Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

In the conversation with Van before the family dinner in “Ardis the Second” Demon Van (in VN’s novel Ada, 1969, Van’s and Ada’s father) twice repeats the word “capital:”

‘I don’t know if you know,’ said Van, resuming his perch on the fat arm of his father’s chair. ‘Uncle Dan will be here with the lawyer and Lucette only after dinner.’

‘Capital,’ said Demon.

‘Marina and Ada should be down in a minute — ce sera un dîner à quatre.’

In VN's play Izobretenie Val'sa ("The Waltz Invention," 1938) the Minister of War tells the Colonel that old Perrault died last night and asks the Colonel to remind him tomorrow to speak to Brutus about the pension for the widow:

In Canto Two of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) describes the paring of his fingernails and compares his thumb to a grocer’s son and his index finger, to lean and glum College astronomer Starover Blue:

The little scissors I am holding are

A dazzling synthesis of sun and star.

I stand before the window and I pare

My fingernails and vaguely am aware

In his poem “Wanted” composed after Lolita was abducted from him Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Lolita, 1955) mentions an old perfume called Soleil Vert:

My Dolly, my folly! Her eyes were vair ,

On Demonia (aka Antiterra, Earth’s twin planet on which VN’s novel Ada, 1962, is set) The Headless Horseman is a poem by Pushkin:

Describing the death of his father (who perishes in a mysterious airplane disaster above the Pacific), Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) compares himself to a sultan:

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 Nice Gradus (Shade’s murderer) stayed at Hotel Lazuli:

Describing his juvenile novel Letters from Terra, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions Theresa and Antilia Glems, the characters in his novel:

Ada’s letters breathed, writhed, lived; Van’s Letters from Terra, ‘a philosophical novel,’ showed no sign of life whatsoever.

(I disagree, it’s a nice, nice little book! Ada’s note.)

In his Foreword to Shade’s poem 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) says that there is a very loud amusement park right in front of his lodgings:

At the beginning of Canto Four of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) says that there are two methods of composing, A and B:

Now I shall spy on beauty as none has

Spied on it yet. Now I shall cry out as

None has cried out. Now I shall try what none

Has tried. Now I shall do what none has done.