Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

Describing IPH (a lay Institute of Preparation for the Hereafter) in Canto Three of his poem, John Shade (the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962) says that IPH borrowed some peripheral debris from mystic visions: 

While snubbing gods, including the big G,

Iph borrowed some peripheral debris

From mystic visions; and it offered tips

(The amber spectacles for life's eclipse) -

How not to panic when you're made a ghost:

Describing his disastrous marriage, 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 Queen Disa's cousin, good old Curdy Buff:

According to 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), the King escaped from Zembla clad in bright red clothes. A policeman in Blawick asks the King to take off his red fufa and red cap:

In VN’s novel Transparent Things (1972) Armande tells Julia that 'snowdrift' cannot be rafale in French and rafalovich in Russian:

Armande informed Percy that Julia had come all the way from Geneva to consult her about the translation of a number of phrases with which she, Julia, who was going tomorrow to Moscow, desired to "impress" her Russian friends. Percy, here, worked for her stepfather.

In their discussion of love the spectral narrators in VN's novel Transparent Things (1972) mention the customs of certain Far Eastern people, virtually halfwits in many other respects:

According to Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Lolita, 1955), it took him fifty-six days (eight weeks) to write Lolita:

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:

Кобальтана + мировая = Набоков + Альтамира + я

(Kobaltana + mirovaya = Nabokov + Altamira + ya)

Kobaltana, a once fashionable mountain resort near the ruins of some old barracks, now a cold and desolate spot of difficult access and no importance but still remembered in military families and forest castles, not in the text. (Kinbote's Index)

The three main characters in VN's novel Pale Fire (1962) are the poet Shade, his commentator Kinbote (who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla), and his murderer Gradus. In Canto Four of Shade's poem there is the following couplet:

Man's life as commentary to abstruse
Unfinished poem. Note for further use. (ll. 939-40)

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:"