Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

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) compares the key in his hot hairy fist to the weighty sesame to a rapturous and formidable future:

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 his only regret is that he did not quietly deposit key “342” at the office, and leave the town, the country, the continent, the hemisphere, - indeed, the globe - that very same night:

In VN’s novel Lolita (1955) the number 342 reappears three times. 342 Lawn Street is the address of the Haze house in Ramsdale. 342 is Humbert Humbert's and Lolita's room in The Enchanted Hunters (a hotel in Briceland where they spend their first night together). According to Humbert Humbert, between July 5 and November 18, 1949, he registered (if not actually stayed) at 342 hotels, motels and tourist homes.

In his Index 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 taynik (secret place) and potaynik (hiding place) where the Zemblan crown jewels are hidden:

Potaynik; taynik (q. v.).

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), the Zemblan Revolution broke out on May 1, 1958:

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), Jakob Gradus (Shade's murderer) called himself variously Jack Degree or Jacques de Grey, or James de Gray, and also appears in police records as Ravus, Ravenstone, and d'Argus:

In VN’s story Lik (1939) Koldunov calls Lik sukin kot (son of a bitch):

- Нет, я это все понимаю,- сказал Лик,- только извини, мне нехорошо, я должен идти, скоро нужно в театр.

In VN’s novel Priglashenie na kazn’ (“Invitation to a Beheading,” 1935) Marthe (Cincinnatus's unfaithful wife) tells her husband that all kinds of fruit are good for her:

In VN’s novel Priglashenie na kazn’ (“Invitation to a Beheading,” 1935) young Cincinnatus spent the evenings in the Floating Library, in memoriam of Dr Sineokov:

At the beginning of VN’s novel Priglashenie na kazn’ (“Invitation to a Beheading,” 1935) the jailer Rodion enters Cincinnatus's cell and offers Cincinnatus tur val'sa (to dance a waltz with him):