Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

The three main characters in VN’s novel Pale Fire (1962) are the poet Shade, his commentator Kinbote (who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) and his murderer Gradus. In Book III (1588) of his Essais Montaigne says that every place swarms with commentaries; of authors there is great scarcity:

The epigraph to VN’s novel Priglashenie na kazn’ (“Invitation to a Beheading,” 1935) is from Discours sur les ombres by the invented French thinker Pierre Delalande:

Comme un fou se croit Dieu

nous nous croyons mortels.

Delalande. Discours sur les ombres

In VN’s story Sovershenstvo (“Perfection,” 1932) Ivanov’s mind is preoccupied with unsolvable problems: How and where do chimney sweeps wash after work:

In VN’s story Sovershenstvo (“Perfection,” 1932) Ivanov (David’s tutor) tries to convince himself that his pupil is perfect:

According to Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Lolita, 1955), among the pseudonyms that he has toyed with before hitting on a particularly apt one was "Mesmer Mesmer:"

According to Kinbote (Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla), Gradus contended that the real origin of his name should be sought in the Russian word for grape, vinograd:

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), in police records Gradus also appears as Ravus, Ravenstone and d’Argus:

The epigraph to VN’s novel Pale Fire (1962) is from James Boswell’s biography of Samuel Johnson:

This reminds me of the ludicrous account he

gave Mr. Langston, of the despicable state of a

young gentleman of good family. 'Sir, when I

heard of him last, he was running about town

shooting cats.' And then in a sort of kindly

In VN’s novel Pale Fire (1962) Kinbote (Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) calls Izumrudov (one of the greater Shadows who visits Gradus in Nice) “the gay green vision:”

In Canto Two of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) speaks of his daughter and says that she twisted words:

                         She twisted words: pot, top
Spider, redips. And "powder" was "red wop."
She called you a didactic katydid.
She hardly ever smiled, and when she did,
It was a sign of pain. She'd criticize