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), the maiden name of Shade’s mother was Caroline Lukin:

In the Kalugano hospital, where he recovers from the wound received in a pistol duel with Captain Tapper, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentally calls Ardis Hall (the estate of his uncle Daniel Veen) “le Château de la Flèche, Flesh Hall:”

According to Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969), his and Ada’s half-sister Lucette turned out to be the impeccable paranymph:

In VN’s novel Ada (1969) Violet Knox (old Van’s typist) is an enchanting English blonde with doll eyes, a velvet carnation and a tweed-cupped little rump:

Describing the Night of the Burning Barn (when they make love for the first time), Ada compares herself and Van to Praying Children:

Oh, Van, that night, that moment as we knelt side by side in the candlelight like Praying Children in a very bad picture, showing two pairs of soft-wrinkled, once arboreal-animal, soles — not to Grandma who gets the Xmas card but to the surprised and pleased Serpent, I remember wanting so badly to ask you for a bit of purely scientific information, because my sidelong glance —

Describing the Chateaubriand mosquito, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions a kind of recueilli silence in which it settled on pretty bare arms and legs:

Describing Villa Venus (Eric Veen’s floramors), Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions a village in Normandy called, dreadfully, Deuil:

When Hugh Person (the main character in VN’s novel Transparent Things, 1972) first meets Armande, his future wife, on a Swiss local train, her hands are black-gloved:

When Hugh Person (the main character in VN’s novel Transparent Things, 1972) first meets Armande, she has a book, the paperback edition of Mr. R.’s novel Figures in a Golden Window, in her lap:

In the Russian version (1967) of Lolita VN adds a sentence about Dr Blue (the doctor in the Elphinstone hospital):

Я не люблю вас, доктор Блю, а почему вас не люблю, я сам не знаю, доктор Блю. Не сомневаюсь, что его ученость значительно уступала его репутации. Он уверил меня, что у нее "вирусная инфекция", и, когда я упомянул о ее недавней инфлуэнце, сухо сказал, что это другой микроб и что у него уже сорок таких пациентов на руках (все это звучит, конечно, как "горячка" старых беллетристов).