Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

Ernest Metzger entitled his elegant little article “Vladimir Nabokov Commits Stillicide.” Actually, it is Kinbote (Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) who “commits stillicide” in Pale Fire. “Stilettos of a frozen stillicide” in Canto One of Shade’s poem bring to mind “a Danish stiletto” mentioned by Kinbote in his Index:

After Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) possessed her for the first time, Cordula de Prey mentions un petit enfantôme:

Cordula told Edmond: ‘Arrêtez près de what’s-it-called, yes, Albion, le store pour messieurs, in Luga’; and as peeved Van remonstrated: ‘You can’t go back to civilization in pajamas,’ she said firmly. ‘I shall buy you some clothes, while Edmond has a mug of coffee.’

At the picnic on Ada’s twelfth birthday Marina (in VN’s novel Ada, 1969, Van’s, Ada’s and Lucette’s mother) shows to Van and Lucette the exact pine and the exact spot on its rugged red trunk where in old, very old days a magnetic telephone nested and pronounces the words ‘currents’ and ‘circuits’ with an actress’s désinvolture (uninhibitedness):

Venena + Blok + Azov = Veen/even + Nabokov + laz/zal = Neva/Vena/vena + nebo + vokzal = zveno + balkon + Eva = venok + zloba + Neva = zakon + obval + Veen

Venena – Lat., poison; in the third poem of his cycle Plyaski Smerti (“The Dances of Death,” 1912-14) Alexander Blok (1880-1921) mentions a Jewish chemist sighing in his sleep and a closet marked Venena:

Describing his first visit to Ardis, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions the portraits of his ancestors:

In her last note Aqua (in VN’s novel Ada, 1969, Marina’s poor mad twin sister) mentioned a klok (piece) of a chelovek (human being):

In VN’s novel Ada (1969) Mlle Larivière’s (Lucette’s governess who publishes her stuff under the penname Guillaume de Monparnasse) wrote a novel entitled Les Enfants Maudits:

In VN’s novel Ada (1969) Van Veen mentions a riddle that he whispered in Ada’s ear on their first night in “Ardis the Second:”

In VN’s novel Ada (1969) Van and Ada find out that they are brother and sister thanks to Marina’s old herbarium that they discovered in the attic of Ardis Hall:

Odon/Nodo/odno + Omega = modo/mood/doom + Onega

Onega + zero = ozero + nega

In his Commentary to Shade’s poem Kinbote (who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) mentions the three conjoined lakes called Omega, Ozero, and Zero: