Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

In Canto Four of his poem, John Shade (the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962) mentions the white-hosed moron torturing a black bull, rayed with red, among the things he loathes:

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,

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) quotes the words of his Zemblan nurse,  "Minnamin, Gut mag alkan, Pern dirstan (my darling, God makes hungry, the Devil thirsty):"

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) quotes a Zemblan proverb "the lost glove is happy:"

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), the terrible name of the leader of the Shadows (a regicidal organization) cannot be mentioned, even in the Index to the obscure work of a scholar:

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 his foreword to Humbert Humbert’s manuscript, John Ray, Jr. (a character in VN’s novel Lolita, 1955) mentions the caretakers of the various cemeteries involved who report that no ghosts walk:

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 the society sculptor and poet Arnor:

In his little pocket diary that he kept in Ramsdale as Charlotte's lodger, Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) says that, before moving to Ramsdale, Lolita and her mother Charlotte lived in Pisky, the Haze home town in the Middle West:

In his foreword to Humbert Humbert’s manuscript John Ray, Jr. (a character in VN’s novel Lolita, 1955) mentions “My Cue,” a biography written by Vivian Darkbloom (Clare Quilty's coauthor):

During her second road trip with Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) across the USA, Lolita falls ill and on Tuesday, 28 June 1949, is hospitalized in Elphinstone (a small town in the Rocky Mountains). Describing his stay at the Elphinstone Silver Spur Court, Humbert Humbert mentions big Frank, a robust and kindly trucker who had been blown through a wall overseas: