Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

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) mentions a person (Shade's former literary agent) who has wondered with a sneer if Mrs. Shade's tremulous signature might not have been penned "in some peculiar kind of red ink:"

Describing his debauch à trois with Ada and Lucette in his Manhattan flat, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Ada, 1969) mentions a Casanovanic situation and the Venetian school:

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) calls Shade "my beloved old conjurer:"

At the end of his manuscript Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Lolita, 1955) says that his story has bits of marrow sticking to it, and blood, and beautiful bright-green flies:

In VN's novel Dar ("The Gift," 1926) the action begins on Thursday, April 1, 192[6]:

Describing Shchyogolev's discussion of politics at table, Fyodor Konstantinovich Godunov-Cherdyntsev, the narrator and main character in VN's novel Dar ("The Gift," 1937), says: "A sidel Shchyogolev na Rossii (and Russia was Shchyogolev's bottom):"

The characters in VN's novel Pnin (1957) include Oleg Komarov, a muralist in Waindell:

Describing the poltergeist phenomena in Shades’ 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 basket in which Aunt Maud had once kept her half-paralyzed Skye terrier:

At the beginning of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962) says that from the inside, too, he would duplicate himself, his lamp, an apple on a plate:

I was the shadow of the waxwing slain

By the false azure in the windowpane;

I was the smudge of ashen fluff - and I

Lived on, flew on, in the reflected sky.

And from the inside, too, I'd duplicate

Myself, my lamp, an apple on a plate:

Uncurtaining the night, I'd let dark glass

Hang all the furniture above the grass,

Describing Eystein's portrait of decrepit Count Kernel (a former Keeper of the Treasure), 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 plate painted by the artist with the beautifully executed, twin-lobed, brainlike, halved kernel of a walnut: