Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

In VN’s story Signs and Symbols (1948) one of the old couple’s fellow travelers in the subway resembles Rebecca Borisovna, whose daughter had married one of the Soloveichiks—in Minsk, years ago:

Describing the difference between Terra and Antiterra (aka Demonia, Earth’s twin planet), Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions Tartary, a country that occupies the territory from Kurland to the Kuriles:

In VN’s story Signs and Symbols (1948) one of the old couple’s fellow travelers in the subway resembles Rebecca Borisovna, whose daughter had married one of the Soloveichiks—in Minsk, years ago:

In VN’s story Signs and Symbols (1948) the hat of Mrs. Sol (the old couple's next-door neighbor) is a cluster of brookside flowers:

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), Gradus is a half-man who is half mad:

At the end of VN’s story Signs and Symbols (1948) the telephone rings several times:

The telephone rang. It was an unusual hour for it to ring. He stood in the middle of the room, groping with his foot for one slipper that had come off, and childishly, toothlessly, gaped at his wife. Since she knew more English than he, she always attended to the calls.

”Can I speak to Charlie?” a girl’s dull little voice said to her now.

At the end of 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) quotes a Zemblan saying that, as a child, he has heard from his nurse:

At the end of his letter to Annette Blagovo Vadim Vadimovich (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Look at the Harlequins! 1974) mentions Botticelli's Primavera:

In his Commentary to Shade’s poem Kinbote calls Gradus (Shade’s murderer in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) “half-man” and says that he is half mad:

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 Gradus’s puny ghost, shargar: