Vladimir Nabokov

Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

Description

Please read Alexey Sklyarenko's annotations on Pale FireAda and other Nabokov works here.

By Alexey Sklyarenko, 8 February, 2025

According to Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969), Marina’s affair with Demon Veen (Van’s and Ada’s father) started on January 5, 1868:


Marina’s affair with Demon Veen started on his, her, and Daniel Veen’s birthday, January 5, 1868, when she was twenty-four and both Veens thirty.

By Alexey Sklyarenko, 6 February, 2025

After the dinner in ‘Ursus’ (the best Franco-Estotian restaurant in Manhattan Major) with Ada and Lucette Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Ada, 1969) wants to learn from Lucette (Van's and Ada's half-sister) the name of Ada's fiancé and finds her in the process of slipping on her pale green nightdress over her head:

 

By Alexey Sklyarenko, 5 February, 2025

At the end of his poem (and life) John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) says that he understands existence only through his art:

 

Maybe my sensual love for the consonne

D'appui, Echo's fey child, is based upon

A feeling of fantastically planned,

Richly rhymed life.

By Alexey Sklyarenko, 4 February, 2025

In Canto Three of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) describes IPH (a lay
Institute of Preparation for the Hereafter) and mentions le grand néant (the great nothing):

 

Nor can one help the exile, the old man

Dying in a motel, with the loud fan

Revolving in the torrid prairie night

And, from the outside, bits of colored light

Reaching his bed like dark hands from the past

He suffocates and conjures in two tongues

By Alexey Sklyarenko, 3 February, 2025

The characters in VN's novel Bend Sinister (1947) include the philosopher Adam Krug and his friend Ember, the Shakespeare scholar and translator. Ember (the name means in Hungarian "human being") is the son of a Persian merchant:

 

But enough of this, let us hear Ember's rendering of some famous lines:

Ubit' il' ne ubit'? Vot est' oprosen.

Vto bude edler: v rasume tzerpieren

Ogneprashchi i strely zlovo roka –