Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

In VN’s novel Bend Sinister (1947) the soldier asks Krug (who just learned that his son David was sadistically murdered at the hospital) "Yablochko, kuda-zh ty tak kotishsa [little apple, whither are you rolling]:"

Krug was caught by a friendly soldier.

'Yablochko, kuda-zh ty tak kotishsa [little apple, whither are you rolling]?' asked the soldier and added:

'A po zhabram, milaĭ, khochesh [want me to hit you, friend]?' (Chapter 17)

In his Commentary to Shade's poem Kinbote (in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962, Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) mockingly calls Gradus (Shade's murderer) “Vinogradus” and “Leningradus” and repeats the word “squeeze” three times:

According to Kinbote (in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962, Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla), after line 274 of Shade’s poem there is a false start in the draft:

I like my name: Shade, Ombre, almost 'man'
In Spanish... (note to Line 275)

In VN’s novel Bend Sinister (1947) mouches volantes (“flying flies,” entoptic phenomena) are mentioned:

The main character in VN's novel Bend Sinister (1947), the philosopher Adam Krug is the author of the Komparatiwn Stuhdar en Sophistat tuen Pekrekh (The Philosophy of Sin in the American edition), a book that was translated into English by Krug's friend Ember:

The main character in VN's novel Bend Sinister (1947), the philosopher Adam Krug is the author of the Komparatiwn Stuhdar en Sophistat tuen Pekrekh:

In his autobiography Speak, Memory (1951) VN describes his life in Berlin in the 1920s and in Paris in the late 1930s and compares Sirin (VN’s Russian nom de plume) to a meteor that passed across the dark sky of exile and disappeared, leaving nothing much else behind him than a vague sense of uneasiness:

At the end of "Ardis the First" Ada, having returned from a bicycle ride in the park with Van, repeats the French phrase tant pis (too bad) two times:

In VN's novel Bend Sinister (1947) the rise of Ekwilism took place in the days when a blatantly bourgeois paper happened to be publishing a cartoon sequence depicting the home life of Mr and Mrs Etermon (Everyman):

Onboard Admiral Tobakoff (a liner on which they cross the Atlantic) Van's and Ada's half-sister Lucette asks Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Ada, 1969) whom did 'Miss Condor' (a tall mulatto girl who approached Van) look like: