Vladimir Nabokov

Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

Description

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

By Alexey Sklyarenko, 30 January, 2023

According to Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Ada, 1969), all the hundred floramors (palatial brothels built all over the world by David van Veen, a wealthy architect of Flemish extraction, in memory of his grandson Eric) opened simultaneously on September 20, 1875:

 

By Alexey Sklyarenko, 30 January, 2023

Describing Villa Venus (Eric Veen's floramors), Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Ada, 1969) mentions Eric Veen's essay 'Villa Venus: an Organized Dream’ and says that he owns a photostat of Eric's calligraph:

 

By Alexey Sklyarenko, 29 January, 2023

Before showing to Van her larvarium, Ada (the title character in VN's novel Ada, 1969) tells him that old dogs do not go to sleepquelle idée, they swoon, it is a little syncope:

 

‘And now,’ she said, and stopped, staring at him.

‘Yes?’ he said, ‘and now?’

By Alexey Sklyarenko, 25 January, 2023

Before the family dinner in "Ardis the Second" Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Ada, 1969) says that old storytelling devices may be parodied only by very great and inhuman artists:

 

‘Our great Coppée,’ said Van, ‘is awful, of course, yet he has one very fetching little piece which Ada de Grandfief here has twisted into English several times, more or less successfully.’

‘Oh, Van!’ interjected Ada with unusual archness, and scooped up a handful of salted almonds.

By Alexey Sklyarenko, 24 January, 2023

On Demonia (aka Antiterra, Earth's twin planet on which VN's novel Ada, 1969, is set) Pasternak's novel Doctor Zhivago (1957) is known as Les Amours du Docteur Mertvago, a mystical romance by a pastor, Mertvago Forever and Klara Mertvago:

 

By Alexey Sklyarenko, 24 January, 2023

In VN's novel Ada (1969) Mlle Larivière (Lucette's governess) writes fiction under the penname Guillaume de Monparnasse:

 

‘Well, that bit about spinsters is rot,’ said Van, ‘we’ll pull it off somehow, we’ll become more and more distant relations in artistically forged papers and finally dwindle to mere namesakes, or at the worst we shall live quietly, you as my housekeeper, I as your epileptic, and then, as in your Chekhov, "we shall see the whole sky swarm with diamonds."’