Vladimir Nabokov

Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

Description

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

By Alexey Sklyarenko, 9 January, 2023

Describing his lovemaking with Ada in "Ardis the First," Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Ada, 1969) mentions Robert Brown's poem "Peter and Margaret" that he made Lucette (Van's and Ada's half-sister) learn by heart:

 

They tried all sorts of other tricks.

By Alexey Sklyarenko, 2 January, 2023

Describing Ada's dramatic career, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Ada, 1969) mentions Dawn de Laire, an actress of the Yakima Academy of Drama who played Natasha (Andrey Prozorov's wife) in a somewhat abridged stage version of Four Sisters (as Chekhov’s play The Three Sisters, 1901, is known on Demonia, aka Antiterra, Earth's twin planet on which Ada is set):

 

By Alexey Sklyarenko, 1 January, 2023

About to leave Van's Manhattan flat, Demon Veen (in VN’s novel Ada, 1969, Van's and Ada's father) asks Van to give him his gloves and cloak:

 

‘My gloves! Cloak! Thank you. Can I use your W.C.? No? All right. I’ll find one elsewhere. Come over as soon as you can, and we’ll meet Marina at the airport around four and then whizz to the wake, and —’

By Alexey Sklyarenko, 31 December, 2022

In March, 1905, Demon Veen (in VN's novel Ada, 1969, Van's and Ada's father) perishes in a mysterious airplane disaster above the Pacific. Half a year later Van and Ada (now married to Andrey Vinelander) meet in Mont Roux, Switzerland, after the thirteen-year-long separation. On October 24, 1905, Ada leaves Mont Roux with her sick husband and reunites with Van only in 1922, after Andrey's death:

 

By Alexey Sklyarenko, 30 December, 2022

In VN's novel Pale Fire (1962) the poet Shade and his commentator Kinbote (who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) live in New Wye in Dulwich Road:

 

Lines 47-48: the frame house between Goldsworth and Wordsmith

By Alexey Sklyarenko, 29 December, 2022

During her visit to Kingston (Van's American University) Lucette (in VN's novel Ada, 1969, Van's and Ada's half-sister) mentions Grandmother’s scrutoir and the gueridon:

 

‘Do you remember Grandmother’s scrutoir between the globe and the gueridon? In the library?’

‘I don’t even know what a scrutoir is; and I do not visualize the gueridon.’

‘But you remember the globe?’

Dusty Tartary with Cinderella’s finger rubbing the place where the invader would fall.