Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

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), in a conversation with him Shade compared words to performing fleas: 

In his Foreword 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) quotes the words of Professor Hurley who asked Shade about the stunning blonde in the black leotard who haunts Lit. 202:

In Canto Three of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) describes his visit to Mrs. Z. who mentioned Shade’s poem about Mon Blon that appeared in the Blue Review:

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) mentions Stella Lazurchik, an Americanized Kashube who married Sinyavin’s son Blue (Starover Blue’s father):

In VN’s novel Ada (1969) Van’s and Ada’s father, Demon Veen perishes in a mysterious airplane disaster above the Pacific (3.7). It seems that Ada (who could not pardon Demon his forcing Van to give her up) managed to persuade the pilot to destroy his machine in midair. In Alexandre Dumas's “The Three Musketeers” (1844) Milady de Winter persuades John Felton, a Puritan, to kill Duke of Buckingham. In Lestrygonians, Episode 8 of Joyce’s Ulysses (1922), the Buckingham Palace hotel in Dublin is mentioned:

In VN’s novel Lolita (1955) one of the chapters ends with a pseudo-Shakespearean quote:

According to Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969), Uncle Dan bequeathed to nurse Bellabestia (‘Bess,’ Uncle Dan’s last mistress whom he had taken to Ardis because she managed to extract orally a few last drops of ‘play-zero’ out of his poor body) a trunkful of museum catalogues and his second-best catheter:

Describing the Night of the Burning Barn (when he and Ada make love for the first time), Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions the belated ignicolists:

In VN’s novel Ada (1969) Dorothy Vinelander (Ada’s sister-in-law) calls Ada la fille d’une actrice et d’un marchand de tableaux (“the daughter of an actress and an art dealer”):

It went on and on like that for more than an hour and Van’s clenched jaws began to ache. Finally, Ada got up, and Dorothy followed suit but continued to speak standing:

After the death of his grandson Eric (the young author of an essay entitled ‘Villa Venus: an Organized Dream’), David van Veen (a wealthy architect of Flemish extraction) resolved to erect a thousand and one memorial floramors (palatial brothels) all over Demonia (aka Antiterra, Earth’s twin planet on which VN’s novel Ada, 1969, is set):