Please read Alexey Sklyarenko's annotations on Pale Fire, Ada and other Nabokov works here.
Before the family dinner in “Ardis the Second” Ada (the title character of a novel, 1969, by VN) mentions “the snake of rhyme” (a play on Van’s words “for the sake of rhyme”):
The neat interplay of harmonious motions, the candid gayety of family reunions, the never-entangling marionette strings — all this is easier described than imagined.