Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

At the beginning of Canto Three of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962) says that IPH (a lay Institute of Preparation for the Hereafter) engaged him for one term to speak on death ("to lecture on the Worm," wrote President McAber):

L'if, lifeless tree! Your great Maybe, Rabelais:

In VN's novel Lolita (1955), Clare Quilty (a playwright and pornographer whom Humbert Humbert murders for abducting Lolita from the Elphinstone hospital) tells Humbert that he has been called the American Maeterlinck:

In VN's novel Ada (1969), the twin sisters Aqua and Marina Durmanov are the daughters of General Ivan Durmanov, Commander of Yukon Fortress and peaceful country gentleman, with lands in the Severn Tories (Severnïya Territorii):

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 the poet's mother, née Caroline Lukin:

At the end of his short poem “The Nature of Electricity” cited by Kinbote in his commentary to Shade's poem John Shade (the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962) mentions "the torments of a Tamerlane, the roar of tyrants torn in hell:"

The light never came back but it gleams again in a short poem "The Nature of Electricity", which John Shade had sent to the New York magazine The Beau and the Butterfly, some time in 1958, but which appeared only after his death: 

In Canto Two of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962) describes the paring of his fingernails and compares the feminine fourth finger to an old flirt to whose skirt little pinky is clinging:

The little scissors I am holding are 

A dazzling synthesis of sun and star. 

I stand before the window and I pare 

My fingernails and vaguely am aware 

Of certain flinching likenesses: the thumb, 

Our grocer's son; the index, lean and glum 

College astronomer Starover Blue; 

In VN's novel Pale Fire (1962), Shade’s birthday, July 5, is also Kinbote’s and Gradus’ birthday. While the poet Shade was born in 1898, his commentator Kinbote (who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) and his murderer Gradus were born in 1915. Shade is thus seventeen years Kinbote's and Gradus' senior. In a letter of Oct.

The narrator and main character in VN's novel Ada (1969), Van Veen is the author (as Voltemand) of Letters from Terra, a philosophical novel (1891). In 1940 Van's novel was made into a film by Victor Vitry, a brilliant French director:

Describing the king's escape from Zembla, 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 a man with his crutches beside him reading the Onhava Post on a sidewalk bench:

In VN's novel Pale Fire (1962), Shade’s birthday, July 5, is also Kinbote’s and Gradus’ birthday. While the poet Shade was born in 1898, his commentator Kinbote (who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) and his murderer Gradus were born in 1915. Shade is thus seventeen years Kinbote's and Gradus' senior. In a letter of Oct. 31, 1838 (Dostoevski's seventeenth birthday), to his brother Fyodor Dostoevski twice repeats the word gradus (degree in Russian).