Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

Before the family dinner in "Ardis the Second" Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Ada, 1969) tells Demon (Van's and Ada's father) that he looks satanically fit, especially with that fresh carnation in his lapel eye:

Demon shed his monocle and wiped his eyes with the modish lace-frilled handkerchief that lodged in the heart pocket of his dinner jacket. His tear glands were facile in action when no real sorrow made him control himself.

At the end of 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) says that he prays for the Lord's benediction to rest on his wretched countrymen:

In Canto Two of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962) describes the night of his daughter's death and quotes the words of his wife Sybil who said that later a quartet of bores, two writers and two critics, would debate the Cause of Poetry on Channel 8:

A male hand traced from Florida to Maine

The curving arrows of Aeolian wars.

You said that later a quartet of bores,

Two writers and two critics, would debate

The Cause of Poetry on Channel 8.

A nymph came pirouetting, under white

As he speaks to Gradus (one of the three main characters in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962, Shade's murderer), Oswin Bretwit (the former Zemblan consul in Paris) says: "Nothing is sacred to you, neither cancer, nor exile, nor the pride of a king:"

His smile gone, Bretwit (the name means Chess Intelligence) got up from his chair. In a larger room he would have paced up and down - not in this cluttered study. Gradus the Bungler buttoned all three buttons of his tight brown coat and shook his head several times.

Describing the King's escape from Zembla, 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 Merman, a fine old melodrama:

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 Canto Four of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962) says that among the things that he loathes are bores:

Now I shall speak of evil as none has

Spoken before. I loathe such things as jazz;

The white-hosed moron torturing a black

Bull, rayed with red; abstractist bric-a-brac;

Primitivist folk-masks; progressive schools;

Music in supermarkets; swimming pools;

Brutes, bores, class-conscious Philistines, Freud, Marx,

Fake thinkers, puffed-up poets, frauds and sharks. (ll. 923-930)

In his commentary and 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 Fleur de Fyler, Queen Disa's favorite lady-in-waiting:

In VN's novel Dar ("The Gift," 1937) Yasha Chernyshevski neatly defined the mutual relationship between him, Rudolf and Olya as treugol'nik, vpisannyi v krug (“a triangle inscribed in a circle”):

As a Christian, 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) knows that suicide is a sin:

The following note is not an apology of suicide – it is the simple and sober description of a spiritual situation.