Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

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

As he speaks to Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969), Trofim Fartukov (the Russian coachman in "Ardis the Second") addresses Van ‘Barin, a barin (master, listen what I say):'

‘The express does not stop at Torfyanka, does it, Trofim?’

Describing his novel Letters from Terra, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions the First Clown in Elsinore (a distinguished London weekly) and the poet Max Mispel, the authors of two reviews of Van's novel:

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) mentions a person (Shade's former literary agent) who has wondered with a sneer if Mrs. Shade's tremulous signature might not have been penned "in some peculiar kind of red ink:"

In VN's novel Lolita (1955) the list of Lolita's classmates in Ramsdale school includes Sherva, Oleg:

At the end of his commentary to Shade's poem Kinbote (in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962, Shade’s commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) quotes a Zemblan saying "Gut mag alkan, Pern dirstan (God makes hungry, the Devil thirsty):”

According to Mlle Larivière (in VN's novel Ada, 1969, the governess of Van's and Ada's half-sister Lucette), Ada could break the back of her pony before she could walk:

The boy who debauches Lolita (the eponymous heroine of VN's 1955 novel) in Camp Q, Charlie Holmes (the camp-mistress's son) is a green-shirted, redheaded impish lad:

Describing Gradus’s day in New York, 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 Rachel Jewelry Company in Brooklyn:

At a meal in "Ardis the First" Marina (in VN’s novel Ada, 1969, Van's, Ada's and Lucette's mother) blows her nose with the sound of an elephant: