In his poem “Wanted” Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) says that he is dying of hate and remorse:
Dying, dying, Lolita Haze,
Of hate and remorse, I'm dying.
And again my hairy fist I raise,
And again I hear you crying. (2.25)
In Canto Two of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) tells about his daughter’s tragic death and mentions the preview of Remorse:
"Was that the phone?" You listened at the door.
More headlights in the fog. There was no sense
In window-rubbing: only some white fence
And the reflector poles passed by unmasked.
"Are we quite sure she's acting right?" you asked.
"It's technically a blind date, of course.
Well, shall we try the preview of Remorse?"
And we allowed, in all tranquillity,
The famous film to spread its charmed marquee;
The famous face flowed in, fair and inane:
The parted lips, the swimming eyes, the grain
Of beauty on the cheek, odd gallicism,
And the soft form dissolving in the prism
Of corporate desire. "I think," she said,
"I'll get off here." "It's only Lochanhead."
"Yes, that's okay." Gripping the stang, she peered
At ghostly trees. Bus stopped. Bus disappeared. (ll. 443-460)
Describing a party in “Ardis the Second,” Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions Adorno, the star of Hate:
Pedro had not yet returned from California. Hay fever and dark glasses did not improve G. A. Vronsky’s appearance. Adorno, the star of Hate, brought his new wife, who turned out to have been one of the old (and most beloved wives) of another guest, a considerably more important comedian, who after supper bribed Bouteillan to simulate the arrival of a message necessitating his immediate departure. Grigoriy Akimovich went with him (having come with him in the same rented limousine), leaving Marina, Ada, Adorno and his ironically sniffing Marianne at a card table. They played biryuch, a variety of whist, till a Ladore taxi could be obtained, which was well after 1:00 a.m. (1.41)
In Minima Moralia (1951) Theodor Adorno (1903-69) says: Der Bürger aber ist tolerant. Seine Liebe zu den Leuten, wie sie sind, entspringt dem Haß gegen den richtigen Menschen. The star of Hate brings to mind Gray Star, a settlement in the remotest Northwest where Mrs. Richard F. Schiller (Lolita's married name) dies in childbed on Christmas Day, 1952. According to Humbert, Lolita's mother Charlotte simply hated her daughter:
Oh, she simply hated her daughter! What I thought especially vicious was that she had gone out of her way to answer with great diligence the questionnaires in a fool’s book she had (A guide to Your Child’s Development), published in Chicago. The rigmarole went year by year, and Mom was supposed to fill out a kind of inventory at each of her child’s birthdays. On Lo’s twelfth, January 1, 1947, Charlotte Haze, née Becker, had underlined the following epithets, ten out of forty, under “Your Child’s Personality”: aggressive, boisterous, critical, distrustful, impatient, irritable, inquisitive, listless, negativistic (underlined twice) and obstinate. She had ignored the thirty remaining adjectives, among which were cheerful, co-operative, energetic, and so forth. It was really maddening. With a brutality that otherwise never appeared in my loving wife’s mild nature, she attacked and routed such of Lo’s little belongings that had wandered to various parts of the house to freeze there like so many hypnotized bunnies. Little did the good lady dream that one morning when an upset stomach (the result of my trying to improve on her sauces) had prevented me from accompanying her to church, I deceived her with one of Lolita’s anklets. And then, her attitude toward my saporous darling’s letters!
“Dear Mummy and Hummy,
Hope you are fine. Thank you very much for the candy. I [crossed out and re-written again] I lost my new sweater in the woods. It has been cold here for the last few days. I’m having a time. Love,
Dolly.”
“The dumb child,” said Mrs. Humbert, “has left out a word before ‘time.’ That sweater was all-wool, and I wish you would not send her candy without consulting me.” (1.19)
Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805) said: "When I hate I rob myself of something; but when I love I become richer by the object I love." According to Karl Popper (1902-94), “he who teaches that Love, not Reason, should rule opens the way to him who is convinced that Hate should rule.” In his diary (the entry of July 12, 1900) Leo Tolstoy says that he is seriously convinced that the people who rule the world are completely mad: Я серьёзно убеждён, что миром правят совсем сумасшедшие.
Humbert writes his poem "Wanted" in a madhouse near Quebec. It seems that Kinbote writes his Commentary, Index and Foreword (in that order) to Shade's poem not in 'Cedarn, Utana,' but in the same lunatic asylum. In fact, the poet Shade, his commentator Kinbote and his murderer Gradus seem to represent three different aspects of one and the same person whose "real" name is Botkin. An American scholar of Russian descent, Professor Vsevolod Botkin went mad and became Shade, Kinbote and Gradus after the tragic death of his daughter Nadezhda (Hazel Shade’s "real" name). Nadezhda means "hope." There is a hope that, when Kinbote completes his work on Shade’s poem and commits suicide (on Oct. 19, 1959, the anniversary of Pushkin’s Lyceum), Botkin, like Count Vorontsov (Pushkin's boss in Odessa and a target of the poet's epigrams, "half-milord, half-merchant, etc."), will be full again.
Describing the morning on which he left Ardis forever, Van mentions a pang of intolerable remorse:
He turned, as they say, on his heel, and walked toward the house.
He could swear he did not look back, could not — by any optical chance, or in any prism — have seen her physically as he walked away; and yet, with dreadful distinction, he retained forever a composite picture of her standing where he left her. The picture — which penetrated him, through an eye in the back of his head, through his vitreous spinal canal, and could never be lived down, never — consisted of a selection and blend of such random images and expressions of hers that had affected him with a pang of intolerable remorse at various moments in the past. Tiffs between them had been very rare, very brief, but there had been enough of them to make up the enduring mosaic. There was the time she stood with her back against a tree trunk, facing a traitor’s doom; the time he had refused to show her some silly Chose snapshots of punt girls and had torn them up in fury and she had looked away knitting her brows and slitting her eyes at an invisible view in the window. Or that time she had hesitated, blinking, shaping a soundless word, suspecting him of a sudden revolt against her odd prudishness of speech, when he challenged her brusquely to find a rhyme to ‘patio’ and she was not quite sure if he had in mind a certain foul word and if so what was its correct pronunciation. And perhaps, worst of all, that time when she stood fiddling with a bunch of wild flowers, a gentle half-smile hanging back quite neutrally in her eyes, her lips pursed, her head making imprecise little movements as if punctuating with self-directed nods secret decisions and silent clauses in some sort of contract with herself, with him, with unknown parties hereinafter called Comfortless, Inutile, Unjust — while he indulged in a brutal outburst triggered by her suggesting — quite sweetly and casually (as she might suggest walking a little way on the edge of a bog to see if a certain orchid was out) — that they visit the late Krolik’s grave in a churchyard by which they were passing — and he had suddenly started to shout (‘You know I abhor churchyards, I despise, I denounce death, dead bodies are burlesque, I refuse to stare at a stone under which a roly-poly old Pole is rotting, let him feed his maggots in peace, the entomologies of death leave me cold, I detest, I despise —’); he went on ranting that way for a couple of minutes and then literally fell at her feet, kissing her feet, imploring her pardon, and for a little while longer she kept gazing at him pensively. (1.41)
Remorse is a poem by Emily Dickinson:
Remorse is memory awake,
Her companies astir, —
A presence of departed acts
At window and at door.
It's past set down before the soul,
And lighted with a match,
Perusal to facilitate
Of its condensed despatch.
Remorse is cureless, — the disease
Not even God can heal;
For 't is his institution, —
The complement of hell.
“Hell” is also the last word in Emily Dickinson’s poem “My life closed twice before its close:”
My life closed twice before its close—
It yet remains to see
If Immortality unveil
A third event to me
So huge, so hopeless to conceive
As these that twice befell.
Parting is all we know of heaven,
And all we need of hell.
The capital of Kinbote’s Zembla, Onhava seems to hint at heaven. In Canto Three of his poem Shade describes IPH (a lay Institute of Preparation for the Hereafter) and quotes the words of his wife Sybil: “I really could not tell the differences between this place [IPH] and Hell:”
A wrench, a rift - that's all one can foresee.
Maybe one finds le grand néant; maybe
Again one spirals from the tuber's eye.
As you remarked the last time we went by
The Institute: "I really could not tell
The differences between this place and Hell." (ll. 617-622)
In Canto Three of his poem Shade describes his heart attack and mentions Hurricane Lolita that swept from Florida to Maine:
It was a year of Tempests: Hurricane
Lolita swept from Florida to Maine.
Mars glowed. Shahs married. Gloomy Russians spied.
Lang made your portrait. And one night I died. (ll. 679-82)