Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

One of the three main characters in VN's novel Pale Fire (1962) is Jakob Gradus (Shade's murderer). At the end of his commentary to Shade's poem Kinbote (who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) mentions a bigger, more respectable, more competent Gradus:

"And you, what will you be doing with yourself, poor King, poor Kinbote?" a gentle young voice may inquire.

Before the family dinner in “Ardis the Second” Demon Veen (in VN’s novel Ada, 1969, Van’s and Ada’s father) says that observation is not always the mother of deduction:

Here Ada herself came running into the room. Yes-yes-yes-yes, here I come. Beaming!

The father of the twins Aqua and Marina, General Ivan Durmanov (in VN's novel Ada, 1969, Van's, Ada's and Lucette's grandfather) owned lands in the Severn Tories (Severnïya Territorii):

Describing the torments of poor mad Aqua (the twin sister of Van's, Ada's and Lucette's mother Marina), Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) says that Revelation can be more perilous than Revolution:

Describing his dinner in ‘Ursus’ with Ada and Lucette, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions Flora, a slender, hardly nubile, half-naked music-hall dancer of uncertain origin:

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:"