Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

The name of the capital of Zembla (a distant northern land in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962), Onhava seems to hint at heaven. In Shakespeare’s Hamlet (1.5) Hamlet tells Horatio: "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, / Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." In a letter of Oct. 31, 1838, to his brother Dostoevski says that philosophy should not be regarded as a mere equation where nature is the unknown quantity:

Describing Gradus’ day in Nice, 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 Umruds (an Eskimo tribe) and their umyaks (hide-lined boats):

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 Mt. Glitterntin:

Describing Gradus (in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962, Shade's murderer), Kinbote (Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) mentions the mineral blue of his jaw:

The three main characters in VN’s novel Pale Fire (1962) are the poet Shade, his commentator Kinbote (who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) and his murderer Gradus. “One shade the more, one ray the less” is a line in Byron’s poem She Walks in Beauty (1813):

She walks in beauty, like the night 

Of cloudless climes and starry skies; 

In Canto Three of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962) mentions a game of chess with his wife Sybil who says that her knight is pinned (or is it the poet whose knight is pinned?):

In a Monday issue of The New York Times Gradus (Shade’s murderer in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) reads (as imagined by Kinbote, Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) about the Queen of England who, during a visit to a museum in Whitehorse, walked to a corner of the White Animals Room, removed her right glove and, with her back turned to several evidently observant people, rubbed her forehead and one of her eyes:

In his apology of suicide 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 “your loved body's obliteration in the Lap of the Lord:”

In Canto Three of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) mentions a dead school chum who in a blend of jauntiness and gloom points at the puddles in his basement room:

For as we know from dreams it is so hard

To speak to our dear dead! They disregard

Our apprehension, queaziness and shame -

The awful sense that they're not quite the same.

And our school chum killed in a distant war

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) mentions Gradus’s puny ghost, shargar: