Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

When Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) describes his nights in “Ardis the First,” Ada takes over and mentions the song of a Tuscan Firecrest or a Sitka Kinglet in a cemetery cypress:

At the beginning of VN's novel Pnin (1957) the narrator mentions Pnin's conservative black Oxfords (formal, lace-up dress shoes defined by "closed lacing," meaning the shoelace eyelet tabs are stitched underneath the front part of the shoe):

At the beginning of VN’s novel Zashchita Luzhina (“The Luzhin Defense,” 1930) Luzhin senior, the writer of books for boys, would be rapping with feigned interest po steklu barometra (on the barometer dial), where the hand always stood at storm:

In Canto Three of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) describes his heart attack and mentions a story in a magazine about a Mrs. Z. whose heart had been rubbed back to life by a prompt surgeon's hand:

It was a story in a magazine

About a Mrs. Z. whose heart had been

Rubbed back to life by a prompt surgeon's hand.

She told her interviewer of "The Land

Beyond the Veil" and the account contained

In Canto One of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962) Shade describes a winter evening and mentions the gradual and dual blue: 

Retake the falling snow: each drifting flake

Shapeless and slow, unsteady and opaque,

A dull dark white against the day's pale white

And abstract larches in the neutral light.

And then the gradual and dual blue

As night unites the viewer and the view,

And in the morning, diamonds of frost

Express amazement: Whose spurred feet have crossed

The narrator and main character in VN’s novel Lolita (1955), Humbert Humbert proposes “nymphets” as a word for sexually attractive little girls:

Now I wish to introduce the following idea. Between the age limits of nine and fourteen there occur maidens who, to certain bewitched travelers, twice or many times older than they, reveal their true nature which is not human, but nymphic (that is, demoniac); and these chosen creatures I propose to designate as “nymphets.” (1.5)

After murdering Clare Quilty (a playwright and pornographer who abducted Lolita from the Elphinstone hospital), Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Lolita, 1955) wonders if some surgeon of genius might not alter his own career, and perhaps the whole destiny of mankind, by reviving quilted Quilty, Clare Obscure:

Describing his rented 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 black cat that came with the house:

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 and his week-long stay at Silver Spur Court, Elphinstone, Humbert Humbert mentions some “serum” (sparrow’s sperm or dugong’s dung) to which Lolita splendidly reacted and a sparrow that perched on the saddle of Mrs. Hays' bicycle:

A character 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 Humbert (the narrator and main character) that he intends retiring to England or Florence forever: