Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

When Charles the Beloved (the last self-exiled King of Zembla) visits his wife, Queen Disa, at her Mediterranean villa, he brings her a bouquet of flowers-of-the-gods:

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) quotes a Zemblan saying in which a beautiful woman is compared to a compass rose:

In his apology of suicide 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 cell in the luminous waffle, room 1915 or 1959:

A son of Colonel Peter Gusev (King Alfin’s ‘aerial adjutant’), Oleg Gusev (Prince Charles’ beloved playmate) is Duke of Rahl:

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), young Prince Charles and his playmate Oleg were handsome, long-legged specimens of Varangian boyhood:

Aсcording to M'sieur Pierre, the executioner in VN’s novel Priglashenie na kazn’ (“Invitation to a Beheading,” 1935), he is vyshnegradets (an Elderburian):

In his essay The Art of Literature and Commonsense (1941) VN says that the Russian language supplies definitions for two types or stages of inspiration, vostorg and vdokhnovenie:

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), Samuel Shade (the poet’s father) had studied medicine in his youth and was vice-president of a firm of surgical instruments in Exton:

According to Professor Hurley, the chief passion of Samuel Shade (the poet’s father in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) was the study of the feathered tribe:

In his Foreword and 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 Professor Hurley, the fine administrator and inept scholar who since 1957 headed the English Department of Wordsmith College: