Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

Telling about the King's uncle Conmal (the Zemblan translator of Shakespeare), 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 Kipling's "The Rhyme of the Three Sealers" whose translation hundred-year-old Conmal had just completed when he fell ill and soon died:

When Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) teaches Lucette to walk on her hands, Dack (the dackel at Ardis whom Ada calls nekhoroshaya sobaka, a bad dog) barks in strident protest:

Now Lucette demanded her mother’s attention.

‘What are Jews?’ she asked.

‘Dissident Christians,’ answered Marina.

‘Why is Greg a Jew?’ asked Lucette.

‘Why-why!’ said Marina; ‘because his parents are Jews.’

In his essay The Texture of Time (1922) Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions Alice in the Camera Obscura, a book he was given on his eighth birthday:

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 elettricità (It., electricity) banned on Demonia (aka Antiterra, Earth's twin planet on which Ada is set) after the L disaster in the beau milieu of the 19th century:

The action in VN's novel Ada (1969) takes place on Demonia, Earth's twin planet also known as Antiterra. On Demonia electricity (the unmentionable magnetic power) was banned after the L disaster in the beau milieu of the 19th century:

VN's novel Ada (1969) famously ends in the words "and much, much more:"

Was it time for the morphine? No, not yet. Time-and-pain had not been mentioned in the Texture. Pity, since an element of pure time enters into pain, into the thick, steady, solid duration of I-can’t-bear-it pain; nothing gray-gauzy about it, solid as a black bole, I can’t, oh, call Lagosse.

Describing the suicide of his and Ada’s half-sister Lucette, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) says that death is only a more complete assortment of the infinite fractions of solitude:

Describing his trip with Lucette (Van's and Ada's half-sister) onboard Admiral Tobakoff, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Ada, 1969) mentions a straw of Procrustean procrastination:

He clutched at a red rope and they entered the lounge.

‘Whom did she look like?’ asked Lucette. ‘En laid et en lard?’

‘I don’t know,’ he lied. ‘Whom?’

‘Skip it,’ she said. ‘You’re mine tonight. Mine, mine, mine!’

In a letter to Van written after Lucette's suicide Demon Veen (in VN's novel Ada, 1969, Van's and Ada's father) mentions the Decadent School of writing to which his son belongs, in company of naughty old Leo [Tolstoy] and consumptive Anton [Chekhov]:

Son:

Describing the difference between Terra and Antiterra (aka Demonia, Earth's twin planet on which VN's novel Ada, 1969, is set), Van Veen (the narrator and main character in Ada) mentions 'a distortive glass of our distorted glebe:'