The number 342 that reappears in VN’s novel Lolita (1955) three times (342 Lawn Street is the address of the Haze house in Ramsdale; 342 is Humbert's and Lolita's room in The Enchanted Hunters; between July 5 and November 18, 1949, Humbert registered, if not actually stayed, at 342 hotels, motels and tourist homes) seems to hint at Earth, Mars and Venus (the third, the fourth and the second planet of the Solar System). Describing his first night with Lolita in The Enchanted Hunters, Humbert says that his only regret today is that he did not quietly deposit key “342” at the office, and leave the town, the country, the continent, the hemisphere, - indeed, the globe - that very same night:
Gentlewomen of the jury! Bear with me! Allow me to take just a tiny bit of your precious time. So this was le grand moment. I had left my Lolita still sitting on the edge of the abysmal bed, drowsily raising her foot, fumbling at the shoelaces and showing as she did so the nether side of her thigh up to the crotch of her pantiesshe had always been singularly absentminded, or shameless, or both, in matters of legshow. This, then, was the hermetic vision of her which I had locked inafter satisfying myself that the door carried no inside bolt. The key, with its numbered dangler of carved wood, became forthwith the weighty sesame to a rapturous and formidable future. It was mine, it was part of my hot hairy fist. In a few minutessay, twenty, say half-an-hour, sicher its sicher as my uncle Gustave used to say - I would let myself into that “342” and find my nymphet, my beauty and bride, imprisoned in her crystal sleep. Jurors! If my happiness could have talked, it would have filled that genteel hotel with a deafening roar. And my only regret today is that I did not quietly deposit key “342” at the office, and leave the town, the country, the continent, the hemisphere, - indeed, the globe - that very same night.
In VN's novel Dar ("The Gift," 1937) Fyodor Godunov-Cherdyntsev (the narrator and main character) compares a chess problem that he just composed to planetarium mysli (a planetarium of thought):
Ещё два-три очистительных штриха, ещё одна проверка, - и задача была готова. Её ключ, первый ход белых, был замаскирован своей мнимой нелепостью, - но именно расстоянием между ней и ослепительным разрядом смысла измерялось одно из главных художественных достоинств задачи, а в том, как одна фигура, точно смазанная маслом, гладко заходила за другую, скользнув через всё поле и забравшись к ней подмышку, была почти телесная приятность, щекочущее ощущение ладности. На доске звёздно сияло восхитительное произведение искусства: планетариум мысли. Всё тут веселило шахматный глаз: остроумие угроз и защит, грация их взаимного движения, чистота матов (столько-то пуль на столько-то сердец); каждая фигура казалась нарочно сработанной для своего квадрата; но может быть очаровательнее всего была тонкая ткань обмана, обилие подмётных ходов (в опровержении которых была ещё своя побочная красота), ложных путей, тщательно уготовленных для читателя.
One or two more refining touches, one more verification – and the problem was ready. The key to it, White's first move, was masked by its apparent absurdity – but it was precisely by the distance between this and the dazzling dénouement that one of the problem’s chief merits was measured; and in the way that one piece, as if greased with oil, went smoothly behind another after slipping across the whole field and creeping up under its arm, constituted an almost physical pleasure, the titillating sensation of an ideal fit. Now on the board there shone, like a constellation, a ravishing work of art, a planetarium of thought. Everything here cheered the chess player's eye: the wit of the threats and defences, the grace of their interlocked movement, the purity of the mates (so many bullets for exactly so many hearts); every polished piece seemed to be made especially for its square; but perhaps the most fascinating of all was the fine fabric of deceit, the abundance of insidious tries (the refutation of which had its own accessory beauty), and of false trails carefully prepared for the reader. (Chapter Three)
Fyodor's landlord, Shchyogolev (Zina Mertz's step-father) tells Fyodor that, if he were a writer, he would have written a novel about a man who falls in love with a little girl and marries her mother:
Однажды, заметив исписанные листочки на столе у Федора Константиновича, он сказал, взяв какой-то новый, прочувствованный тон: "Эх, кабы у меня было времячко, я бы такой роман накатал... Из настоящей жизни. Вот представьте себе такую историю: старый пёс, - но ещё в соку, с огнём, с жаждой счастья, - знакомится с вдовицей, а у неё дочка, совсем ещё девочка, - знаете, когда ещё ничего не оформилось, а уже ходит так, что с ума сойти. Бледненькая, лёгонькая, под глазами синева, - и конечно на старого хрыча не смотрит. Что делать? И вот, недолго думая, он, видите ли, на вдовице женится. Хорошо-с. Вот, зажили втроём. Тут можно без конца описывать - соблазн, вечную пыточку, зуд, безумную надежду. И в общем - просчёт. Время бежит-летит, он стареет, она расцветает, - и ни черта. Пройдёт, бывало, рядом, обожжёт презрительным взглядом. А? Чувствуете трагедию Достоевского? Эта история, видите ли, произошла с одним моим большим приятелем, в некотором царстве, в некотором самоварстве, во времена царя Гороха. Каково?" - и Борис Иванович, обрати в сторону темные глаза, надул губы и издал меланхолический лопающийся звук.
Once, when he had noticed some written-up sheets of paper on Fyodor’s desk, he said, adopting a new heartfelt tone of voice: “Ah, if only I had a tick or two, what a novel I’d whip off! From real life. Imagine this kind of thing: an old dog—but still in his prime, fiery, thirsting for happiness—gets to know a widow, and she has a daughter, still quite a little girl—you know what I mean—when nothing is formed yet but already she has a way of walking that drives you out of your mind—A slip of a girl, very fair, pale, with blue under the eyes—and of course she doesn’t even look at the old goat. What to do? Well, not long thinking, he ups and marries the widow. Okay. They settle down the three of them. Here you can go on indefinitely—the temptation, the eternal torment, the itch, the mad hopes. And the upshot—a miscalculation. Time flies, he gets older, she blossoms out—and not a sausage. Just walks by and scorches you with a look of contempt. Eh? D’you feel here a kind of Dostoevskian tragedy? That story, you see, happened to a great friend of mine, once upon a time in fairyland when Old King Cole was a merry old soul,” and Boris Ivanovich, turning his dark eyes away, pursed his lips and emitted a melancholy, bursting sound. (ibid.)
As he imagines his future life with Charlotte (Lolita's mother), Humbert feels a Dostoevskian grin on his lips:
After a while I destroyed the letter and went to my room, and ruminated, and rumpled my hair, and modeled my purple robe, and moaned through clenched teeth and suddenly - Suddenly, gentlemen of the jury, I felt a Dostoevskian grin dawning (through the very grimace that twisted my lips) like a distant and terrible sun. I imagined (under conditions of new and perfect visibility) all the casual caresses her mother's husband would be able to lavish on his Lolita. I would hold her against me three times a day, every day. All my troubles would be expelled, I would be a healthy man. "To hold thee lightly on a gentle knee and print on thy soft cheek a parent's kiss . . ." Well-read Humbert! (1.17)
Key "342" that Humbert clasps in his hairy fist brings to mind the keys motif in The Gift. In Paris Humbert played chess with Valeria's father, a Polish doctor. At Beardsley Humbert plays chess with Gaston Godin (an old Frenchman who loves little boys).
In Goethe's Faust (1808) the cosmic chess game takes place between Faust and Mephistopheles. Lolita mother is a namesake of Charlotte, the central female character in Goethe's novel Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (1774). Mrs. “Richard F. Schiller” (Lolita’s married name) dies in childbed, giving birth to a stillborn girl, on Christmas Day 1952, in Gray Star, a settlement in the remotest Northwest.
“The Interplanetary Chess Tournament” is a chapter in Ilf and Petrov's novel Dvenadtsat' stuliev (“The Twelve Chairs,” 1928). Ilf and Petrov are the authors of Odnoetazhnaya Amerika ("One-storied America," 1937), a book based on a published travelogue across the United States.