Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

In VN’s novel Transparent Things (1972) Hugh Person strangles his wife Armande in his sleep, as he dreams of Julia Moore (Hugh's former mistress whom in his dream he struggles to save from falling to her death):

Just before the execution in VN’s novel Priglashenie na kazn’ (“Invitation to a Beheading,” 1935) the deputy city director mentions a comic opera Sokratis’, Sokratik (Socrates Must Decrease):

На помост, ловко и энергично (так что Цинциннат невольно отшатнулся), вскочил заместитель управляющего городом и, небрежно поставив одну, высоко поднятую ногу на плаху (был мастер непринужденного красноречия), громко объявил:

In VN’s story Usta k ustam (“Lips to Lips,” 1931) Euphratski calls Galatov Russkiy Dzhoys (the Russian Joyce):

In VN’s novel Lolita (1955) Humbert Humbert says that he always admired l'œuvre ormonde du sublime Dublinois (the Ormond masterpiece of the great Dubliner):

Describing his train trip to Kalugano, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions Cordula’s brief bright affair with Marquis Quizz Quisana:

In Memory of Don Johnson

In a botanical conversation in “Ardis the First” Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) puns “flowers into bloomers” and Ada mentions “mollyblob:”

Van: ‘That yellow thingum’ (pointing at a floweret prettily depicted on an Eckercrown plate) ‘— is it a buttercup?’

In an article that announces the publication of his Russian version of Ada Mr. Babikov affirms that, as a young man, VN made an inscription on his copy of “Madame Bovary:” Livre génial — la perle de la littérature française:

In his autobiography Speak, Memory (1951) VN describes his life in Berlin in the 1920s and in Paris in the late 1930s and compares Sirin (VN’s Russian nom de plume) to a meteor that passed across the dark sky of exile and disappeared, leaving nothing much else behind him than a vague sense of uneasiness:

I met many other émigré Russian authors. I did not meet Poplavski who died young, a far violin among near balalaikas.

Describing the King’s bedroom, 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 Bower B where Fleur de Fyler (Queen Disa’s lady in waiting) made tinny music:

In VN’s poem The Ballad of Longwood Glen (1957) Art Longwood, a local florist, climbs a tree and gets lost in it: