Describing Lolita's illness and hospitalization in Elphinstone (a little town in the Rockies), Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) mentions a heterosexual Erlkönig in pursuit:
Mrs. Hays, the brisk, briskly rouged, blue-eyed widow who ran the motor court, asked me if I were Swiss perchance, because her sister had married a Swiss ski instructor. I was, whereas my daughter happened to be half Irish. I registered, Hays gave me the key and a tinkling smile, and, still twinkling, showed me where to park the car; Lo crawled out and shivered a little: the luminous evening air was decidedly crisp. Upon entering the cabin, she sat down on a chair at a card table, buried her face in the crook of her arm and said she felt awful. Shamming, I thought, shamming, no doubt, to evade my caresses; I was passionately parched; but she began to whimper in an unusually dreary way when I attempted to fondle her. Lolita ill. Lolita dying. Her skin was scalding hot! I took her temperature, orally, then looked up a scribbled formula I fortunately had in a jotter and after laboriously reducing the, meaningless to me, degrees Fahrenheit to the intimate centigrade of my childhood, found she had 40.4, which at least made sense. Hysterical little nymphs might, I knew, run up all kinds of temperatureeven exceeding a fatal count. And I would have given her a sip of hot spiced wine, and two aspirins, and kissed the fever away, if, upon an examination of her lovely uvula, one of the gems of her body, I had not seen that it was a burning red. I undressed her. Her breath was bittersweet. Her brown rose tasted of blood. She was shaking from head to toe. She complained of a painful stiffness in the upper vertebraeand I thought of poliomyelitis as any American parent would. Giving up all hope of intercourse, I wrapped her in a laprobe and carried her into the car. Kind Mrs. Hays in the meantime had alerted the local doctor. “You are lucky it happened here,” she said; for not only was Blue the best man in the district, but the Elphinstone hospital was as modern as modern could be, despite its limited capacity. With a heterosexual Erlkönig in pursuit, thither I drove, half-blinded by a royal sunset on the lowland side and guided by a little old woman, a portable witch, perhaps his daughter, whom Mrs. Hays had lent me, and whom I was never to see again. Dr. Blue, whose learning, no doubt, was infinitely inferior to his reputation, assured me it was a virus infection, and when I alluded to her comparatively recent flu, curtly said this was another bug, he had forty such cases on his hands; all of which sounded like the “ague” of the ancients. I wondered if I should mention, with a casual chuckle, that my fifteen-year-old daughter had had a minor accident while climbing an awkward fence with her boy friend, but knowing I was drunk, I decided to withhold the information till later if necessary. To an unsmiling blond bitch of a secretary I gave my daughter’s age as “practically sixteen.” While I was not looking, my child was taken away from me! In vain I insisted I be allowed to spend the night on a “welcome” mat in a corner of their damned hospital. I ran up constructivistic flights of stairs, I tried to trace my darling so as to tell her she had better not babble, especially if she felt as lightheaded as we all did. At one point, I was rather dreadfully rude to a very young and very cheeky nurse with overdeveloped gluteal parts and blazing black eyesof Basque descent, as I learned. Her father was an imported shepherd, a trainer of sheep dogs. Finally, I returned to the car and remained in it for I do not know how many hours, hunched up in the dark, stunned by my new solitude, looking out open-mouthed now at the dimly illumined, very square and low hospital building squatting in the middle of its lawny block, now up at the wash of stars and the jagged silvery ramparts of the haute montagne where at the moment Mary’s father, lonely Joseph Lore was dreaming of Oloron, Lagore, Rolas - que sais-je! - or seducing a ewe. Such-like fragrant vagabond thoughts have been always a solace to me in times of unusual stress, and only when, despite liberal libations, I felt fairly numbed by the endless night, did I think of driving back to the motel. The old woman had disappeared, and I was not quite sure of my way. Wide gravel roads criss-crossed drowsy rectangual shadows. I made out what looked like the silhouette of gallows on what was probably a school playground; and in another wastelike black there rose in domed silence the pale temple of some local sect. I found the highway at last, and then the motel, where millions of so-called “millers,” a kind of insect, were swarming around the neon contours of “No Vacancy”; and, when, at 3 a. m., after one of those untimely hot showers which like some mordant only help to fix a man’s despair and weariness, I lay on her bed that smelled of chestnuts and roses, and peppermint, and the very delicate, very special French perfume I latterly allowed her to use, I found myself unable to assimilate the simple fact that for the first time in two years I was separated from my Lolita. All at once it occurred to me that her illness was somehow the development of a themethat it had the same taste and tone as the series of linked impressions which had puzzled and tormented me during our journey; I imagined that secret agent, or secret lover, or prankster, or hallucination, or whatever he was, prowling around the hospital - and Aurora had hardly “warmed her hands,” as the pickers of lavender say in the country of my birth, when I found myself trying to get into that dungeon again, knocking upon its green doors, breakfastless, stool-less, in despair. (2.22)
Der Erlkönig (1782) is a famous poem by J. W. von Goethe (a German poet, 1749-1832). Humbert compares a little old woman whom Mrs. Hays had lent him, to a portable witch, perhaps Erlkönig's daughter. Erlkönigs Tochter ("Erlkönig's Daughter," 1779) is a ballad by J. G. von Herder (a German philosopher, 1744-1803):
Herr Oluf reitet spät und weit,
Zu bieten auf seine Hochzeitleut;
Da tanzen die Elfen auf grünem Land,
Erlkönigs Tochter reicht ihm die Hand.
„Willkommen, Herr Oluf! Was eilst von hier?
Tritt her in den Reihen und tanz mit mir.“
„Ich darf nicht tanzen, nicht tanzen ich mag,
Frühmorgen ist mein Hochzeittag.“
„Hör an, Herr Oluf, tritt tanzen mit mir,
Zwei güldne Sporne schenk ich dir!
Ein Hemd von Seide so weiß und fein,
Meine Mutter bleicht's mit Mondenschein.“
„Ich darf nicht tanzen, nicht tanzen ich mag,
Frühmorgen ist mein Hochzeittag.“
„Hör an, Herr Oluf, tritt tanzen mit mir,
Einen Haufen Goldes schenk ich dir.“
„Einen Haufen Goldes nähm ich wohl;
Doch tanzen ich nicht darf noch soll.“
„Und willt, Herr Oluf, nicht tanzen mit mir,
Soll Seuch und Krankheit folgen dir.“
Sie tät einen Schlag ihm auf sein Herz,
Noch nimmer fühlt er solchen Schmerz.
Sie hob ihn bleichend auf sein Pferd:
„Reit heim nun zu dein'm Fräulein wert.“
Und als er kam vor Hauses Tür,
Seine Mutter zitternd stand dafür.
„Hör an, mein Sohn, sag an mir gleich,
Wie ist dein' Farbe blaß und bleich?“
„Und sollt sie nicht sein blaß und bleich,
Ich traf in Erlenkönigs Reich.“
„Hör an, mein Sohn, so lieb und traut,
Was soll ich nun sagen deiner Braut?“
„Sagt ihr, ich sei im Wald zur Stund,
Zu proben da mein Pferd und Hund.“
Frühmorgen und als es Tag kaum war,
Da kam die Braut mit der Hochzeitschar.
Sie schenkten Met, sie schenkten Wein;
„Wo ist Herr Oluf, der Bräutigam mein?“
„Herr Oluf, er ritt in Wald zur Stund,
Er probt allda sein Pferd und Hund.“
Die Braut hob auf den Scharlach rot,
Da lag Herr Oluf, und er war tot.
Lord Oluf rides late and far,
To bid on his wedding couple.
But the dance goes so easily through the grove.
There the elves dance on green land,
Erlkönig's daughter shakes hands with him.
"Welcome, Mr. Oluf! What hastens from here?
Join the ranks and dance with me."
"I'm not allowed to dance, I don't like dancing,
Early tomorrow is my wedding day."
"Listen, Mr. Oluf, come dance with me,
I'll give you two golden spurs!"
"I'm not allowed to dance, I don't like dancing,
Early tomorrow is my wedding day."
"Listen, Mr. Oluf, come dance with me,
A silk shirt, I'll give you that."
A shirt of silk so white and fine,
My mother pales in the moonlight."
"I'm not allowed to dance, I don't like dancing,
Early tomorrow is my wedding day."
"Listen, Mr. Oluf, come dance with me,
A head of gold I give you."
"A head of gold, that I would take well;
But I can't and shouldn't dance."
"And don't you want to dance with me, Mr. Oluf?
Let plague and sickness follow you."
She hit him in the heart
He's never felt such pain.
Paling, she lifted him onto his horse:
"Ride home now to your dear lady."
And when he came to the door of the house,
His mother trembling stood for:
"Listen, my son, tell me right away
How is your color pale and pale?"
"And shouldn't she be pale and pale,
I met in Erlenkönigs Reich."
"Listen, my son, so dear and trusting,
What shall I tell your bride now?"
"Tell her I'm in the woods at the moment
My horse and dog there for rehearsals."
early morning and when it was hardly day,
Then the bride came with the wedding party.
They gave mead, they gave wine;
"Where is Mr. Oluf, my bridegroom?"
"Lord Oluf, he rode in the woods at the hour,
He's rehearsing his horse and dog there."
The bride picked up the scarlet red -
There lay Mr. Oluf, and he was dead.
But the dance goes so easily through the grove.
Zwei güldne Sporne (two golden spurs) that Erlkönig's daughter offers Herr Oluf brings to mind "Silver Spur Court, Elphinstone:"
The two-room cabin we had ordered at Silver Spur Court, Elphinstone, turned out to belong to the glossily browned pine-log kind that Lolita used to be so fond of in the days of our carefree first journey; oh, how different things were now! I am not referring to Trapp or Trapps. After all - well, really… After all, gentlemen, it was becoming abundantly clear that all those identical detectives in prismatically changing cars were figments of my persecution mania, recurrent images based on coincidence and chance resemblance. Soyons logiques, crowed the cocky Gallic part of my brain - and proceeded to rout the notion of a Lolita-maddened salesman or comedy gangster, with stooges, persecuting me, and hoaxing me, and otherwise taking riotous advantage of my strange relations with the law. I remember humming my panic away. I remember evolving even an explanation of the “Birdsley” telephone call… But if I could dismiss Trapp, as I had dismissed my convulsions on the lawn at Champion, I could do nothing with the anguish of knowing Lolita to be so tantalizingly, so miserably unattainable and beloved on the very even of a new era, when my alembics told me she should stop being a nymphet, stop torturing me. (2.22)
Na serebryanye shpory… (“At the silver spurs,” 1833-34) is a poem by Lermontov, the author of a Russian version of Goethe's Wanderers Nachtlied (Über allen Gipfeln...). Herder's Erlkönigs Tochter is a translation and adaption (included in Herder's collection Volkslieder) of the Danish ballad Elveskud. Elveskud ("Elf-shot") brings to mind Elphinstone. In Chapter Eight (XXXV: 3) of Pushkin's Eugene Onegin Onegin reads, among other authors, Herder (presumably, Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit, 1784-91, in a 1824 French translation):
Стал вновь читать он без разбора.
Прочел он Гиббона, Руссо,
Манзони, Гердера, Шамфора,
Madame de Stael, Биша, Тиссо,
Прочел скептического Беля,
Прочел творенья Фонтенеля,
Прочел из наших кой-кого,
Не отвергая ничего:
И альманахи, и журналы,
Где поученья нам твердят,
Где нынче так меня бранят,
А где такие мадригалы
Себе встречал я иногда:
Е sempre bene, господа.
Again, without discrimination,
he started reading. He read Gibbon,
Rousseau, Manzoni, Herder,
Chamfort, Mme de Staël, Bichat, Tissot.
He read the skeptic Bayle,
he read the works of Fontenelle,
he read some [authors] of our own,
without rejecting anything —
the “almanacs” and the reviews
where sermons into us are drummed,
where I'm today abused so much
but where such madrigals addressed tome
I used to meet with now and then:
e sempre bene, gentlemen.
In the Russian Lolita (1967) Gumbert Gumbert calls his guide odna iz kuzin Erlköniga (one of the Erlkönig's cousins):
"Вам повезло, что это случилось именно тут", - сказала она, ибо не только доктор Блю считался светилом во всем районе, но Эльфинстоновский госпиталь был оборудован в самом новейшем духе, несмотря на ограниченную вместительность. Словно меня преследовал лесной царь, как в Гетевском "Короле Эльфов" (но на сей раз любитель не мальчиков, а девочек), я с ней поскакал прямо в слепящий закат, пробивавшийся со стороны низменности. Моим проводником была маленькая старушка вроде портативной ведьмы (может быть, одна из кузин Erlkönig'a), которую мне одолжила миссис Гейз и которой я больше никогда в жизни не видал. (2.22)