Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

In VN’s novel Lolita (1955) Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character) mentions deified Harold Haze (Lolita’s father):

Describing the suicide of his and Ada’s half-sister Lucette, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) says that death is only a more complete assortment of the infinite fractions of solitude:

At the picnic on Ada’s twelfth birthday Marina (in VN’s novel Ada, 1969, Van’s, Ada’s and Lucette’s mother) calls her husband Daniel Veen bednyachok (poor, poor little man) and remarks that Ada’s cruelty is sometimes satanic:

Describing his affair with Dolly von Borg, Vadim Vadimovich (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Look at the Harlequins!, 1974) mentions “Casanovia of all places:”

As she speaks to Van, Ada mentions a delicious spazmochka experienced by Lucette (Van’s and Ada’s half-sister):

Van walked over to a monastic lectern that he had acquired for writing in the vertical position of vertebrate thought and wrote what follows:

Poor L.

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:"

In Cano One of his poem Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) mentions the Canadian maid and her niece Adèle who had seen the Pope:

A preterist: one who collects cold nests.
Here was my bedroom, now reserved for guests.
Here, tucked away by the Canadian maid,
I listened to the buzz downstairs and prayed
For everybody to be always well,
Uncles and aunts, the maid, her niece Adèle,
Who'd seen the Pope, people in books, and God. (79-85)

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), his landlord, Judge Goldsworth, is an authority on Roman law (note to Lines 47-48). In Chekhov’s story Ionych (1898) Ivan Petrovich Turkin (a jovial punster) mentions rimskoe pravo (Roman law) and his wife Vera Iosifovna tells Dr. Startsev that her husband is an Othello:

Ernest Metzger entitled his elegant little article “Vladimir Nabokov Commits Stillicide.” Actually, it is Kinbote (Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) who “commits stillicide” in Pale Fire. “Stilettos of a frozen stillicide” in Canto One of Shade’s poem bring to mind “a Danish stiletto” mentioned by Kinbote in his Index:

After Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) possessed her for the first time, Cordula de Prey mentions un petit enfantôme:

Cordula told Edmond: ‘Arrêtez près de what’s-it-called, yes, Albion, le store pour messieurs, in Luga’; and as peeved Van remonstrated: ‘You can’t go back to civilization in pajamas,’ she said firmly. ‘I shall buy you some clothes, while Edmond has a mug of coffee.’