Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

Describing his childhood, Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) mentions the splendid Hotel Mirana that revolved around him as a kind of private universe, a whitewashed cosmos within the blue greater one that blazed outside:

In VN's novel Lolita (1955) the list of Lolita's classmates in Ramsdale school includes Stella Fantasia (adorable Stella who has let strangers touch her). On 24 September 1952 (the day on which Humbert Humbert revisits Ramsdale), Murphy marries Fantasia:

One of the chapters in VN's novel Lolita (1955) ends in the sentence "But there was no Charlotte in the living room:"

Describing the king's arrival in America, 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) says that Sylvia O'Donnell inquired about a notorious actress with whom her son (Odon, the world-famous actor and Zemblan patriot who helps the king to escape from Zembla) was said to be living in sin: 

When Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) visits Lolita (now married to Dick Schiller and big with child) in Coalmont, she tells him about her life after her escape from the Elphinstone hospital with Clare Quilty (a playwright and pornographer) and calls Elphinstone (a small town in the Rockies) "Elephant:"

“Sit down,” she said, audibly striking her flanks with her palms. I relapsed into the black rocker.

“So you betrayed me? Where did you go? Where is he now?”

The characters in VN's novel Lolita (1955) include Mona Dahl, Lolita's best friend and confidant at Beardsley:

According to John Ray, Jr. (a character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955, the author of the Foreword to Humbert Humbert's manuscript), the manuscript that came to his hands was subtitled "the Confession of a White Widowed Male:"  

At the beginning of his manuscript Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) mentions the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth: 

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. (1.1)

In his Foreword to Humbert Humbert's manuscript John Ray, Jr. (a character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) mentions his modest work (“Do the Senses make Sense?”) wherein certain morbid states and perversions had been discussed:

In his Foreword to Humbert Humbert's manuscript John Ray, Jr. (a character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) mentions his colleague, Dr. Blanche Schwarzmann: