Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

Describing Izumrudov’s visit to Gradus in Nice, 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 bright rap-rap at the door:

At the end of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962) says that he understands existence only through his art:

Maybe my sensual love for the consonne

D'appui, Echo's fey child, is based upon

A feeling of fantastically planned,

Richly rhymed life.

                              I feel I understand

Existence, or at least a minute part

According to Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969), one of the girls dubbed his penthouse apartment in Manhattan ‘your wing à terre:’

Describing his meeting with Lucette in Kingston, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) compares a philosopher’s orbitless eye to a peeled hard-boiled egg:

Van, Vanichka, we are straying from the main point. The point is that the writing desk or if you like, secretaire —’

‘I hate both, but it stood at the opposite end of the black divan.’

In VN’s novel Look at the Harlequins! (1974) Vadim Vadimovich mentions Professor Moody and the "numerical nimbus" syndrome:

According to Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969), his and Ada’s half-sister Lucette turned out to be the impeccable paranymph:

In a letter to her lover and brother, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969), Ada (now married to Andrey Vinelander) calls herself “a petite fille modèle practicing archery near a vase and a parapet:”

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 that was given to him on his eighth birthday:

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), Shade wrote his last poem in July, 1959:

In Fyodor’s first imaginary dialogue with Koncheyev (in VN’s novel “The Gift,” 1937, Fyodor’s rival poet) the latter says that he sees in the line that he read today in Vasiliev’s Gazeta, “Na Tebe, Bozhe, chto mne negozhe” (“Take, God, what I don’t need,” a slightly altered Russian proverb), obozhestvlenie kalik (deification of the calques):

Они простились. Фу, какой ветер...