Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

In Canto Three of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) describes his heart attack and mentions his wife's portrait by Lang:

It was a year of Tempests: Hurricane
Lolita swept from Florida to Maine.
Mars glowed. Shahs married. Gloomy Russians spied.
Lang made your portrait. And one night I died. (ll. 679-682)

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 Sylvia O’Donnell (née O'Connell), a wealthy socialite with several ex-husbands who helps the ex-king immigrate to America and gets him a job at Wordsmith University:

In VN's novel Pale Fire (1962), Kinbote's note to line 149 of Shade's poem, in which Kinbote (Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) describes the king's escape from Zembla, ends with the sentence "I trust the reader has enjoyed this note." Au lecteur ("To the Reader") is the introductory poem to Charles Baudelaire's collection Les Fleurs du mal ("The Flowers of Evil," 1857).

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) says that he has no desire to twist and batter an unambiguous apparatus criticus into the monstrous semblance of a novel:

Describing the death of Queen Blenda (the mother of Charles the Beloved), 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 Otar, the Prince's platonic pal, a pleasant and cultured adeling with a tremendous nose and sparse hair:

The characters in VN’s novel Pale Fire (1962) include Odon (a world-famous actor and Zemblan patriot who helps the king to escape from Zembla) and his mother Sylvia O’Donnell (a wealthy socialite with several ex-husbands who helps the king immigrate to America and gets him a job at Wordsmith University):

According to John Shade (the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962), a person who deliberately peels off a drab and unhappy past and replaces it with a brilliant invention is merely turning a new leaf with the left hand:

Above this the poet wrote and struck out:

The madman’s fate

In his foreword 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) compares himself to an exiled prince who is unaware of the Golconda in his cuff links:

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 conversation with him and Shade Mrs. Hurley mentioned the old man at the Exton railway station who thought he was God and began redirecting the trains:

Above this the poet wrote and struck out:

The madman’s fate

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 Arnor's poem about a miragarl ("mirage girl"):