Vladimir Nabokov

Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

Description

Please read Alexey Sklyarenko's annotations on Pale FireAda and other Nabokov works here.

By Alexey Sklyarenko , 16 March, 2026

According to John Ray, Jr. (in VN's novel Lolita, 1955, the author of the Foreword to Humbert Humbert’s manuscript), Mrs. “Richard F. Schiller” (Lolita's married name) outlived Humbert by forty days and died in childbed, giving birth to a stillborn girl, on Christmas Day 1952, in Gray Star, a settlement in the remotest Northwest:

 

By Alexey Sklyarenko , 16 March, 2026

As she speaks to Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Lolita, 1955) and his wife Charlotte (Lolita's mother), Jean Farlow mentions her dogs Cavall and Melampus:

 

From the debouchment of the trail came a rustle, a footfall, and Jean Farlow marched down with her easel and things.

“You scared us,” said Charlotte.

By Alexey Sklyarenko , 13 March, 2026

On the pillared porch of The Enchanted Hunters (a hotel in Briceland where Humbert and Lolita spend their first night together) a stranger tells Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Lolita, 1955) that his child needs a lot of sleep and that sleep is a rose, as the Persians say:

 

By Alexey Sklyarenko , 13 March, 2026

Describing his first night with Lolita in The Enchanted Hunters (a hotel in Briceland), Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Lolita, 1955) says that he has but followed nature and calls himself "nature’s faithful hound:"