Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

According to Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955), as a young man in Paris he discussed Soviet movies with expatriates:

In VN's novel Lolita (1955) Clare Quilty (a fashionable playwright and pornographer whom Humbert murders for kidnapping Lolita) tells Humbert that he has been called the American Maeterlinck:

VN's novel Lolita (1955) begins and ends with its title character's name:

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.

She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita. 

Describing his departure from Manhattan, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) calls his father's mistress "a temporary Tamara" and mentions her Caucasian perfume, Granial Maza:

As a boy of ten, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) puzzled out the exaggerated but, on the whole, complimentary allusions to his father’s volitations and loves in another life in Lermontov’s diamond-faceted tetrameters:

In Canto One of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962) speaks of his dead parents and mentions a preterist (one who collects cold nests):

I was an infant when my parents died.
They both were ornithologists. I've tried
So often to evoke them that today
I have a thousand parents. Sadly they
Dissolve in their own virtues and recede,
But certain words, chance words I hear or read,
Such as "bad heart" always to him refer,
And "cancer of the pancreas" to her.

A preterist: one who collects cold nests. (ll. 71-79)

Describing his rented house, 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 damask paperknife (described as "one ancient dagger brought by Mrs. Goldsworth's father from the Orient"):

Describing his and Ada's favorite house, the château recently built in Ex, in the Swiss Alps, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions the famous glittering air, le cristal d’Ex:

Describing his meetings with Ada (now married to Andrey Vinelander) in Mont Roux, in October 1905, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) compares the morning to a crinolined prude and mentions Desdemonia (the planet where artists are the only gods):

On the day preceding Ada's sixteenth birthday (July 21, 1888) Greg Erminin (in VN's novel Ada, 1969, Grace's twin brother) gives Ada a little camel of yellow ivory carved in Kiev, five centuries ago, in the days of Timur and Nabok: