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 his landlord’s four daughters (Alphina, Betty, Candida and Dee):

The characters in VN's novel Lolita (1955) include Clare Quilty, the playwright and pornographer whom Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character) tracks down and murders for abducting Lolita. As has been pointed out before, Quilty is a small fishing village in County Clare, Ireland. The local Catholic church, belonging to Kilmurry Ibrickane parish, has a round tower which is visible from the surrounding countryside. It was built in remembrance of the Leon XIII (shipwrecked on Sept.

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 his landlord’s four daughters (Alphina, Betty, Candida and Dee):

In VN's novel Lolita (1955) Humbert Humbert is afraid that his wife Charlotte (Lolita's mother) will bundle off Lolita to St. Algebra:

There was a woodlake (Hourglass Lake - not as I had thought it was spelled) a few miles from Ramsdale, and there was one week of great heat at the end of July when we drove there daily. I am now obliged to describe in some tedious detail our last swim there together, one tropical Tuesday morning.

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 red Kramler:

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: