The Luzhin Defense Vladimir Nabokov Mel Foster 9781480543102 Books
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Nabokov’s third novel, The Luzhin Defense, is a chilling story of obsession and madness. As a young boy, Luzhin was unattractive, distracted, withdrawn, sullen — an enigma to his parents and an object of ridicule to his classmates. He takes up chess as a refuge from the anxiety of his everyday life. His talent is prodigious and he rises to the rank of grandmaster — but at a cost in Luzhin’s obsessive mind, the game of chess gradually supplants reality. His own world falls apart during a crucial championship match, when the intricate defense he has devised withers under his opponent’s unexpected and unpredictable lines of assault. One of the twentieth century’s master prose stylists, Vladimir Nabokov was born in St. Petersburg in 1899. He studied French and Russian literature at Trinity College, Cambridge, then lived in Berlin and Paris, where he launched a brilliant literary career. In 1940, he moved to the United States and achieved renown as a novelist, poet, critic, and translator. He taught literature at Wellesley, Stanford, Cornell, and Harvard. In 1961, he moved to Montreux, Switzerland, where he died in 1977. “[Nabokov is] the supreme master.” — The New York Times Book Review
The Luzhin Defense Vladimir Nabokov Mel Foster 9781480543102 Books
This was my first Nabokov novel, read for a class focused on his works. As a translation of the original Russian text undergone by the author himself (along with his son), I am confident in assuming that this is as faithful a representation of an author's original intent as any translation can be; Nabokov's deep understanding of the English language (learned before Russian as a child) is also evident in the sheer complexity of his vocabulary and syntax.As for the novel itself, it encapsulates many of N's primary thematic concerns: the fallibility of memory and perception, the cost of obsession, the nature of Russian identity following the mass exodus that was necessitated by the Bolshevik Revolution, and the careful insertion of autobiographical details which give his images and characters additional authenticity and emotional impact. The narrative of a chess grandmaster losing his tenuous grip on reality is fairly straightforward, but Nabokov never states outright what Luzhin's journey is supposed to mean, allowing his complex web of imagery and allusions to guide the reader's personal interpretation. As an introduction to Nabokov's novels, I would suggest this early work over the more famous and controversial Lolita, as it allows one to familiarize herself with Nabokov's unique style and better appreciate Lolita as the departure that it truly is.
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The Luzhin Defense Vladimir Nabokov Mel Foster 9781480543102 Books Reviews
In THE LUZHIN DEFENSE, Nabokov examines the effects of mental exhaustion in an esteemed but socially awkward chess master who connects to life only through the language and conventions of chess. In doing so, Nabokov creates Luzhin, a thirty-something man whose arrested emotional development overlaps with an inward madness and who has a breakdown during the championship match of an arduous chess tournament. Thereafter, Luzhin is institutionalized briefly and then marries a woman whose purpose in life is to divert the famous but childish Luzhin and keep him from returning to chess, which she believes will kill him. The title of this novel refers to the strategy the desperate and unstable Luzhin ultimately employs to maintain control.
Brilliant but damaged men and madness are certainly major presences in the Nab's oeuvre. But among the Nab's brilliant but damaged protagonists, I'd say that Luzhin may be the most extreme, since he is completely dependent on others to both exercise his gifts and organize his life. Meanwhile, Luzhin's madness is not unlike that of Adam Krug of BEND SINISTER or Hugh Person in TRANSPARENT THINGS, whose madness leads to their demises. The difference, I suppose, is that Luzhin's madness is expressed through the mental structure of an obsessive chess player.
Chess is not my game. But in writing about chess, Nabokov forces me to recognize that I'm missing a game with great dazzle, elegance, and power. Here, for example, is some of his lead-up to the championship match between Luzhin and Turati, which initiates Luzhin's breakdown. "... and there were those who said that the limpidity and lightness of Luzhin's thought would prevail over the Italian's tumultuous fantasy, and there were those who forecast that the fiery, swift-swooping Turati would defeat the far-sighted Russian player." Chapter 8 contains their match and it's as exciting as "the Giants win the pennant...the Giants win the pennant..."
Highly recommended.
A delightful early novel from the master in which the life of an artist in relation to both 'reality' and to his art is explored.
The main character, Luzhin, is a chess grand master who is devoted to the game to the exclusion of 'real' life. His childhood, career and marriage are explored-and the sections have a common theme of control by a third party a father, an impresario and a wife, who either exploit or have little understanding of what his art means to Luzhin.
But with Nabokov, everything is multi-layered and not what it seems at first glance. There are marvelous scenes here-not so much of Luzhin's perceptions or lack thereof eg-the wife being viewed initially as an open handbag, but of the master himself discovering then avant-garde forms to express the dilemmas confronting his hero.
I've always considered Nabokov to be a particularly spiritual author, though that fact is often only visible in his early short stories, before it was concealed under clever layers of multiplicity and word play. Here at the end of the story, we may ask, does Luzhin choose to annihilate himself, unable to face the stress of his his return to chess or does he in fact fall into a universal chess board which will prove more congenial?
However we choose to read and interpret the book, I think it is of tantamount importance to view the story as an exploration of an artist both to his art and reality as the rest of humanity has chosen to constitute it- and finally about our place in the universe itself. The question being, is life itself a work of art- perhaps written by an authorial deity, in which, at the end, the self merges with the cosmos-which, of course, may be the entire purpose of creating art in the first place.
This was my first Nabokov novel, read for a class focused on his works. As a translation of the original Russian text undergone by the author himself (along with his son), I am confident in assuming that this is as faithful a representation of an author's original intent as any translation can be; Nabokov's deep understanding of the English language (learned before Russian as a child) is also evident in the sheer complexity of his vocabulary and syntax.
As for the novel itself, it encapsulates many of N's primary thematic concerns the fallibility of memory and perception, the cost of obsession, the nature of Russian identity following the mass exodus that was necessitated by the Bolshevik Revolution, and the careful insertion of autobiographical details which give his images and characters additional authenticity and emotional impact. The narrative of a chess grandmaster losing his tenuous grip on reality is fairly straightforward, but Nabokov never states outright what Luzhin's journey is supposed to mean, allowing his complex web of imagery and allusions to guide the reader's personal interpretation. As an introduction to Nabokov's novels, I would suggest this early work over the more famous and controversial Lolita, as it allows one to familiarize herself with Nabokov's unique style and better appreciate Lolita as the departure that it truly is.
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