Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

Describing the last moments of Shade’s life, 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 miracle of a few written signs being able to contain immortal imagery, involutions of thought, new worlds with live people, speaking, weeping, laughing:

In Canto Three of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) describes his heart attack and calls 1958 “a year of Tempests” and mentions Mars (in the Solar System, the fourth planet from the Sun):

In Canto Three of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) speaks of IPH (a lay Institute of Preparation for the Hereafter) and mentions “Terra the Fair, an orbicle of jasp:”

While snubbing gods, including the big G,

Iph borrowed some peripheral debris

From mystic visions; and it offered tips

(The amber spectacles for life's eclipse) -

How not to panic when you're made a ghost:

In his Foreword 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) mentions a certain ferocious lady at whose club he had refused to speak on the subject of "The Hally Valley:"

In VN’s novel Transparent Things (1972) Hugh Person strangles his wife Armande in his sleep, as he dreams of Julia Moore (Hugh's former mistress whom in his dream he struggles to save from falling to her death):

In VN's novel Ada (1969) Ada calls the Night of the Burning Barn (when Van and Ada make love for the first time) apofeoz (the apotheosis) of "Ardis the First:"

In October 1905, after the twelve-year-long separation, Van and Ada (now married to Andrey Vinelander) meet again in Mont Roux, and Ada tells Van: "Sbrit’ usï! (that mustache must go):"

Describing the death of Marina (Van's, Ada's and Lucette's mother who in 1900 dies of cancer and whose body is burnt, according to her instructions), Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions numbers and rows and series — the nightmare and malediction harrowing pure thought and pure time:

According to Otar (in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962, a pleasant and cultured adeling mentioned by Kinbote in his commentary to Shade's poem), Fleur de Fyler's fragile ankles, which she placed very close together in her dainty and wavy walk, were the "careful jewels" in Arnor's poem about a miragarl ("mirage girl"), for which "a dream king in the sandy wastes of time would give three hundred camels and three fountains:"

Describing the death of Queen Blenda (the mother of Charles the Beloved), 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 King's pal Otar, a pleasant and cultured adeling with a tremendous nose and sparse hair: