I was intrigued by the blurb for The Luzhin Defense: a troubled chess master’s creeping descent into madness. Because of Nabokov’s talent for unsettling portrayals of insanity, exemplified by Kinbote in Pale Fire, and my hobby interest in chess, my expectations were high.
Perhaps due to these lofty expectations, the novel fell short for me. It fluctuates between overly subtle imagery, such as the recurrent “black and white” motifs hinting at a chessboard, and overly explicit elements, like Luzhin's chess-themed dreams and the transformation of objects around him into chess pieces.
Once you abstract beyond the particularities of the protagonist’s obsession with chess, the novel’s strengths emerge – the nature of all-consuming obsession, and the pathos of his wife’s support for Luzhin’s single-minded pursuit of greatness, despite not truly understanding the nature of what he is pursuing.
It was then that she realized clearly that this man, whether you liked him or not, was not one you could thrust out of your life, that he had sat himself down firmly, solidly and apparently for a long time. But she also wondered how she could show this man to her father and mother, how could he be visualized in their drawing room—a man of a different dimension, with a particular form and coloring that was compatible with nothing and no one.
Nabokov felt that The Luzhin Defense “contains and diffuses the greatest warmth” of his early novels. I guess I can’t justifiably disagree with this because I haven’t read his other Russian works, but if we expand the field to his later corpus, I find it hard to rank The Luzhin Defense above Pnin and The Real Life of Sebastian Knight.
With the revolution it was even worse. The general opinion was that it had influenced the course of every Russian’s life; an author could not have his hero go through it without getting scorched, and to dodge it was impossible. This amounted to a genuine violation of the writer’s free will. Actually, how could the revolution affect his son? On the long-awaited day in the fall of nineteen hundred and seventeen Valentinov appeared, just as cheerful, loud and magnificently dressed as before, and behind him was a pudgy young man with a rudimentary mustache. There was a moment of sorrow, embarrassment and strange disillusionment. The son hardly spoke and kept glancing askance at the window (loc 860)
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she was twenty-five, her fashionably bobbed hair was neat and lovely and she had one turn of the head which betrayed a hint of possible harmony, a promise of real beauty that at the last moment remained unfulfilled. (loc 924)
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Luzhin’s present plight was that of a writer or composer who, having assimilated the latest things in art at the beginning of his active career and caused a temporary sensation with the originality of his devices, all at once notices that a change has imperceptibly taken place around him, that others, sprung from goodness knows where, have left him behind in the very devices where he recently led the way, and then he feels himself robbed, sees only ungrateful imitators in the bold artists who have overtaken him, and seldom understands that he himself is to blame, he who has petrified in his art which was once new but has not advanced since then. (loc 1061)
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It was then that she realized clearly that this man, whether you liked him or not, was not one you could thrust out of your life, that he had sat himself down firmly, solidly and apparently for a long time. But she also wondered how she could show this man to her father and mother, how could he be visualized in their drawing room—a man of a different dimension, with a particular form and coloring that was compatible with nothing and no one. (loc 1138)
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to hold her on his lap was nothing compared to the certainty that she would follow him and not disappear, like certain dreams that suddenly burst and disperse because the gleaming dome of the alarm clock has floated up through them. With one shoulder pressed against his chest she tried with a cautious finger to raise his eyelids a little higher and the slight pressure on his eyeball caused a strange black light to leap there, to leap like his black Knight which simply took the Pawn if Turati moved it out on the seventh move, as he had done at their last meeting. The Knight, of course, perished, but this loss was recompensed with a subtle attack by black and here the chances were on his side. (loc 1287)
Segments like this are among the highlights of the book, where his trains of thoughts suddenly veer into chess.
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the moon emerged from behind the angular black twigs, a round, full-bodied moon—a vivid confirmation of victory—and when finally Luzhin left the balcony and stepped back into his room, there on the floor lay an enormous square of moonlight, and in that light—his own shadow. (loc 1293)
Luzhin resembling a chess piece on the board
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Having stamped out a shadow in one place, Luzhin saw with despair that far from where he was sitting a new combination was taking shape on the floor. “If you are in the least interested in my opinion then I must tell you I consider this match ridiculous. You probably think my husband will support you. Admit it: you do think that?” “I am in straitened circumstances,” said Luzhin. “I would need very little. And a magazine has offered me to edit its chess section …” Here the nuisances on the floor became so brazen that Luzhin involuntarily put out a hand to remove shadow’s King from the threat of light’s Pawn. (loc 1414)
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The whole time, however, now feebly, now sharply, shadows of his real chess life would show through this dream and finally it broke through and it was simply night in the hotel, chess thoughts, chess insomnia and meditations on the drastic defense he had invented to counter Turati’s opening. He was wide-awake and his mind worked clearly, purged of all dross and aware that everything apart from chess was only an enchanting dream, in which, like the golden haze of the moon, the image of a sweet, clear-eyed maiden with bare arms dissolved and melted. (loc 1485)
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