Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

According to Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969), his maternal grandmother Daria (‘Dolly’) Durmanov was the daughter of Prince Peter Zemski, Governor of Bras d’Or:

Before he falls asleep, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) asks Ada to avoid sapphic vorschmacks with Lucette (Van’s and Ada’s half-sister):

‘My dear,’ said Van, ‘do help me. She told me about her Valentian estanciero but now the name escapes me and I hate bothering her.’

Describing a stage play in which Marina (Van’s, Ada’s and Lucette’s mother) plays the heroine, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions an old nurse in Eskimo boots and the glass slipper (left by the protagonist’s fickle lady) that Baron d’O. is holding in the middle of an empty stage:

Marina’s affair with Demon Veen started on his, her, and Daniel Veen’s birthday, January 5, 1868, when she was twenty-four and both Veens thirty.

Describing the debauch á trois with Ada and Lucette in his Manhattan flat after the dinner in ‘Ursus’ (the best Franco-Estotian restaurant in Manhattan Major), Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions a box of Wipex on the bedside table:

Describing Kim Beauharnais’s visit to Ardis, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) calls the album that Kim brings with him “the mud-colored scrapbook:”

In Canto Four of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) lists swimming pools and sharks among the things he loathes:

Now I shall speak of evil as none has

Spoken before. I loathe such things as jazz;

The white-hosed moron torturing a black

Bull, rayed with red; abstractist bric-a-brac;

Primitivist folk-masks; progressive schools;

Describing Gradus’ visit to Oswin Bretwit (the former Zemblan consul in Paris), 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 the roofs of Paris:

In Canto Four of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) describes shaving and says that now he will speak of evil and despair as none has spoken before:

My Adam's apple is a prickly pear:

Now I shall speak of evil and despair

As none has spoken. Five, six, seven, eight,

Nine strokes are not enough. Ten. I palpate

Describing his rented house, 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 Lake Omega, the larger and sadder of the three conjoined lakes near New Wye:

Describing King Alfin’s death in an aviation accident, 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 Prince Andrey Kachurin, the famous Russian stunter and War One hero: