Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

Describing the torments and suicide 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) says that Aqua's last note was signed My sister's sister who teper' iz ada (now is out of hell):

Her last note, found on her and addressed to her husband and son, might have come from the sanest person on this or that earth.

In Canto Three of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) describes IPH (a lay Institute of Preparation for the Hereafter) and mentions “Terra the Fair, an orbicle of jasp:”

While snubbing gods, including the big G,

Iph borrowed some peripheral debris

From mystic visions; and it offered tips

(The amber spectacles for life's eclipse) -

How not to panic when you're made a ghost:

Describing big Frank (the robust trucker and beau of Mrs. Hays, the widow who runs the Silver Spur Court in Elphinstone, a small town in the Rocky Mountains where Lolita falls ill and is hospitalized on June 28, 1949), Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) compares a girl charmingly tattoed on Frank's maimed hand to some sly fairy:

I heard the sound of whistling lips nearing the half-opened door of my cabin, and then a thump upon it.

Describing Lolita's illness and hospitalization in Elphinstone (a small town in the Rocky Mountains), Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) mentions Dr. Blue (the chief physician at the Elphinstone hospital):

Describing Lolita's illness and hospitalization in Elphinstone (a small town in the Rocky Mountains), Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) mentions a heterosexual Erlkönig in pursuit:

In VN’s novel Lolita (1955) the number 342 reappears three times. 342 Lawn Street is the address of the Haze house in Ramsdale (a small town in New England). 342 is Humbert Humbert's and Lolita's room in The Enchanted Hunters (a hotel in Briceland where Humbert Humbert and Lolita spend their first night together).

The narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita (1955), Humbert Humbert is tempted to drown his wife Charlotte (Lolita's mother who dies under the wheels of a truck) in Hourglass Lake:

There was a woodlake (Hourglass Lake - not as I had thought it was spelled) a few miles from Ramsdale, and there was one week of great heat at the end of July when we drove there daily. I am now obliged to describe in some tedious detail our last swim there together, one tropical Tuesday morning.

In VN's novel Lolita (1955) the list of Lolita's classmates at the Ramsdale school includes Stella Fantasia (adorable Stella, who has let strangers touch her):

Describing his attempt to find a photograph of Lolita’s abductor in an old issue of the Briceland Gazette, Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Lolita, 1955) quotes the beginning of Verlaine's sonnet Nevermore (1866), "Souvenir, souvenir, que me veux-tu? (Remembrance, remembrance, what do you want of me?):"

VN's novel Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle (1969) begins with a prefatory family tree (here it is in Italian):