Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

Describing the forty days after the death of his mother, 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 a whole mountain of gift boys from Troth, and Tuscany, and Albanoland:

In Canto One of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962) speaks of his childhood and says that he was brought up by dear bizarre Aunt Maud:

I was brought up by dear bizarre Aunt Maud,

A poet and a painter with a taste

For realistic objects interlaced

With grotesque growths and images of doom.

She lived to hear the next babe cry. Her room

We've kept intact. Its trivia create

A still life in her style: the paperweight

Of convex glass enclosing a lagoon,

The verse book open at the Index (Moon,

In his foreword and 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) mentions Gerald Emerald, a young instructor at Wordsmith University who gives Gradus (Shade's murderer) a lift to Kinbote's rented house in New Wye:

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), Shade’s heart attack almost coincided with the disguised king's arrival in America:

Describing his wife, Queen Disa (Duchess of Payn, of Great Payn and Mone), 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 a Zemblan saying belwif ivurkumpf wid spew ebanumf ("A beautiful woman should be like a compass rose of ivory with four parts of ebony”):

At the end of Canto Four of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN's poem Pale Fire, 1962) says that the day (the last day of Shade's life) has passed in a sustained low hum of harmony:

Gently the day has passed in a sustained

Low hum of harmony. The brain is drained

And a brown ament, and the noun I meant

To use but did not, dry on the cement.

Maybe my sensual love for the consonne

D'appui, Echo's fey child, is based upon

A feeling of fantastically planned,

At the beginning of Canto Three of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962) says that IPH (a lay Institute of Preparation for the Hereafter) engaged him for one term to speak on death ("to lecture on the Worm," wrote President McAber):

L'if, lifeless tree! Your great Maybe, Rabelais:

In VN's novel Lolita (1955), Clare Quilty (a playwright and pornographer whom Humbert Humbert murders for abducting Lolita from the Elphinstone hospital) tells Humbert that he has been called the American Maeterlinck:

In VN's novel Ada (1969), the twin sisters Aqua and Marina Durmanov are the daughters of General Ivan Durmanov, Commander of Yukon Fortress and peaceful country gentleman, with lands in the Severn Tories (Severnïya Territorii):

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) mentions the poet's mother, née Caroline Lukin: