Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

The epigraph to VN’s novel Priglashenie na kazn’ (“Invitation to a Beheading,” 1935) is from Discours sur les ombres by the invented French thinker Pierre Delalande:

Comme un fou se croit Dieu

nous nous croyons mortels.

Delalande. Discours sur les ombres

In VN’s story Sovershenstvo (“Perfection,” 1932) Ivanov’s mind is preoccupied with unsolvable problems: How and where do chimney sweeps wash after work:

In VN’s story Sovershenstvo (“Perfection,” 1932) Ivanov (David’s tutor) tries to convince himself that his pupil is perfect:

According to Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Lolita, 1955), among the pseudonyms that he has toyed with before hitting on a particularly apt one was "Mesmer Mesmer:"

According to Kinbote (Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla), Gradus contended that the real origin of his name should be sought in the Russian word for grape, vinograd:

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), in police records Gradus also appears as Ravus, Ravenstone and d’Argus:

The epigraph to VN’s novel Pale Fire (1962) is from James Boswell’s biography of Samuel Johnson:

This reminds me of the ludicrous account he

gave Mr. Langston, of the despicable state of a

young gentleman of good family. 'Sir, when I

heard of him last, he was running about town

shooting cats.' And then in a sort of kindly

In VN’s novel Pale Fire (1962) Kinbote (Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) calls Izumrudov (one of the greater Shadows who visits Gradus in Nice) “the gay green vision:”

In Canto Two of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) speaks of his daughter and says that she twisted words:

                         She twisted words: pot, top
Spider, redips. And "powder" was "red wop."
She called you a didactic katydid.
She hardly ever smiled, and when she did,
It was a sign of pain. She'd criticize

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), Judge Goldsworth (Kinbote’s landlord) resembles a Medusa-locked hag: