In his foreword to
the English edition (in 1964, therefore suspiciously close to Pale Fire
and to Shade's lines about imitating the gods who "promote ebony
fauns in a game of worlds" in order to share in their pleasure)
Nabokov writes about his "attractive novel--the intricate
immanence in plot and imagery of chess as a prevailing metaphor, and the weird
lovableness of the virtually inert hero.", thereby excluding this
metaphysical dimension, which I continue to take for granted - inspite
of the emphasis on the novel as being only concerned with chess problems.
Like John Updike**, Dave Haan considers
that "the Turati that Luzhin prepares for is not the actual opponent but one
Luzhin constucts in his own mind," and this fantasy is well described by
Khodasevich in connection to both Turati and Valentinov ( Luzhin's
Defense, translated from the Russian by Jeff Edmunds, on Zembla). However,
in relation to what Nabokov defined as his chess "metaphor," for me there
is another, one that is an all-embracing world-game being played with
human pawns. As I see it, it is here that Valentinov plays a crucial
role - by trapping Luzhin into playing one more game,
one which shall give continuity to the interrupted match with
Turati and in which he expected to lose. (Valentinov treacherously places his
bet on Turati)*** I'll develop this in the end of the next
paragraph.
In his introduction to the 1995 renewed
edition of Recreational Mathematics (Mathematical Association of
America, Washington DC, p. 9), Martin Gardner writes: "Vladimir Nabokov's
great chess novel, The Defense, is about such a man [using chess as a kind
of drug]. He permited chess (one form of mathematicalplay)to dominate his
mind so completely that he finally lost contact with the real world and ended
his miserable life-game with what chess problemists call a suimate or self-mate.
He jumped out of a window. It is consistent with the steady disintegration
of Nabokov's chess master that, as a boy, he had been a poor student, even
in mathematics, at the same time that he had been "extraordinarily engrossed in
a collection of problems entitled Merry Mathematics, in the fantastical
misbehavior of numbers and the wayward frolic of geometric lines, in
everything that the shoolbook lacked." For
Gardner, Luzhin's suicide ends his " miserable life-game with what chess
problemists call a suimate or self-mate." But as Valentinov, in my eyes, represents the author, it's the
author who needs him to play the role of the Gods in his
stead, thereby representing the forces of destiny that rule
over everyone's life (John Shade's insight). In his madness, trapped Luzhin sees Valentinov as the
enemy, the evil agent who has preordained all his future
moves (contrary to Krug's final discovery in Bend
Sinister?). Valentinov becomes the opponent Luzhin has constructed in
his mind and his only escape is through suicide, considered as a way to
drop out of the game (the author's). As a character, whose entire life has been
pre-programmed to turn him into a chessmaster and, besides, to play the
role of an author's chess-piece, Luzhin comes to realize
that he's been playing a looser's game. He cannot lead his moves
towards the pre-determined "suimate" by killing Valentino/Nabokov. His
suicide, on the contrary, is the opposite move to a "suimate" (his moves are
controlled to kill the controller himself in the case of a
"suimate").
................................................................................................
* - Dave
Haan: "Chess and chess problems are different disciplines
(due to different objectives) sharing an underlying matrix. The uniqueness
of solution to chess problems and satisfaction of imposed conditions (how
many moves to checkmate) are key constraints. Unorthodox, or fairy,
chess problems vary the matrix or conditions (objectives) that further remove
them from chess proper; selfmate is the reversal of objective (force checkmate
not on the side without control, but on the side with control: no matter what
Black's response, White's moves compel Black to give checkmate in the prescribed
number of moves).
The grounds for describing The Luzhin Defense as a selfmate
are not based on the chess matches that Luzhin undertakes; these are merely part
of the matrix in which the metaphor is embedded. Luzhin does not set out to lose
in chess but in life, so determined to exercise control in the latter (using the
former as model) that he's willing to change his objectives to suit.
from Karshan, VN & the Art of Play: "... the chess analogies in The
Luzhin Defense tempt the reader with parallels and patterns that can never quite
be defined, producing what Luzhin sees in his childhood delirium, 'the semblance
of a kind of monstrous game on a spectral, wobbly, and endlessly disintegrating
board' (71). As Leona Toker has argued, 'its chess patterns stand for all the
patterns and systems that prove tragically inadequate when preferred to or
violently superimposed on the natural flow of life.'" (Karshan also compares
with Pushkin's Queen of Spades, and with Apollo Apollonovich in Bely's
Petersburg.)
As far as the chess goes, the Turati that Luzhin prepares for is
not the actual opponent but one Luzhin constructs in his own mind. Luzhin does
not set out to lose in chess."
"We know, from Chapter XIV of his autobiography,
that Nabokov's forte was not tournament play but the "beautiful, complex and
sterile art" of composing chess problems of a "poetico mathematical type". On
this level as a work-epic of chess...The Defense is splendly shaped
toward Luzhin's match with Turati...and during the tournament in which Luzhin
thinks himself into a nervous breakdown suspense mounts...a display of
metaphorical brilliance that turns pure thought heroic" and, further on, "I'm
not sure it perfectly works, this chess puzzle pieced out with human
characters...The reintroduction of Valentinov, though well-prepared, does not
function smoothly...I am unable to feel Luzhin's descent into an eternity of
"dark and pale squares" as anything but the foreordained outcome of a scheme
that, however pretty, is less weight than the human fictions [Anna
Karenina's and Eva Bovary's suicide, or Kirillov's] it has conjured
up."
*** - Updike's
conclusions about Nabokov's pretty scheme concerning Luzhin's
suicide is echoed, very recently, by movie critic Alan A. Stone:
"Valentinov, a minor figure in the novel, becomes the evil serpent, the plot
device of the film [Marleen Gorris's "The Defense," and her
construction of Luzhin's "traumatic childhood"]...Gorris's Luzhin cracks
under Valentinov's manipulations" ( "No Defense: The Luzhin defence turns a
clever novel into pop-psychological tripe," by Alan A. Stone.). For me,
Luzhin was "cracked" since he was a little (almost autistic) boy and he
resents the external world, his parents and school-mates from the very
start.