Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

According to John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962), his daughter called her mother "a didactic katydid:"

                         She twisted words: pot, top

Spider, redips. And "powder" was "red wop."

She called you a didactic katydid.

VN’s autobiography Speak, Memory (1951) begins ab incunabulis (from the cradle):

Describing Daniel Veen’s triple trip round the globe, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada or Ardor: a Family Chronicle, 1969) mentions Dan’s smelly but nice cicerone:

On Demonia (aka Antiterra, Earth’s twin planet on which VN’s novel Ada, 1969, is set) Whitehorse (a city in NW Canada) is known as Belokonsk:

Describing his journey with Lucette on Admiral Tobakoff, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions Minataor, the famous artificial island on which Lucette (Van’s and Ada’s half-sister) spent a torrid May:

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 saw Disa for the first time at a masked ball in his uncle’s palace:

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) quotes the beginning of a sonnet that Conmal (the king’s uncle, Zemblan translator of Shakespeare) composed directly in English:

In his Commentary 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 his great-great-gradmother, Queen Yaruga, and her lover Hodinski (also known as Hodyna), the author of a celebrated pastiche:

Talking over the ’phone to Joe Lavender, Gradus (Shade’s murderer in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) pronounces the word “what” as “vot:”

In a conversation at the Faculty Club Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) says that kings do not die - they only disappear and Kinbote (Shade's mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) mentions Flatman:

Shade [smiling and massaging my knee]: "Kings do not die - they only disappear, eh, Charles?"