Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

Describing his dinner in ‘Ursus’ (the best Franco-Estotian restaurant in Manhattan Major) with Ada and Lucette, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions the velvet cheek of his Cupidon peach:

Telling Van about Ada’s infidelity, Blanche (in VN’s novel Ada, 1969, the French handmaid at Ardis) calls one of Ada’s lovers, Lucette’s music teacher, “l’immonde Monsieur Rack:”

The children of Demon Veen and Marina Durmanov, Van and Ada (the two main characters in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) are officially maternal cousins and can marry only by special decree:

They walked through a grove and past a grotto.

Ada said: ‘Officially we are maternal cousins, and cousins can marry by special decree, if they promise to sterilize their first five children. But, moreover, the father-in-law of my mother was the brother of your grandfather. Right?’

After Van’s and Ada’s death Mr. Ronald Oranger (in VN’s novel Ada, 1969, old Van’s secretary and the editor of Ada) marries Violet Knox, old Van’s typist whom Ada called ‘Fialochka’ (little Violet):

According to Ada, she told the driver to turn somewhere near Morzhey (a Russian pun on ‘Morges,’ a town on Lake Geneva mentioned by Karamzin in “The Letters of a Russian Traveler”):

He left the balcony and ran down a short spiral staircase to the fourth floor. In the pit of his stomach there sat the suspicion that it might not be room 410, as he conjectured, but 412 or even 414, What would happen if she had not understood, was not on the lookout? She had, she was.

Describing the breakfast after the Night of the Burning Barn (when Van and Ada make love for the first time), Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions a dab of ye-old Orange Marmalade:

In VN’s novel Ada (1969) Van tells Lucette (Van’s and Ada’s half-sister) who looks at Lenore Colline (the movie actress who resembles Ada) that cats do not stare at stars:

Mr Sween, lunching with a young fellow who sported a bullfighter’s sideburns and other charms, bowed gravely in the direction of their table; then a naval officer in the azure uniform of the Gulfstream Guards passed by in the wake of a dark, ivory-pale lady and said: ‘Hullo Lucette, hullo, Van.’

In VN’s novel Lolita (1955) Lolita is abducted from Humbert Humbert on July 4, 1949 (the Independence Day).

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), the king escaped from green Zembla clad in bright red clothes:

Describing his stay in Elphinstone (where Lolita falls ill and is hospitalized), Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Lolita, 1955) mentions Aurora (the goddess of dawn in Roman mythology and Latin poetry) and the pickers of lavender: