Vladimir Nabokov

Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

Description

Please read Alexey Sklyarenko's annotations on Pale FireAda and other Nabokov works here.

By Alexey Sklyarenko , 15 May, 2025

On their way from Camp Q to The Enchanted Hunters (a hotel in Briceland where they spend their first night together) Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) tells Lolita that her sick mother is at the hospital near Lepingville:

 

“How’s Mother?” she asked dutifully.

By Alexey Sklyarenko , 11 May, 2025

According to Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Ada, 1969), Baron d'Onsky (nicknamed Skonky, Demon's adversary in a sword duel) died not ‘of his wounds’ (as it was viciously rumored) but of a gangrenous afterthought on the part of the least of them, possibly self-inflicted: 

 

By Alexey Sklyarenko , 10 May, 2025

At the end of 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) says that Marina's runaway maid has been found by the police in a brothel here and will be shipped to Marina as soon as she is sufficiently stuffed with mercury:

 

By Alexey Sklyarenko , 8 May, 2025

In his poem "Wanted" composed in a madhouse after Lolita was abducted from him Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Lolita, 1955) mentions the balmy days and the palmy bays:

 

Who is your hero, Dolores Haze?

Still one of those blue-caped star-men?

Oh the balmy days and the palmy bays,

And the cars, and the bars, my Carmen! (2.25)

 

The balmy days and the palmy bays make one think of Balmont's poem Pal'ma ("The Palm," 1914):