Vladimir Nabokov

Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

Description

Please read Alexey Sklyarenko's annotations on Pale FireAda and other Nabokov works here.

By Alexey Sklyarenko , 22 February, 2023

Describing the king’s escape from Zembla, 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 lazy Garh, the farmer's daughter who shows to the king the shortest way to the pass:

 

By Alexey Sklyarenko , 22 February, 2023

Describing Villa Venus (Eric Veen's floramors), Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Ada, 1969) mentions a special chair built for King Victor (the Antiterran ruler of the British Commonwealth who frequents floramors):

 

By Alexey Sklyarenko , 18 February, 2023

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), science tells us that the Earth would not merely fall apart, but vanish like a ghost, if Electricity were suddenly removed from the world:

 

By Alexey Sklyarenko , 17 February, 2023

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

 

By Alexey Sklyarenko , 16 February, 2023

Describing his escape from Zembla, 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 Bera Range, a two-hundred-mile-long chain of rugged mountains: