During her second road trip with Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) across the USA, Lolita falls ill and on Tuesday, June 28, 1949, is hospitalized in Elphinstone (a small town in the Rocky Mountains). Describing his visits to the Elphinstone hospital, Humbert mentions poor Bluebeard and roly-poly Romeo:
Poor Bluebeard. Those brutal brothers. Est-ce que tu ne m’aimes plus, ma Carmen? She never had. At the moment I knew my love was as hopeless as ever - and I also knew the two girls were conspirators, plotting in Basque, or Zemfirian, against my hopeless love. I shall go further and say that Lo was playing a double game since she was also fooling sentimental Mary whom she had told, I suppose, that she wanted to dwell with her fun-loving young uncle and not with cruel melancholy me. And another nurse whom I never identified, and the village idiot who carted cots and coffins into the elevator, and the idiotic green love birds in a cage in the waiting roomall were in the plot, the sordid plot. I suppose Mary thought comedy father Professor Humbertoldi was interfering with the romance between Dolores and her father-substitute, roly-poly Romeo (for you were rather lardy, you know, Rom, despite all that “snow” and “joy juice”). (2.22)
Romeo's family name in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Montague, brings to mind Count Robert de Montesquiou-Fézensac (a French aesthete, Symbolist poet, painter, art collector, art interpreter, and dandy, 1855-1921). A model for Jean des Esseintes in Huysmans' novel À rebours ("Against the Grain," 1884), for the Peacock, 'Prince of the unexpected adjective,' in Edmond Rostand's verse play Chantecler (1910) and for Baron de Charlus in Marcel Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time, 1913–1927), Robert de Montesquiou was born and died in the same years as Konstantin Merezhkovski (a Russian biologist who loved little girls, 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 27th century on a Polynesian Island. Humbert asks big Frank to tell nurse Mary Lore over the 'phone that he will get into touch with his daughter sometime tomorrow if he feels probably Polynesian:
I heard the sound of whistling lips nearing the half-opened door of my cabin, and then a thump upon it.
It was big Frank. He remained framed in the opened door, one hand on its jamb, leaning forward a little.
Howdy. Nurse Lore was on the telephone. She wanted to know was I better and would I come today?
At twenty paces Frank used to look a mountain of health; at five, as now, he was a ruddy mosaic of scars - had been blown through a wall overseas; but despite nameless injuries he was able to man a tremendous truck, fish, hunt, drink, and buoyantly dally with roadside ladies. That day, either because it was such a great holiday, or simply because he wanted to divert a sick man, he had taken off the glove he usually wore on his left hand (the one pressing against the side of the door) and revealed to the fascinated sufferer not only an entire lack of fourth and fifth fingers, but also a naked girl, with cinnabar nipples and indigo delta, charmingly tattooed on the back of his crippled hand, its index and middle digit making her legs while his wrist bore her flower-crowned head. Oh, delicious… reclining against the woodwork, like some sly fairy.
I asked him to tell Mary Lore I would stay in bed all day and would get into touch with my daughter sometime tomorrow if I felt probably Polynesian. (2.22)
A French writer, Joris-Karl Huysmans (1848-1907) is the author of Là-bas ("Down There," 1891). Its plot concerns the novelist Durtal, who is disgusted by the emptiness and vulgarity of the modern world. He seeks relief by turning to the study of the Middle Ages and begins to research the life of the notorious 15th-century child-murderer and torturer Gilles de Rais. Konstantin Merezhkovski's Ray zemnoy and Gilles de Rais (Joan of Arc's comrade-in-arms, Marshal of France and confessed child murderer, whom folklore transfigured into Bluebeard, c. 1405-1440) bring to mind John Ray, Jr. (the author of the foreword to Humbert's manuscript). According to John Ray, Jr., Mrs. “Richard F. Schiller” (Lolita's married name) outlived Humbert (who had died in legal captivity, of coronary thrombosis, on November 16, 1952, a few days before his trial was scheduled to start) by forty days and died in childbed, giving birth to a stillborn girl, on Christmas Day 1952, in Gray Star, a settlement in the remotest Northwest:
For the benefit of old-fashioned readers who wish to follow the destinies of the “real” people beyond the “true” story, a few details may be given as received from Mr. “Windmuller,” or “Ramsdale,” who desires his identity suppressed so that “the long shadow 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 publshed 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.
But it seems that, actually, Lolita dies of ague on July 4, 1949, in the Elphinstone hospital. Everything what happens after her sudden death (Lolita's escape from the hospital, Humbert's affair with Rita, Lolita's marriage and pregnancy, and the murder of Clare Quilty) was invented by Humbert Humbert (whose "real" name is John Ray, Jr.). The title of Vivian Darkbloom's biography of Clare Quilty, "My Cue," makes one think of the last syllable of the surname Montesquiou. Liricheskiy sport grafa Montesk'yu - karikatura neoromantizma ("The Lyrical Sport of Count Montesquiou - a Caricature of Neoromantism") is Chapter V of Dmitri Merezhkovski's essay Noveyshaya lirika ("The Newest Lyricism," 1894). A Russian poet and writer, Dmitri Merezhkovski (1865-1941) was Konstantin's younger brother. Humbert Humbert (as John Ray, Jr. calls himself) brings to mind Altera Alteria, a heading title in the table of contents of Robert de Montesquiou's collection Le Chef des Odeurs Suaves ("The Master of Fragrant Scents," 1893):
Любопытна la table titulaire, то есть попросту оглавление книги. Здесь мы встречаем модные и многообещающие заглавия, как например: "Оттенки", "Мрак", "Полутени", "Таинства Луны", "Лунатики", "Eaux d'Artifice"(!), "Белая Месса", "Кандидаты", "Рыжие Луны", "Altera Alteria", "Сизигии" и т.п.
A playwright and pornographer whom Humbert murders for abducting Lolita from the Elphinstone hospital, Clare Quilty is Humbert's alter ego. Ater ego (1878) is a poem by Afanasiy Fet:
Как лилея глядится в нагорный ручей,
Ты стояла над первою песней моей,
И была ли при этом победа, и чья,
У ручья ль от цветка, у цветка ль от ручья?
Ты душою младенческой всё поняла,
Что́ мне высказать тайная сила дала,
И хоть жизнь без тебя суждено мне влачить,
Но мы вместе с тобой, нас нельзя разлучить.
Та трава, что вдали на могиле твоей,
Здесь на сердце, чем старе оно, тем свежей,
И я знаю, взглянувши на звёзды порой,
Что взирали на них мы как боги с тобой.
У любви есть слова, те слова не умрут.
Нас с тобой ожидает особенный суд;
Он сумеет нас сразу в толпе различить,
И мы вместе придём, нас нельзя разлучить!
Like a lily that looks into the mountain stream,
You stood like my first ever song of my dream,
Was there a winner at that, and who won the scene,
The stream by the flower or the flower by the stream?
Your young little soul grasped all in some way,
All that magical power allowed me to say.
And though I am fated to live far from you,
Yet we are together - that's what we are due.
The grass that is growing on your burial place
Is here in my heart getting fresher with years.
At times as I look at the stars in the sky
I recall we would watch them like gods, you and I.
I know love has words that will not die away,
And I know we'll be tried in a special way..
The judges will know us at once in the crowd,
And we'll be together, can't be drawn apart!
(transl. A. Vagapov)
A Russian poet and memoirist, Afanasiy Fet (1820-1892) was the son of Afanasiy Shenshin (a Russian landowner) and Charlotte Becker (a German girl whose first husband was Johann Foeth). Charlotte Becker is the maiden name of Lolita's mother.
In his travelogue Notes d'un voyage dans l'ouest de la France (1836) Prosper Mérimée (a French writer, 1803-1870) interpreted local regional traditions by suggesting Bluebeard (La Barbe Bleue) was actually a mythologized, folklore memory of Gilles de Rais. From Mérimée's novella Carmen (1845):
— Carmencita, lui demandais-je, est-ce que tu ne m’aimes plus ?
Elle ne répondit rien. Elle était assise les jambes croisées sur une natte et faisait des traits par terre avec son doigt.
— Changeons de vie, Carmen, lui dis-je d’un ton suppliant. Allons vivre quelque part où nous ne serons jamais séparés. Tu sais que nous avons, pas loin d’ici, sous un chêne, cent vingt onces enterrées… Puis, nous avons des fonds encore chez le juif Ben-Joseph.
“‘Carmencita,’ I asked, ‘don’t you love me any more?’
“She gave me no answer, she was sitting cross-legged on a mat, making marks on the ground with her finger.
“‘Let us change our life, Carmen,’ said I imploringly. ‘Let us go away and live somewhere we shall never be parted. You know we have a hundred and twenty gold ounces buried under an oak not far from here, and then we have more money with Ben-Joseph the Jew.’ (Chapter III)
Prosper Mérimée died on September 23, 1870 (five days before his sixty-seventh birthday), in Cannes, France. On September 23, 1952, Humbert visits Lolita (now married to Dick Schiller and big with child) in Coalmont (a small mining town) and finds out the name of her abductor (whom Humbert murders two days later).