Vladimir Nabokov

Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

Description

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

By Alexey Sklyarenko , 8 December, 2022

In The Waltz Invention, the English version of VN's play Izobretenie Val'sa (1938), Son (the reporter who runs errands for Waltz and whose name means in Russian "sleep, dream") becomes Trance. In his book Original o portretistakh ("The Model about the Portrait Painters," 1922) Evreinov says that, despite his "trance," "visions" and other psychic peculiarities, William Blake, when he drew his biblical characters, always used himself as a model:

 

By Alexey Sklyarenko , 7 December, 2022

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), as he was ascending with bowed head the gravel path to his poor rented house, he heard with absolute distinction Shade's voice say: "Come tonight, Charlie:"

 

By Alexey Sklyarenko , 3 December, 2022

Asked by Kinbote what he had been doing around noon (when Kinbote had heard him like a big bird in his garden) Shade (the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962) says that he had been playing golf with Paul (whoever that was), or at least watching Paul play with another colleague: