Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

During her second road trip with Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) across the USA, Lolita falls ill and on Tuesday, 28 June 1949, is hospitalized in Elphinstone (a small town in the Rocky Mountains). At the Elphinstone hospital nurse Mary Lore calls Lolita (born Dolores Haze) by her first name:

Describing his stay at Silver Spur Court in Elphinstone (a small town in the Rocky Mountains where Lolita falls ill and is hospitalized on Tuesday, June 28, 1949), Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Lolita, 1955) mentions big Frank (the landlady' beau, a robust and kindly trucker):

I heard the sound of whistling lips nearing the half-opened door of my cabin, and then a thump upon it.

It was big Frank. He remained framed in the opened door, one hand on its jamb, leaning forward a little.

The characters in VN's novel Lolita (1955) include Mona Dahl (Lolita's best friend and confidante at Beardsley) and Mary Lore (the Basque nurse at the Elphinstone hospital). Mona Dahl and Mary Lore make one think of Salvador Dalí (a Spanish surrealist painter, 1904-1989) and his friend Federico García Lorca (a Spanish poet, playwright, and theatre director, 1898-1936).

In his commentary and index 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 Sudarg of Bokay, a mirror maker of genius:

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 says that he is ready to become a floweret or a fat fly, but never, to forget:

L'if, lifeless tree! Your great Maybe, Rabelais:

The grand potato. I.P.H., a lay

Institute (I) of Preparation (P)

For the Hereafter (H), or If, as we

Called it - big if! - engaged me for one term

To speak on death ("to lecture on the Worm,"

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 says that he is ready to become a floweret or a fat fly, but never, to forget:

L'if, lifeless tree! Your great Maybe, Rabelais:

The grand potato. I.P.H., a lay

Institute (I) of Preparation (P)

For the Hereafter (H), or If, as we

Called it - big if! - engaged me for one term

To speak on death ("to lecture on the Worm,"

At the beginning of Canto Two of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962) says that today he is sixty-one:

There was a time in my demented youth

When somehow I suspected that the truth

About survival after death was known -

To every human being: I alone

Knew nothing, and a great conspiracy

Of books and people hid the truth from me.

There was the day when I began to doubt

Man's sanity: How could he live without

Knowing for sure what dawn, what death, what doom

Describing his travels with Rita, Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Lolita, 1955) mentions some investigation that Rita undertook on her own, around San Humbertino:

According to John Ray, Jr. (in VN's novel Lolita, 1955, the author of the foreword to Humbert Humbert's manuscript), Mrs. “Richard F. Schiller” (Lolita's married name) outlived Humbert Humbert (who had died in legal captivity, of coronary thrombosis, on November 16, 1952, a few days before his trial was scheduled to start) by forty days and died in childbed, giving birth to a stillborn girl, on Christmas Day 1952, in Gray Star, a settlement in the remotest Northwest:

During her second road trip with Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) across the USA, Lolita falls ill and on Tuesday, June 28, 1949, is hospitalized in Elphinstone (a small town in the Rocky Mountains). Describing his visits to the Elphinstone hospital, Humbert Humbert mentions poor Bluebeard and his brutal brothers-in-law: