Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

After Van's first tea party at Ardis Marina (in VN's novel Ada, 1969, Van's, Ada's and Lucette's mother) tells Van that he can see the Tarn from the library window and Ada introduces the view to Van pollice verso:

When Lucette (in VN's novel Ada, 1969, Van's and Ada's half-sister) visits Van at Kingston (Van's American University) bringing him a letter from Ada, Van quips that it is terrible for a window not to be able to turn its paralyzed embrasure and see what is on the other side of the house:

‘I think I’ll take off my jacket,’ she said with the usual flitting frown of feminine fuss that fits the ‘thought.’ ‘You’ve got central heating; we girls have tiny fireplaces.’

In Canto Two of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) describes a TV program that he and his wife Sybil saw on the eve of their daughter's tragic death and mentions Frost (the poet):

I was in time to overhear brief fame

And have a cup of tea with you: my name

Was mentioned twice, as usual just behind

(one oozy footstep) Frost.

In Canto One of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) mentions diamonds of frost:

Retake the falling snow: each drifting flake

Shapeless and slow, unsteady and opaque,

A dull dark white against the day's pale white

And abstract larches in the neutral light.

And then the gradual and dual blue

As night unites the viewer and the view,

And in the morning, diamonds of frost

Describing Kim Beauharnais's album, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) uses the phrase "art my foute:"

In an equally casual tone of voice Van said: ‘Darling, you smoke too much, my belly is covered with your ashes. I suppose Bouteillan knows Professor Beauharnais’s exact address in the Athens of Graphic Arts.’

Describing King Victor’s last visit to Villa Venus (Eric Veen’s floramors), Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions a line composed by Seneca that King Victor (the Antiterran ruler of the British Commonwealth) wrote in the Shell Pink Book:

According to Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969), all the hundred floramors (palatial brothels built by David van Veen, a wealthy architect of Flemish extraction, all over the world in memory of his grandson Eric) opened simultaneously on September 20, 1875:

Describing his bicycle ride with Ada and visit to a Russian traktir in Gamlet (a half-Russian village near Ardis Hall), Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions a coachman who came straight from a pretzel-string of old novels:

‘We must now find our bicycles,’ said Van, ‘we are lost "in another part of the forest."’

‘Oh, let’s not return yet,’ she cried, ‘oh, wait.’

‘But I want to make sure of our whereabouts and whenabouts,’ said Van. ‘It is a philosophical need.’

Describing the Night of the Burning Barn (when he and Ada make love for the first time), Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions telegas (pl. of telega, a cart) among the vehicles used by the inhabitants of Ardis Hall to reach the site of the fire:

With the tartan toga around him, he accompanied his black double down the accessory spiral stairs leading to the library. Placing a bare knee on the shaggy divan under the window, Van drew back the heavy red curtains.

Like her grandmother, Marina (in VN's novel Ada, 1969, Van's, Ada's and Lucette's mother) likes to have her hair done in the open: