Vladimir Nabokov

Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

Description

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

By Alexey Sklyarenko, 17 February, 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 the first two lines of Goethe’s Erlkönig (1782) in Zemblan translation:

 

Line 662: Who rides so late in the night and the wind

 

By Alexey Sklyarenko, 16 February, 2023

Describing his escape from Zembla, 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 Bera Range, a two-hundred-mile-long chain of rugged mountains:

 

By Alexey Sklyarenko, 14 February, 2023

When Ada refuses to leave her sick husband, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) walks some ten kilometers along soggy roads to Rennaz and thence flies to Nice, Biskra, the Cape, Nairobi, the Basset range:

 

By Alexey Sklyarenko, 12 February, 2023

According to Ada, she and Van will have four pairs of eyes in paradise:

 

Nirvana, Nevada, Vaniada. By the way, should I not add, my Ada, that only at the very last interview with poor dummy-mummy, soon after my premature — I mean, premonitory — nightmare about, ‘You can, Sir,’ she employed mon petit nom, Vanya, Vanyusha — never had before, and it sounded so odd, so tend... (voice trailing off, radiators tinkling).

By Alexey Sklyarenko, 11 February, 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) speaks of Charles Xavier’s chaste romance with Fleur de Fyler and mentions his new boy pa

By Alexey Sklyarenko, 10 February, 2023

Describing his childhood trips with his father, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions a cummerbunded Dutchman who told another that Demon was a famous gambler: