Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

At the beginning of Ada’s last chapter Van Veen (the narrator and main character in Ada, 1969) mentions Nirvana (in Hinduism and Buddhism, the highest state that someone can attain, a state of enlightenment, meaning a person's individual desires and suffering go away):

At the patio party in "Ardis the Second" G. A. Vronsky’s joke about a telegraph pole causes Marina (Van’s, Ada’s and Lucette’s mother who had a secret fondness for salty jokes) to collapse in Ada-like ripples of rolling laughter (pokativshis’ so smehu vrode Adï):

And now hairy Pedro hoisted himself onto the brink and began to flirt with the miserable girl (his banal attentions were, really, the least of her troubles).

During Van’s first tea party at Ardis Marina (in VN’s novel Ada, 1969, Van’s, Ada’s and Lucette’s mother) says that, as a girl, she used to love history:

At the patio party in "Ardis the Second" G. A. Vronsky (the movie man who makes a film of Mlle Larivière's novel Les Enfants Maudits) mentions a telegraph pole:

And now hairy Pedro hoisted himself onto the brink and began to flirt with the miserable girl (his banal attentions were, really, the least of her troubles).

‘Your leetle aperture must be raccommodated,’ he said.

At the beginning of VN’s novel Ada (1969) Van Veen (the narrator and main character) mentions Mount Tabor Ltd., the publishing house that brought out an English translation of Tolstoy’s novel Anna Karenin (1875-77):

Describing the difference between Terra and Antiterra (aka Demonia, Earth’s twin planet on which Ada is set), Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions the New Believers:

When Van and Ada look at the photographs in Kim Beauharnais’ album, Ada mentions their red boat Souvenance visible through the rushes:

In an equally casual tone of voice Van said: ‘Darling, you smoke too much, my belly is covered with your ashes. I suppose Bouteillan knows Professor Beauharnais’s exact address in the Athens of Graphic Arts.’

Describing his performance in variety shows as Mascodagama, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions a clash of cymbals in the orchestra:

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) mentions an especially brilliant impersonator of the King, the tennis ace Julius Steinmann:

Describing the family dinner in “Ardis the Second,” Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions the great bronze bowl with carved-looking Calville apples and elongated Persty grapes: