Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

In his Commentary and Index 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) mentions Embla Point and Emblem Bay:

Describing Zembla’s geography, Kinbote (Shade’s mad commentator in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) mentions Odevalla, Yeslove and Embla:

In VN’s novel Ada (1969) Van and Ada discover that they brother and sister thanks to Marina’s old herbarium that they found in the attic of Ardis Hall. In her herbarium Marina mentions Dr Lapiner, her and her sister’s physician whom Marina calls lapochka (darling):

In his poem The Room (1950) VN mentions “a blend of anonymity and doom” and wonders if the author of the line "Alone, unknown, unloved, I die" is a woman:

In Canto One of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) says that he was brought up by dear bizarre Aunt Maud whose room he and his wife have kept intact:

In Canto Two of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) speaks of his daughter and mentions Lafontaine:

Life is a message scribbled in the dark.

Anonymous.

At the beginning of VN’s novel Lolita (1955) Humbert Humbert calls Lolita “light of my life, fire of my loins, my sin, my soul:”

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. (1.1)

In his poem Une Charogne (“A Carcass”) Baudelaire calls his mistress “star of my eyes, sun of my nature, my angel and my passion:”

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), after line 274 of Shade’s poem there is a false start in the draft:

I like my name: Shade, Ombre, almost "man"
In Spanish...

The epigraph to VN’s novel Dar (“The Gift,” 1937) is from Smirnovski’s Uchebnik russkoy grammatiki (A Textbook of Russian Grammar):

Дуб - дерево. Роза - цветок. Олень - животное. Воробей - птица. Россия - наше Отечество. Смерть неизбежна.

П. Смирновский. Учебник русской грамматики.

The three main characters in VN’s novel Pale Fire (1962) are the poet Shade, his commentator Kinbote (who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) and his murderer Gradus. In Book III (1588) of his Essais Montaigne says that every place swarms with commentaries; of authors there is great scarcity: