Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

In Canto Three of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962) describes a March night and mentions funny creaking and other strange sounds:

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) describes Hazel Shade’s and his own attempts to decipher a message from the ghost and mentions a secret design in the abracadabra:

Jane allowed me to copy out some of Hazel's notes from a typescript based on jottings made on the spot: 

The three main characters in VN's novel Pale Fire (1962) - the poet John Shade, his commentator Charles Kinbote (who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) and his murderer Jakob Gradus (a member of the Shadows, a regicidal organization) - seem to represent three different aspects of one and the same person whose "real" name is Vsevolod Botkin. An American scholar of Russian descent, Professor Botkin went mad and became Shade, Kinbote and Gradus after the tragic death of his daughter Nadezhda (Hazel Shade’s "real" name).

In Canto Two of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) mentions a hive in which he is locked up:

What moment in the gradual decay

Does resurrection choose? What year? What day?

Who has the stopwatch? Who rewinds the tape?

Are some less lucky, or do all escape?

In Canto Three John Shade (the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962) describes IPH (a lay Institute of Preparation for the Hereafter):

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), on the eve of his wedding he prayed most of the night locked up all alone in the cold vastness of the Onhava cathedral, fervently asking God for guidance and strength:

In Canto Two of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) speaks of his dead daughter and quotes the words of his wife Sybil "Virgins have written some resplendent books:"

Another winter was scrape-scooped away.

The Toothwort White haunted our woods in May.

Summer was power-mowed, and autumn, burned.

Alas, the dingy cygnet never turned

Into a wood duck. And again your voice:

"But this is prejudice! You should rejoice

That she is innocent. Why overstress

In Canto Three of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) compares a tall white fountain that he saw during his heart attack to Old Faithful (a cone geyser in Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, United States):

My vision reeked with truth. It had the tone, 

The quiddity and quaintness of its own 

Reality. It was. As time went on,

Its constant vertical in triumph shone. 

Often when troubled by the outer glare 

Describing the death of Queen Blenda, 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 drunk who started to sing a ribald ballad about "Karlie-Garlie:"

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), he was introduced to Shade on Monday, February 16, 1959: