Please read Alexey Sklyarenko's annotations on Pale Fire, Ada and other Nabokov works here.
Describing his perfromance in variety shows as Mascodagama (when he dances tango on his hands), Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) says that the work of a poet, and only a poet could have adequately described a certain macabre quiver that marked his extraordinary act :