Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

I read with interest "The River Kur in Bend Sinister," Gavriel Shapiro's note in the new issue of The Nabokovian, and would like to add the following. The Kur also makes me think of Maxim Gorki's novella Gorodok Okurov ("The Town of Okurov," 1909). It has an epigraph from Dostoevski: 

«...уездная, звериная глушь». Ф. М. Достоевский

“... provincial, bestial wilderness.”  F. M. Dostoevski

In his Commentary to Shade's poem 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 poet's mother, née Caroline Lukin, and points out that Lukin comes from Luke, as also do Locock and Luxon and Lukashevich:

In his Commentary to Shade's poem 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 poet's mother, née Caroline Lukin, and points out that Lukin comes from Luke:

In his Foreword to Shade's poem 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 two ping-pong tables that he installed in his basement:

In Canto One of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962) speaks of his childhood and says that he was brought up by dear bizarre Aunt Maud:

I was brought up by dear bizarre Aunt Maud,

A poet and a painter with a taste

For realistic objects interlaced

With grotesque growths and images of doom.

She lived to hear the next babe cry. Her room

We've kept intact. Its trivia create

A still life in her style: the paperweight

Of convex glass enclosing a lagoon,

The verse book open at the Index (Moon,

At the beginning 0f his poem John Shade (the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962) mentions that crystal land outside the window:

I was the shadow of the waxwing slain

By the false azure in the windowpane;

I was the smudge of ashen fluff - and I

Lived on, flew on, in the reflected sky.

And from the inside, too, I'd duplicate

Myself, my lamp, an apple on a plate:

Uncurtaining the night, I'd let dark glass

Hang all the furniture above the grass,

And how delightful when a fall of snow

In his Commentary to Shade’s poem 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) describes his rented house and mentions the three conjoined lakes called Omega, Ozero, and Zero:

After the dinner in 'Ursus' (the best Franco-Estotian restaurant in Manhattan Major) with Ada and Lucette (Van's and Ada's half-sister) Van uses the amenities of a little vessie (Canady form of W.C.) in his Manhattan penthouse apartment:

On the morning after the Night of the Burning Barn (when Van and Ada make love for the first time) Ada tells Van that she has to finish a translation for Mlle Larivière (Lucette’s governess):

Describing the family dinner in 'Ardis the Second,' Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Ada, 1969) mentions Richard Leonard Churchill’s novel about a certain Crimean Khan, “A Great Good Man:”

‘Might I have another helping of Peterson’s Grouse, Tetrastes bonasia windriverensis?’ asked Ada loftily.