Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

In VN’s novel Transparent Things (1972) Mr. R. lives at Diablonnet, near Versex:

In his poem “The Nature of Electricity” quoted by 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 his Commentary Shade mentions Shelley’s incandescent soul that lures the pale moths of starless nights:

In VN’s novel Transparent Things (1972) Hugh Person’s wife Armande calls her mother, to her face, skotina ("brute"):

In VN’s novel Transparent Things (1972) Mr. R.’s publisher receives Mr. R.’s last letter on the day of Mr. R.’s death:

Dear Phil,

This, no doubt, is my last letter to you. I am leaving you. I am leaving you for another even greater Publisher. In that House I shall be proofread by cherubim - or misprinted by devils, depending on the department my poor soul is assigned to. So adieu, dear friend, and may your heir auction this off most profitably.

The main character in VN’s novel Transparent Things (1972), Hugh Person dies in a hotel fire. Describing Hugh Person's death, the spectral narrators in VN's novel mention the orgasm of art that courses through the whole spine with incomparably more force than sexual ecstasy or metaphysical panic:

When Hugh Person (the main character in VN’s novel Transparent Things, 1972) revisits Switzerland in 1965, he experiences a sentimental thrill, half wonder and half remorse, by going to see a hotel in which he had stayed with his father ten years ago:

When Hugh Person (the main character in VN’s novel Transparent Things, 1972) first meets Armande, she has a book, the paperback edition of Mr. R.’s novel Figures in a Golden Window, in her lap:

When Hugh Person (the main character in VN’s novel Transparent Things, 1972) first meets Armande, she has a book, the paperback edition of Mr. R.’s novel Figures in a Golden Window, in her lap:

In Canto Three of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) wonders if he should stop investigating his abyss and mentions a web of sense:

Life Everlasting – based on a misprint!

I mused as I drove homeward: take the hint,

And stop investigating my abyss?

But all at once it dawned on me that this

At the end of Canto Three of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) mentions ornaments of accidents and possibilities and tells his wife Sybil that he can grope his way to some faint hope:

It did not matter who they were. No sound,

No furtive light came from their involute

Abode, but there they were, aloof and mute,

Playing a game of worlds, promoting pawns