Vladimir Nabokov

Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

Description

Please read Alexey Sklyarenko's annotations on Pale FireAda and other Nabokov works here.

By Alexey Sklyarenko , 29 July, 2026

Describing the last game of Flavita (the Russian Scrabble) that he played at Ardis with Ada and Lucette, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Ada, 1969) is on the brink of mentioning KREMLIN (the word formed by Lucette's letters):

 

By Alexey Sklyarenko , 26 July, 2026

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 Stella Lazurchik, an Americanized Kashube who married a son of Sinyavin, a Russian starover (Old Believer) who migrated from Saratov to Seattle: