Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

According to John Ray, Jr. (in VN's novel Lolita, 1962, the author of the Foreword to Humbert Humbert's manuscript), Mrs. “Richard F. Schiller” (Lolita's married name) died in childbed, giving birth to a stillborn girl, on Christmas Day 1952, in Gray Star, a settlement in the remotest Northwest:

Describing his attempt to find his photograph (the portrait of the artist as a younger brute) in an old issue of the Briceland Gazette, Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Lolita, 1955) quotes the words of the author of Dark Age "wine, wine, wine, may suit a Persian bubble bird, but I say give me rain, rain, rain on the shingle roof for roses and inspiration every time:"

At The Enchanted Hunters (in VN's novel Lolita, 1955, a hotel in Briceland where Humbert and Lolita spend their first night together) a hostess mistakes Humbert Humbert for Mr. Braddock:

Describing his day in Ramsdale as Charlotte's lodger, Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Lolita, 1955) mentions the dandelions in the lawn of the Haze house that had changed from suns to moons:

Describing the first occasion on which Ada had glimpsed him, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions a motor landaulet that Marina (Van's, Ada's and Lucette's mother) and Ada hired to Radugalet:

In a little poem he composed for Rita (a girl whom he picked up one depraved May evening somewhere between Montreal and New York, or more narrowly, between Toylestown and Blake, at a drakishly burning bar under the sign of the Tigermoth), Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Lolita, 1955) mentions Diana (the ancient Roman goddess of hunting):

Describing his visit to the Elphinstone hospital, Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Lolita, 1955) mentions “Ponderosa Lodge” (a motel where Clare Quilty, a playwright and pornographer who poses as Humbert's brother and who abducts Lolita from the Elphinstone hospital, puts up):

Describing the young Prince's chaste romance with Fleur de Fyler, 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 his - or rather, his grandfather's - cheval glass, a triptych of bottomless light, a really fantastic mirror, signed with a diamond by its maker, Sudarg of Bokay:

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), onhava-onhava means in Zemblan "far, far away:"

Describing Gradus's day in New York, 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 a Zemblan moppet who at a picnic for international children cried to her Japanese friend: "Ufgut, ufgut, velkum ut Semblerland! (Adieu, adieu, till we meet in Zembla!):"