Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

Describing Gradus’ activities in Paris, 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 Oswin Bretwit, the former Zemblan consul in Paris:

In Canto Four of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962) says that among the things that he loathes are bores:

Now I shall speak of evil as none has

Spoken before. I loathe such things as jazz;

The white-hosed moron torturing a black

Bull, rayed with red; abstractist bric-a-brac;

Primitivist folk-masks; progressive schools;

Music in supermarkets; swimming pools;

Brutes, bores, class-conscious Philistines, Freud, Marx,

Fake thinkers, puffed-up poets, frauds and sharks. (ll. 923-930)

In his commentary and index 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 Fleur de Fyler, Queen Disa's favorite lady-in-waiting:

In VN's novel Dar ("The Gift," 1937) Yasha Chernyshevski neatly defined the mutual relationship between him, Rudolf and Olya as treugol'nik, vpisannyi v krug (“a triangle inscribed in a circle”):

As a Christian, 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) knows that suicide is a sin:

The following note is not an apology of suicide – it is the simple and sober description of a spiritual situation.

Describing his rented house, 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 Judge Goldsworth's four daughters (Alphina, Betty, Candida and Dee):

In his autobiography Speak, Memory (1951) VN mentions his grand aunt, Praskovia Nikolaevna Tarnovski (the author of works on psychiatry, anthropology and social welfare, 1848-1910):

One of the three main characters in VN's novel Pale Fire (1962), Kinbote (Shade's mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) nicknamed his black gardener “Balthasar, Prince of Loam:”

In Canto Two of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) asks "why scorn a hereafter none can verify" and mentions the seraph with his six flamingo wings:

In his commentary and index 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 Sudarg of Bokay (Jakob Gradus in reverse), a mirror maker of genius: