Vladimir Nabokov

Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

Description

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

By Alexey Sklyarenko , 12 September, 2025

Before the family dinner in "Ardis the Second" Demon Veen (in VN's novel Ada, 1969, Van's and Ada's father) tells Ada that, when he saw her last time, she simply reeked of some arsenic stuff after seeing her dentist:

 

Here Ada herself came running into the room. Yes-yes-yes-yes, here I come. Beaming!

By Alexey Sklyarenko , 7 September, 2025

In Canto Three of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) describes his heart attack and mentions Hurricane Lolita and 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)

 

In his note to Line 682 (Lang) Kinbote (Shade's mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) writes:

 

By Alexey Sklyarenko , 7 September, 2025

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 Arnor’s poem about a miragarl (mirage girl), for whose "careful jewels" a dream king in the sandy wastes of time would give tri stana verbalala (three hundred camels) ut tri phantana (and three fountains):