Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

At the beginning of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) compares himself to the shadow of the waxwing:

I was the shadow of the waxwing slain

By the false azure in the windowpane;

I was the smudge of ashen fluff – and I

Lived on, flew on, in the reflected sky. (1-4)

VN’s poem Lines Written in Oregon (1953) ends in the line “Esmeralda, immer, immer:”

Esmeralda! now we rest
Here, in the bewitched and blest
Mountain forests of the West.

Here the very air is stranger.
Damzel, anchoret, and ranger
Share the woodland’s dream and danger

And to think I deemed you dead!
(In a dungeon, it was said;
Tortured, strangled); but instead –

Upon his arrival in Ardis in the summer of 1888, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) tells Cordula de Prey that his horse caught a hoof in a hole in the rotting planks of Ladore Bridge and had to be shot:

In Canto Four of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) lists the things that he loathes and, at the end of his list, mentions sharks:

Now I shall speak of evil as none has

Spoken before. I loathe such things as jazz;

The white-hosed moron torturing a black

Bull, rayed with red; abstractist bric-a-brac;

Primitivist folk-masks; progressive schools;

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

According to Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Lolita, 1955), a pistol is the Freudian symbol of the Ur-father’s central forelimb:

Introducing M’sieur Pierre (the executioner) to Cincinnatus (the main character in VN’s novel Priglashenie na kazn’, 1935), Rodrig Ivanovich (the director of the fortress) uses the French word bref (in short):

Так. Я попрошу вас теперь, Родриг Иванович, официально объявить мое звание, представить меня.

Директор поспешно надел очки, разгладил какую-то бумажку и, рванув голосом, обратился к Цинциннату:

VN's novel Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle (1969) is prefaced with a brief editorial note:

With the exception of Mr and Mrs Ronald Oranger, a few incidental figures, and some non-American citizens, all the persons mentioned by name in this book are dead. [Ed.]

In "Ада, или Отрада" (Ada, or Joy, 2022) A. Babikov renders this as follows:

Describing his visits with Ada of the little Caliph Island in the summer of 1888, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions the first faint shadows of what Ada would later term ‘my acarpous destiny’ (pustotsvetnost’):

In Canto One of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) mentions his favorite young shagbark tree:

I had a favorite young shagbark there

With ample dark jade leaves and a black, spare,

Vermiculated trunk. The setting sun

Bronzed the black bark, around which, like undone

Garlands, the shadows of the foliage fell.