Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

In March 1905 Demon Veen (in VN's novel Ada, 1969, Van's and Ada's father) perishes in a mysterious airplane disaster above the Pacific. A month before Demon's death Ada (now married to Andrey Vinelander) wrote a letter to Van telling him that they can meet in October:

Describing his reunion with Ada in December 1892, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions Ardis’ crisp bacon:

In his apologetic note to Lucette (in VN's novel Ada, 1969, Van's and Ada's half-sister) written after the dinner in ‘Ursus’ and debauch à trois in Van’s Manhattan flat Van says "we apollo" (meaning that he and Ada apologize for coaxing Lucette into their lovemaking):

Van walked over to a monastic lectern that he had acquired for writing in the vertical position of vertebrate thought and wrote what follows:

Poor L. 

In VN's novel Ada (1969) Demon Veen (Van's and Ada's father) learns about his children's affair by chance, thanks to Daniel Veen's odd Boschean death. On his way to Dan's lawyer Demon nearly runs into Mrs Arfour, a dentist's widow with a caterpillar dog:

The poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire (1962), John Shade lives in the frame house between Goldsworth and Wordsmith:

I cannot understand why from the lake

I could make out our front porch when I'd take

Lake Road to school, whilst now, although no tree

Has intervened, I look but fail to see

Even the roof. Maybe some quirk in space

Has caused a fold or furrow to displace

The fragile vista, the frame house between

In VN's novel Pale Fire (1962) the poet Shade's full name is John Francis Shade; the full name of Charles the Beloved (the last self-exiled king of Zembla) is Charles Xavier Vseslav. In James Joyce's novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) a portrait of saint Francis Xavier (a Navarrese cleric and missionary, 1506-52) pointing to his chest is mentioned:  

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 a conversation with him Shade mentioned certain trifles he did not forgive when grading his students' papers:

Describing his father's death in a mysterious airplane disaster above the Pacific, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Ada, 1969) mentions Furnished Space, l’espace meublé:

In the opening chapter of VN's novel Transparent Things (1972) the spectral narrators mention a hillside stone over which a multitude of small animals have scurried in the course of incalculable seasons:

Here's the person I want. Hullo, person! Doesn't hear me.

Describing his novel Letters from Terra, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions the poet Max Mispel who discerned in Van's novel the influence of Osberg (Spanish writer of pretentious fairy tales and mystico-allegoric anecdotes, highly esteemed by short-shift thesialists):