Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

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) quotes the beginning of a sonnet that Conmal (the king’s uncle, Zemblan translator of Shakespeare) composed directly in English:

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) metnions a luxurious ‘sanastoria’ at Centaur, Arizona, and a Dr Sig Heiler (Aqua's last doctor):

In the "library" chapter of VN's novel Ada (1969) Van Veen (the narrator and main character) mentions a spectacular skin disease that Monsieur Philippe Verger (the Ardis librarian) shared with Miss Vertograd (the librarian of Demon Veen, Van's and Ada's father): 

On Demonia (Earth’s twin planet, also known as Antiterra, on which VN’s novel Ada, 1969, is set) Charlotte Corday (the girl who stabbed Marat in his bath) is known as Cora Day, an opera singer:

After the dinner in 'Ursus' and debauch à trois with Lucette (in VN's novel Ada, 1969, Van's and Ada's half-sister) in Van's Manhattan flat Ada is wearing her diamond necklace in sign of at least one more caro Van and a Camel before her morning bath:

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:

After his father's sudden death Hugh Person (the main character in VN's novel Transparent Things, 1972) moves to Geneva, has homard à l'américaine for dinner and goes to find his first whore in a lane right behind his hotel: 

After the picnic on Ada's sixteenth birthday Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Ada, 1969) tells Ada (who repeated G. A. Vronsky's salacious joke): 'Vos "vyragences" sont assez lestes' (your expressions are rather free):

Lucette ran up to Van and, almost kneeling, cosily embraced her big cousin around the hips, and clung to him for a moment, ‘Come along,’ said Van, lifting her, ‘don’t forget your jersey, you can’t go naked.’

When Kim Beauharnais (in VN's novel Ada, 1969, a kitchen boy and photographer at Ardis whom Van blinds for spying on him and Ada and attempting to blackmail Ada) visits Ada at Ardis, he vaguely resembles a janizary in some exotic opera, stomping in to announce an invasion or an execution:

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), when Andronnikov and Niagarin (the two Soviet experts whom the new Zemblan government hired to find the crown jewels) sang beautiful sentimental military duets at eventide on the rampart, the sky turned away showing its ethereal vertebrae:

Line 681: gloomy Russians spied