Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

At the beginning of Canto Three of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) mentions Rabelais’s great Maybe, “the grand potato:”

Describing his life in Paris, Vadim Vadimovich (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Look at the Harlequins!, 1974) mentions the poet Basilevski:

In his note to Line 230 (a domestic ghost) of 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 Aunt Maud’s oil Cypress and Bat:

According to Vadim Vadimovich (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Look at the Harlequins!, 1974), he had first looked at the harlequins in the arbor of his favorite manor of Marevo:

In the second stanza of his poem Vlyublyonnost' (“Being in Love”) composed on the night of July 20, 1922, Vadim Vadimovich (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Look at the Harlequins!, 1974) mentions luch (a moonbeam):

Pokuda snitsya, snis', vlyublyonnost',

No probuzhdeniem ne much',

I luchshe nedogovoryonnost'

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 Embla Point and Emblem Bay:

Describing Zembla’s geography, Kinbote (Shade’s mad commentator in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) mentions Odevalla, Yeslove and Embla:

In VN’s novel Ada (1969) Van and Ada discover that they brother and sister thanks to Marina’s old herbarium that they found in the attic of Ardis Hall. In her herbarium Marina mentions Dr Lapiner, her and her sister’s physician whom Marina calls lapochka (darling):

In his poem The Room (1950) VN mentions “a blend of anonymity and doom” and wonders if the author of the line "Alone, unknown, unloved, I die" is a woman:

In Canto One of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) says that he was brought up by dear bizarre Aunt Maud whose room he and his wife have kept intact: