Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

The wife of John Shade (the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962), Sybil Shade is a namesake of Humbert Humbert's Aunt Sybil (a character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955):

Describing his attempt to find a photograph of Lolita’s abductor in an old issue of the Briceland Gazette, Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Lolita, 1955) quotes the words of the author of Dark Age "wine, wine, wine, may suit a Persian bubble bird, but I say give me rain, rain, rain on the shingle roof for roses and inspiration every time:"

During Van's conversation with Demon Veen (in VN's novel Ada, 1969, Van's and Ada's father) Demon says that he he is not concerned with semantics — or semination and Van asks Demon not to use philistine epithets:

The most protracted of the several pauses having run its dark course, Demon’s voice emerged to say, with a vigor that it had lacked before:

During her visit to Kingston (in VN's novel Ada, 1969, Van's American University) Lucette (Van's and Ada's half-sister who brings Van a letter from Ada) tells Van that she can swear by William Shakespeare that she is a virgin:

‘Van, it will make you smile’ [thus in the MS. Ed.].

‘Van,’ said Lucette, ‘it will make you smile’ (it did not: that prediction is seldom fulfilled), ‘but if you posed the famous Van Question, I would answer in the affirmative.’

In his pocket diary Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) describes the first days of his stay at the Haze house in Ramsdale and calls Lolita "the loveliest nymphet green-red-blue Priap himself could think up:"

At the end of May, 1947, thirty-seven-year-old Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) meets twelve-year-old Dolores Haze and falls in love with her, because on the eve McCoo's house was destroyed by fire:

In his pocket diary Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) describes the first days of his stay at the Haze house in Ramsdale and mentions the thousand eyes wide open in his eyed blood:

In Canto Three of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) speaks of IPH (a lay Institute of Preparation for the Hereafter) and mentions “Terra the Fair, an orbicle of jasp:”

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:

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 himself "the beholder and only begetter, whose own past intercoils with the fate of the innocent author:"

In Canto Three of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) speaks of IPH (a lay Institute of Preparation for the Hereafter) and mentions “Terra the Fair, an orbicle of jasp:”

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: