Please read Alexey Sklyarenko's annotations on Pale Fire, Ada and other Nabokov works here.
Describing the torments of poor mad Aqua (the twin sister of Van’s, Ada’s and Lucette’s mother Marina), Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) quotes Aqua’s words to her doctor “I know you want to examine my pudendron, the Hairy Alpine Rose in her album, collected ten years ago:”
Describing the escape of poor mad Aqua (the twin sister of Van’s, Ada’s and Lucette’s mother Marina) from a lunatic asylum, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) quotes Aqua’s words to a train conductor “Signor Konduktor, ay vant go Lago di Luga, hier geld:”
Describing Demon’s sword duel with Baron d’Onsky (Skonky), Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions Gunter’s Bookshop:
As a schoolboy at Riverlane (Van’s prep-school), Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) is platonically in love with Mrs Tapirov's daughter:
Describing the method of his work, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions Marx père, the popular author of 'historical' plays:
Describing his performance in variety shows as Mascodagama, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions the psychiatrist P. O. Tyomkin who was saved by one of the special detectives at Chose (Van’s English University) from the dagger of Prince Potyomkin, a mixed-up kid from Sebastopol, Id.:
The main villain in VN’s novel Camera Obscura (1933), Robert Horn (Axel Rex in Laughter in the Dark, 1938) is a gambler:
In his Foreword and 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) mentions his powerful Kramler:
The epigraph to VN’s novel Pale Fire (1962) is from James Boswell’s biography of Samuel Johnson:
This reminds me of the ludicrous account he
gave Mr. Langston, of the despicable state of a
young gentleman of good family. 'Sir, when I
heard of him last, he was running about town
shooting cats.' And then in a sort of kindly
At the end of his poem (a few moments before his death) John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) mentions horseshoes being tossed somewhere and compares a horseshoe to a drunk leaning against a lamppost:
But it's not bedtime yet. The sun attains
Old Dr. Sutton's last two windowpanes.
The man must be - what? Eighty? Eighty-two?
Was twice my age the year I married you.