Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

In the lift of a tall Manhattan building that brings him to Van's penthouse apartment Demon Veen (in VN's novel Ada, 1969, Van's and Ada's father) places a piece of nobler metal among the silver domes on Valerio's rolling table with breakfast for two: 

Not a belief in ghosts makes Hugh Person (the main character in VN's novel Transparent Things, 1972) revisit dreary drab Witt:

The main character in VN's novel Transparent Things (1972), Hugh Person is staying at the Ascot Hotel in Witt:

The characters in VN's novel Transparent Things (1972) include Monsieur Wilde, a Swiss businessman to whom Hugh Person talks in the lounge of the Ascot Hotel in Witt on the eve of his death:

The narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita (1955), Humbert Humbert dubs his devil "Aubrey McFate:"

In his poem “The Nature of Electricity” quoted by 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) in his Commentary John Shade mentions Shelley’s incandescent soul that lures the pale moths of starless nights:

In his diary Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Lolita, 1955) compares himself to an inflated pale spider that sits in the middle of a luminous web and gives little jerks to this or that strand:

Describing his life with Rita, Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) mentions the beautiful bluish furs that Rita had been accused of stealing from a Mrs. Roland MacCrum:

Leaving Rita forever, Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) tapes a note of tender adieu to her navel:

According to Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955), he is nature’s faithful hound:

I am trying to describe these things not to relive them in my present boundless misery, but to sort out the portion of hell and the portion of heaven in that strange, awful, maddening world - nymphet love. The beastly and beautiful merged at one point, and it is that borderline I would like to fix, and I feel I fail to do so utterly. Why?