Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

In Canto Three of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962) mentions a dying man who conjures in two tongues the nebulae dilating in his lungs:

Nor can one help the exile, the old man

Dying in a motel, with the loud fan

Revolving in the torrid prairie night

And, from the outside, bits of colored light

Reaching his bed like dark hands from the past

Offering jems; and death is coming fast.

He suffocates and conjures in two tongues

The nebulae dilating in his lungs. (ll. 609-616)

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), Shade’s heart attack almost coincided with the disguised king's arrival in America:

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), he once told Shade "people who live in glass houses should not write poems:"

Describing Gradus’ activities in Paris, 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 Oswin Bretwit, the former Zemblan consul in Paris:

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), the king escaped from Zembla clad in bright red clothes:

Telling his son about Uncle Dan's odd Boschean death, Demon Veen (in VN's novel Ada, 1969, Van's and Ada's father) mentions a woman-sized strawberry in Bosch's painting The Garden of Earthly Delights:

Describing his rented house, 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 the atmosphere of damnum infectum in which he was supposed to dwell:

Describing his rented house, 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 his landlord’s four daughters (Alphina, Betty, Candida and Dee):

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

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 conversation with him Shade complained that Russian intellectuals lack all sense of humor:

In a conversation at the Faculty Club Professor Pardon (a character in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962) tries to pronounce the name Pnin:

Professor Pardon now spoke to me: "I was under the impression that you were born in Russia, and that your name was a kind of anagram of Botkin or Botkine?"

Kinbote: "You are confusing me with some refugee from Nova Zembla" [sarcastically stressing the "Nova'"].