Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

At the end of his commentary to Shade's poem Kinbote (in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962, Shade’s commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) quotes a Zemblan saying "Gut mag alkan, Pern dirstan (God makes hungry, the Devil thirsty):”

According to Mlle Larivière (in VN's novel Ada, 1969, the governess of Van's and Ada's half-sister Lucette), Ada could break the back of her pony before she could walk:

The boy who debauches Lolita (the eponymous heroine of VN's 1955 novel) in Camp Q, Charlie Holmes (the camp-mistress's son) is a green-shirted, redheaded impish lad:

Describing Gradus’s day in New York, 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 Rachel Jewelry Company in Brooklyn:

At a meal in "Ardis the First" Marina (in VN’s novel Ada, 1969, Van's, Ada's and Lucette's mother) blows her nose with the sound of an elephant:

The element that destroys Marina (in VN’s novel Ada, 1969, Van's, Ada's and Lucette's mother who dies of cancer and whose body is burnt, according to her instructions) is fire:

Numbers and rows and series — the nightmare and malediction harrowing pure thought and pure time — seemed bent on mechanizing his mind. Three elements, fire, water, and air, destroyed, in that sequence, Marina, Lucette, and Demon. Terra waited. 

Describing Gradus’s day in New York, 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 Nikita Khrushchyov's visit to Zembla and "quotes" the Soviet leader's words "Vï nazïvaete sebya zemblerami, a ya vas nazïvayu zemlyakami (You call yourselves Zemblans and I call you fellow countrymen!):"

Describing Gradus’s day in New York, 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 agate type in which the Rachel Jewelry Company in Brooklyn advertised for a jewelry polisher who "must have experience on costume jewelry:"

In Canto Three of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962) describes IPH (a lay Institute of Preparation for the Hereafter) and mentions the fantasies of Poe that he tore apart:

We heard cremationists guffaw and snort

At Grabermann's denouncing the Retort

As detrimental to the birth of wraiths.

We all avoided criticizing faiths.

The great Starover Blue reviewed the role

Planets had played as landfalls of the soul.

Describing his insomnias, 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 a Wagner record and hallucinations: