Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

In VN's novel Pale Fire (1962), Shade’s poem is almost finished when the author is killed by Gradus. Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla, Kinbote believes that, to be completed, Shade’s poem needs but one line (Line 1000, identical to Line 1: “I was the shadow of the waxwing slain”). But it seems that, like some sonnets, Shade's poem also needs a coda (Line 1001: “By its own double in the windowpane”).

The name of one of the three main characters in VN's novel Pale Fire (1962), Jakob Gradus (Shade's murderer), seems to hint at Gradus ad Parnassum, the title of a dictionary of prosody used in English public schools for centuries as a guide to Roman poetry. In Greek mythology, Mount Parnassus was the home of the Muses and sacred to Apollo (the Greek and Roman god of music, prophecy, healing, archery, and the sun/light). The pantheon of twelve Greek gods resided atop Mount Olympus.

A linguist by necessity, Timofey Pnin (the title character of VN's novel Pnin, 1957) tells Joan Clements (Pnin's landlady in Waindell) that water in Turkish is su:

Describing the King’s escape from Zembla, 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) mentions lazy Garh, the farmer's daughter who showed to the king the shortest way to the pass:

In his Foreword and 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) mentions a distinguished Zemblan scholar Oscar Nattochdag:

Describing his first physical contact with Lolita, Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Lolita, 1955) mentions the picture in Lolita's magazine: a surrealist painter relaxing, supine, on a beach, and near him, likewise supine, a plaster replica of the Venus di Milo, half-buried in sand:

Describing his contacts with publishers, 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) compares himself to an exiled prince who is unaware of the Golconda in his cuff links:

According to Ada, at the funeral of Marina (in VN's novel Ada, 1969, Van's, Ada's and Lucette's mother) she met d’Onsky’s son, a person with only one arm:

‘My upper-lip space feels indecently naked.’ (He had shaved his mustache off with howls of pain in her presence). ‘And I cannot keep sucking in my belly all the time.’

Before the family dinner in "Ardis the Second" Demon Veen (in VN's novel Ada, 1969, Van's and Ada's father) offers his arm kalachikom (in the form of a Russian crescent loaf) to Marina (Van's, Ada's and Lucette's mother):

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), after his father's death Jakob Gradus (Shade's murderer) was adopted by another, totally unrelated Gradus: