Vladimir Nabokov

Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

Description

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

By Alexey Sklyarenko, 19 May, 2023

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) quotes Shade's words about their common acquaintance, "The man is as corny as a cook-out chef apron:" 

 

By Alexey Sklyarenko, 18 May, 2023

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:

 

By Alexey Sklyarenko, 17 May, 2023

In his Commentary and 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 Iris Act, a celebrated actress, favorite of Thurgus the Third (grandfather of Charles the Beloved):

 

By Alexey Sklyarenko, 16 May, 2023

In VN’s novel Zashchita Luzhina (“The Luzhin Defense,” 1930) the guests at a party thrown by Luzhin’s wife include an elderly actor with a face manipulated by many roles and Petrov, a plain-looking man whose sole function in life was to carry, reverently and with concentration, that which had been entrusted to him, something which it was necessary at all costs to preserve in all its detail and in all its purity:

 

By Alexey Sklyarenko, 14 May, 2023

Describing his dinner with Ada’s family at the Bellevue Hotel in Mont Roux, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions Lemorio, the flamboyant comedian whom Yuzlik (the director of Don Juan’s Last Fling, a film in which Ada played the part of the gitanilla) passionately wanted for his next picture: