Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

Telling Van about Uncle Dan's death, Demon Veen (in VN’s novel Ada, 1969, Van’s and Ada’s father) says that Marina (Van’s, Ada’s and Lucette’s mother) will arrive in the late afternoon, wearing, no doubt, pleureuses, very becoming:

Before she met Demon Veen (in VN’s novel Ada, 1969, Van’s and Ada’s father), Marina’s twin sister Aqua had had an affair with a married man in Belokonsk (the Antiterran twin of Canadian Whitehorse):

In Canto Three of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) describes IPH (a lay Institute of Preparation for the Hereafter) where he lectured and dealt with childhood memories of strange nacreous gleams beyond the adults' range:

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), he is known on the campus as the Great Beaver:

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 King escaped from the palace by the secret passage that leads to the theater’s green room. Describing the discovery of the secret passage, Kinbote mentions the three transverse streets, Academy Boulevard, Coriolanus Lane and Timon Alley:

VN’s novel Bend Sinister (1947) ends in the sentence “A good night for mothing:”

In VN’s novel Bend Sinister (1947) mouches volantes (“flying flies,” entoptic phenomena) are mentioned:

In VN’s novel Priglashenie na kazn’ (“Invitation to a Beheading,” 1935) one of inscriptions on the wall of Cincinnatus’s cell reads: Smer’te do smerti, - potom pozdno budet (Measure me while I live—after it will be too late):

"Бытие безымянное, существенность беспредметная..." - прочел Цинциннат на стене там, где дверь, отпахиваясь, прикрывала стену.

"Вечные именинники, мне вас --" - написано было в другом месте.

According to the narrator of VN’s story Istreblenie tiranov (“Tyrants Destroyed,” 1936), laughter saved him:

Sybil, or The Two Nations (1845) is a novel by Benjamin Disraeli (who would later become Prime Minister of Great Britain). In Disraeli’s novel The Infernal Marriage (1834) Pluto, the king of hell, whisks Proserpine, the daughter of Jupiter, away to Hades. Hades = Shade; Sybil Shade (the poet’s wife) = Queen Disa (the wife of Charles the Beloved) = Sofia Botkin (born Lastochkin).