Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

The main villain in VN’s novel Camera Obscura (1933), Robert Horn (Axel Rex in Laughter in the Dark, 1938) is a gambler:

In his Foreword and 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 his powerful Kramler:

The epigraph to VN’s novel Pale Fire (1962) is from James Boswell’s biography of Samuel Johnson:

This reminds me of the ludicrous account he

gave Mr. Langston, of the despicable state of a

young gentleman of good family. 'Sir, when I

heard of him last, he was running about town

shooting cats.' And then in a sort of kindly

At the end of his poem (a few moments before his death) John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) mentions horseshoes being tossed somewhere and compares a horseshoe to a drunk leaning against a lamppost:

But it's not bedtime yet. The sun attains

Old Dr. Sutton's last two windowpanes.

The man must be - what? Eighty? Eighty-two?

Was twice my age the year I married you.

Talking over the ’phone to Joe Lavender (the owner of Villa Libitina who mistakes Gradus for a newspaper reporter), Gradus (Shade’s murderer in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) pronounces the word “what” as “vot:”

During a conversation at the Faculty Club John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) mentions the lovingly reconstructed ancestor of man in the Exton Museum:

Shade [smiling and massaging my knee]: "Kings do not die - they only disappear, eh, Charles?"

"Who said that?" asked sharply, as if coming out of a trance, the ignorant, and always suspicious, Head of the English Department.

In the conversation at the Faculty Club John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) mentions the lovingly reconstructed ancestor of man in the Exton Museum:

Shade [smiling and massaging my knee]: "Kings do not die - they only disappear, eh, Charles?"

"Who said that?" asked sharply, as if coming out of a trance, the ignorant, and always suspicious, Head of the English Department.

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) mentions this or that beast lying in prison and positively dying of raghdirst (thirst for revenge):

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) mentions a note in the icebox warning with a bark that "no national specialties with odors hard to get rid of" should be placed therein:

When Gradus (Shade’s murderer in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) visits Villa Libitina in Switzerland, Joe Lavender (the villa’s owner) mistakes Gradus for a reporter and calls him over the ’phone “a mucking snooping son of a bitch:”