Vladimir Nabokov

Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

Description

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

By Alexey Sklyarenko, 26 March, 2023

Offering Ada a ride in the park, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions two horses, Pardus and Peg:

 

‘Now let’s go out for a breath of crisp air,’ suggested Van. ‘I’ll order Pardus and Peg to be saddled.’

By Alexey Sklyarenko, 26 March, 2023

Describing Lucette's visit to Kingston (Van's American University), Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Ada, 1969) mentions old Rattner, resident pessimist of genius: 

 

By Alexey Sklyarenko, 25 March, 2023

At the end of VN's novel Ada (1969) Dr Lagosse makes Van and Ada the last merciful injection of morphine:

 

Was it time for the morphine? No, not yet. Time-and-pain had not been mentioned in the Texture. Pity, since an element of pure time enters into pain, into the thick, steady, solid duration of I-can’t-bear-it pain; nothing gray-gauzy about it, solid as a black bole, I can’t, oh, call Lagosse.

By Alexey Sklyarenko, 24 March, 2023

Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) comes to Ramsdale and falls in love with Dolores Haze in June, 1947. At the time of his first meeting with Lolita Humbert (who was born in Paris, in 1910) is thirty-seven (the age of Pushkin's death) and Lolita (who was born on January 1, 1935) is twelve (the poet's murderer, George d'Anthès, and the poet's wife, Natalia Nikolaevna, were born in 1812, the year of Napoleon's invasion of Russia). VN was born in 1899, a hundred years after Pushkin's birth.