Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

Telling Van about strange visitors at the Agavia Ranch (where she lives with her husband Andrey Vinelander), Ada uses the phrase vsyu kompaniyu (the entire company):

‘My upper-lip space feels indecently naked.’ (He had shaved his mustache off with howls of pain in her presence). ‘And I cannot keep sucking in my belly all the time.’

According to Demon Veen (in VN’s novel Ada, 1969, Van’s and Ada’s father), the sweetest word in the language rhymes with "billiard:"

According to Ada, at Marina’s funeral Demon Veen (in VN’s novel Ada, 1969, Van’s and Ada’s father) and d’Onsky’s son, a person with only one arm, wept comme des fontaines:

Describing his imaginary duel with Andrey Vinelander (Ada’s husband), Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) calls his adversary “Mr Cutaway:”

Van kissed her leaf-cold hand and, letting the Bellevue worry about his car, letting all Swans worry about his effects and Mme Scarlet worry about Eveline’s skin trouble, he walked some ten kilometers along soggy roads to Rennaz and thence flew to Nice, Biskra, the Cape, Nairobi, the Basset range —

Describing Hugh’s and Armande’s last evening together, the anonymous narrators of VN’s novel Transparent Things (1972) mention a heavy piece of inscrutable sculpture catalogued as "Pauline anide:"

We are back in New York and this is their last evening together.

In VN’s novel Ada (1969) Van Veen (the narrator and main character) learns card tricks from Mr Plunkett (a reformed card-sharper):

According to Ada (the title character of a novel, 1969, by VN), she could dissect a koala but not its baby:

He discovered her hands (forget that nail-biting business). The pathos of the carpus, the grace of the phalanges demanding helpless genuflections, a mist of brimming tears, agonies of unresolvable adoration. He touched her wrist, like a dying doctor. A quiet madman, he caressed the parallel strokes of the delicate down shading the brunette’s forearm. He went back to her knuckles. Fingers, please.

In Canto Four of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) says that the title of his first book (free verse) was Dim Gulf:

Dim Gulf was my first book (free verse); Night Rote

Came next; then Hebe's Cup, my final float

In that damp carnival, for now I term

Everything "Poems," and no longer squirm.

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), on his deathbed Conmal (the King’s uncle, Zemblan translator of Shakespeare) called his nephew “Karlik:”

Describing an extraordinary session of the Extremist government, 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 copy of a French newspaper with the headline: L'EX-ROI DE ZEMBLA EST-IL À PARIS?: