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[NABOKOV-L] A mystical sui-mate?
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In relation to Nabokov's "The Luzhin Defense" Sandy Drescher* observes that the "distinction between Game and Problem controls how the end of the novel is to be understood. If the chess board of eternity is part of a Game, then suicide is unsuccessful as a defense. It is a defeat if Luzhin jumped into a malignant continuation of the life he wished to escape...Alternatively, if eternity is a Chess Problem, Luzhin enters into that abstract realm where he functions, can finally be at home, will enjoy the music of the spheres." An interesting, metaphysical, point. A different one has been raised by Stan. Milkowsky (in an old Nab-L posting), related to the note written by Nabokov in connection to his short-story, "Christmas": ""it oddly resembles the type of chess problem called "selfmate."
In this short-story Sleptsov is a grieving father who returns to his native village to bury his young son. The mansion is freezing cold and, since his stay shall be short, he is installed in the smaller anex. Excerpts: ".Just recently, in Petersburg, after having babbled in his delirium about school, about his bicycle, about some great Oriental moth, he died, and yesterday Sleptsov had taken the coffin-weighed down, it seemed, with an entire lifetime-to the country, into the family vault near the village church.[...] where the countless summer tracks of his rapid sandals were preserved beneath the snow [...]
Room after room filled with yellow light, and the shrouded furniture seemed unfamiliar...and Sleptsov's enormous shadow, slowly extending one arm, floated across the wall and the gray squares of curtained paintings. He went into the room which had been his son's study in summer [...] In the desk he found a notebook, spreading boards...and an English biscuit tin that contained a large exotic cocoon which had cost three rubles...His son had remembered it during his sickness, regretting that he had left it behind, but consoling himself with the thought that the chrysalid inside was probably dead [...] Here, in this room, on that very desk, his son had spread the wings of his captures...Sleptsov returned from the main house, chilled, red-eyed...carrying a wooden case under his arm. Seeing the Christmas tree on the table, he asked absently: "What's that?" Relieving him of the case, Ivan answered in a low, mellow voice: "There's a holiday coming up tomorrow."/ .../"Please take it away," repeated Sleptsov, and bent over the case he had brought. In it he had gathered his son's belongings-the folding butterfly net, the biscuit tin with the pear-shaped cocoon, the spreading board...the blue notebook [...] "Saw a fresh specimen of the Camberwell Beauty today....She has probably left, and we didn't even get acquainted. Farewell, my darling. I feel terribly sad... "/ Sleptsov tried to remember.../"I-can't-bear-it-any-longer," he drawled between groans.../"It's Christmas tomorrow," came the abrupt reminder, "and I'm going to die. Of course. It's so simple. This very night..."[...] "... death," Sleptsov said softly, as if concluding a long sentence./ ...Sleptsov pressed his eyes shut, and had a fleeting sensation that earthly life lay before him, totally bared and comprehensible-and ghastly in its sadness, humiliatingly pointless, sterile, devoid of miracles.... At that instant there was a sudden snap-a thin sound like that of an overstretched rubber band breaking. Sleptsov opened his eyes. The cocoon in the biscuit tin had burst at its tip, and a black, wrinkled creature the size of a mouse was crawling up the wall above the table...It had emerged from the chrysalid because a man overcome with grief had transferred a tin box to his warm room, and the warmth had penetrated its taut leaf-and-silk envelope; it had awaited this moment so long, had collected its strength so tensely, and now, having broken out, it was slowly and miraculously expanding...It became a winged thing imperceptibly...And its wings-still feeble, still moist-kept growing and unfolding, and now they were developed to the limit set for them by God, and there, on the wall, instead of a little lump of life, instead of a dark mouse, was a great Attacus moth like those that fly, birdlike, around lamps in the Indian dusk./And then those thick black wings, with a glazy eyespot on each and a purplish bloom dusting their hooked foretips, took a full breath under the impulse of tender, ravishing, almost human happiness."
Christmas indicates Christ and the Ressurrection and there is a dead son with a grieving father who plans to kill himself but, as if in answer to his ghastly vision of earthly life, sterile and devoid of miracles, the seemlingly dead chrysalid unfolds under the impulse of a "ravishing, almost human happiness."
How does this occurrence relate to a sui-mate chess problem? Are we supposed to relate it to Christ and his preordained destiny and death, or to his victorious ressurrection?
......................................................
* Musical Analogies in The Defense by Alexander Drescher (Zembla)
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In this short-story Sleptsov is a grieving father who returns to his native village to bury his young son. The mansion is freezing cold and, since his stay shall be short, he is installed in the smaller anex. Excerpts: ".Just recently, in Petersburg, after having babbled in his delirium about school, about his bicycle, about some great Oriental moth, he died, and yesterday Sleptsov had taken the coffin-weighed down, it seemed, with an entire lifetime-to the country, into the family vault near the village church.[...] where the countless summer tracks of his rapid sandals were preserved beneath the snow [...]
Room after room filled with yellow light, and the shrouded furniture seemed unfamiliar...and Sleptsov's enormous shadow, slowly extending one arm, floated across the wall and the gray squares of curtained paintings. He went into the room which had been his son's study in summer [...] In the desk he found a notebook, spreading boards...and an English biscuit tin that contained a large exotic cocoon which had cost three rubles...His son had remembered it during his sickness, regretting that he had left it behind, but consoling himself with the thought that the chrysalid inside was probably dead [...] Here, in this room, on that very desk, his son had spread the wings of his captures...Sleptsov returned from the main house, chilled, red-eyed...carrying a wooden case under his arm. Seeing the Christmas tree on the table, he asked absently: "What's that?" Relieving him of the case, Ivan answered in a low, mellow voice: "There's a holiday coming up tomorrow."/ .../"Please take it away," repeated Sleptsov, and bent over the case he had brought. In it he had gathered his son's belongings-the folding butterfly net, the biscuit tin with the pear-shaped cocoon, the spreading board...the blue notebook [...] "Saw a fresh specimen of the Camberwell Beauty today....She has probably left, and we didn't even get acquainted. Farewell, my darling. I feel terribly sad... "/ Sleptsov tried to remember.../"I-can't-bear-it-any-longer," he drawled between groans.../"It's Christmas tomorrow," came the abrupt reminder, "and I'm going to die. Of course. It's so simple. This very night..."[...] "... death," Sleptsov said softly, as if concluding a long sentence./ ...Sleptsov pressed his eyes shut, and had a fleeting sensation that earthly life lay before him, totally bared and comprehensible-and ghastly in its sadness, humiliatingly pointless, sterile, devoid of miracles.... At that instant there was a sudden snap-a thin sound like that of an overstretched rubber band breaking. Sleptsov opened his eyes. The cocoon in the biscuit tin had burst at its tip, and a black, wrinkled creature the size of a mouse was crawling up the wall above the table...It had emerged from the chrysalid because a man overcome with grief had transferred a tin box to his warm room, and the warmth had penetrated its taut leaf-and-silk envelope; it had awaited this moment so long, had collected its strength so tensely, and now, having broken out, it was slowly and miraculously expanding...It became a winged thing imperceptibly...And its wings-still feeble, still moist-kept growing and unfolding, and now they were developed to the limit set for them by God, and there, on the wall, instead of a little lump of life, instead of a dark mouse, was a great Attacus moth like those that fly, birdlike, around lamps in the Indian dusk./And then those thick black wings, with a glazy eyespot on each and a purplish bloom dusting their hooked foretips, took a full breath under the impulse of tender, ravishing, almost human happiness."
Christmas indicates Christ and the Ressurrection and there is a dead son with a grieving father who plans to kill himself but, as if in answer to his ghastly vision of earthly life, sterile and devoid of miracles, the seemlingly dead chrysalid unfolds under the impulse of a "ravishing, almost human happiness."
How does this occurrence relate to a sui-mate chess problem? Are we supposed to relate it to Christ and his preordained destiny and death, or to his victorious ressurrection?
......................................................
* Musical Analogies in The Defense by Alexander Drescher (Zembla)
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/