Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

According to Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Ada, 1969), the ancestor of Ada's husband, Andrey Vinelander, was the first Russian to taste the labruska grape:

Had she cabled him? Cancelled or Postponed? Mrs Viner — no, Vingolfer, no, Vinelander — first Russki to taste the labruska grape.

‘Mne snitsa saPERnik SHCHASTLEEVOY!’ (Mihail Ivanovich arcating the sand with his cane, humped on his bench under the creamy racemes).

‘I dream of a fortunate rival!’ (2.8)

In March 1905 Demon Veen (in VN's novel Ada, 1969, Van's and Ada's father) perishes in a mysterious airplane disaster above the Pacific. In the same year, soon after his father's death, Van is elected to the Rattner Chair of Philosophy in the University of Kingston:

Describing his dinner with Ada (now married to Andrey Vinelander) and her family in Bellevue Hotel in Mont Roux, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Ada, 1969) mentions the ‘Swiss White’ page of the wine list:

Chance looked after the seating arrangement.

According to Vera Nabokov, the Russian title of VN's novel Transparent Things (1972) should have been Skvoznyak is proshlogo ("A Draft from the Past").

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 King Thurgus the Third, Charles Xavier's grandfather who liked to bicycle in the park with a sponge bag on his head:

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), Gradus (Shade's murderer) contended that the real origin of his name should be sought in the Russian word for grape, vinograd, to which a Latin suffix had adhered, making it Vinogradus:

Line 17: And then the gradual; Line 29: gray

Below is a brief addendum to my recent post "Lolita's traffic light." In VN's Russian translation (1967) of Lolita a line in Humbert's poem "Wanted," 'In the rain, where that lighted store is,' becomes Gde struitya noch', svetoforyas' (Where the night ripples, trafficlighting):

Патрульщик, патрульщик, вон там, под дождем,            

Где струится ночь, светофорясь...             

Она в белых носках, она - сказка моя,

Investigating the phenomena in the Haunted Barn, Hazel Shade (the poet’s daughter in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) asked the luminous circlet if it was a will-o-the-wisp:

After murdering Quilty, Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1962) decides to disregard the rules of traffic and passes through a red light:

In one of her letters to Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Ada, 1969) written after Van left Ardis forever Ada says that she is coy and obscene:

[California? 1890]