Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

Describing Lolita's illness and hospitalization in Elphinstone (a small town in the Rocky Mountains), Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) mentions a heterosexual Erlkönig in pursuit:

In VN’s novel Lolita (1955) the number 342 reappears three times. 342 Lawn Street is the address of the Haze house in Ramsdale (a small town in New England). 342 is Humbert Humbert's and Lolita's room in The Enchanted Hunters (a hotel in Briceland where Humbert Humbert and Lolita spend their first night together).

The narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita (1955), Humbert Humbert is tempted to drown his wife Charlotte (Lolita's mother who dies under the wheels of a truck) in Hourglass Lake:

There was a woodlake (Hourglass Lake - not as I had thought it was spelled) a few miles from Ramsdale, and there was one week of great heat at the end of July when we drove there daily. I am now obliged to describe in some tedious detail our last swim there together, one tropical Tuesday morning.

In VN's novel Lolita (1955) the list of Lolita's classmates at the Ramsdale school includes Stella Fantasia (adorable Stella, who has let strangers touch her):

Describing his attempt to find a photograph of Lolita’s abductor in an old issue of the Briceland Gazette, Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Lolita, 1955) quotes the beginning of Verlaine's sonnet Nevermore (1866), "Souvenir, souvenir, que me veux-tu? (Remembrance, remembrance, what do you want of me?):"

VN's novel Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle (1969) begins with a prefatory family tree (here it is in Italian):

According to Ada, Demon Veen (in VN’s novel Ada, 1969, Van’s and Ada’s father who in March 1905 perishes in a mysterious airplane disaster above the Pacific) called Dorothy Vinelander (Ada’s sister-in-law) l'impayable ("priceless for impudence and absurdity") Dorothy:

‘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.’

The characters in VN's novel Lolita (1955) include Charlotte Haze, née Becker, Lolita's mother whom Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character) marries in order to get access to her daughter. Humbert calls his late wife (who died under the wheels of a truck) "adult Lotte:"

Describing his attempt to find a photograph of Lolita’s abductor in an old issue of the Briceland Gazette, Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Lolita, 1955) mentions Dunkerque (Dunkirk, "church in the dunes"), an ancient fishing village (now a small coastal town) in northern France:

In the Russian Lolita (1967) Gumbert Gumbert (Humbert Humbert in Russian spelling) calls Clare Quilty (a playwright and pornographer whom Gumbert murders for abducting Lolita from the Elphinstone hospital) Klariy Novus: