Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

Describing his lovemakings with Ada in "Ardis the First," Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Ada, 1969) mentions voluptuous and tender stuff that Italian masters allowed themselves to produce in between too many pious Resurrections during a too long and lusty Renaissance:

On Demonia (Earth's twin planet on which VN's novel Ada, 1969, is set) Paris is also known as Lute:

In 1885, having completed his prep-school education, he went up to Chose University in England, where his fathers had gone, and traveled from time to time to London or Lute (as prosperous but not overrefined British colonials called that lovely pearl-gray sad city on the other side of the Channel). (1.28)

Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): Lute: from ‘Lutèce’, ancient name of Paris.

In her letter to Van (written a month before Demon's death in an airplane disaster) Ada (now married to Andrey Vinelander) says that her sister-in-law, Dorothy Vinelander, finished Chose where she read History:

According to John Ray, Jr. (in VN’s novel Lolita, 1955, the author of the Foreword to Humbert Humbert’s manuscript), Mrs. Richard F. Schiller (Lolita’s married name) died in childbed, giving birth to a stillborn girl, on Christmas Day 1952, in Gray Star, a settlement in the remotest Northwest:

Describing the difference between Terra and Antiterra (Earth's twin planet also known as Demonia), Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Ada, 1969) mentions the details of the L disaster that happened on Demonia in the beau milieu of the 19th century:

In March 1905 Demon Veen (in VN's novel Ada, 1969, Van's and Ada's father) perishes in a mysterious airplane disaster above the Pacific:

In his Commentary 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) describes his conversations with Shade and mentions Prof. Botkin and Russian humorists:

Describing the L disaster in the beau milieu of the 19th century after which electricity was banned on Demonia (Earth's twin planet on which VN's novel Ada, 1869, is set), Van Veen (the narrator and main character) mentions Faragod (apparently, the god of electricity):

According to Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955), his very photogenic mother was a daughter of Jerome Dunn, the alpinist, and granddaughter of two Dorset parsons, experts in obscure subjects - paleopedology and Aeolian harps, respectively:

When Demon Veen (in VN's novel Ada, 1969, Van's and Ada's father) asks Van how is his wound (that Van received in a pistol duel with Captain Tapper, of Wild Violet Lodge), Van replies that he is in for another spell of surgery — this time in London, where butchers carve so much better: