Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

According to Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Lolita, 1955), his father had a dash of the Danube in his veins:

In VN’s novel Lolita (1955) Clare Quilty (the playwright who abducts Lolita from the Elphinstone hospital) resembles Gustave Trapp, Humbert Humbert’s Swiss uncle:

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), as many old glaziers, Gradus (Shade's murderer) could deduce rather accurately water temperature from certain indices of brilliancy and motion:

In Canto Three of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962) describes IPH (a lay Institute of the Preparation for Hereafter) and mentions the great Starover Blue (the College astronomer) who reviewed the role planets had played as landfalls of the soul:

We heard cremationists guffaw and snort

At Grabermann's denouncing the Retort

As detrimental to the birth of wraiths.

We all avoided criticizing faiths.

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), in a theological dispute with him Shade said that, when he was small, he thought Original Sin meant Cain killing Abel:

In Canto Three of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962) describes IPH (a lay Institute of Preparation for the Hereafter) and mentions the great Starover Blue who reviewed the role planets had played as landfalls of the soul:

We heard cremationists guffaw and snort

At Grabermann's denouncing the Retort

As detrimental to the birth of wraiths.

We all avoided criticizing faiths.

The great Starover Blue reviewed the role

Describing IPH (a lay Institute of Preparation for the Hereafter) in Canto Three of his poem, John Shade (the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962) mentions the role planets had played as landfalls of the soul and the fate of beasts:

We heard cremationists guffaw and snort

At Grabermann's denouncing the Retort

As detrimental to the birth of wraiths.

We all avoided criticizing faiths.

The great Starover Blue reviewed the role

Planets had played as landfalls of the soul.

Describing IPH (a lay Institute of Preparation for the Hereafter) in Canto Three of his poem, John Shade (the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962) mentions the great Starover Blue who reviewed the role planets had played as landfalls of the soul:

We heard cremationists guffaw and snort

At Grabermann's denouncing the Retort

As detrimental to the birth of wraiths.

We all avoided criticizing faiths.

The great Starover Blue reviewed the role

Planets had played as landfalls of the soul.

According to Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Lolita, 1955), Annabel Leigh (Humbert's childhood love) died of typhus in Corfu:

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 a certain ferocious lady at whose club he had refused to speak on the subject of "The Hally Valley:"