Vladimir Nabokov

Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

Description

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

By Alexey Sklyarenko, 31 March, 2021

Describing the torments of poor mad Aqua (the twin sister of Marina, Van’s, Ada’s and Lucette’s mother), Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions the Dr Froit of Signy-Mondieu-Mondieu in the Ardennes:

 

By Alexey Sklyarenko, 23 March, 2021

In his Commentary 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 Gerald Emerald (a young instructor at Wordsmith University) “the man in green” and Gradus (Shade’s murderer) “the man in brown:”