Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

The poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire (1962), John Shade likes his name:

After line 274 there is a false start in the draft:

In a discarded variant John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) says that he likes his name:

When Cecilia C. visits him in the fortress, Cincinnatus (the main character in VN’s novel “Invitation to a Beheading,” 1935) is granted a glimpse of the lining of life:

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), he is known on the campus as the Great Beaver:

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) nicknamed his black gardener “Balthasar, Prince of Loam:”

At an informal supper on the eve of Cincinnatus’s beheading M’sieur Pierre (the executioner in VN’s novel “Invitation to a Beheading,” 1935) recites: Luna, balkon, ona i on (“A porch, moon’s torch, and he, and she”):

One of the three main characters in VN’s novel Pale Fire (1962), John Shade was born on July 5, 1898. Two other main characters, Charles Kinbote and Jakob Gradus, were born seventeen years later, on July 5, 1915. In a letter to his brother Mikhail that he wrote on his seventeenth birthday (October 31, 1838, OS) Dostoevski twice uses the word gradus (degree):

Dandies on their shiny clockwork cycles overtake the horse-drawn carriage that brings Cincinnatus (the main character of VN’s novel “Invitation to a Beheading,” 1935) from the fortress to Interesnaya ploshchad’ (Thriller Square, the site of the execution):

Describing her meeting with Cincinnatus’s mother, Marthe (Cincinnatus’s wife in VN’s novel “Invitation to a Beheading,” 1935) speaks of herself in the third person and twice repeats the phrase tak smeshno (so funny):

- Что ж ты плачешь? - спросил Цинциннат, усмехнувшись.

In VN’s novel Priglashenie na kazn’ (“Invitation to a Beheading,” 1935) the girls throw bouquets into the carriage that brings Cincinnatus to the site of the execution and M’sieur Pierre (the executioner) shakes a finger:

Несколько девушек, без шляп, спеша и визжа, скупали все цветы у жирной цветочницы с бурыми грудями, и наиболее шустрая успела бросить букетом в экипаж, едва не сбив картуза с головы Романа. М-сье Пьер погрозил пальчиком.