Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

In his Index entry on Botkin, V. 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) renders the obsolete word botelyi (fat, stout, obese, corpulent) as “big-bellied.” This epithet brings to mind tolstopuzyi (pot-bellied), a word used by Pushkin in the first line of his poem Rumyanyi kritik moy, nasmeshnik tolstopuzyi… (“My

In Kinbote's Index to Shade's poem there is the following entry:

In Canto Two of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) calls the little scissors with which he pares his fingernails “a dazzling synthesis of sun and star:”

The little scissors I am holding are

A dazzling synthesis of sun and star.

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.

In his essay "On a Book Entitled Lolita" (1956) VN says that the name of the protagonist in his story Volshebnik ("The Enchanter," 1939), the Russian precursor to Lolita (1955), was Arthur:

In Canto Three of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) calls 1958 “a year of Tempests” and mentions Mars:

It was a year of Tempests: Hurricane
Lolita swept from Florida to Maine.
Mars glowed. Shahs married. Gloomy Russians spied.
Lang made your portrait. And one night I died. (ll. 679-82)

In VN’s novel Pale Fire (1962) Kinbote (Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) completes his work on Shade’s poem on October 19, 1959 (the anniversary of Pushkin’s Lyceum). In a letter of Oct. 9, 1888, to Mme Lintvaryov (the owner of a farm in Ukraine where Chekhov spent the summer) Chekhov (who just received the Pushkin Prize, 500 rubles) says that the prize award will be officially announced at the Academy on October 19:

In Canto Two of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) mentions a singing cicada:

Today I'm sixty-one. Waxwings

Are berry-pecking. A cicada sings. (ll. 181-182)

In Canto Two of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) mentions a singing cicada:

Today I'm sixty-one. Waxwings

Are berry-pecking. A cicada sings. (ll. 181-182)

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), the king escaped from green Zembla clad in bright red clothes. As pointed out by Mary McCarthy in her introductory essay ("A Bolt from the Blue"), "Zembla has turned red after the revolution that began in the Glass Factory.