Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

At the end of VN’s novel Transparent Things (1972) Hugh Person dies in a hotel fire. In his poem Dvenadtsat’ (“The Twelve,” 1918) Alexander Blok mentions mirovoy pozhar (a worldwide conflagration):

Мы на горе всем буржуям
Мировой пожар раздуем,
Мировой пожар в крови —
Господи, благослови!

The main character in VN’s play Izobretenie Val’sa (“The Waltz Invention,” 1938), Salvator Waltz calls himself razrushitel’ (a destroyer). According to Waltz, he can destroy the world in six days:

Привыкнув к мысли, простой, как азбука, что я могу строптивый мир в шесть суток изничтожить, всяк волен жить как хочет, -- ибо круг описан, вы -- внутри, и там просторно, там можете свободно предаваться труду, игре, поэзии, науке... (Act Two)

In VN's play Izobretenie Val'sa ("The Waltz Invention," 1938) Salvator Waltz plans to move to the island of Palmera and asks the architect to build for him a fairy-tale palace in ten days: 

Гриб. Видите ли, ваше... ваше сиятельство, я, собственно, архитектор.

Вальс. А... так бы сразу и сказали. Глупое недоразумение. Мне от него захотелось есть. Отлично. Вам уже сообщили, что мне нужно?

Гриб. Вам нужен дворец.

Describing his meeting with Lucette (Van’s and Ada’s half-sister) in Paris, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions Vivian Vale’s golden veils and rue des Jeunes Martyres:

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), the surname Lukin comes from Luke:

At the end of his Commentary 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) quotes a Zemblan saying that he heard from his nurse:

In VN’s novel Ada (1969) poor mad Aqua (the twin sister of Van’s, Ada’s and Lucette’s mother Marina) imagined that she could understand the language of her namesake, water:

In his Commentary 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 his uncle Conmal, Duke of Aros, who translated the complete works of Shakespeare into Zemblan:

In his Foreword 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) says that there exist friendships which develop their own inner duration, their own eons of transparent time:

Describing Shade’s murder by Gradus, 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 inexhaustible lava in Gradus’ bowels: