Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

In an article that announces the publication of his Russian version of Ada Mr. Babikov affirms that, as a young man, VN made an inscription on his copy of “Madame Bovary:” Livre génial — la perle de la littérature française:

In his autobiography Speak, Memory (1951) VN describes his life in Berlin in the 1920s and in Paris in the late 1930s and compares Sirin (VN’s Russian nom de plume) to a meteor that passed across the dark sky of exile and disappeared, leaving nothing much else behind him than a vague sense of uneasiness:

I met many other émigré Russian authors. I did not meet Poplavski who died young, a far violin among near balalaikas.

Describing the King’s bedroom, 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 Bower B where Fleur de Fyler (Queen Disa’s lady in waiting) made tinny music:

In VN’s poem The Ballad of Longwood Glen (1957) Art Longwood, a local florist, climbs a tree and gets lost in it:

According to an anonymous joker, 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) has halitosis (bad breath):

In Canto Three of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) mentions his collection of essays The Untamed Seahorse that appeared shortly before (or soon after) his daughter’s death:

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 superstitiously cannot write out the odd dark word employed by his black gardener with respect to Gradus:

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 the Russian adventurer Hodinski, Queen Yaruga’s goliart (court jester) and a poet of genius who is said to have forged in his spare time a famous old Russian chanson de geste:

In a conversation with Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) Lucette (Van’s and Ada’s half-sister) mentions tonen’kiy-tonen’kiy (thin little) layer, under which there is absolutely nothing, except Van’s image:

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), Gradus (Shade’s murderer) is a cross between bat and crab:

The grotesque figure of Gradus, a cross between bat and crab, was not much odder than many other Shadows, such as, for example, Nodo, Odon's epileptic half-brother who cheated at cards, or a mad Mandevil who had lost a leg in trying to make anti-matter. (note to Line 171)