Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

In his diary Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Lolita, 1955) compares himself to a spider that sits in the middle of a luminous web and gives little jerks to this or that strand:

According to Humbert Humbert, the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Lolita (1955), Rita was so kind that she would have given herself to any pathetic creature or fallacy, an old broken tree or a bereaved porcupine, out of sheer chumminess and compassion:

земля + небо + вода + Блок = Зембла + невод + яблоко

земля – earth

небо – sky

вода – water

Блок – Blok

Зембла – Zembla

невод – seine, sweep-net

яблоко – apple

At the end of his poem (and life) John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) says that he understands existence only through his art:

Maybe my sensual love for the consonne

D'appui, Echo's fey child, is based upon

A feeling of fantastically planned,

Richly rhymed life.

In Canto Four of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) describes shaving and compares his Adam’s apple to a prickly pear:

Since my biographer may be too staid

Or know too little to affirm that Shade

Shaved in his bath, here goes: "He'd fixed a sort

Of hinge-and-screw affair, a steel support

Running across the tub to hold in place

In Canto Four of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) describes shaving and compares his Adam’s apple to a prickly pear:

Since my biographer may be too staid

Or know too little to affirm that Shade

Shaved in his bath, here goes: "He'd fixed a sort

Of hinge-and-screw affair, a steel support

Running across the tub to hold in place

In Canto Four of his poem John Shade, the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire (1962), describes two methods of composing, method A and method B, and mentions the right word that by some mute command flutes and perches on his hand:

But method A is agony! The brain

Is soon enclosed in a steel cap of pain.

A muse in overalls directs the drill

Which grinds and which no effort of the will

Describing Izumrudov’s visit to Gradus in Nice, 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 bright rap-rap at the door:

At the end of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962) says that he understands existence only through his art:

Maybe my sensual love for the consonne

D'appui, Echo's fey child, is based upon

A feeling of fantastically planned,

Richly rhymed life.

                              I feel I understand

Existence, or at least a minute part

According to Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969), one of the girls dubbed his penthouse apartment in Manhattan ‘your wing à terre:’