Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

When Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) visits Lolita (now married to Dick Schiller and big with child) in Coalmont, she tells him about her life after her escape from the Elphinstone hospital with Clare Quilty (the playwright) and calls Elphinstone "Elephant:"

“Sit down,” she said, audibly striking her flanks with her palms. I relapsed into the black rocker.

“So you betrayed me? Where did you go? Where is he now?”

Describing his rented house, 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) mentions his landlord’s four daughters (Alphina, Betty, Candida and Dee) and calls Judge Goldsworth "the head of this alphabetic family:"

Lines 47-48: the frame house between Goldsworth and Wordsmith 

The poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire (1962), John Shade lives in the frame house between Goldsworth and Wordsmith:

I cannot understand why from the lake

I could make out our front porch when I'd take

Lake Road to school, whilst now, although no tree

Has intervened, I look but fail to see

Even the roof. Maybe some quirk in space

Has caused a fold or furrow to displace

The fragile vista, the frame house between

Describing his journey with Lucette (in VN's novel Ada, 1969, Van's and Ada's half-sister) onboard Admiral Tobakoff, Van Veen mentions a steeplechase picture of ‘Pale Fire with Tom Cox Up’ that hangs in Lucette's suite:

Quite kindly he asked where she thought she was going.

At the end of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962) says that his brain is drained and mentions a brown ament (a catkin) that dries on the cement:

Gently the day has passed in a sustained

Low hum of harmony. The brain is drained

And a brown ament, and the noun I meant

To use but did not, dry on the cement.

At the beginning of Canto Three of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) mentions Rabelais’s great Maybe, “the grand potato:”

At the end of his almost finished poem John Shade (the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962) says that he is reasonably sure that he will wake at six tomorrow, on July the twenty-second:

I'm reasonably sure that we survive

And that my darling somewhere is alive,

As I am reasonably sure that I

Shall wake at six tomorrow, on July

The twenty-second, nineteen fifty-nine,

And that the day will probably be fine;

So this alarm clock let me set myself,

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), King Alfin's question "What emperor?" has remained his only memorable mot:

Describing Villa Venus (Eric Veen's floramors), Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Ada, 1969) mentions a Chose don who has a triplet of charming twelve-year-old daughters, Ala, Lolá and Lalage:

When Ada shows to Van (Van Veen, the narrator and main character in VN's novel Ada, 1969) Ardis Hall, a toy barrel organ invitingly goes into action with a stumbling little minuet: