Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

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) quotes Shade's words “crystal to crystal:”

According to Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Lolita, 1955), Rita (a girl whom Humbert picked up one depraved May evening somewhere between Montreal and New York, or more narrowly, between Toylestown and Blake) was so kind that she would have given herself to any pathetic creature or fallacy, an old broken tree or a bereaved porcupine, out of sheer chumminess and compassion:

In Canto Three of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) describes his visit to a Mrs. Z. who told him that her niece had climbed the Matterhorn:

In Canto One of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962) speaks of his dead parents and mentions a preterist (one who collects cold nests):

After she happened to glimpse Pnin (the title character of a novel, 1957, by VN) basking in the unearthly lilac light of his sun lamp, wearing nothing but shorts, dark glasses, and a dazzling Greek-Catholic cross on his broad chest, Desdemona (the old coloured charwoman, who came on Fridays) insisted that Pnin was a saint:

In his commentary 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) calls Professor Pnin, the Head of the bloated Russian Department at Wordsmith University, "a regular martinet in regard to his underlings," and "that grotesque perfectionist:"

Describing a conversation at the Faculty Club, 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) compares Gerald Emerald (a young instructor at Wordsmith University who gives Gradus, Shade's murderer, a lift to Kinbote's rented house in New Wye) to a disciple in Leonardo's Last Supper:

In June 1947 thirty-seven-year-old Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) meets and falls in love with twelve-year-old Dolores Haze (Lolita's full name) in Ramsdale, a town in New England. Ramsdale seems to combine Ramsgate (a sea-side town and civil parish in east Kent, England) with Deal (another coastal town in Kent; close to Deal is Walmer, a possible location for Julius Caesar's first arrival in Britain, Aug. 26, 55 BC).

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 and Shade Mrs. Hurley mentioned the old man at the Exton railway station who thought he was God and began redirecting the trains:

Above this the poet wrote and struck out:

The madman’s fate

In Canto Two of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962) speaks of afterlife and mentions the Turk's delight: 

So why join in the vulgar laughter? Why

Scorn a hereafter none can verify:

The Turk's delight, the future lyres, the talks

With Socrates and Proust in cypress walks,

The seraph with his six flamingo wings,

And Flemish hells with porcupines and things?

It isn't that we dream too wild a dream:

The trouble is we do not make it seem

Sufficiently unlikely; for the most