Please read Alexey Sklyarenko's annotations on Pale Fire, Ada and other Nabokov works here.
The characters in VN's novel Bend Sinister (1947) include Krug's friend Ember (a Shakespeare specialist). Three months of the year, September, November and December, end in ember. In Krylov's fable Lzhets ("The Liar," 1811) the Liar uses the phrase kruglyi bozhiy god (the whole God's year):
Из дальних странствий возвратясь,
Какой-то дворянин (а может быть, и князь),
The characters in VN's novel Bend Sinister (1947) include Mariette, the Krugs' housemaid who was sent by Paduk to spy on Adam Krug and his son David:
The name of the dictator of Padukgrad in VN's novel Bend Sinister (1947), Paduk seems to hint at glitay abozh pauk (the spider), in Chekhov's story Chelovek v futlyare ("The Man in a Case," 1898) a nickname that Kovalenko gave Belikov:
In VN's novel Ada (1969) Demon Veen (Van's and Ada's father) dies in a mysterious airplane disaster above the Pacific. Describing his father's death, Van Veen mentions a series of strange newspaper garbles:
Furnished Space, l’espace meublé (known to us only as furnished and full even if its contents be ‘absence of substance’ — which seats the mind, too), is mostly watery so far as this globe is concerned. In that form it destroyed Lucette. Another variety, more or less atmospheric, but no less gravitational and loathsome, destroyed Demon.
The characters in VN's novel Bend Sinister (1947) include Krug's friend Ember. Three months of the year, September, November and December, end in ember. In Kuprin's humorous story Putanitsa ("A Mix-up," 1897) the doctor asks Pchelovodov (whom the doctor believes to be mad) what month it is now:
— Продолжайте, продолжайте, пожалуйста, я вас слушаю, — сказал главный врач с притворной ласковостью. Но я еще не дошел до эпизода с моим пробуждением, как он вдруг огорошил меня вопросом:
The main character in VN's novel Bend Sinister (1947), the philosopher Adam Krug is the author of 'Mirokonzepsia' ("The World-Conception"):
In VN's novel Bend Sinister (1947) Paduk, the dictator of Padukgrad and Adam Krug's former schoolmate, is nicknamed the Toad. In Chekhov's story V usad'be ("At a Country House," 1894) everybody calls Rashevich, behind his back, zhaba (a toad):
In VN's novel Bend Sinister (1947) Krug's parents died in a railway accident:
It belatedly occurs to me that the Kur river in Bend Sinister may also hint at Antoniy Pogorelski's fairy tale Chyornaya kuritsa, ili Podzemnye zhiteli ("The Little Black Hen, or the Underground People," 1829). It influenced Vladimir Odoevski (it was Odoevski who wrote Pushkin's obituary that begins with the words "The sun of the Russian poetry has gone down"), the author of Gorodok v tabakerke ("The Little Town in the Snuffbox," 1834).
I read with interest "The River Kur in Bend Sinister," Gavriel Shapiro's note in the new issue of The Nabokovian, and would like to add the following. The Kur also makes me think of Maxim Gorki's novella Gorodok Okurov ("The Town of Okurov," 1909). It has an epigraph from Dostoevski:
«...уездная, звериная глушь». Ф. М. Достоевский
“... provincial, bestial wilderness.” F. M. Dostoevski