Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

In VN’s novel Ada (1969) Van and Ada find out that they brother and sister thanks to Marina’s old herbarium that they discovered in the attic of Ardis Hall. In her herbarium Marina mentions Dr Lapiner, her and her sister’s physician whom Marina calls lapochka (darling):

In Canto Four of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962) mentions jazz and the white-hosed moron torturing a black bull, rayed with red, among the things that he loathes:

Now I shall speak of evil as none has

Spoken before. I loathe such things as jazz;

The white-hosed moron torturing a black

Bull, rayed with red; abstractist bric-a-brac;

Primitivist folk-masks; progressive schools;

Music in supermarkets; swimming pools;

Brutes, bores, class-conscious Philistines, Freud, Marx,

Describing his fatal conversation with his and Ada's father, Demon Veen, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Ada, 1969) says that all ends are banal:

In Paris Jakob Gradus (one of the three main characters in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962, Shade's murderer) visits Oswin Bretwit, the former Zemblan consul. According to Kinbote (Shade's mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla), the name Bretwit means Chess Intelligence:

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), Oswin Bretwit (the former Zemblan consul in Paris) was not exactly persona grata with the new regime:

On their way from Camp Q to The Enchanted Hunters (a hotel in Briceland where they spend their first night together) Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) tells Lolita that her sick mother is at the hospital near Lepingville:

“How’s Mother?” she asked dutifully.

Humbert Humbert's friend and chess partner at Beardsley, Gaston Godin (a character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) eventually gets involved in a sale histoire, in Naples of all places:

Describing his life with Valeria in Paris, Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) calls Colonel Maximovich (Valeria's lover) le gredin (the scoundrel):

Like her grandmother (Mary O'Reilly, 1806-50), Marina Durmanov (in VN's novel Ada, 1969, Van's, Ada's and Lucette's mother) likes to have her hair done in the open:

Describing the torments of poor mad Aqua (the twin sister of Van's, Ada's and Lucette's mother Marina), Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Ada, 1969) mentions the workshop of the red-shirted Yukonets and the kitchen of the red-kerchiefed Lyaskanka: