Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

According to Kinbote (Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla), Gradus contended that the real origin of his name should be sought in the Russian word for grape, vinograd:

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), in police records Gradus also appears as Ravus, Ravenstone and d’Argus:

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

In VN’s novel Pale Fire (1962) Kinbote (Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) calls Izumrudov (one of the greater Shadows who visits Gradus in Nice) “the gay green vision:”

In Canto Two of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) speaks of his daughter and says that she twisted words:

                         She twisted words: pot, top
Spider, redips. And "powder" was "red wop."
She called you a didactic katydid.
She hardly ever smiled, and when she did,
It was a sign of pain. She'd criticize

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), Judge Goldsworth (Kinbote’s landlord) resembles a Medusa-locked hag:

Describing King Alfin’s passion for flying apparatuses, 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 constant "aerial adjutant" Colonel Peter Gusev:

In VN’s novel Pale Fire (1962) John Shade’s poem begins as follows:

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. (ll. 1-4)

In VN’s novel Pale Fire (1962) Canto Four of Shade’s poem (written in heroic couplets, a traditional form for English poetry) begins as follows:

Now I shall spy on beauty as none has
Spied on it yet. Now I shall cry out as
None has cried out. Now I shall try what none
Has tried. Now I shall do what none has done. (ll. 835-838)

Describing two methods of composing, method A and method B, John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) mentions the automaton:

In method B the hand supports the thought,

The abstract battle is concretely fought.

The pen stops in mid-air, then swoops to bar

A canceled sunset or restore a star,

And thus it physically guides the phrase