Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

Describing his rented house, 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 his landlord’s four daughters (Alphina, Betty, Candida and Dee):

The characters in VN's novel Dar ("The Gift," 1937) include civil engineer Kern who closely knew the late Alexander Blok:

Describing his visit to Brownhill (Ada's school for girls) in the fall of 1884, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Ada, 1969) says that Ada's breath smelled of ether:

Describing his rented house, 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) says that he has no desire to twist and batter an unambiguous apparatus criticus into the monstrous semblance of a novel:

Describing his rented house, 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 atmosphere of damnum infectum in which he was supposed to dwell:

Describing his second road trip with Lolita across the USA, Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) mentions Kasbeam, a town where a very old barber gave him a very mediocre haircut:

Describing Gradus’s visit to Oswin Bretwit (the former Zemblan consul in Paris), 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 Zule Bretwit, Mayor of Odevalla:

Describing Gradus’s visit to Oswin Bretwit (the former Zemblan consul in Paris), 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 Ferz Bretwit, Mayor of Aros:

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 Izumrudov, one of the greater Shadows (a regicidal organization) who visits Gradus (Shade's murderer) in Nice and tells him the King's new name and address in America:

In a conversation at the Faculty Club, Gerald Emerald (in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962, a young instructor at Wordsmith University who gives Gradus, Shade's murderer, a lift to Kinbote's rented house in New Wye) calls the young King of Zembla "quite the fancy pansy", and Kinbote (Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) says that Gerald Emerald is "a foul-minded pup in a cheap green jacket:"