Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

Describing Gradus’ day in New York, 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 Zemblan moppet who cried to her Japanese friend: Ufgut, ufgut, velkam ut Semblerland! (Adieu, adieu, till we meet in Zembla!):

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 name Izumrudov (of one of the greater Shadows who visits Gradus in Nice) sounds rather Russian but actually means "of the Umruds," an Eskimo tribe sometimes seen paddling their umyaks (hide-lined boats) on the emerald waters of Zembla’s northern shores:

Upon the ex-king’s arrival in America, Sylvia O’Donnell (in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962, the mother of Odon, world-famous Zemblan actor who helps the king to escape from Zembla) offers Kinbote (Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) a mascana fruit (Kinbote is a confirmed vegetarian):

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), he arrived in America descending by parachute:

A few moments before Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) is killed by Gradus, Kinbote (Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) asks him, if the muse has been kind to him:

According to John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962), oblivion thrives not on dry thighbones but on blood-ripe lives:

                                                   Iph

Was a larvorium and a violet:

A grave in Reason's early spring. And yet

In Canto Three of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) describes IPH (a lay Institute of Preparation for the Hereafter) and mentions Elysian life:

Time means succession, and succession, change:

Hence timelessness is bound to disarrange

Schedules of sentiment. We give advice

To widower. He has been married twice:

At the end of Canto Three of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) mentions a Balkan king and some faint hope:

Yes! It sufficed that I in life could find

Some kind of link-and-bobolink, some kind

Of correlated pattern in the game,

Plexed artistry, and something of the same

Pleasure in it as they who played it found.

When Ada refuses to leave her sick husband, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) walks some ten kilometers along soggy roads to Rennaz and thence flies to Nice, Biskra, the Cape, Nairobi, the Basset range:

Describing Ada’s allusions to her affairs of the flesh, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions cockamaroo (Russian ‘biks’), played with a toy cue on the billiard cloth of an oblong board with holes and hoops, bells and pins among which the ping-pong-sized eburnean ball zigzagged with bix-pix concussions: