Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

Describing his life in Paris with Valeria (his first wife), Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) compares himself to Jean-Paul Marat (a French radical journalist, 1743-1793, who was stabbed in his bath by Charlotte Corday):

In a letter to his mother (who lives in Paris) Fyodor Konstantinovich Godunov-Cherdyntsev, the narrator and main character in VN's novel Dar ("The Gift," 1938), mentions istoricheskaya nadezhda (a historical hope):

At the end of VN's novel Lolita (1955) Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character) mentions the only immortality that he and Lolita may share:

When Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) enters the kitchen, Lolita's eyes rise to meet his with a kind of celestial vapidity:

Describing his first road trip with Lolita across the USA, Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) mentions a fly that would settle and walk in the vicinity of Lolita's navel or explore her tender pale areolas:

A fly would settle and walk in the vicinity of her navel or explore her tender pale areolas. She tried to catch it in her fist (Charlotte’s method) and then would turn to the column 'Let’s Explore Your Mind.'

At a Party with Boys thrown by Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) in his and Lolita's Beardsley home Mona Dahl and Roy hotly discuss Predestination and the Law of Averages:

At the beginning of Canto Four of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) says that now he will spy on beauty as none has spied on it yet and mentions two methods of composing:

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.

And speaking of this wonderful machine:

I'm puzzled by the difference between

Two methods of composing: A, the kind

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), Jakob Gradus (Shade's murderer) began his career in the glass business as a maker of Cartesian devils:

Describing the beginning of his life with Lolita, Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) mentions the lyrical, epic, tragic but never Arcadian American wilds:

Describing his childhood, Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) mentions the splendid Hotel Mirana that revolved around him as a kind of private universe, a whitewashed cosmos within the blue greater one that blazed outside: