Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

The main character in VN's novel Bend Sinister (1947), the philosopher Adam Krug is the author of the Komparatiwn Stuhdar en Sophistat tuen Pekrekh (The Philosophy of Sin in the American edition), a book that was translated into English by Krug's friend Ember:

The main character in VN's novel Bend Sinister (1947), the philosopher Adam Krug is the author of the Komparatiwn Stuhdar en Sophistat tuen Pekrekh:

In his autobiography Speak, Memory (1951) VN describes his life in Berlin in the 1920s and in Paris in the late 1930s and compares Sirin (VN’s Russian nom de plume) to a meteor that passed across the dark sky of exile and disappeared, leaving nothing much else behind him than a vague sense of uneasiness:

At the end of "Ardis the First" Ada, having returned from a bicycle ride in the park with Van, repeats the French phrase tant pis (too bad) two times:

In VN's novel Bend Sinister (1947) the rise of Ekwilism took place in the days when a blatantly bourgeois paper happened to be publishing a cartoon sequence depicting the home life of Mr and Mrs Etermon (Everyman):

Onboard Admiral Tobakoff (a liner on which they cross the Atlantic) Van's and Ada's half-sister Lucette asks Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Ada, 1969) whom did 'Miss Condor' (a tall mulatto girl who approached Van) look like:

On the bridge across the Kur (in VN's novel Bend Sinister, 1947, the river that flows in Padukgrad and Omigod) one of the soldiers says that his cousin, the gardener, lives in Bervok and Krug mentions Bervok's grand apples:

Another soldier came up idly juggling with a flashlight and again Krug had a glimpse of a pale-faced little man standing apart and smiling.

'I want some fun too,' the third soldier said.

'Well, well,' said Krug. 'Fancy seeing you here. How is your cousin, the gardener?'

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:

On the bridge across the Kur (in VN's novel Bend Sinister, 1947, the river that flows in Padukgrad) one of the illiterate soldiers calls the grocer "ved'min syn [son of a witch]:"

Another soldier came up idly juggling with a flashlight and again Krug had a glimpse of a pale-faced little man standing apart and smiling.

'I want some fun too,' the third soldier said.

'Well, well,' said Krug. 'Fancy seeing you here. How is your cousin, the gardener?'

In VN's novel Bend Sinister (1947) Krug recalls the words of his late wife Olga, 'togliwn ochnat divodiv [the daily surprise of awakening]!':