Describing his visit to Ivor Quilty (the Ramsdale dentist), Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) mentally tells Clare Quilty (a playwright and pornographer whom Humbert murders for abducting Lolita from the Elphinstone hospital) “Réveillez-vous, Laqueue, il est temps de mourir! (Wake up, Laqueue, it is time to die!):"
Now that everything had been put out of the way, I could dedicate myself freely to the main object of my visit to Ramsdale. In the methodical manner on which I have always prided myself, I had been keeping Clare Quilty’s face masked in my dark dungeon, where he was waiting for me to come with barber and priest: “Réveillez-vous, Laqueue, il est temps de mourir! ” I have no time right now to discuss the mnemonics of physiognomization - I am on my way to his uncle and walking fast - but let me jot down this: I had preserved in the alcohol of a clouded memory the toad of a face. In the course of a few glimpses, I had noticed its slight resemblance to a cheery and rather repulsive wine dealer, a relative of mine in Switzerland. With his dumbbells and stinking tricot, and fat hairy arms, and bald patch, and pig-faced servant-concubine, he was on the whole a harmless old rascal. Too harmless, in fact, to be confused with my prey. In the state of mind I now found myself, I had lost contact with Trapp’s image. It had become completely engulfed by the face of Clare Quilty - as represented, with artistic precision, by an easeled photograph of him that stood on his uncle’s desk. (2.33)
In the Russian Lolita (1967) Laqueue (a play on Cue, Clare Quilty's nickname) becomes Tropman:
Теперь, когда я покончил с делами, я мог посвятить себя главной цели поездки в Рамздэль. До сих пор, придерживаясь той методичности, которой недаром горжусь, я не снимал маски с лица Клэра Куильти; он сидел у меня в подземелье, ожидая моего прихода со служителем культа и брадобреем: "Reveillez-vous, Tropman, il est temps de mourir!" Мне сейчас недосуг заниматься вопросом, как запоминаются физиономии (нахожусь на пути к его дядюшке и иду скорым шагом); но позволю себе отчеркнуть следующее: в спирту мутной памяти я сохранял чье-то жабье лицо. Я видал это лицо мельком несколько раз и заметил в нем некоторое сходство с жизнерадостным и довольно противным родственником моим, жившим и умершим в Швейцарии. Помню его гантели, вонючее трико, толстые волосатые руки, и плешь, и свиноподобную горничную-наложницу, - но в общем этот паршивец был довольно безобидный; слишком безобидный, добавлю, чтобы сойти за мою добычу. В странном состоянии ума, в котором я сейчас находился, я как-то потерял связь с образом Густава Траппа: его полностью поглотило лицо драматурга Клэра Куильти, таким, каким он был представлен, с художественной точностью, на рекламах папирос "Дромадер" и на кабинетной фотографии, стоявшей у его дядюшки на письменном столе.
Kazn' Tropmana ("The Execution of Tropmann," 1870) is an essay by Ivan Turgenev. Describing his visit to Ramsdale in September 1952, Humbert mentions a Turgenev story ("The Three Meetings," 1852):
Should I enter my old house? As in a Turgenev story, a torrent of Italian music came from an open window—that of the living room: what romantic soul was playing the piano where no piano had plunged and plashed on that bewitched Sunday with the sun on her beloved legs? (2.33)
In his essay Iz zapisnoy knizhki 1918 goda ("From a Notebook of the Year 1918") Mark Aldanov says that it will be always difficult to explain logically why Tropmann was beheaded, if Wilhelm and Lenin die natural deaths:
По простодушному выражению Шиллера, "физический человек реален, а моральный только проблематичен". Что и говорить, проблематичен, все более и более проблематичен. Уже три года "человечество идет назад и мы в первых рядах". Логически всегда будет трудно объяснить, почему отрубили голову Тропману, если Вильгельм и Ленин умрут естественной смертью.
Aldanov quotes Schiller's simplehearted words "the physical man is real, and the moral man is only problematic." Dick Schiller is the name of Lolita's husband. 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.
But it seems that, actually, Lolita dies of ague in the Elphinstone hospital on July 4, 1949, and 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 Quilty) was invented by Humbert Humbert (whose "real" name is John Ray, Jr.). A small town in the Rocky Mountains where Lolita dies, Elphinstone seems to hint at John Elphinstone (1722-85), a senior British naval officer who in the the battle of Chesma Bay (July 5-7, 1770) commanded the Russian rear guard. In Mark Aldanov's story Na 'Roze Luksemburg' ("Onboard the Rosa Luxemburg," 1942) Comissar Bogumil mentions in his lecture an English sailor who served under Aleksey Orlov, Admiral Elfingston (sic):
-- Поп не кончил, а дьякон запел, -- сказал весело Богумил. -- Ну, да эту поправку я принимаю... И еще я хотел сказать одно, товарищи. Как вы завтра узнаете, в Чесменском бою одной из наших эскадр командовал, под начальством Алексея Орлова, английский моряк, адмирал (он заглянул в бумажку), адмирал Эльфингстон, состоявший на нашей службе. Так вот, и сейчас на "Розе" с нами плывут английский и американский моряки, сражающиеся вместе с вами за общее дело. Предлагаю их приветствовать... -- Он хотел было добавить: "и занести это в стенгазету", но раздумал. Его слова были покрыты рукоплесканиями. (Chapter V)
The action in Aldanov's story takes place during World War II onboard the Rosa Luxemburg, a Russian ship on its perilous trip from Murmansk to England. Among its passengers is Lieutenant Hamilton (an American naval officer and poet who is mentioned right in the next paragraph):
Лейтенант Гамильтон раскланивался с искренним волнением. Мистер Деффильд тоже выразил благодарность. Но, когда комиссар, собрав бумаги, стал искать его глазами, коммандэра уже в каюте не было.
-- Вже его нема! -- с удивлением сказал Богумил. Во время политзанятий он не вставлял в речь украинских слов, и это его утомляло. Он опять засмеялся, увидев штурмана, и дружески хлопнул его по плечу. -- Устал, брат, сталинский питомец?
-- Вчера два часа сидел над той брошюрой, не мог оторваться. Отличная брошюра, -- сказал штурман.
-- Вот и отлично, что сидели. Сидите и дальше. "Попы", фабриканты, купцы, толстосумы -- сидели в стенах Государственной Думы", -- весело продекламировал комиссар, очень довольный своей лекцией. (Chapter V)
Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919) was a Polish and naturalised-German Marxist theorist and revolutionary. Clare Quilty's first name makes one think of Clara Zetkin (1857-1933), a German Marxist theorist, communist activist, and advocate for women's rights. In her class list at Ramsdale school Dolores Haze (Lolita’s full name) occupies a place between two Roses (Hamilton, Mary Rose and Honeck, Rosaline):
A poem, a poem, forsooth! So strange and sweet was it to discover this “Haze, Dolores” (she!) in its special bower of names, with its bodyguard of roses – a fairy princess between her two maids of honor. (1.11)
On the porch of The Enchanted Hunters (a hotel in Briceland where Humbert and Lolita spend their first night together) a stranger (Clare Quilty) tells Humbert that his child needs a lot of sleep and that sleep is a rose, as the Persians say:
I left the loud lobby and stood outside, on the white steps, looking at the hundreds of powdered bugs wheeling around the lamps in the soggy black night, full of ripple and stir. All I would do - all I would dare do - would amount to such a trifle… 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 hotelsand 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)
In an interview to the Briceland Gazette Quilty (“the author of Dark Age”) mentioned a Persian bubble bird and roses:
A curious urge to relive my stay there with Lolita had got hold of me. I was entering a phase of existence where I had given up all hope of tracing her kidnapper and her. I now attempted to fall back on old settings in order to save what still could be saved in the way of souvenir, souvenir que me veux-tu? Autumn was ringing in the air. To a post card requesting twin beds Professor Hamburg got a prompt expression of regret in reply. They were full up. They had one bathless basement room with four beds which they thought I would not want. Their note paper was headed:
The Enchanted Hunters
Near Churches
No Dogs
All legal beverages
I wondered if the last statement was true. All? Did they have for instance sidewalk grenadine? I also wondered if a hunter, enchanted or otherwise, would not need a pointer more than a pew, and with a spasm of pain I recalled a scene worthy of a great artist: petite nymphe accroupie; but that silky cocker spaniel had perhaps been a baptized one. No - I felt I could not endure the throes of revisiting that lobby. There was a much better possibility of retrievable time elsewhere in soft, rich-colored, autumnal Briceland. Leaving Rita in a bar, I made for the town library. A twittering spinster was only too glad to help me disinter mid-August 1947 from the bound Briceland Gazette, and presently, in a secluded nook under a naked light, I was turning the enormous and fragile pages of a coffin-black volume almost as big as Lolita.
Reader! Bruder! What a foolish Hamburg that Hamburg was! Since his supersensitive system was loath to face the actual scene, he thought he could at least enjoy a secret part of it - which reminds one of the tenth or twentieth soldier in the raping queue who throws the girl’s black shawl over her white face so as not to see those impossible eyes while taking his military pleasure in the sad, sacked village. What I lusted to get was the printed picture that had chanced to absorb my trespassing image while the Gazette’s photographer was concentrating on Dr. Braddock and his group. Passionately I hoped to find preserved the portrait of the artist as a younger brute. An innocent camera catching me on my dark way to Lolita’s bed - what a magnet for Mnemosyne! I cannot well explain the true nature of that urge of mine. It was allied, I suppose, to that swooning curiosity which impels one to examine with a magnifying glass bleak little figures - still life practically, and everybody about to throw up - at an early morning execution, and the patient’s expression impossible to make out in the print. Anyway, I was literally gasping for breath, and one corner of the book of doom kept stabbing me in the stomach while I scanned and skimmed… Brute Force and Possessed were coming on Sunday, the 24th, to both theatres. Mr. Purdom, independent tobacco auctioneer, said that ever since 1925 he had been an Omen Faustum smoker. Husky Hank and his petite bride were to be the guests of Mr. and Mrs. Reginald G. Gore, 58 Inchkeith Ave. The size of certain parasites is one sixth of the host. Dunkerque was fortified in the tenth century. Misses’ socks, 39 c. Saddle Oxfords 3.98. Wine, wine, wine, quipped the author of Dark Age who refused to be photographed, may suit a Persian bubble bird, but I say give me rain, rain, rain on the shingle roof for roses and inspiration every time. Dimples are caused by the adherence of the skin to the deeper tissues. Greeks repulse a heavy guerrilla assault - and, ah, at last, a little figure in white, and Dr. Braddock in black, but whatever spectral shoulder was brushing against his ample form - nothing of myself could I make out. (2.26)
Shahr-e Ray (Nick name: Mother of Tehran) is the capital of Ray County, Tehran provonce, Iran. Formerly a distinct city, it has now been absorbed into the metropolitan area of Greater Tehran as the 20th district of municipal Tehran, the capital city of the country. Iran's old name in the West was Persia, named after the Fars (Pars) region, but Iranians themselves always called their land Iran, meaning "Land of the Aryans." In the Russian Lolita Quilty (who meets Humbert in the Oriental parlor) tells Humbert "etot dom - ariyskiy" ("this is a Gentile's house" in the original):
"Куильти", - сказал я. - "Попробуйте сосредоточиться. Через минуту вы умрете. Загробная жизнь может оказаться, как знать, вечным состоянием мучительнейшего безумия. Вы выкурили вашу последнюю папиросу вчера. Сосредоточьтесь. Постарайтесь понять, что с вами происходит".
Он, меж тем, рвал на части папиросу Дромадер и жевал кусочки.
"Я готов постараться", - проговорил он. - "Вы либо австралиец, либо немецкий беженец. Как это вообще случилось, что вы со мной разговариваете? Это дом - арийский, имейте в виду. Вы бы лучше уходили. И прошу вас перестать размахивать этим кольтом. Между прочим, у меня есть старый наган в соседнем зальце".
“Quilty,” I said. “I want you to concentrate. You are going to die in a moment. The hereafter for all we know may be an eternal state of excruciating insanity. You smoked your last cigarette yesterday. Concentrate. Try to understand what is happening to you.”
He kept taking the Drome cigarette apart and munching bits of it.
“I am willing to try,” he said. “You are either Australian, or a German refugee. Must you talk to me? This is a Gentile’s house, you know. Maybe, you’d better run along. And do stop demonstrating that gun. I’ve an old Stern-Luger in the music room.” (2.35)