Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

According to Miss Cleft (the headmistress of Ada’s school for girls), a thorn is always close to a bud:

Describing the difference between Terra and Antiterra (aka Demonia, Earth’s twin planet on which Ada is set), Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions the deepest thinkers, the purest philosophers, Paar of Chose and Zapater of Aardvark:

In VN’s novel Ada (1969) Lucette’s note (written after the dinner in ‘Ursus’ and debauch à trois in Van’s Manhattan flat) to Van and Ada ends in the words Pour Elle (Fr. “for her”):

Describing his father’s death in a mysterious airplane disaster, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions a maussade Lebanese beauty of fifteen sultry summers:

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 –