Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

On Demonia (aka Antiterra, Earth’s twin planet on which VN’s novel Ada, 1962, is set) The Headless Horseman is a poem by Pushkin:

Describing the death of his father (who perishes in a mysterious airplane disaster above the Pacific), Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) compares himself to a sultan:

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), in Nice Gradus (Shade’s murderer) stayed at Hotel Lazuli:

Describing his juvenile novel Letters from Terra, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions Theresa and Antilia Glems, the characters in his novel:

Ada’s letters breathed, writhed, lived; Van’s Letters from Terra, ‘a philosophical novel,’ showed no sign of life whatsoever.

(I disagree, it’s a nice, nice little book! Ada’s note.)

In his Foreword 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) says that there is a very loud amusement park right in front of his lodgings:

At the beginning of Canto Four of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) says that there are two methods of composing, A and B:

Now I shall spy on beauty as none has

Spied on it yet. Now I shall cry out as

None has cried out. Now I shall try what none

Has tried. Now I shall do what none has done.

In Canto One of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) describes his house and mentions the stiff vane so often visited by the naïve, the gauzy mockingbird:

The house itself is much the same. One wing

We've had revamped. There's a solarium. There's

A picture window flanked with fancy chairs.

TV's huge paperclip now shines instead

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), after line 274 of Shade’s poem there is a false start in the draft:

After the dinner in ‘Ursus’ with their half-sister Lucette Van and Ada make love in Van’s Manhattan flat and Ada complains that Van hurt her ‘like a Tiger Turk:’

Describing Kim Beauharnais’s album, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions the painted word that would be retouched by the still richer brush of time: