Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

In his lecture on dreams Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions El Motela and Ramera (the Moors in Osberg’s novel The Gitanilla):

Describing his courtship of Annette Blagovo, Vadim Vadimovich (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Look at the Harlequins!, 1974) compares Annette’s dreadful parents who asked to see Vadim’s books to a suspicious physician who might ask for a sample of semen:

Describing the family dinner in “Ardis the Second,” Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions the goodness of Demon’s crooked heart:

‘Ah!’ said Demon, tasting Lord Byron’s Hock. ‘This redeems Our Lady’s Tears.’

Describing the family dinner in “Ardis the Second,” Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions Jones, a servant at Ardis who carries two beautiful dragon-entwined flambeaux:

At the patio party in "Ardis the Second" G. A. Vronsky (in VN’s novel Ada, 1969, the movie man who makes a film of Mlle Larivière's novel Les Enfants Maudits) mentions a telegraph pole:

And now hairy Pedro hoisted himself onto the brink and began to flirt with the miserable girl (his banal attentions were, really, the least of her troubles).

‘Your leetle aperture must be raccommodated,’ he said.

The characters in VN’s novel Otchayanie (“Despair,” 1934) include Orlovius, the insurance agent whose old mother lives in Yuriev (Dorpat). In Dostoevski’s Zapiski iz myortvogo doma (“Notes from the House of the Dead,” 1861) Goryanchikov mentions Orlov, a defiant prisoner and hardened criminal endowed with virtually superhuman power of will:

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) mentions “gradual Gradus:”

After murdering Quilty, Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Lolita, 1955) wonders if some surgeon of genius might not revive his victim:

I wondered idly if some surgeon of genius might not alter his own career, and perhaps the whole destiny of mankind, by reviving quilted Quilty, Clare Obscure. (2.36)

In VN’s novel Lolita (1955) Clare Quilty wants to smoke a Drome cigarette and “quotes” Kipling:

In VN’s novel Lolita (1955) Humbert Humbert would have never met Lolita, if the fire had not destroyed McCoo's house: