Vladimir Nabokov

Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

Description

Please read Alexey Sklyarenko's annotations on Pale FireAda and other Nabokov works here.

By Alexey Sklyarenko, 6 April, 2024

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) quotes the beginning of a sonnet that Conmal (the king’s uncle, Zemblan translator of Shakespeare) composed directly in English:

 

By Alexey Sklyarenko, 4 April, 2024

Describing the family dinner in "Ardis the Second," Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Ada, 1969) mentions the third sight (individual, magically detailed imagination) that Marina (Van's, Ada's and Lucette's mother) lacks:

 

By Alexey Sklyarenko, 3 April, 2024

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) quotes the beginning of a sonnet that Conmal (the king’s uncle, Zemblan translator of Shakespeare) composed directly in English:

 

By Alexey Sklyarenko, 2 April, 2024

In a poem that Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) makes Clare Quilty (the playwright who abducted Lolita from the Elphinstone hospital) read aloud before murdering him Humbert calls himself a sinner and compares himself to Adam (the first man):

 

By Alexey Sklyarenko, 2 April, 2024

When Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) visits Lolita (now married to Dick Schiller) in Coalmont, she tells him that Clare Quilty (the playwright with whom Lolita escaped from the Elphinstone hospital) took her to the Duk Duk Ranch:

 

“Sit down,” she said, audibly striking her flanks with her palms. I relapsed into the black rocker.

“So you betrayed me? Where did you go? Where is he now?”

By Alexey Sklyarenko, 31 March, 2024

In the lift of a tall Manhattan building that brings him to Van's penthouse apartment Demon Veen (in VN's novel Ada, 1969, Van's and Ada's father) places a piece of nobler metal among the silver domes on Valerio's rolling table with breakfast for two: