Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

In the Night of the Burning Barn (when Van and Ada make love for the first time) Ada, after joining Van on the divan beside the picture window, points to a group of people: two men, one with a ladder, and a child or dwarf who is walking à reculons as if taking pictures:

Van, kneeling at the picture window, watched the inflamed eye of the cigar recede and vanish. That multiple departure... Take over.

In his essay The Texture of Time Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Ada, 1969) mentions a novo-sapiens species and Neohomo:

In his essay The Texture of Time Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Ada, 1969) says that if a creature loses its teeth and becomes a bird, the best the latter can do when needing teeth again is to evolve a serrated beak, never the real dentition it once possessed:

Among the combinations in which 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) finds the name of Shade's murderer is "a prig rad us:"

Among the combinations in which 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) finds the name of Shade's murderer is "a prig rad us:"

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) cites several combinations that contain the name of Shade's murderer:

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) quotes the first two lines of Goethe’s Erlkönig (1782) in Zemblan translation:

Line 662: Who rides so late in the night and the wind

In a discarded variant quoted by 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 his commentary to Shade's poem Shade mentions great temples and Tanagra dust:

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), after line 274 of Shade’s poem there is a false start in the draft:

In Canto Two of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962) speaks of his daughter and says that she twisted words: