Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

According to Professor Hurley (in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962, the Head of the English Department at Wordsmith University), Samuel Shade (the poet's father) had studied medicine in his youth and was vice-president of a firm of surgical instruments in Exton:

Describing the king’s escape from Zembla, 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 lazy Garh, the farmer's daughter who shows to the king the shortest way to the pass:

In a conversation at the Faculty Club a visiting German lecturer from Oxford says that 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) resembles King Charles whom he and his Swedish wife saw at a Sport Festival in Onhava (the capital of Zembla):

The three main characters of VN's novel Pale Fire (1962), the poet Shade, his commentator Kinbote (who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) and his murderer Gradus, seem to represent three different aspects of one and the same person whose "real" name is Botkin. An American scholar of Russian descent, Professor Vsevolod Botkin went mad and became Shade, Kinbote and Gradus after the tragic death of his daughter Nadezhda (Hazel Shade’s “real” name).

One of the three main characters in VN’s novel Pale Fire (1962), Jakob Gradus (Shade’s murderer) is the son of Martin Gradus, a Protestant minister in Riga:

In Canto Three of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) speaks of IPH (a lay Institute of Preparation for the Hereafter) and mentions “Terra the Fair, an orbicle of jasp:”

While snubbing gods, including the big G,

Iph borrowed some peripheral debris

From mystic visions; and it offered tips

(The amber spectacles for life's eclipse) -

How not to panic when you're made a ghost:

Describing Victor Vitry's film vesion of his novel Letters from Terra, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Ada, 1969) mentions ‘Bergson’s Duration’ and ‘Whitehead’s Bright Fringe:’

In Canto Four of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962) calls his Muse "my versiple:"

Dressing in all the rooms, I rhyme and roam

Throughout the house with, in my fist, a comb

Or a shoehorn, which turns into the spoon

I eat my egg with. In the afternoon

You drive me to the library. We dine

At half past six. And that odd muse of mine,

My versipel, is with me everywhere,

In carrel and in car, and in my chair. (ll. 941-948)

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 Amphitheatricus, a writer of fugitive poetry who gave King Alfin (the father of Charles the Beloved) his cognomen and who dubbed Onhava (the capital of Zembla) "Uranograd:"

In his commentary and index 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) mentions Colonel Peter Gusev (King Alfin’s constant "aerial adjutant") and his son Oleg (the beloved playmate of Prince Charles Xavier Vseslav):