Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

In his letter to V. the hero of VN’s story That in Aleppo Once… (1943) compares himself to that gushing lady in Chekhov who was dying to be described:

In a letter of July 16, 1944, to Edmund Wilson and his wife VN mentions his brother Pavel who teaches horsemanship at a place in Maine and who has married an American girl who was together with Mary [McCarthy] at the convent.

In VN’s story Signs and Symbols (1947) the boy’s inmost thoughts are discussed at nightfall, in manual alphabet, by darkly gesticulating trees:

In VN’s story Signs and Symbols (1947) the boy’s inmost thoughts are discussed at nightfall, in manual alphabet, by darkly gesticulating trees:

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 The Merman, a fine old melodrama which, according to Odon (a world-famous actor and Zemblan patriot who helps the King to escape from Zembla), had not been performed for at least three decades:

In the Russian version (1967) of VN’s novel Lolita (1955) “Silver Spur Court, Elphinstone” becomes pod znakom Serebryanoy Shpory, v Elfinstone:

Describing his stay with Lolita at Chestnut Court in Kasbeam, Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Lolita, 1955) quotes dear old Ronsard:

Describing his childhood notion of “Appalachian Mountains,” Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Lolita, 1955) mentions Felis tigris goldsmithi:

In a dialogue with the stranger on the porch of The Enchanted Hunters (a hotel in Briceland where Humbert and Lolita spend their first night together) Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Lolita, 1955) twice repeats the phrase “I beg your pardon:”

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), Judge Goldsworth (Kinbote’s landlord) resembles a Medusa-locked hag: