Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

In Canto Three of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) mentions a dead school chum who in a blend of jauntiness and gloom points at the puddles in his basement room:

For as we know from dreams it is so hard

To speak to our dear dead! They disregard

Our apprehension, queaziness and shame -

The awful sense that they're not quite the same.

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 Gradus’s puny ghost, shargar:

At the beginning (and, presumably, at the end) of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) compares himself to the shadow of the waxwing:

I was the shadow of the waxwing slain
By the false azure in the windowpane;
I was the smudge of ashen fluff--and I
Lived on, flew on, in the reflected sky. (ll. 1-4)

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), we all know those dreams in which something Stygian soaks through and Lethe leaks in the dreary terms of defective plumbing:

In VN’s novel Pale Fire (1962) the poet Shade and his commentator Kinbote (who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) live in New Wye (a small University town). “Wye” is the English name of the letter Y. New Wye seems to be a cross between New York and New Moscow, as in his lecture on chess Ostap Bender (the main character in Ilf and Petrov’s novels "The Twelve Chairs" and "The Golden Calf") calls Vasyuki (a fictitious Volgan town):

In a conversation with 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) Shade repeats the word “sure” twice and then says "Oh, sure" again:

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), the King escaped from Zembla clad in bright red clothes. A policeman asked him to take off his red fufa and red cap:

Describing Gradus’ activities in Paris, 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 Oswin Bretwit, the former Zemblan consul in Paris:

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:

According to Pahl Pahlich Rechnoy (a character in VN’s novel The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, 1941), the name of his first wife when he first met her was Nina Toorovetz: