Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

Describing Kim Beauharnais’s album, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions the kimera (chimera, camera):

When Ada refuses to leave her sick husband, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) walks some ten kilometers along soggy roads to Rennaz and thence flies to Nice, Biskra, the Cape, Nairobi, the Basset range: 

On Demonia (in VN's novel Ada, 1969, Earth's twin planet also known as Antiterra) the Iron Curtain (a term used by Winston Churchill in his Fulton speech on March 5, 1946) is known as the Golden Curtain:

Describing his last evening at Ardis, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions a group of brilliantly pictured gross orchids whose popularity with bees depends ‘on various attractive odors ranging from the smell of dead workers to that of a tomcat:’

Describing Victor Vitry’s film version of his juvenile novel Letters from Terra, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions Charlie Chose, the suave nephew of Lord Goal, the governor of Lute (as Paris is also known on Demonia, Earth’s twin planet also known as Antiterra):

Describing Marina's wedding photograph, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions the commonplace sweep of a bride’s ectoplasmic veil:

In a conversation in "Ardis the First" Marina (in VN’s novel Ada, 1969, Van's, Ada's and Lucette's mother) uses the word skorovato (rather soon):

Telling about the King's uncle Conmal (the Zemblan translator of Shakespeare), 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 Kipling's "The Rhyme of the Three Sealers" whose translation hundred-year-old Conmal had just completed when he fell ill and soon died:

When Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) teaches Lucette to walk on her hands, Dack (the dackel at Ardis whom Ada calls nekhoroshaya sobaka, a bad dog) barks in strident protest:

Now Lucette demanded her mother’s attention.

‘What are Jews?’ she asked.

‘Dissident Christians,’ answered Marina.

‘Why is Greg a Jew?’ asked Lucette.

‘Why-why!’ said Marina; ‘because his parents are Jews.’

In his essay The Texture of Time (1922) Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions Alice in the Camera Obscura, a book he was given on his eighth birthday: