Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

Telling Cincinnatus about his amorous prowess, M’sieur Pierre (the executioner in VN’s novel Priglashenie na kazn’, “Invitation to a Beheading,” 1935) uses the phrase sam s usam (I’m no piker myself) and mentions his pruzhina (a spring):

Trying to calm him down, the doctor tells Hermann, the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Otchayanie (“Despair,” 1934), that the little countess is quite infatuated with him:

Он поговорил еще немного и встал. Я отдал ему платок.

At a meal in “Ardis the First” Ada (the title character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) calls muzhiks in Tartary (who misapply Kuroslep, the Russian word for marsh marigold, to the buttercup) “poor slaves:”

Van: ‘That yellow thingum’ (pointing at a floweret prettily depicted on an Eckercrown plate) ‘— is it a buttercup?’

According to Hermann, the narrator and main character in VN's novel Otchayanie (Despair,” 1934), both he and Felix look like Amundsen: 

At the end of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) mentions a dark Vanessa butterfly:

A dark Vanessa with crimson band

Wheels in the low sun, settles on the sand

And shows its ink-blue wingtips flecked with white.

And through the flowing shade and ebbing light

A man, unheedful of the butterfly -

Some neighbor's gardener, I guess - goes by

At the end 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) says that he may turn up yet, on another campus, as an old, happy, healthy heterosexual Russian, a writer in exile, sans fame, sans future, sans audience, sans anything but his art:

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

John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) and Charles Kinbote (Shade’s mad Commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) live in New Wye (a small University town). In his Foreword and Commentary to Shade’s poem Kinbote mentions Exton, a town near New Wye:

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) mentions those dreams in which something Stygian soaks through and Lethe leaks in the dreary terms of defective plumbing:

The action in VN’s play Sobytie (“The Event,” 1938) takes place on the fiftieth birthday of Antonina Pavlovna Opayashin, a lady writer. At her birthday party Antonina Pavlovna calls Izvestnyi pisatel’ (the Famous Writer) zalyotnyi gost’ (an accidental guest):

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), of the not very many ways known of shedding one's body, falling, falling, falling is the supreme method: