Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

The surname of the protagonist of VN's first novel Mashenka ("Mary," 1926), Lev Glebovich Ganin, seems to hint at Ganina Yama (Ganya's Pit). After the execution of the imperial Russian family on July 17, 1918, in the basement of the Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg (a city on the Iset River between the Volga-Ural region and Siberia), the bodies were secretly transported to Ganina Yama (Ganya's Pit) in the woods near the city and thrown into the pit.

At the beginning (and then again in Lines 131-132) of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) compares himself to the shadow of the waxwing:

I was the shadow of the waxwing slain

By the false azure in the windowpane;

I was the smudge of ashen fluff - and I

Lived on, flew on, in the reflected sky. (ll. 1-4)

I was the shadow of the waxwing slain 

Describing his meeting with Cordula Tobak (Van's former mistress, born de Prey) in Paris (a city also known as Lute on Demonia, Earth's twin planet also known as Antiterra) at the end of May or beginning of June 1901 followed by love-making in a drab little hotel, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) compares Cordula to a ballerina:

Describing his first road trip with Lolita across the USA, Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) mentions R. L. Stevenson’s footprint on an extinct volcano:

On Wednesday, 24 September 1952, Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Lolita, 1955) revisits Ramsdale:

The characters in VN's novel Lolita (1955) include Frederick Beale, Jr., the driver of the Packard that kills Charlotte (Lolita's mother whom Humbert Humbert married in order to get access to her daughter):

At the end of his manuscript Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Lolita, 1955) says that he started, fifty-six days ago, to write Lolita first in the psychopathic ward for observation and then in this well-heated, albeit tombal, seclusion.

At the lunch with Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Ada, 1969) in Alphonse Four (Lucette's Paris hotel) Lucette (Van's and Ada's half-sister) compares herself to Dolores who says (apparently, in Osberg's novel The Gitanilla) that she is "only a picture painted on air:"

She wanted fish, he stuck to cold cuts and salad.

‘You know whom I ran into this morning? Good old Greg Erminin. It was he who told me you were around. His wife est un peu snob, what?’

In his commentary and index 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 the society sculptor and poet Arnor:

During her second road trip with Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) across the USA, Lolita falls ill and on Tuesday, June 28, 1949, is hospitalized in Elphinstone (a small town in the Rocky Mountains). Describing Lolita's hospitalization, Humbert Humbert mentions Dr Blue (the chief physician at the Elphinstone hospital):