Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

At the end of VN’s story Signs and Symbols (1948) the telephone rings several times:

The telephone rang. It was an unusual hour for it to ring. He stood in the middle of the room, groping with his foot for one slipper that had come off, and childishly, toothlessly, gaped at his wife. Since she knew more English than he, she always attended to the calls.

”Can I speak to Charlie?” a girl’s dull little voice said to her now.

At the end of his Commentary 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) quotes a Zemblan saying that, as a child, he has heard from his nurse:

At the end of his letter to Annette Blagovo Vadim Vadimovich (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Look at the Harlequins! 1974) mentions Botticelli's Primavera:

In his Commentary to Shade’s poem Kinbote calls Gradus (Shade’s murderer in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) “half-man” and says that he is half mad:

In his Commentary 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:

VN’s novel Podvig (“Glory,” 1932) begins as follows:

In VN’s novel Priglashenie na kazn’ (“Invitation to a Beheading,” 1935) Marthe’s face appears as in a locket (medalyon) against the background of that black velvet which lines at night the underside of the eyelids:

Describing his meeting with Ada (now married to Andrey Vinelander) in Mont Roux, Van mentions Vere’s Ninon and Ada’s lenclose:

According to Ada, Demon Veen (in VN’s novel Ada, 1969, Van’s and Ada’s father) called Dorothy Vinelander (Ada’s sister-in-law) l'impayable ("priceless for impudence and absurdity") Dorothy:

In VN’s novel Priglashenie na kazn’ (“Invitation to a Beheading,” 1935) the jailer Rodion uses the phrase styd i sram (shame on you):

Часы пробили семь, и вскоре явился Родион с обедом.

- Он, наверное, еще не приехал? - спросил Цинциннат.

Родион было ушел, но на пороге обернулся: