Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

At the beginning of VN’s novel Zashchita Luzhina (The Luzhin Defense, 1930) little Luzhin finds a mysterious sweetness in the fact that a long number, arrived at with difficulty, at the decisive moment, after many adventures, is divided by nineteen without any remainder:

In VN’s novel Zashchita Luzhina (“The Luzhin Defense,” 1930) Luzhin gets married on Thursday, November 29, 1928, and commits suicide 84 days (twelve weeks) later, on Thursday, February 21, 1929:

In VN’s novel Zashchita Luzhina (“The Luzhin Defense,” 1930) Luzhin gets married on a November day:

At the beginning of VN’s novel Zashchita Luzhina (The Luzhin Defense, 1930) little Luzhin writes dictations ('Being born in this world is hardly to be borne'):

The action in VN’s novel Zashchita Luzhina (The Luzhin Defense, 1930) begins on Saturday, August 28, 1910 (OS), Leo Tolstoy’s eighty-second birthday. Tolstoy is the author of Voskresenie ("Resurrection," 1899). Voskresen’ye is Russian for “Sunday.” In VN's play Sobytie ("The Event," 1938) the action takes place on Sunday, August 28, 1938. The play’s main character, the portrait painter Troshcheykin, has the same name and patronymic as Aleksey Maksimovich Peshkov (Maxim Gorky’s real name).

In VN’s novel Zashchita Luzhina (“The Luzhin Defense,” 1930) the word partiya (match) keeps floating through the brain of Luzhin’s wife after the wedding:

In VN’s novel Zashchita Luzhina (“The Luzhin Defense,” 1930) Kurt and Karl (the German revelers) mistake Luzhin who fainted in the street after his game with Turati for their friend Pulvermacher:

Describing Cincinnatus’s childhood in his novel Priglashenie na kazn’ (“Invitation to a Beheading,” 1935), VN mentions malina (rumpberry) and tych’ (poke) among the games that Cincinnatus played with other children:

In VN’s novel Zashchita Luzhina (“The Luzhin Defense,” 1930) not a single date is mentioned. But we can figure out at least three exact dates: Luzhin's birthday, the day on which the action in the novel begins and the day of Luzhin's death. Luzhin was born on October 19, 1902, goes to school on Monday, August 31, 1909 (OS), and dies on February 21, 1929.

In The Luzhin Defense, the English version of his novel Zashchita Luzhina (1930), VN renames Mit’ka (the boy of the lady from Russia) Ivan: