Vladimir Nabokov

Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

Description

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

By Alexey Sklyarenko , 22 January, 2026

Describing his meeting with Lucette (Van's and Ada's half-sister) in Paris at the end of May, 1901, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Ada, 1969) mentions Vivian Vale’s golden veils and The Chimes of Chose, a Sapsucker paperback on a book shelf in the lobby of Alphonse Four (Lucette's hotel):

 

By Alexey Sklyarenko , 18 January, 2026

In his pocket diary that he kept at Ramsdale as Charlotte's lodger Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Lolita, 1955) compares himself to an inflated pale spider that sits in the middle of a luminous web and gives little jerks to this or that strand: