Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

In VN’s novel Look at the Harlequins! (1974) Other Books by the Narrator include Dr. Olga Repnin (1946). Vadim Vadimovich’s third English novel, Dr. Olga Repnin corresponds to VN’s Pnin (1957).

Describing the difference between Terra and Antiterra (aka Demonia, Earth’s twin planet), Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions the Amerussia of Abraham Milton:

In VN’s novel Ada (1969) Marina (Van’s, Ada’s and Lucette’s mother) tells Van (the narrator and main character) that Belle (as Lucette calls her governess, Mlle Larivière) has cited to her the cousinage-dangereux-voisinage adage:

Naked-faced, dull-haired, wrapped up in her oldest kimono (her Pedro had suddenly left for Rio), Marina reclined on her mahogany bed under a golden-yellow quilt, drinking tea with mare’s milk, one of her fads.

In a farewell letter to Marina (in VN’s novel Ada, 1969, Van's, Ada's and Lucette's mother) Demon Veen (Van’s and Ada’s father) mentions his aunt's ranch near Lolita, Texas, and Marina’s runaway maid who will be stuffed with mercury:

In an attempt to save his life Clare Quilty offers Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) to arrange for him to attend executions and tells him that the chair is painted yellow:

According to John Ray, Jr. (in VN's novel Lolita, 1955, the author of the Foreword to Humbert Humbert's manuscript), he had just been awarded the Poling Prize for a modest work (“Do the Senses make Sense?”) wherein certain morbid states and perversions had been discussed.

Describing the difference between Terra and Antiterra (aka Demonia, Earth’s twin planet on which VN’s novel Ada, 1969, is set), Van Veen (the narrator and main character in Ada) mentions Gavronsky (as Ada calls G. A. Vronsky, the movie man who made a film of Mlle Larivière’s novel Les Enfants Maudits):

According to John Ray, Jr. (in VN's novel Lolita, 1955, the author of the Foreword to Humbert Humbert's manuscript), he had just been awarded the Poling Prize for a modest work (“Do the Senses make Sense?”) wherein certain morbid states and perversions had been discussed.

The Poling Prize seems to hint at Polignac, a French politician (1780-1847) mentioned by Poprishchin in Gogol’s story Zapiski sumasshedshego (“The Notes of a Madman,” 1835):

In VN’s novel Lolita (1955) the number 342 reappears three times. 342 Lawn Street is the address of the Haze house in Ramsdale. 342 is Humbert Humbert's and Lolita's room in The Enchanted Hunters (a hotel in Briceland where they spend their first night together). According to Humbert Humbert, between July 5 and November 18, 1949, he registered (if not actually stayed) at 342 hotels, motels and tourist homes.

In VN's novel Lolita (1955) Clare Quilty mistakes Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character who came to murder Quilty) for a man from the telephone company and calls him Brewster: