Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

Describing his rented house, 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 a damask paperknife (described as "one ancient dagger brought by Mrs. Goldsworth's father from the Orient"):

Describing Shade's last birthday, 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 an utterly gorgeous silk dressing gown, a veritable dragon skin of oriental chromas, fit for a samurai, that he gave Shade as a birthday present:

At the end of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN's poem Pale Fire, 1962) says that the day (the last day of Shade's life) has passed in a sustained low hum of harmony:

Gently the day has passed in a sustained

Low hum of harmony. The brain is drained

And a brown ament, and the noun I meant

To use but did not, dry on the cement.

Maybe my sensual love for the consonne

D'appui, Echo's fey child, is based upon

A feeling of fantastically planned,

Describing his dinner in 'Ursus' with Ada and Lucette (followed by the debauch à trois in Van's Manhattan flat), Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Ada, 1969) mentions Edmund, the chauffeur who substituted Edmond (Cordula de Prey's former driver):

The narrator and main character in VN's novel Ada (1969), Van Veen learns about Percy de Prey's death in the Crimean War from Cordula de Prey (Ada's schoolmate at Brownhill College, Percy's second cousin):

Panting, Cordula said:

The French butler at Ardis (in VN's novel Ada, 1969, the family estate of Van's and Ada's uncle Daniel Veen), Bouteillan calls Kim Beauharnais (a kitchen boy and photographer at Ardis whom Van blinds for spying on him and Ada and attempting to blackmail Ada) "ce gredin" (that scoundrel): 

In VN's novel Pale Fire (1962) Hazel Shade (the poet's daughter whose "real" name seems to be Nadezhda Botkin) drowned in Lake Omega. In A Song to David (1763) Christopher Smart (an English poet, 1722-71, who wrote A Song to David and Jubilate Agno during his confinement for insanity in St. Luke's Asylum in London) mentions seven letters of the Greek alphabet (Alpha, Gamma, Eta, Theta, Iota, Sigma and Omega):

Describing Shade’s murder by Gradus, 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) says that he cannot write out the odd dark word employed by his black gardener with respect to the killer:

Line 998: Some neighbor's gardener

Before the family dinner in "Ardis the Second" Demon Veen (in VN's novel Ada, 1969, Van's and Ada's father) reads Van's palm and mentions the strange condition of the Sister of Van's Life:

According to Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969), Marina’s affair with Demon Veen (Van’s and Ada’s father) started on January 5, 1868:

Marina’s affair with Demon Veen started on his, her, and Daniel Veen’s birthday, January 5, 1868, when she was twenty-four and both Veens thirty.