Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

The characters in VN’s novel Pale Fire (1962) include Odon (a world-famous actor and Zemblan patriot who helps the king to escape from Zembla) and his mother Sylvia O’Donnell (a wealthy socialite with several ex-husbands who helps the king immigrate to America and gets him a job at Wordsmith University):

According to John Shade (the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962), a person who deliberately peels off a drab and unhappy past and replaces it with a brilliant invention is merely turning a new leaf with the left hand:

Above this the poet wrote and struck out:

The madman’s fate

In his foreword 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) compares himself to an exiled prince who is unaware of the Golconda in his cuff links:

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), in a conversation with him and Shade Mrs. Hurley mentioned the old man at the Exton railway station who thought he was God and began redirecting the trains:

Above this the poet wrote and struck out:

The madman’s fate

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 Arnor's poem about a miragarl ("mirage girl"):

In Canto Four of his poem, John Shade (the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962) mentions the white-hosed moron torturing a black bull, rayed with red, among the things he loathes:

Now I shall speak of evil as none has

Spoken before. I loathe such things as jazz;

The white-hosed moron torturing a black

Bull, rayed with red; abstractist bric-a-brac;

Primitivist folk-masks; progressive schools;

Music in supermarkets; swimming pools;

Brutes, bores, class-conscious Philistines, Freud, Marx,

At the end of 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) quotes the words of his Zemblan nurse,  "Minnamin, Gut mag alkan, Pern dirstan (my darling, God makes hungry, the Devil thirsty):"

In his foreword 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) quotes a Zemblan proverb "the lost glove is happy:"

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), the terrible name of the leader of the Shadows (a regicidal organization) cannot be mentioned, even in the Index to the obscure work of a scholar:

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), after line 274 of Shade's poem there is a false start in the draft: