During Van's conversation with Demon Veen (in VN's novel Ada, 1969, Van's and Ada's father) Demon says that he he is not concerned with semantics — or semination and Van asks Demon not to use philistine epithets:
The most protracted of the several pauses having run its dark course, Demon’s voice emerged to say, with a vigor that it had lacked before:
‘Van, you receive the news I impart with incomprehensible calmness. I do not recall any instance, in factual or fictional life, of a father’s having to tell his son that particular kind of thing in these particular circumstances. But you play with a pencil and seem as unruffled as if we were discussing your gaming debts or the demands of a wench knocked up in a ditch.’
Tell him about the herbarium in the attic? About the indiscretions of (anonymous) servants? About a forged wedding date? About everything that two bright children had so gaily gleaned? I will. He did.
‘She was twelve,’ Van added, ‘and I was a male primatal of fourteen and a half, and we just did not care. And it’s too late to care now.’
‘Too late?’ shouted his father, sitting up on his couch.
‘Please, Dad, do not lose your temper,’ said Van. ‘Nature, as I informed you once, has been kind to me. We can afford to be careless in every sense of the word.’
‘I’m not concerned with semantics — or semination. One thing, and only one, matters. It is not too late to stop that ignoble affair —’
‘No shouting and no philistine epithets,’ interrupted Van.
‘All right,’ said Demon. ‘I take back the adjective, and I ask you instead: Is it too late to prevent your affair with your sister from wrecking her life?’
Van knew this was coming. He knew, he said, this was coming. ‘Ignoble’ had been taken care of; would his accuser define ‘wrecking’?
The conversation now took a neutral turn that was far more terrible than its introductory admission of faults for which our young lovers had long pardoned their parents. How did Van imagine his sister’s pursuing a scenic career? Would he admit it would be wrecked if they persisted in their relationship? Did he envisage a life of concealment in luxurious exile? Was he ready to deprive her of normal interests and a normal marriage? Children? Normal amusements?
‘Don’t forget "normal adultery,"’ remarked Van.
‘How much better that would be!’ said grim Demon, sitting on the edge of the couch with both elbows propped on his knees, and nursing his head in his hands: ‘The awfulness of the situation is an abyss that grows deeper the more I think of it. You force me to bring up the tritest terms such as "family," "honor," "set," "law."...All right, I have bribed many officials in my wild life but neither you nor I can bribe a whole culture, a whole country. And the emotional impact of learning that for almost ten years you and that charming child have been deceiving their parents —’
Here Van expected his father to take the ‘it-would-kill-your-mother’ line, but Demon was wise enough to keep clear of it. Nothing could ‘kill’ Marina. If any rumors of incest did come her way, concern with her ‘inner peace’ would help her to ignore them — or at least romanticize them out of reality’s reach. Both men knew all that. Her image appeared for a moment and accomplished a facile fade-out. (2.11)
As he speaks to Lolita, Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) mentions the revenge that the Gods of Semantics take against tight-zippered Philistines:
“My chère Dolores! I want to protect you, dear, from all the horrors that happen to little girls in coal sheds and alley ways, and alas, comme vous le savez trop bien, ma gentille, in the blueberry woods during the bluest of summers. Through thick and thin I will still stay your guardian, and if you are good, I hope a court may legalize that guardianship before long. Let us, however, forget, Dolores Haze, so-called legal terminology, terminology that accepts as rational the term ‘lewd and lascivious cohabitation.’ I am not a criminal sexual psychopath taking indecent liberties with a child. The rapist was Charlie Holmes; I am the therapist – a matter of nice spacing in the way of distinction. I am your daddum, Lo. Look, I’ve a learned book here about young girls. Look, darling, what it says. I quote: the normal girl - normal, mark you – the normal girl is usually extremely anxious to please her father. She feels in him the forerunner of the desired elusive male (‘elusive’ is good, by Polonius!). The wise mother (and your poor mother would have been wise, had she lived) will encourage a companionship between father and daughter, realizing – excuse the corny style – that the girl forms her ideals of romance and of men from her association with her father. Now, what association does this cheery book mean – and recommend? I quote again: Among Sicilians sexual relations between a father and his daughter are accepted as a matter of course, and the girl who participates in such relationship is not looked upon with disapproval by the society of which she is part. I’m a great admirer of Sicilians, fine athletes, fine musicians, fine upright people, Lo, and great lovers. But let’s not digress. Only the other day we read in the newspapers some bunkum about a middle-aged morals offender who pleaded guilty to the violation of the Mann Act and to transporting a nine-year-old girl across state lines for immoral purposes, whatever these are. Dolores darling! You are not nine but almost thirteen, and I would not advise you to consider yourself my cross-country slave, and I deplore the Mann Act as lending itself to a dreadful pun, the revenge that the Gods of Semantics take against tight-zippered Philistines. I am your father, and I am speaking English, and I love you." (2.1)
Van tells Demon "we can afford to be careless in every sense of the word" and Demon agrees to take back the adjective he used, ignoble ("it is not too late to stop that ignoble affair"). After his first night with Lolita in The Enchanted Hunters (a hotel in Briceland) Humbert admits that he had been careless, stupid, and ignoble:
As she was in the act of getting back into the car, an expression of pain flitted across Lo’s face. It flitted again, more meaningfully, as she settled down beside me. No doubt, she reproduced it that second time for my benefit. Foolishly, I asked her what was the matter. “Nothing, you brute,” she replied. “You what?” I asked. She was silent. Leaving Briceland. Loquacious Lo was silent. Cold spiders of panic crawled down my back. This was an orphan. This was a lone child, an absolute waif, with whom a heavy-limbed, foul-smelling adult had had strenuous intercourse three times that very morning. Whether or not the realization of a lifelong dream had surpassed all expectation, it had, in a sense, overshot its markand plunged into a nightmare. I had been careless, stupid, and ignoble. And let me be quite frank: somewhere at the bottom of that dark turmoil I felt the writhing of desire again, so monstrous was my appetite for that miserable nymphet. Mingled with the pangs of guilt was the agonizing through that her mood might prevent me from making love to her again as soon as I found a nice country road where to park in peace. In other words, poor Humbert Humbert was dreadfully unhappy, and while steadily and inanely driving toward Lepingville, he kept racking his brains for some quip, under the bright wing of which he might dare turn to his seatmate. It was she, however, who broke the silence:
“Oh, a squashed squirrel,” she said. “What a shame.”
“Yes, isn’t it?” (eager, hopeful Hum).
“Let us stop at the next gas station,” Lo continued. “I want to go to the washroom.”
“We shall stop wherever you want,” I said. And then as a lovely, lonely, supercilious grove (oaks, I thought; American trees at that stage were beyond me) started to echo greenly the rush of our car, a red and ferny road on our right turned its head before slanting into the woodland, and I suggested we might perhaps
“Drive on,” my Lo cried shrilly.
“Righto. Take it easy.” (Down, poor beast, down.)
I glanced at her. Thank God, the child was smiling.
“You chump,” she said, sweetly smiling at me. “You revolting creature. I was a daisy-fresh girl, and look what you’ve done to me. I ought to call the police and tell them you raped me. Oh, you dirty, dirty old man.”
Was she just joking? An ominous hysterical note rang through her silly words. Presently, making a sizzling sound with her lips, she started complaining of pains, said she could not sit, said I had torn something inside her. The sweat rolled down my neck, and we almost ran over some little animal or other that was crossing the road with tail erect, and again my vile-tempered companion called me an ugly name. When we stopped at the filling station, she scrambled out without a word and was a long time away. Slowly, lovingly, an elderly friend with a broken nose wiped my windshieldthey do it differently at every place, from chamois cloth to soapy brush, this fellow used a pink sponge.
She appeared at last. “Look,” she said in that neutral voice that hurt me so, “give me some dimes and nickels. I want to call mother in that hospital. What’s the number?”
“Get in,” I said. “You can’t call that number.”
“Why?”
“Get in and slam the door.”
She got in and slammed the door. The old garage man beamed at her. I swung onto the highway.
“Why can’t I call my mother if I want to?”
“Because,” I answered, “your mother is dead.” (1.32)
According to John Ray, Jr. (the author of the Foreword to 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:
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.
In March 1905 (half a year before Van's meeting with Ada, now married to Andrey Vinelander, in Mont Roux) Demon Veen perishes in a mysterious airplane disaster above the Pacific. Van does not realize that his father died, because Ada (who could not pardon Demon his forcing Van to give her up) managed to persuade the pilot to destroy his machine in midair. Because love is blind, Van fails to see that Andrey Vinelander and Ada have at least two children and that Ronald Oranger (old Van's secretary, the editor of Ada) and Violet Knox (old Van's typist whom Ada calls Fialochka, 'little Violet,' and who marries Ronald Oranger after Van's and Ada's death), are Ada's grandchildren.