Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

Describing Shchyogolev's discussion of politics at table, Fyodor Konstantinovich Godunov-Cherdyntsev, the narrator and main character in VN's novel Dar ("The Gift," 1937), says: "A sidel Shchyogolev na Rossii (and Russia was Shchyogolev's bottom):"

The characters in VN's novel Pnin (1957) include Oleg Komarov, a muralist in Waindell:

Describing the poltergeist phenomena in Shades’ 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 the basket in which Aunt Maud had once kept her half-paralyzed Skye terrier:

At the beginning of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962) says that from the inside, too, he would duplicate himself, his lamp, an apple on a plate:

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.

And from the inside, too, I'd duplicate

Myself, my lamp, an apple on a plate:

Uncurtaining the night, I'd let dark glass

Hang all the furniture above the grass,

Describing Eystein's portrait of decrepit Count Kernel (a former Keeper of the Treasure), 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 plate painted by the artist with the beautifully executed, twin-lobed, brainlike, halved kernel of a walnut:

Describing Hazel Shade's investigations in the Haunted Barn, 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 an extraordinary episode from the history of Onhava University that took place in the year of grace 1876:

The characters in VN's novel Pnin (1957) include Oleg Komarov, a muralist in Waindell:

The characters in VN's novel Pnin (1957) include Jack Cockerell (the Head of the English Department at Waindell University, who is known for cruel, comical impersonations of Pnin) and his wife Gwen. The Cockerell couple brings to mind Pushkin's Skazka o zolotom petushke ("The Tale of the Golden Cockerel," 1834), in which the cockerel tells Tsar Dadon (a satire on the tsar Alexander I): "Tsarstvuy, lyozha na boku! (Reign abed, lying on your side!):"

In VN's novel Pnin (1957) the Cockerells have an old dog (a brown cocker spaniel with a tear-stained face) named Sobakevich:

In VN's novel Pnin (1957) the narrator recalls the late Olga Krotki once telling him that among the fifty or so faculty members of a wartime Intensive Language School, at which the poor, one-lunged lady had to teach Lethean and Fenugreek, there were as many as six Pnins, besides the genuine and, to him, unique article: