Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

Describing an amnesiac person whom he and Rita discovered in their hotel room sleeping in their bed, Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) exclaims: "Oh Mnemosyne, sweetest and most mischievous of muses!":

At the end of his manuscript Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) mentions prophetic sonnets:

In Canto Two of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) speaks of his daughter and says that she twisted words:

                                   She twisted words: pot, top

Spider, redips. And "powder" was "red wop."

She called you a didactic katydid.

She hardly ever smiled, and when she did,

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 beginning of a sonnet that Conmal (Shakespeare’s Zemblan translator) composed directly in English:

Line 962: Help me, Will. Pale Fire. 

In Canto Four of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) calls his odd muse “my versipel:”

Dressing in all the rooms, I rhyme and roam

Throughout the house with, in my fist, a comb

Or a shoehorn, which turns into the spoon

I eat my egg with. In the afternoon

You drive me to the library. We dine

At half past six. And that odd muse of mine,

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) says that conchologists among the kings can be counted on the fingers of one maimed hand:

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 and Shade were talking one day about Prejudice:

According to Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Lolita, 1955), he picked Rita up one depraved May evening somewhere between Montreal and New York: 

Describing his rented house, 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 a catalogue raisonné of the desk's meager contents:

In Canto Two of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962) speaks of his dead daughter and mentions one shy little guest who might be left out after a party:

It was no use, no use. The prizes won

In French and history, no doubt, were fun;

At Christmas parties games were rough, no doubt,

And one shy little guest might be left out;

But let's be fair: while children of her age

Were cast as elves and fairies on the stage

That she'd helped paint for the school pantomime,