Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

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 the narstran, a hellish hall where the souls of murderers are tortured under a constant drizzle of drake venom coming down from the foggy vault:

In his Index 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 a number of Sylvia O'Donnell's more or less glamorous marriages:

In a conversation at the Faculty Club Gerald Emerald (in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962, a young instructor at Wordsmith University who gives Gradus, Shade's murderer, a lift to Kinbote's rented house in New Wye) calls the king of Zembla whose picture he found in an illustrated encyclopedia "quite the fancy pansy, in fact:"

In a conversation at the faculty club 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) calls Gerald Emerald, a young instructor at Wordsmith University who gives Gradus (Shade's murderer) a lift to Kinbote's rented house in New Wye, "a foul-minded pup in a cheap green jacket:"

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 Canto Two of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) speaks of his dead daughter and says that she had strange fears, strange fantasies, strange force of character:

She had strange fears, strange fantasies, strange force

Of character - as when she spent three nights

Investigating certain sounds and lights

In an old barn. She twisted words: pot, top,

Spider, redips. And "powder" was "red wop."

She called you a didactic katydid.

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), in a skit performed by a group of drama students he was pictured as a pompous woman hater with a German accent, constantly quoting Housman and nibbling raw carrots:

In Canto One of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962) speaks of his childhood and mentions hickory leaves and his favorite young shagbark tree:

All colors made me happy: even gray.

My eyes were such that literally they

Took photographs. Whenever I'd permit,

Or, with a silent shiver, order it,

Whatever in my field of vision dwelt -

An indoor scene, hickory leaves, the svelte

Stilettos of a frozen stillicide -

Was printed on my eyelids' nether side

Describing Gradus' appearance, 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 the mineral blue of Gradus' jaw:

In Canto One of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962) describes his childhood fit and says that he felt distributed through space and time: one foot upon a mountaintop, one hand under the pebbles of a panting strand, one ear in Italy, one eye in Spain:

A thread of subtle pain,

Tugged at by playful death, released again,

But always present, ran through me. One day,

When I'd just turned eleven, as I lay

Prone on the floor and watched a clockwork toy -

A tin wheelbarrow pushed by a tin boy -