Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

In VN’s novel Transparent Things (1972) the spectral narrators discuss the history of a pencil:

According to Mr. R. (the writer in VN’s novel Transparent Things, 1972), all he can offer his publisher is not Tralala but the first and dullest tome of his Tralatitions:

In VN's play Izobretenie Val'sa ("The Waltz Invention," 1938) Salvator Waltz wants to rule the world from Palmora (a distant island, Palmera in the English version) and exclaims: “Na Palmoru, skorey na Palmoru!” (“To Palmera, to Palmera as soon as possible!”):

In VN’s novel Transparent Things (1972) Hugh Person kills his wife Armande in his sleep, dreaming of Giulia Romeo (a prostitute whom he had picked up on his first trip abroad):

According to Mr. R. (the writer in VN’s novel Transparent Things, 1972), the name of his secretary, Mr. Tamworth, is pronounced like that of the English breed of black-blotched swine:

Reading the galleys of Mr. R.’s Tralatitions, Hugh Person (the main character in VN’s novel Transparent Things, 1972) ponders the name of an incidental character "Adam von Librikov:"

Compared to the reality of Armande, his meeting with Mr. R. seems to Hugh Person (the main character in VN’s novel Transparent Things, 1972) all sham and waxworks:

After his first meeting with Armande Hugh Person (the main character in VN’s novel Transparent Things, 1972) describes her in his diary as “slender, athletic, lethal:”

In a diary he kept in fits and starts Hugh wrote that night in Versex:

In Canto Four of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) calls his odd muse “my versipel” and his last poem, “this transparent thingum:”

Dressing in all the rooms, I rhyme and roam

Throughout the house with, in my fist, a comb

Or a shoehorn, which turns into the spoon

I eat my egg with. In the afternoon

You drive me to the library. We dine

In VN’s novel Transparent Things (1972) Hugh Person meets Mr. R. (the writer who lives in his house at Diablonnet) in Versex, in a hotel (the venerable Versex Palace):