Vladimir Nabokov

Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

Description

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

By Alexey Sklyarenko , 8 January, 2026

Describing his life with Lolita in Beardsley (a small University town in New England), Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) mentions Butler’s Academy for Boys and their annual ball:

 

I did my best, your Honour, to tackle the problem of boys. Oh, I used even to read in the Beardsley Star a so-called Column for Teens, to find out how to behave!

By Alexey Sklyarenko , 4 January, 2026

Describing his desperate attempts to find Lolita's abductor, Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) mentions the spangled acrobat with classical grace meticulously walking his tight rope in the taclum light and the sagging rope expert wearing scarecrow clothes and impersonating a grotesque drunk:

 

By Alexey Sklyarenko , 1 January, 2026

Describing the beginning of his life-long romance with Ada, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Ada, 1969) mentions Ben Wright, the English coachman in "Ardis the First" who was fired after letting winds go free while driving Marina (Van's, Ada's and Lucette's mother) and Mlle Larivière (Lucette's governess who writes fiction under the penname Guillaume de Monparnasse) home from the Vendange Festival at Brantôme near Ladore: