Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

In Canto Two of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) speaks of his dead daughter and mentions the talks with Socrates and Proust in cypress walks:

In Canto One of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962) speaks of his childhood and says that his God died young:

My God died young. Theolatry I found

Degrading, and its premises, unsound.

No free man needs a God; but was I free?

How fully I felt nature glued to me

And how my childish palate loved the taste

Half-fish, half-honey, of that golden paste!

My picture book was at an early age

The painted parchment papering our cage:

Mauve rings around the moon; blood-orange sun

In a letter to Ada Dr. Krolik (in VN's novel Ada, 1969, the local lepidopterist, Ada's beloved teacher of natural history) says that bobo’s of the harmless psoriatics protect them from bubas and buboes:

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) describes Judge Goldsworth's house as "an old, dismal, white-and-black, half-timbered house, of the type termed wodnaggen in my country:"

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

In Canto One of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) speaks of his childhood and mentions that rare phenomenon the iridule:

My God died young. Theolatry I found

Degrading, and its premises, unsound.

No free man needs a God; but was I free?

How fully I felt nature glued to me

And how my childish palate loved the taste

Half-fish, half-honey, of that golden paste!

At the end of 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) says that he will continue to exist:

"And you, what will you be doing with yourself, poor King, poor Kinbote?" a gentle young voice may inquire.

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), he writes his Commentary, Index and Foreword to Shade's poem in a desolate log cabin in Cedarn, Utana:

These lines are represented in the drafts by a variant reading

39 ........... and home would haste my thieves

40The sun with stolen ice, the moon with leaves

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), his landlord, Judge Goldsworth, resembles a Medusa-locked hag:

In his Commentary and Index 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) mentions Embla town and Emblem bay:

Embla, a small old town with a wooden church surrounded by sphagnum bogs at the saddest, loneliest, northmost point of the misty peninsula, 149, 433. (Index)

In an unused variant quoted by 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) Shade mentions events, strange happenings, that strike the mind as emblematic: