Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

In his farewell letter to Marina (in VN’s novel Ada, 1969, Van's, Ada's and Lucette's mother) Demon Veen (Van’s and Ada’s father) mentions the automatic dorophone:

The action in VN's novel Ada (1969) takes place on Demonia, Earth's twin planet also known as Antiterra. According to Van Veen (the narrator and main character in Ada), by the L disaster (that happened on Demonia in the beau milieu of the 19th century) he does not mean Elevated:

According to Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Lolita, 1955), it took him fifty-six days (eight weeks) to write Lolita:

In Canto One of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) describes his childhood and, at the end of the Canto, mentions his fainting fits:

I was the shadow of the waxwing slain

By feigned remoteness in the windowpane.

I had a brain, five senses (one unique);

But otherwise I was a cloutish freak.

In sleeping dreams I played with other chaps

But really envied nothing - save perhaps

The miracle of a lemniscate left

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), the surname Lukin comes from Luke:

In Canto Three of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) describes his heart attack and mentions his wife’s portrait by Lang:

It was a year of Tempests: Hurricane
Lolita swept from Florida to Maine.
Mars glowed. Shahs married. Gloomy Russians spied.
Lang made your portrait. And one night I died. (ll. 679-682)

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 good capercaillie and woodcock shooting:

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), the King escaped from Zembla clad in bright red clothes. A policeman in Blawick asks the King (whom the policeman mistakes for an impostor impersonating the King) to take off his red fufa and red cap:

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 a catalogue raisonné of the desk's meager contents:

In Canto Three of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) mentions some kind of link-and-bobolink that he could find in life:

Life Everlasting – based on a misprint!

I mused as I drove homeward: take the hint,

And stop investigating my abyss?

But all at once it dawned on me that this

Was the real point, the contrapuntal theme;

Just this: not text, but texture; not the dream