Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

Describing the death of King Alfin (the father of Charles the Beloved), 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) calls a very special monoplane, Blenda IV, built for King Alfin by his constant "aerial adjutant," Colonel Peter Gusev, a "bird of doom:"

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), superstitiously he cannot write out the odd dark word employed by his black gardener (Balthasar, Prince of Loam, as Kinbote dubbed him) with regard to Shade's murderer:

Line 998: Some neighbor's gardener

At the beginning (and then again in Lines 131-132) of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) compares himself to the shadow of the waxwing:

I was the shadow of the waxwing slain

By the false azure in the windowpane;

I was the smudge of ashen fluff - and I

Lived on, flew on, in the reflected sky. (ll. 1-4)

I was the shadow of the waxwing slain 

In his foreword 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 a person (Shade's former literary agent) who wondered with a sneer if Mrs. Shade's tremulous signature under her contract with Kinbote might not have been penned "in some peculiar kind of red ink:"

In his commentary and index 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 Sudarg of Bokay, a mirror maker of genius:

Describing IPH (a lay Institute of Preparation for the Hereafter) in Canto Three of his poem, John Shade (the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962) mentions Buddhism, a religion that took root at IPH:

In VN's novel Ada (1969), the governess of Van's and Ada's half-sister Lucette, Mlle Larivière writes fiction under the penname Guillaume de Monparnasse:

In Canto Two of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962) speaks of his dead daughter (whose name he never mentions) and says: 

I think she always nursed a small mad hope. (Line 383)

Die Hoffnung ("The Hope," 1900) is a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke (an Austrian poet, 1875-1926):

Stille Stunden gibt's, da ranken
leicht sich um des Lebens Baum
Wünsche, Hoffnungen, Gedanken,
Bild um Bild und Traum um Traum.

In Canto One of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962) speaks of his childhood and says that his God died young:

My God died young. Theolatry I found

Degrading, and its premises, unsound.

No free man needs a God; but was I free?

How fully I felt nature glued to me

And how my childish palate loved the taste

Half-fish, half-honey, of that golden paste!

My picture book was at an early age

The painted parchment papering our cage:

Mauve rings around the moon; blood-orange sun

In VN's novel Pale Fire (1962), Shade's poem is almost finished when the author is killed by Gradus. Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla, Kinbote believes that, to be completed, Shade’s poem needs but one line (Line 1000, identical to Line 1: “I was the shadow of the waxwing slain”). But it seems that, like some sonnets, Shade's poem also needs a coda (Line 1001: “By its own double in the windowpane”).