Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

Describing the beginning of his life-long romance with Ada, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions guba, the Russian word for lip, district court, and arctic gulf:

The hugest dictionary in the library said under Lip: ‘Either of a pair of fleshy folds surrounding an orifice.’

In Canto One of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962) says that a thousand years ago five minutes were equal to forty ounces of fine sand:

And there's the wall of sound: the nightly wall

Raised by a trillion crickets in the fall.

Impenetrable! Halfway up the hill

I'd pause in thrall of their delirious trill.

That's Dr. Sutton's light. That's the Great Bear.

A thousand years ago five minutes were

Equal to forty ounces of fine sand.

In his treatise The Texture of Time (1924) Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) calls Lucette (Van's and Ada's half-sister who committed suicide by jumping from Admiral Tobakoff into the Atlantic) "a mermaid in the groves of Atlantis:"

Describing Ada's dramatic career, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions remote and sinful Moscow, Id., the former capital of Estotiland, and the fragile shoulders of three unhappy Estotiwomen (the characters in Four Sisters, as Chekhov's play The Three Sisters, 1901, is known on Demonia, Earth's twin planet also known as Antiterra):

During her second road trip with Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) across the USA, Lolita falls ill and on Tuesday, 28 June 1949, is hospitalized in Elphinstone (a small town in the Rocky Mountains). Describing Lolita's hospitalization, Humbert Humbert mentions Aurora (the goddess of dawn in Roman mythology and Latin poetry):

At the beginning of VN's novel Ada (1969), Van Veen (the narrator and main character) mentions the Severn Tories (Severnïya Territorii), that tesselated protectorate still lovingly called ‘Russian’ Estoty, which commingles, granoblastically and organically, with ‘Russian’ Canady, otherwise ‘French’ Estoty:

Describing the torments of poor mad Aqua (the twin sister of Van's, Ada's and Lucette's mother Marina), Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Ada, 1969) mentions a Phree Pharmacy that Aqua, in her erratic student years, organized in Belokonsk (on Demonia, Earth's twin planet also known as Antiterra, the Russian twin of ‘Whitehorse,’ a city in N.W. Canada) with Milton Abraham’s invaluable help:

In his commentary and index 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 Queen Blenda, the mother of Charles the Beloved:

In Canto Two of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962) describes the paring of his fingernails and compares his thumb to the grocer's son:

The little scissors I am holding are

A dazzling synthesis of sun and star.

I stand before the window and I pare

My fingernails and vaguely am aware

Of certain flinching likenesses: the thumb,

Our grocer's son; the index, lean and glum

College astronomer Starover Blue;

The middle fellow, a tall priest I knew;

The feminine fourth finger, an old flirt;

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 the poet's mother was born Caroline Lukin: