Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

Describing his sexual dreams, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions a dream in which Ada and Lucette (Van’s and Ada’s half-sister) slake their thirst in the pool of his blood:

According to Ada, at Marina’s funeral Demon Veen (in VN’s novel Ada, 1969, Van’s and Ada’s father) told her that he would not cheat the poor grubs:

Describing Ada’s amorous life, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) repeats the French word ailleurs (elsewhere) three times:

After Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) possessed her for the first time, Cordula de Prey mentions un petit enfantôme:

Cordula told Edmond: ‘Arrêtez près de what’s-it-called, yes, Albion, le store pour messieurs, in Luga’; and as peeved Van remonstrated: ‘You can’t go back to civilization in pajamas,’ she said firmly. ‘I shall buy you some clothes, while Edmond has a mug of coffee.’

At the beginning of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) compares himself to the shadow of the waxwing:

I was the shadow of the waxwing slain

By the false azure in the windowpane;

I was the smudge of ashen fluff – and I

Lived on, flew on, in the reflected sky. (1-4)

VN’s poem Lines Written in Oregon (1953) ends in the line “Esmeralda, immer, immer:”

Esmeralda! now we rest
Here, in the bewitched and blest
Mountain forests of the West.

Here the very air is stranger.
Damzel, anchoret, and ranger
Share the woodland’s dream and danger

And to think I deemed you dead!
(In a dungeon, it was said;
Tortured, strangled); but instead –

Upon his arrival in Ardis in the summer of 1888, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) tells Cordula de Prey that his horse caught a hoof in a hole in the rotting planks of Ladore Bridge and had to be shot:

In Canto Four of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) lists the things that he loathes and, at the end of his list, mentions sharks:

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;

Describing his juvenile novel Letters from Terra, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions Theresa, a character in his novel:

Ada’s letters breathed, writhed, lived; Van’s Letters from Terra, ‘a philosophical novel,’ showed no sign of life whatsoever.

(I disagree, it’s a nice, nice little book! Ada’s note.)

According to Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Lolita, 1955), a pistol is the Freudian symbol of the Ur-father’s central forelimb: