Vladimir Nabokov

Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

Description

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

By Alexey Sklyarenko, 2 June, 2023

In Canto Three of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962) describes IPH (a lay Institute of the Preparation for Hereafter) and mentions the great Starover Blue (the College astronomer) who reviewed the role planets had played as landfalls of the soul:

 

We heard cremationists guffaw and snort

At Grabermann's denouncing the Retort

As detrimental to the birth of wraiths.

We all avoided criticizing faiths.

By Alexey Sklyarenko, 1 June, 2023

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), in a theological dispute with him Shade said that, when he was small, he thought Original Sin meant Cain killing Abel:

 

By Alexey Sklyarenko, 1 June, 2023

In Canto Three of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962) describes IPH (a lay Institute of the Preparation for Hereafter) and mentions the great Starover Blue who reviewed the role planets had played as landfalls of the soul:

 

We heard cremationists guffaw and snort

At Grabermann's denouncing the Retort

As detrimental to the birth of wraiths.

We all avoided criticizing faiths.

The great Starover Blue reviewed the role

By Alexey Sklyarenko, 1 June, 2023

Describing IPH (a lay Institute of Preparation for the Hereafter) in Canto Three of his poem, John Shade (the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962) mentions the role planets had played as landfalls of the soul and the fate of beasts:

 

We heard cremationists guffaw and snort

At Grabermann's denouncing the Retort

As detrimental to the birth of wraiths.

We all avoided criticizing faiths.

The great Starover Blue reviewed the role

Planets had played as landfalls of the soul.

By Alexey Sklyarenko, 31 May, 2023

Describing IPH (a lay Institute of Preparation for the Hereafter) in Canto Three of his poem, John Shade (the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962) mentions the great Starover Blue who reviewed the role planets had played as landfalls of the soul:

 

We heard cremationists guffaw and snort

At Grabermann's denouncing the Retort

As detrimental to the birth of wraiths.

We all avoided criticizing faiths.

The great Starover Blue reviewed the role

Planets had played as landfalls of the soul.

By Alexey Sklyarenko, 29 May, 2023

In his Foreword 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 certain ferocious lady at whose club he had refused to speak on the subject of "The Hally Valley:"

 

By Alexey Sklyarenko, 28 May, 2023

Describing his first night with Lolita in The Enchanted Hunters (a hotel in Briceland), Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Lolita, 1955) compares the key in his hot hairy fist to the weighty sesame to a rapturous and formidable future:

 

By Alexey Sklyarenko, 28 May, 2023

Describing his first night with Lolita in The Enchanted Hunters (a hotel in Briceland), Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Lolita, 1955) says that his only regret is that he did not quietly deposit key “342” at the office, and leave the town, the country, the continent, the hemisphere, - indeed, the globe - that very same night: