reached Christ’s age. Here the role of Judas was filled by Vsevolod Kostomarov; the role of Peter by the famous poet Nekrasov, who declined to visit the jailed man. Corpulent Herzen, ensconced in London, called Chernyshevski’s pillory column “The companion piece of the Cross.” And in a famous Nekrasov iambic there was more about the Crucifixion, about the fact that Chernyshevski had been “sent to remind the earthly kings of Christ.” Finally, when he was completely dead and they were washing his body, that thinness, that steepness of the ribs, that dark pallor of the skin and those long toes vaguely reminded one of his intimates of “The Removal from the Cross”—by Rembrandt, is it?
Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-69) was a Dutch Golden Age painter. The mother of Annabel Leigh (Humbert's childhood love, Lolita's precursor) was Dutch (born Vanessa van Ness):
Annabel was, like the writer, of mixed parentage: half-English, half-Dutch, in her case. I remember her features far less distinctly today than I did a few years ago, before I knew Lolita. There are two kinds of visual memory: one when you skillfully recreate an image in the laboratory of your mind, with your eyes open (and then I see Annabel in such general terms as: “honey-colored skin,” “think arms,” “brown bobbed hair,” “long lashes,” “big bright mouth”); and the other when you instantly evoke, with shut eyes, on the dark inner side of your eyelids, the objective, absolutely optical replica of a beloved face, a little ghost in natural colors (and this is how I see Lolita).
Let me therefore primly limit myself, in describing Annabel, to saying she was a lovely child a few months my junior. Her parents were old friends of my aunt’s, and as stuffy as she. They had rented a villa not far from Hotel Mirana. Bald brown Mr. Leigh and fat, powdered Mrs. Leigh (born Vanessa van Ness). How I loathed them! At first, Annabel and I talked of peripheral affairs. She kept lifting handfuls of fine sand and letting it pour through her fingers. Our brains were turned the way those of intelligent European preadolescents were in our day and set, and I doubt if much individual genius should be assigned to our interest in the plurality of inhabited worlds, competitive tennis, infinity, solipsism and so on. The softness and fragility of baby animals caused us the same intense pain. She wanted to be a nurse in some famished Asiatic country; I wanted to be a famous spy. (1.3)
Vanessa van Ness brings to mind a Mrs. Vibrissa mentioned by Quilty:
"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 protg 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 play - I have not much at the bank right now but I propose to borrow - you 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)
General Bagration was felled in the battle of Borodino (1812). Borodino (1837) is a poem by Lermontov, the author of Geroy nashego vremeni ("A Hero of Our Time," 1840). Vladislav Kostomarov was a man with a touch of madness and a pinch of Pechorinism about him. Pechorin is the main character in A Hero of Our Time. Maksim Maksimovich, the title character of the second novella of Lermontov's novel, brings to mind Colonel Maximovich, a White Russian for whom Valeria (Humbert's first wife) leaves her husband.