Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

At the beginning of VN's novel Ada (1969), Van Veen (the narrator and main character) mentions the Severn Tories (Severnïya Territorii), that tesselated protectorate still lovingly called ‘Russian’ Estoty, which commingles, granoblastically and organically, with ‘Russian’ Canady, otherwise ‘French’ Estoty:

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 a Phree Pharmacy that Aqua, in her erratic student years, organized in Belokonsk (on Demonia, Earth's twin planet also known as Antiterra, the Russian twin of ‘Whitehorse,’ a city in N.W. Canada) with Milton Abraham’s invaluable help:

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 Queen Blenda, the mother of Charles the Beloved:

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 his thumb to the grocer's son:

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;

The middle fellow, a tall priest I knew;

The feminine fourth finger, an old flirt;

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) says that the poet's mother was born Caroline Lukin:

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 calls IPH "a grave in Reason's early spring:"

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

The grand potato. I.P.H., a lay

Institute (I) of Preparation (P)

For the Hereafter (H), or If, as we

Called it - big if! - engaged me for one term

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) describes his rented house and mentions Professor C.’s ultramodern villa from whose terrace one can glimpse to the south the larger and sadder of the three conjoined lakes called Omega, Ozero, and Zero:

One of the three main characters in VN’s novel Pale Fire (1962), Professor Kinbote (Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) is the author of a remarkable book on surnames. Describing Gradus's visit to Oswin Bretwit (the former Zemblan consul in Paris) on July 7, 1959, Kinbote points out that the name Bretwit means Chess Intelligence:

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). Visiting Lolita at the hospital, Humbert Humbert brings her, among other books, The History of Dancing and The Russian Ballet:

According to John Ray, Jr. (in VN's novel Lolita, 1955, the author of the foreword to Humbert Humbert's manuscript), Mrs. “Richard F. Schiller” (Lolita's married name) died in childbed, giving birth to a stillborn girl, on Christmas Day 1952, in Gray Star, a settlement in the remotest Northwest: