Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

On the morning after Van's first night with Ada in "Ardis the Second" Ada tells Van that her teacher at the Drama School thinks she is better in farces than in tragedy:

They sat, facing each other, at a breakfast table, munching black bread with fresh butter, and Virginia ham, and slices of genuine Emmenthaler cheese — and here’s a pot of transparent honey: two cheerful cousins, ‘raiding the icebox’ as children in old fairy tales, and the thrushes were sweetly whistling in the bright-green garden as the dark-green shadows drew in their claws.

Describing Ada's dramatic career, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Ada, 1969) mimics a mad prompter (‘Finestra, sestra'):  

A character in VN's novel Ada (1969), Demon Veen (Van's and Ada's father) learns about his children's affair by chance, because of Daniel Veen's death. In February 1893 Demon visits Van in his Manhattan penthouse apartment (where Van lives with Ada) in order to inform his son of Uncle Dan's odd Boschean death. Asking his father to leave, Van tells Demon that he cannot very well stumble into his and his girlfriend's bedroom "with all that infernal paraphernalia:"

According to Ada, at the funeral of Marina (in VN's novel Ada, 1969, Van's, Ada's and Lucette's mother) Demon Veen (Van's and Ada's father) and d’Onsky’s son, a person with only one arm, wept comme des fontaines:

‘My upper-lip space feels indecently naked.’ (He had shaved his mustache off with howls of pain in her presence). ‘And I cannot keep sucking in my belly all the time.’

At the family dinner in “Ardis the Second” Demon Veen (in VN’s novel Ada, 1969, Van’s and Ada’s father) tells Marina (Van’s, Ada’s and Lucette’s mother) "vous me comblez (you overwhelm me with kindness):"

‘Ah!’ said Demon, tasting Lord Byron’s Hock. ‘This redeems Our Lady’s Tears.’

The narrator and main character in VN's novel Ada (1969), Van Veen is the author of Letters from Terra, a philosophical novel. According to Theresa (a character in Van's novel), she had been an instrument of 'cosmic propaganda:'

Before the family dinner in "Ardis the Second" Demon Veen (in VN's novel Ada, 1969, Van's and Ada's father) tells Ada that there is nothing improper about a hanky dumped on a Bechstein:

Here Ada herself came running into the room. Yes-yes-yes-yes, here I come. Beaming!

Describing the difference between Terra and Antiterra (Earth's twin planet also known as Demonia), Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Ada, 1969) mentions the details of the L disaster that happened on Demonia in the beau milieu of the 19th century:

As he speaks to Philip Rack (Lucette’s music teacher who was poisoned by his jealous wife Elsie and who dies in Ward Five of the Kalugano hospital), Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions the “agony of agony” — Professor Lamort’s felicitous pleonasm:

Describing his first night with Lolita in The Enchanted Hunters (a hotel in Briceland), Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Lolita, 1955) says that his only regret is that he did not quietly deposit key “342” at the office, and leave the town, the country, the continent, the hemisphere, - indeed, the globe - that very same night: