At a party thrown by Pnin (the title character of a novel, 1957, by VN) there are real German pumpernickel (dark, dense German bread made from coarsely ground wholemeal rye) and a dish of very special vinaigrette:
'He is a biochemist and is now in Pittsburgh,' said Betty as she helped Pnin to arrange buttered slices of French bread around a pot of glossy-grey fresh caviare and to rinse three large bunches of grapes. There was also a large plate of cold cuts, real German pumpernickel, and a dish of very special vinaigrette, where shrimps hobnobbed with pickles and peas, and some miniature sausages in tomato sauce, and hot pirozhki (mushroom tarts, meat tarts, cabbage tarts), and four kinds of nuts, and various interesting Oriental sweets. Drinks were to be represented by whisky (Betty's contribution), ryabinovka (a rowanberry liqueur), brandy-and-grenadine cocktails, and of course Pnin's Punch, a heady mixture of chilled Chateau Yquem, grapefruit juice, and maraschino, which the solemn host had already started to stir in a large bowl of brilliant aquamarine glass with a decorative design of swirled ribbing and lily pads. (Chapter Six, 6)
The Pumpernickel (1951) is a story by Ray Bradbury (an American writer, 1920-2012). A dish of very special vinaigrette brings to mind tselyi vinegret iz genov, as in the Russian Lolita (1967) VN renders "a salad of racial genes:"
Я родился в 1910-ом году, в Париже. Мой отец отличался мягкостью сердца, легкостью нрава - и целым винегретом из генов: был швейцарский гражданин, полуфранцуз-полуавстриец, с Дунайской прожилкой. Я сейчас раздам несколько прелестных, глянцевито-голубых открыток.
Ему принадлежала роскошная гостиница на Ривьере. Его отец и оба деда торговали вином, бриллиантами и шелками (распределяйте сами). В тридцать лет он женился на англичанке, дочке альпиниста Джерома Дунна, внучке двух Дорсетских пасторов, экспертов по замысловатым предметам: палеопедологии и Эоловым арфам (распределяйте сами). Обстоятельства и причина смерти моей весьма фотогеничной матери были довольно оригинальные (пикник, молния); мне же было тогда всего три года, и, кроме какого-то теплого тупика в темнейшем прошлом, у меня ничего от нее не осталось в котловинах и впадинах памяти, за которыми - если вы еще в силах выносить мой слог (пишу под надзором) - садится солнце моего младенчества: всем вам, наверное, знакомы эти благоуханные остатки дня, которые повисают вместе с мошкарой над какой-нибудь цветущей изгородью и в которые вдруг попадаешь на прогулке, проходишь сквозь них, у подножья холма, в летних сумерках - глухая теплынь, золотистые мошки.
I was born in 1910, in Paris. My father was a gentle, easy-going person, a salad of racial genes: a Swiss citizen, of mixed French and Austrian descent, with a dash of the Danube in his veins. I am going to pass around in a minute some lovely, glossy-blue picture-postcards. He owned a luxurious hotel on the Riviera. His father and two grandfathers had sold wine, jewels and silk, respectively. At thirty he married an English girl, daughter of Jerome Dunn, the alpinist, and granddaughter of two Dorset parsons, experts in obscure subjects - paleopedology and Aeolian harps, respectively. My very photogenic mother died in a freak accident (picnic, lightning) when I was three, and, save for a pocket of warmth in the darkest past, nothing of her subsists within the hollows and dells of memory, over which, if you can still stand my style (I am writing under observation), the sun of my infancy had set: surely, you all know those redolent remnants of day suspended, with the midges, about some hedge in bloom or suddenly entered and traversed by the rambler, at the bottom of a hill, in the summer dusk; a furry warmth, golden midges. (1.2)
S dunayskoy prozhilkoy (with a dash of the Danube in his veins) brings to mind Wanda von Dunajew (the central female character in Leopold Sacher-Masoch's novella Venus in Furs, 1870) and Bender-Zadunayskiy, as in Ilf and Petrov's novel Zolotoy telyonok (“The Golden Calf,” 1931) Ostap Bender calls himself. In a conversation with Kinbote (Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) Shade (the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962) mentioned those joint authors of genius Ilf and Petrov:
Speaking of the Head of the bloated Russian Department, Prof. Pnin, a regular martinet in regard to his underlings (happily, Prof. Botkin, who taught in another department, was not subordinated to that grotesque "perfectionist"): "How odd that Russian intellectuals should lack all sense of humor when they have such marvelous humorists as Gogol, Dostoevski, Chekhov, Zoshchenko, and those joint authors of genius Ilf and Petrov." (note to Line 172)
Just as Botkin seems to be the "real" name of Shade, Kinbote and Gradus (Shade's murderer), the three main characters in Pale Fire, John Ray, Jr. (the author of the Foreword to Humbert's manuscript) seems to be Humbert Humbert's "real" name.
Humbert Humbert was born in 1910, in Paris. In 1910 Mr. Welles (a character in Ray Bradbury's story The Pumpernickel) was twenty:
"Something I'd almost forgotten," said Mr. Welles. "In 1910, when I was twenty, I nailed a loaf of pumpernickel to the top of my bureau mirror. . . ."
In the hard, shiny crust of the bread, the boys at Druce's Lake had cut their names: Tom, Nick, Bill, Alec, Paul, Jack. The finest picnic in history! Their faces tanned as they rattled down the dusty roads. Those were the days when roads were really dusty; a fine brown talcum floured up after your car. And the lake was always twice as good to reach as it would be later in life when you arrived immaculate, clean, and un-rumpled.
"That was the last time the old gang got together," Mr. Welles said.
The finest picnic in history and Ray Bradbury's story October 2026: THE MILLION-YEAR PICNIC from The Martian Chronicles (1950) bring to mind a freak accident (picnic, lightning) in which Humbert's photogenic mother died.
Humbert's aunt Sybil (whose favorite locution was "overwhelmingly obvious") is a namesake of Sybil Shade (the poet's wife in Pale Fire).