Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

Before the family dinner in "Ardis the Second" Demon Veen (in VN's novel Ada, 1969, Van's and Ada's father) quotes a poem by François Coppée and mentions Irène de Grandfief, la pauvre et noble enfant, who sold her éléphant:

Here Ada herself came running into the room. Yes-yes-yes-yes, here I come. Beaming!

In the lift of a tall Manhattan building that brings him to Van's penthouse apartment Demon Veen (in VN's novel Ada, 1969, Van's and Ada's father) places a piece of nobler metal among the silver domes on Valerio's rolling table with breakfast for two: 

Not a belief in ghosts makes Hugh Person (the main character in VN's novel Transparent Things, 1972) revisit dreary drab Witt:

The main character in VN's novel Transparent Things (1972), Hugh Person is staying at the Ascot Hotel in Witt:

The characters in VN's novel Transparent Things (1972) include Monsieur Wilde, a Swiss businessman to whom Hugh Person talks in the lounge of the Ascot Hotel in Witt on the eve of his death:

The narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita (1955), Humbert Humbert dubs his devil "Aubrey McFate:"

In his poem “The Nature of Electricity” quoted by 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 his Commentary John Shade mentions Shelley’s incandescent soul that lures the pale moths of starless nights:

In his diary Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Lolita, 1955) compares himself to an inflated pale spider that sits in the middle of a luminous web and gives little jerks to this or that strand:

Describing his life with Rita, Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) mentions the beautiful bluish furs that Rita had been accused of stealing from a Mrs. Roland MacCrum:

Leaving Rita forever, Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) tapes a note of tender adieu to her navel: