Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

In Canto One of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962) Shade describes a winter evening and mentions the gradual and dual blue: 

Retake the falling snow: each drifting flake

Shapeless and slow, unsteady and opaque,

A dull dark white against the day's pale white

And abstract larches in the neutral light.

And then the gradual and dual blue

As night unites the viewer and the view,

And in the morning, diamonds of frost

Express amazement: Whose spurred feet have crossed

The narrator and main character in VN’s novel Lolita (1955), Humbert Humbert proposes “nymphets” as a word for sexually attractive little girls:

Now I wish to introduce the following idea. Between the age limits of nine and fourteen there occur maidens who, to certain bewitched travelers, twice or many times older than they, reveal their true nature which is not human, but nymphic (that is, demoniac); and these chosen creatures I propose to designate as “nymphets.” (1.5)

After murdering Clare Quilty (a playwright and pornographer who abducted Lolita from the Elphinstone hospital), Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Lolita, 1955) wonders if some surgeon of genius might not alter his own career, and perhaps the whole destiny of mankind, by reviving quilted Quilty, Clare Obscure:

Describing his rented house, 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 black cat that came with the house:

During her second road trip with Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) across the USA, Lolita falls ill and on Tuesday, 28 June 1949, is hospitalized in Elphinstone (a small town in the Rocky Mountains). Describing Lolita's hospitalization and his week-long stay at Silver Spur Court, Elphinstone, Humbert Humbert mentions some “serum” (sparrow’s sperm or dugong’s dung) to which Lolita splendidly reacted and a sparrow that perched on the saddle of Mrs. Hays' bicycle:

A character 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 Humbert (the narrator and main character) that he intends retiring to England or Florence forever:

The action in VN's novel Ada (1969) takes place on Demonia, Earth's twin planet also known as Antiterra. On Demonia, electricity (the unmentionable magnetic power) was banned after the L disaster in the beau milieu of the 19th century:

Describing the beginning of his life-long romance with Ada, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions guba, the Russian word for lip, district court, and arctic gulf:

The hugest dictionary in the library said under Lip: ‘Either of a pair of fleshy folds surrounding an orifice.’

In Canto One of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962) says that a thousand years ago five minutes were equal to forty ounces of fine sand:

And there's the wall of sound: the nightly wall

Raised by a trillion crickets in the fall.

Impenetrable! Halfway up the hill

I'd pause in thrall of their delirious trill.

That's Dr. Sutton's light. That's the Great Bear.

A thousand years ago five minutes were

Equal to forty ounces of fine sand.

In his treatise The Texture of Time (1924) Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) calls Lucette (Van's and Ada's half-sister who committed suicide by jumping from Admiral Tobakoff into the Atlantic) "a mermaid in the groves of Atlantis:"