Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

From Kinbote’s Commentary to Shade’s poem:

Line 247: Sybil

John Shade's wife, nee Irondell (which comes not from a little valley yielding iron ore but from the French for "swallow"). She was a few months his senior. I understand she came of Canadian stock, as did Shade's maternal grandmother (a first cousin of Sybil's grandfather, if I am not greatly mistaken).

Describing Kim Beauharnais’ album, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions the Knabenkräuter and other pendants of Ada’s lovers:

Nonchalantly, Van went back to the willows and said:

‘Every shot in the book has been snapped in 1884, except this one. I never rowed you down Ladore River in early spring. Nice to note you have not lost your wonderful ability to blush.’

Describing his novel Letters from Terra, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions the testibulus (test tube):

Describing his contacts with publishers, Kinbote (Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) compares himself to an exiled prince who is unaware of the Golconda in his cuff links:

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), he arrived in America descending by parachute:

In his Commentary and Index to Shade’s poem Kinbote (who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) mentions Nitra and Indra, the twin islands off Blawick (a pleasant seaside resort on the Western Coast of Zembla):

Describing his escape from Zembla, 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 Bera Range, a two-hundred-mile-long chain of rugged mountains:

According to Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969), all the hundred floramors (palatial brothels built by David van Veen, a wealthy architect of Flemish extraction, all over the world in memory of his grandson Eric) opened simultaneously on September 20, 1875:

In VN’s novel Ada (1969) Eric Veen (the author of an essay entitled ‘Villa Venus: an Organized Dream’) derived his project from reading too many erotic works found in a furnished house his grandfather had bought near Vence from Count Tolstoy, a Russian or Pole (2.3).

In Canto One of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) mentions the Great Bear and the Milky Way:

That's Dr. Sutton's light. That's the Great Bear.
A thousand years ago five minutes were
Equal to forty ounces of fine sand.
Outstare the stars. Infinite foretime and
Infinite aftertime: above your head
They close like giant wings, and you are dead.