Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

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), Gradus (Shade's murderer whose whole clan seems to have been in the liquor business) contended that the real origin of his name should be sought in the Russian word for grape, vinograd, to which a Latin suffix had adhered, making it Vinogradus (note to Line 17).

In VN’s novel Priglashenie na kazn’ (“Invitation to a Beheading,” 1935) Marthe, her moist lips half open, is aiming a thread at the eye of a needle:

In VN’s novel Priglashenie na kazn’ (“Invitation to a Beheading,”1935) there are several inscriptions on the wall of Cincinnatus’s cell:

"Бытие безымянное, существенность беспредметная..." - прочёл Цинциннат на стене там, где дверь, отпахиваясь, прикрывала стену.

"Вечные именинники, мне вас --" - написано было в другом месте.

In VN’s novel Priglashenie na kazn’ (“Invitation to a Beheading,” 1935) Cincinnatus’s mother wears uzhasnyi vaterpruf (an awful raincoat):

Что ж ты плачешь? - спросил Цинциннат, усмехнувшись.

Having learnt of the death sentence, Cincinnatus (the main character in VN’s novel Priglashenie na kazn’, 1935) writes down that he had premonitions of this finale:

Цинциннат написал: "и всё-таки я сравнительно. Ведь этот финал я предчувствовал этот финал".

Cincinnatus wrote: ‘In spite of everything I am comparatively. After all I had premonitions, had premonitions of this finale.’ (Chapter I)

 In VN’s novel Zashchita Luzhina (“The Luzhin Defense,” 1930) lombernyi stol (a card table) is mentioned:

At the beginning of VN’s novel Priglashenie na kazn’ (“Invitation to a Beheading,” 1935) kucha chereshen (a heap of cherries) is mentioned:

As she speaks to Cincinnatus, Cecilia C. (Cincinnatus’s mother) says that she lives in Doktorskoe (Doctorton) and mentions tryn-trava, an idiom rendered in Invitation to a Beheading (the English title of VN’s novel Priglashenie na kazn’, 1935) as “I take everything in my stride:”

In the first line of the "inverted" sonnet opening Zhizn’ Chernyshevskogo (“The Life of Chernyshevski”), Chapter Four of VN’s novel Dar (“The Gift,” 1937), Fyodor Godunov-Cherdyntsev (the narrator and main character in "The Gift") mentions potomok prosveshchyonnyi (an enlightened descendant):

In Cincinnatus’s cell there is a spider, official friend of the jailed:

Работая лапами, спустился на нитке паук с потолка, - официальный друг заключённых.

Feet working, a spider — official friend of the jailed — lowered itself on a thread from the ceiling. (Chapter One)

At the end of Byron’s poem The Prisoner of Chillon the hero says that he had made friendship with spiders: