Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

After his father's sudden death Hugh Person (the main character in VN's novel Transparent Things, 1972) moves to Geneva, has homard à l'américaine for dinner and goes to find his first whore in a lane right behind his hotel: 

After the picnic on Ada's sixteenth birthday Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Ada, 1969) tells Ada (who repeated G. A. Vronsky's salacious joke): 'Vos "vyragences" sont assez lestes' (your expressions are rather free):

Lucette ran up to Van and, almost kneeling, cosily embraced her big cousin around the hips, and clung to him for a moment, ‘Come along,’ said Van, lifting her, ‘don’t forget your jersey, you can’t go naked.’

When Kim Beauharnais (in VN's novel Ada, 1969, a kitchen boy and photographer at Ardis whom Van blinds for spying on him and Ada and attempting to blackmail Ada) visits Ada at Ardis, he vaguely resembles a janizary in some exotic opera, stomping in to announce an invasion or an execution:

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), when Andronnikov and Niagarin (the two Soviet experts whom the new Zemblan government hired to find the crown jewels) sang beautiful sentimental military duets at eventide on the rampart, the sky turned away showing its ethereal vertebrae:

Line 681: gloomy Russians spied

One of the three blind characters in VN's novel Ada (1969), Spencer Muldoon was born eyeless:

A teasy problem demanded Dr Veen’s presence in England.

Describing the picnic on Ada's twelfth birthday, when he walks on his hands for the first time, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Ada, 1969) mentions King Wing (Demon's wrestling master) and Vekchelo, a professional maniambulist:

Describing Demon's affair with Marina, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Ada, 1969) mentions a Bohemian lady (Baron d'Onsky's mistress from whom Demon learns about Marina's infidelity):

At the end of her letter to Lolita Mona Dahl (in VN's novel Lolita, 1955, Lolita's best friend at Beardsley) sends her best regards to the Governor (i. e. Humbert Humbert):

In VN’s novel Ada (1969) Ada, showing to Van her larvarium, says: ‘Je raffole de tout ce qui rampe (I’m crazy about everything that crawls):’

‘And now,’ she said, and stopped, staring at him.

‘Yes?’ he said, ‘and now?’

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: