Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0024278, Sat, 25 May 2013 23:38:18 +0100

Subject
Re: Chess problem
Date
Body
Carolyn/Jansy: I¹m delighted you have triggered some serious, professional
comments on VN¹s diverse interactions with the wonderfully wide world of
Chess. Especially the two links offered by Dave Haan, both dripping with
goodies previously unknown to moi:

The problem referred to (described) in Speak, Memory is the first of those
listed in
http://www.italiascacchistica.com/a_nabokov.htm
(This is the only online reference I've found; for further discussion see
http://nnyhav.blogspot.com/2005/09/nabokovs-theme.html

My limited command of Italian, Dio sia lodato, is no impediment to following
VN¹s problems¹ and annotated solutions. But, I¹m sure many of us would
welcome an English translation of those ³non-technical literary² sections
not found in ³Speak, Memory.² Any offers? Also, I remain confused about
which ³Speak, Memory² problem* it was that VN claimed to have resisted
solution?
* For the complex titular& publicational variants, see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speak,_Memory

The nnyhav.blogspot deserves the highest Nabokovian praise, although its
author¹s name seems modestly concealed. Note the sweet pun: ³going out on a
LIMB/LIMN.²

Nabokov himself makes use of this cross-over potential in a variety of ways,
some less obvious than others. It may be going out on a limn to assert the
relevance of Poe and Carroll, two prime resources for Lolita, sharing not
only a predeliction for too-young girls (asked what scenes he would have
liked to seen filmed, Nabokov included: "Poe's wedding. Lewis Carroll's
picnics."), but also for essaying chess (Poe in Maelzel's Chess-Player,
Carroll in Wonderland); nevertheless, Humbert's relation to Quilty is much
that of would-be solver to composer.

Less-well-known are Poe¹s genuinely ORIGINAL solutions to long-standing
ASTROPHYSICAL problems. E.g., OLBERS¹ Paradox asks why the SKY gets DARK at
NIGHT?! Edgar Allan Poe's essay Eureka (1848) cleverly anticipated some
qualitative aspects of Kelvin's explanation:

Were the succession of stars endless, then the background of the sky would
present us a uniform luminosity, like that displayed by the Galaxy ­ since
there could be absolutely no point, in all that background, at which would
not exist a star. The only mode, therefore, in which, under such a state of
affairs, we could comprehend the voids which our telescopes find in
innumerable directions, would be by supposing the distance of the invisible
background so immense that no ray from it has yet been able to reach us at
all.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olbers'_paradox#The_paradox
and
http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/science/2011/01/edgar-allan-poe-and-the-worl
d-of-astronomy/

Stan Kelly-Bootle, MA (Cantab), ACM, MAA, AMS, ASCAP.
------------
On 22/05/2013 01:10, "Jansy" <jansy@AETERN.US> wrote:

> Carolyn Kunin: "... it got me to thinking about Nabokov as a chess
> player.Google led me to an interview done with the author before fame struck,
> but in 1951, the latest book was .a volume called "Conclusive Evidence." It
> was an autobiography and yet it wasn't altogether so. Would Mr. Nabokov talk a
> bit about it? He would.[ ] The memoir became the meeting point of an
> impersonal art form and a very personal life story."[ ] "With me, Mr. Nabokov
> said, 'it is a kind of composition. I am a composer of chess problems.
> Nobody,' he said, 'has yet solved the chess problem in 'Conclusive Evidence'
> ." What about a professional, a Reuben Fine, a Reshevsky, or someone like
> that? 'I'm waiting for one to come along,' Mr. Nabokov said in a voice that
> could have been as ambivalent as Joyce's when people were starting to guess at
> the title of what turned out to be 'Finnegans Wake'."
>
> Jansy Mello: You reminded me of two things. In the first place, that Nabokov
> wasn't as keen on playing chess as he was in devising chess problems.So, his
> invitation in "Conclusive Evidence" turns the reader into a chess player and
> this promotes a distancing distinction bt. him and those readers whose joy
> depends on solving the problem and winning the game, instead of following the
> malicious turns and clever devices of his mind (another kind of "discovery
> game").
>
> Still stuck with Kinbote's mention of Proust's "flora of metaphors," I started
> to read again Beckett's essay, which was not a true academic work, filled with
> footnotes, references and quotes, although his work already carried the mark
> of his future writings (a variation of VN's Memoir that isn't just a Memoir,
> i.e, an Essay that's not an academic feat). Beckett became close to James
> Joyce during his stay in Paris. Joyce, noticing the young man's talent,
> invited him to join a collective travail evolving around what he'd been
> writing in 1922, namely, his "Work in Progress, published much later, in 1939,
> as Finnegans Wake (Beckett was in charge of researching Bruno, Vico and Dante
> and his results were published as a part of "Our Exagmination Round his
> Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress") ..
>
> Factifications, indeed! And these carry me to the second association to your
> comment. It's a quote, from Mark Twain's Autobiography (which I haven't read)
> After all, if Clement's observation is true, he must have inadvertently
> transformed his "very personal life story" into literary fiction then and
> there. ( "When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had
> happened or not; but my faculties are decaying now and soon I shall be so I
> cannot remember any but the things that never happened.")
>


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