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Re: Nabokov's Inspiration for The Defense ...
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Sandy Klein :http://hubpages.com/hub/Bardeleben-the-Chess-Master-Vladimir-Nabokovs-Inspiration-for-The-Defense :[ Cf. also Glen Downey - The Relentless Combination: Chess and the Patterns of Madness in Vladimir Nabokov's The Defense]
"Aleksandr Luzhin, the main character from Vladimir Nabokov's "The Luzhin Defense," was based on real life chess master Curt von Bardeleben who lived from 1861 to 1924. Both the fictional character and the real person were strong chess players who competed at world championship levels, both were reclusive and socially awkward, both jumped to their deaths through a window. Curt is most famous for his game against Steinitz in which he (Carl) left the room instead of resigning. Apparently Curt didn't like his position here against Steinitz, because it was his move, and the move he played was leaving the room and never returning.
I believe there is a correlation between chess and madness--as it really is an obsession. Whenever I talk to a chess player who has decided to give up chess I feel a sense of impending doom for them...Curt, or in Nabokov's novel, the character "Aleksandr Ivanovich Luzhin" decides that chess is the reason for his declining state and tries to give it up. Chess creeps back into his consiousness, however, and he feels it pulling him in. He tries to find the move that will get him out of the game. He finds that move by throwing himself to his death."
JM:The commentator above is categorical ("Aleksandr Luzhin, the main character from Vladimir Nabokov's 'The Luzhin Defense,' was based on real life chess master Curt von Bardeleben") and "patterns of madness" is an enticing title for an approach between certain symptoms of mental illness ("obsession", "repetition") and chess patterns. Like him, movie director Marleen Gorri (in her film "The Luzhin Defence") reactivated her notion of "childhood traumas" and neurosis to explain Luzhin's torments: she ignored Nabokov's warning addressed to those little freudians who'd find papa and mama in chess-pieces shaped like kings and queens.
Alan A. Stone ("No Defense") thought that Gorri had operated a frontal lobotomy on Nabokov's original novel and he valued Nabokov's almost prophetic perceptiveness (in 1930), in his depiction of Luzhin's behavior and terrors, since he sees tham as being suggestive of cognitive disturbances and autistic symptoms, matters which have only recently been isolated and described.
Citations, like "Chess Fever" and Harold Loyd's "Safety Last," may be as important in "The Defense" as the influence of Curt von Bardeleben's suicide on Nabokov's Aleksander Ivanovich, or over Luzhin's "suimate" .I think that it doesn't constitute the most marking feature of the novel.
Perhaps the problem lies with entertaining too broad a vision about the meaning of "patterns" (in life, in mental-illness, in chess, in stars, in a novel, for Nabokov...)
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"Aleksandr Luzhin, the main character from Vladimir Nabokov's "The Luzhin Defense," was based on real life chess master Curt von Bardeleben who lived from 1861 to 1924. Both the fictional character and the real person were strong chess players who competed at world championship levels, both were reclusive and socially awkward, both jumped to their deaths through a window. Curt is most famous for his game against Steinitz in which he (Carl) left the room instead of resigning. Apparently Curt didn't like his position here against Steinitz, because it was his move, and the move he played was leaving the room and never returning.
I believe there is a correlation between chess and madness--as it really is an obsession. Whenever I talk to a chess player who has decided to give up chess I feel a sense of impending doom for them...Curt, or in Nabokov's novel, the character "Aleksandr Ivanovich Luzhin" decides that chess is the reason for his declining state and tries to give it up. Chess creeps back into his consiousness, however, and he feels it pulling him in. He tries to find the move that will get him out of the game. He finds that move by throwing himself to his death."
JM:The commentator above is categorical ("Aleksandr Luzhin, the main character from Vladimir Nabokov's 'The Luzhin Defense,' was based on real life chess master Curt von Bardeleben") and "patterns of madness" is an enticing title for an approach between certain symptoms of mental illness ("obsession", "repetition") and chess patterns. Like him, movie director Marleen Gorri (in her film "The Luzhin Defence") reactivated her notion of "childhood traumas" and neurosis to explain Luzhin's torments: she ignored Nabokov's warning addressed to those little freudians who'd find papa and mama in chess-pieces shaped like kings and queens.
Alan A. Stone ("No Defense") thought that Gorri had operated a frontal lobotomy on Nabokov's original novel and he valued Nabokov's almost prophetic perceptiveness (in 1930), in his depiction of Luzhin's behavior and terrors, since he sees tham as being suggestive of cognitive disturbances and autistic symptoms, matters which have only recently been isolated and described.
Citations, like "Chess Fever" and Harold Loyd's "Safety Last," may be as important in "The Defense" as the influence of Curt von Bardeleben's suicide on Nabokov's Aleksander Ivanovich, or over Luzhin's "suimate" .I think that it doesn't constitute the most marking feature of the novel.
Perhaps the problem lies with entertaining too broad a vision about the meaning of "patterns" (in life, in mental-illness, in chess, in stars, in a novel, for Nabokov...)
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/