Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

Describing his nights at Ardis, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) says that his only contribution to Anglo-American poetry is a dactylic trimeter ‘Ada, our ardors and arbors:’

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:

At the beginning of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) compares himself to the shadow of the waxwing:

I was the shadow of the waxwing slain

By the false azure in the windowpane;

I was the smudge of ashen fluff - and I

Lived on, flew on, in the reflected sky. (ll. 1-4)

In VN’s novel Ada (1969) Ada compares her letter to Van to a document in madness or the herb of repentance:

At the beginning of his Commentary 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 a crested bird called in Zemblan sampel ("silktail"), closely resembling a waxwing in shape and shade:

VN’s story Lik appeared in the émigré review Russkiya Zapiski in February, 1939, in Paris. The stage name of its title character brings to mind Lika Mizinov (1870-1939), a friend of Chekhov’s family who died on Feb. 5, 1939, in Paris. In a letter of Dec.

Describing King Alfin’s passion for flying apparatuses, 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 King Alfin’s constant "aerial adjutant" Colonel Peter Gusev:

Describing King Alfin’s passion for flying apparatuses, 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 King Alfin’s constant "aerial adjutant" Colonel Peter Gusev:

Describing the library of Ardis Hall and the Ivanov affair, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions a progressive poet in residence at Tennesee Waltz College:

In VN’s novel Ada (1969) John James (or James Jones, a man who represents a famous international agency, known as the VPL, which handled Very Private Letters) hands Van the second letter from Ada in the Louvre right in front of Bosch’s Bâteau Ivre: