In VN's novel Zashchita Luzhina ("The Luzhin's Defense," 1930) the guests at a party thrown by Luzhin's wife include a plain-looking man named Petrov:
Лужина, увидев мужа, сунула ему в руку тарелочку с красиво очищенным апельсином и прошла мимо него в кабинет. “И заметьте”,– сказал невзрачного вида человек, выслушав и оценив мысль журналиста — заметьте, что тютчевская ночь прохладна, и звезды там круглые, влажные, с отливом, а не просто светлые точки. Он больше ничего не сказал, так как говорил вообще мало, не столько из скромности, сколько, казалось, из боязни расплескать что-то драгоценное, не ему принадлежащее, но порученное ему. Лужиной, кстати сказать, он очень нравился, именно невзрачностью, неприметностью черт, словно он был сам по себе только некий сосуд, наполненный чем-то таким священным и редким, что было бы даже кощунственно внешность сосуда расцветить. Его звали Петров, он ничем в жизни не был замечателен, ничего не писал, жил, кажется, по-нищенски, но об этом никогда не рассказывал. Единственным его назначением в жизни было сосредоточенно и благоговейно нести то, что было ему поручено, то, что нужно было сохранить непременно, во всех подробностях, во всей чистоте, а потому и ходил он мелкими, осторожными шажками, стараясь никого не толкнуть, и только очень редко, только, когда улавливал в собеседнике родственную бережность, показывал на миг — из всего того огромного и таинственного, что он в себе нес,– какую-нибудь нежную, бесценную мелочь, строку из Пушкина или простонародное название полевого цветка.
Mrs. Luzhin, catching sight of her husband, thrust a plate into his hand with a beautifully peeled orange on it and went past him into the study. “And note," said a plain-looking man who had listened to the whole of the journalist’s idea and appreci- ated it, “note that Tyutchev’s night is cool and the stars in it are round and moist and glossy, and not simply bright dots,” He did not say any more, since in general he spoke little, not so much out of modesty, it seemed, as out of a fear of spilling something precious that was not his but had been entrusted to him. Mrs. Luzhin, incidentally, liked him very much, and precisely because of his plainness, the neutrality of his features, as if he were himself only the out- side of a vassel filled with something so sacred and rare that it would be a sacrilege to paint the clay. His name was Petrov, not a single thing about him was remarkable, he had written nothing, and he lived like a beggar, but never talked about it to anyone. His sole function in life was to carry, reverently and with concentration, that which had been entrusted to him, something which it was necessary at all costs to preserve in all its detail and in all its purity, and for that reason he even walked with small careful steps, trying not to bump into anyone, and only very seldom, only when he discerned a kindred solicitude in the person be was talking to did he reveal for a moment— from the whole of that enormous something that he carried mysteriously within him— some tender, priceless little trifle, a line from Pushkin or the peasant name of a wild flower. (Chapter 14)
Alexander Dmitrievich Petrov (1794-1867) was a Russian chess player (who over half a century was considered Russia's strongest player), chess composer, and chess writer. With Carl Jaenisch, he analysed the opening that later became known as the Petrov's Defense or Russian Game. It is believed that the chess player on Grigoriy Myasoyedov's painting Sam s soboyu, ili Igra v shakhmaty ("Chess with himself," 1907) is Petrov:
For his painting Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan on 16 November 1581 made in 1883-1885 Ilya Repin (a Russian realist painter, 1844-1931) used Grigoriy Myasoyedov (1834-1911), his friend and fellow artist, as the model for Ivan the Terrible, and writer Vsevolod Garshin (1855-1888) for the Tsarevich. The Russian tsar Ivan IV (surnamed the Terrible) died on March 28, 1584, from a stroke while he was playing chess with his close associate Bogdan Belski. VN's father, Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov, was assassinated in Berlin on March 28, 1922, exactly eighteen years, day for day, after his father's death in St. Petersburg (on his deathbed VN's grandfather, Dmitri Nabokov, the former minister of justice in the government of Alexander II and Alexander III, believed that he was in Nice).
On March 24, 1888, Vsevolod Garshin committed suicide by falling down a stairwell. At the end of VN's novel (presumably on March 1, 1929, the 38th anniversary of the assassination of Alexander I) mad Luzhin commits suicide by falling down from the bathroom window. The action in The Luzhin Defense begins on Friday, August 28, 1908 (Leo Tolstoy's eightieth birthday). Tolstoy is the author of Voyna i mir ("War and Peace," 1869). Begstvo Napoleona iz Moskvy v Parizh ("The Retreat of Napoleon I from Moscow") is an amzing chess problem created by Alexander Petrov in 1824:
It symbolizes: b1=Moscow, h8=Paris, h1-a8=Berezina, sK=Napoleon, wK=Tsar Alexander I. The possibility of mating with 6.Qa8 instead of 6.Nb4+ is not a cook, but was intentionally built in by the author to illustrate the "possible but missed annihilation of the enemy" on the banks of the Beresina.