Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

The title of VN’s story Signs and Symbols (1948) bring to mind the words often attributed to Conficius, "Signs and symbols rule the world, not words nor laws." In the draft of Eugene Onegin (One: VII: 1-5) Pushkin mentions Confucius (a Chinese philosopher, K'ung Fu-Tzu, c. 551 – 479 B.C.) and calls him mudrets Kitaya (the Chinese sage):

Describing his theological dispute with Shade (the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962), Kinbote (Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) mentions a richly ornamented recess:

Describing his dialogue with Ada in "Ardis the First," Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions an empty beer bottle left by some dead old gardener, the year of the obsolete brand being 1842:

The element that destroys Demon Veen (in VN’s novel Ada, 1969, Van’s and Ada’s father who perishes in a mysterious airplane disaster above the Pacific) is air:

Furnished Space, l’espace meublé (known to us only as furnished and full even if its contents be ‘absence of substance’ — which seats the mind, too), is mostly watery so far as this globe is concerned. In that form it destroyed Lucette. Another variety, more or less atmospheric, but no less gravitational and loathsome, destroyed Demon.

In VN’s novel Lolita (1955) Lolita is sent by her mother to Camp Q where she is debauched by Charlie Holmes, the camp-mistress's son:

In Canto Three of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) speaks of IPH (a lay Institute of Preparation for the Hereafter) and mentions “Terra the Fair, an orbicle of jasp:”

While snubbing gods, including the big G,

Iph borrowed some peripheral debris

From mystic visions; and it offered tips

(The amber spectacles for life's eclipse) -

How not to panic when you're made a ghost:

In the Enchanted Hunters (a hotel in Briceland where Humbert and Lolita spend their first night together) Lolita tells Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Lolita, 1955) how she was debauched in Camp Q and mentions Onyx and Eryx (two small lakes in the wood):

According to Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Lolita, 1955), he spent the period from September 1951 to June 1952 in Cantrip College, four hundred miles away from New York:

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), his tutor, a Scotsman, used to call any old tumble-down building "a hurley-house:"

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), Professor Blue (the college astronomer mentioned by Shade in Canto Two and Canto Three of his poem) was nicknamed by the students Colonel Starbottle: