Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

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) says that the Zemblan word coramen denotes the rude strap with which a Zemblan herdsman attaches his humble provisions and ragged blanket to the meekest of his cows when driving them up to the vebodar (upland pastures):

Line 137: lemniscate

The characters in VN’s story Podlets (“An Affair of Honor,” 1927) include Mityushin and Gnushke (Anton Petrovich’s seconds):

In VN’s story Podlets (“An Affair of Honor,” 1927) Mityushin (Anton Petrovich’s second) confuses the names of Berg’s seconds and calls them “Malinin and Burenin” (“Marx and Engels” in the English version):

In VN’s novel Zashchita Luzhina (“The Luzhin Defense,” 1930) Valentinov (Luzhin’s tutor and manager) writes to Luzhin’s father svoi – sochtyomsya (it's a family affair – we'll settle up later):

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) says that the Zemblan word coramen denotes the rude strap with which a Zemblan herdsman attaches his humble provisions and ragged blanket to the meekest of his cows when driving them up to the vebodar (upland pastures):

Line 137: lemniscate

At the beginning of VN’s novel Zashchita Luzhina (“The Luzhin Defense,” 1930) Luzhin is ten years old:

In VN’s novel Zashchita Luzhina (“The Luzhin Defense,” 1930) one of the guests at a party thrown by Luzhin’s wife, Petrov, is compared to nekiy sosud (a vessel) filled with something so sacred and rare that it would be a sacrilege to paint the clay:

At the end of VN’s novel Ada (1969) Van Veen mentions the mosquito executed eighty years ago upon one’s bare leg, which has been amputated since then:

Explaining to her little nephew the rules of chess, Luzhin’s aunt calls the bishops “Officers” and the knights, “Horses:”

In VN’s novel Zashchita Luzhina (“The Luzhin Defense,” 1930) Valentinov (Luzhin’s tutor and manager) tells to the twenty-year-old Luzhin (who came out a victor in a chess tournament in London, the first after the war) “Bleshchi, poka bleshchetsya” (“Shine while you can”):