Vladimir Nabokov

Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

Description

Please read Alexey Sklyarenko's annotations on Pale FireAda and other Nabokov works here.

By Alexey Sklyarenko , 18 December, 2023

Before the family dinner in "Ardis the Second" Demon Veen (in VN's novel Ada, 1969, Van's and Ada's father) says that observation is not always the mother of deduction:

 

Here Ada herself came running into the room. Yes-yes-yes-yes, here I come. Beaming!

By Alexey Sklyarenko , 17 December, 2023

The action in VN's novel Ada (1969) takes place on Demonia, Earth's twin planet also known as Antiterra. After the family dinner in "Ardis the Second" Ada mentions spies from Terra:

 

He kissed her half-closed lips, gently and ‘morally’ as they defined moments of depth to distinguish them from the despair of passion.

‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘it’s fun to be two secret agents in an alien country. Marina has gone upstairs. Your hair is wet.’

‘Spies from Terra? You believe, you believe in the existence of Terra? Oh, you do! You accept it. I know you!’

By Alexey Sklyarenko , 13 December, 2023

According to Ada, a couple of hours after Demon's death in a mysterious airplane disaster she and Andrey Vinelander (in VN's novel Ada, 1969, Ada's husband) had sudden visitors at the ranch — an incredibly graceful moppet of eight, black-veiled, and a kind of duenna, also in black, with two bodyguards:

 

‘My upper-lip space feels indecently naked.’ (He had shaved his mustache off with howls of pain in her presence). ‘And I cannot keep sucking in my belly all the time.’