Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

In Canto Four of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) says that the title of his first book (free verse) was Dim Gulf:

Dim Gulf was my first book (free verse); Night Rote

Came next; then Hebe's Cup, my final float

In that damp carnival, for now I term

Everything "Poems," and no longer squirm.

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), on his deathbed Conmal (the King’s uncle, Zemblan translator of Shakespeare) called his nephew “Karlik:”

Describing an extraordinary session of the Extremist government, 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 copy of a French newspaper with the headline: L'EX-ROI DE ZEMBLA EST-IL À PARIS?:

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), Gradus (Shade’s murderer) contended that the real origin of his name should be sought in the Russian word for grape, vinograd, to which a Latin suffix had adhered, making it Vinogradus:

In Memory of Hafid Bouazza

Shade’s murderer, Jakob Gradus (one of the three main characters in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) is a member of the Shadows (a regicidal organization):

In Canto Two of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) says that his daughter called her mother "a didactic katydid:"

                         She twisted words: pot, top

Spider, redips. And "powder" was "red wop."

She called you a didactic katydid.

Describing Shade’s murder by Gradus, 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) compares himself to a stone king on a stone charger in the Tessera Square of Onhava (the capital of Zembla):

Describing his nights at Ardis, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) says that his only contribution to Anglo-American poetry is a dactylic trimeter ‘Ada, our ardors and arbors:’

According to Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969), all the hundred floramors (palatial brothels built by David van Veen, a wealthy architect of Flemish extraction, all over the world in memory of his grandson Eric) opened simultaneously on September 20, 1875:

At the beginning of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) compares himself to the shadow of the waxwing:

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. (ll. 1-4)