On the chess prototypes of Vladimir Nabokov's novel The Defense

Abstract

The article is devoted to discussing the likely prototypes of the figure of Luzhin - the protagonist of V. Nabokov's novel The Defense. Studying the biographical and chess contexts, analyzing the plot components of the novel related to the game, and taking into account the psychological aspects of the early XX century chess history, the authors prove that the versions of the main character's prototypes presented in previous studies of Nabokov's works are controversial. Among these prototypes are the chess players famous at different periods of the past, sharing only one thing with Nabokov's hero – a mental disorder at the end of his life. The authors of the article present and summarize new facts, not considered before, which are somehow reflected in the text of the novel, and the circumstances of the chess history and the world around it taking place at that time. This data became the basis for a new version that one of the prototypes of the protagonist's “chess impersonation” in the novel The Defense could be the Russian (and later Danish – by new citizenship) chess grandmaster Alexander Nimtsovich, whose life path crossed Nabokov's more than once. The famous chess opening “The Nimtsovich Defense” finds compositional and motif parallels in the corresponding scenes of the novel, and the narrator's reflection (close to the hero's reflection) on the specifics of playing chess is quite consistent with Grandmaster Nimtsovich's chess ideas, summarized by him in his book My System (1925). One of Nimzowitsch's biggest successes was winning the tournament in Karlovy Vary (Czechoslovakia) in July-August 1929 – at the very time when Nabokov was busy working on the text of his novel The Defense.