Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

At the dinner with Ada’s family in the Bellevue Hotel Yuzlik (the director of Don Juan’s Last Fling, a film in which Ada played the part of the gitanilla) tells Van that he is delighted and honored to dine with Vasco de Gama:

Yuzlik was dying to say something. Van yielded to the well-meaning automaton.

‘I’m delighted and honored to dine with Vasco de Gama,’ said Yuzlik holding up his glass in front of his handsome facial apparatus.

According to Kinbote (in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962, Shade’s commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla), in a theological dispute with him Shade said that the password was Pity:

In VN’s novel Ada (1969) Mademoiselle Larivière (Lucette’s governess) calls Blanche (a French handmaid at Ardis) ‘Cendrillon:’

Describing a party in “Ardis the Second,” Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions Doc Ecksreher (a play on X-rays):

In VN’s novel Ada (1969) Ada’s last letter to Van (in which she tells him that she will marry another man, if he spurns her) ends in the words Tvoya, tvoya, tvoya (thine):

On the eve of his duel with Tapper Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) remembers the morning of the day on which he left Ardis forever and mentally calls Blanche (a French handmaid at Ardis) “a fey character out of some Dormilona novel for servant maids:”

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), the maiden name of Shade’s mother was Caroline Lukin:

In the Kalugano hospital, where he recovers from the wound received in a pistol duel with Captain Tapper, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentally calls Ardis Hall (the estate of his uncle Daniel Veen) “le Château de la Flèche, Flesh Hall:”

According to Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969), his and Ada’s half-sister Lucette turned out to be the impeccable paranymph:

In VN’s novel Ada (1969) Violet Knox (old Van’s typist) is an enchanting English blonde with doll eyes, a velvet carnation and a tweed-cupped little rump: