Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

Describing Lucette's visit to Kingston, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Ada, 1969) mentions one of his old projects, which turned on the Idea of Dimension & Dementia:

At the end of Part Two of VN's novel Ada (1969) Van describes his suicide attempt and Ada quotes the words of Van's nurse "Secondes pensées sont les bonnes:" 

In The Waltz Invention, the English version of VN's play Izobretenie Val'sa (1938), Son (the reporter who runs errands for Waltz and whose name means in Russian "sleep, dream") becomes Trance. In his book Original o portretistakh ("The Model about the Portrait Painters," 1922) Evreinov says that, despite his "trance," "visions" and other psychic peculiarities, William Blake, when he drew his biblical characters, always used himself as a model:

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), as he was ascending with bowed head the gravel path to his poor rented house, he heard with absolute distinction Shade's voice say: "Come tonight, Charlie:"

Asked by Kinbote what he had been doing around noon (when Kinbote had heard him like a big bird in his garden) Shade (the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962) says that he had been playing golf with Paul (whoever that was), or at least watching Paul play with another colleague:

According to Kinbote (in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962, Shade's mad commentator who believes that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla), on sunny, sad mornings he always feels in his bones that there is a chance yet of his not being excluded from Heaven:

According to Kinbote (in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962, Shade's mad commentator who imagines that he is the last self-exiled king of Zembla), Oswin Bretwit (the Zemblan former consul in Paris) was not exactly persona grata with the new regime:

Describing his second good ramble with Shade (the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962), Kinbote (Shade's mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) mentions chaos into which Shade wants to plunge back in order to drag out of it, with all its wet stars, his cosmos:

Where was I? Yes, trudging along again as in the old days with John, in the woods of Arcady, under a salmon sky.

"Well," I said gaily, "what were you writing about last night, John? Your study window was simply blazing."

In Canto Two of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962) quotes a line from Pope's Essay on Man in which the blind beggar is mentioned:

I went upstairs and read a galley proof,

And heard the wind roll marbles on the roof.

"See the blind beggar dance, the cripple sing"

Has unmistakably the vulgar ring

Of its preposterous age. Then came your call,

My tender mockingbird, up from the hall.

I was in time to overhear brief fame

In his farewell letter to Marina (in VN's novel Ada, 1969, Van's, Ada's and Lucette's mother) Demon Veen (Van's and Ada's father) mentions his aunt's ranch near Lolita, Texas: