S. Kelly-Bootle, on Ada's
chess-games: "When VN writes “an infinity of sensation and thought within a
finite existence,” his use of “infinite” and “finite” is entirely in accord with
normal mathematical usage. When he speaks of “infinite” transitions in LEGAL
games-of-chess, he is mathematically wrong. This fleeting deviation is worthy of
attention simply because we think of and revere VN as the skilled
chess-player/problemist endowed with a love of precise scientific language
that’s rare in novelists."
SKB argued that "Human Life spans are finite in the
sense of having a limited temporal duration. During that finite period, though,
the “number” of sensations/thoughts experienced can plausibly be considered
infinite[...] There are specific rules that prevent endless chess games,
e.g., you can’t have repetitions such as 1 Nf3 Nc6 2 Ng1 Nb8 3 Nf3 Nc6 4 Ng1 Nb8
... In fact, it’s even more complex than forbidding such sequences; if the same
position recurs thrice at any time during a game, a draw can be
claimed."
Nabokov's original sentence: “two chess games with identical openings and identical end moves
might ramify in an infinite number of variations, on one board and in two brains, at any middle stage of their irrevocably converging
development”
I ask our illustrious mathematician: Because
I understood that VN implicitly mentioned
Euclid's fifth (?) theorem, the one about "parallel lines" ( according
to which they'd converge in infinity) when he wrote about
the "two brains irrevocable converging" ( reference to maths) which
also might be facing and mirroring each other ( reference to optics),
VN's choice of "infinite number of variations" might favour this kind of
infinity ( math's or mirrors in optics) and not the legal chess-game moves
themselves. In this case, could VN's "infinite" be correct?
Btw: In TRLSK
there is a character in SK's own book "Success" ( that deals with "the workings
of fate") named Perceval Q. In SK's book-shelves
there is a book about the Holy Grail, "Le Morte d'Arthur", written by Sir Thomas
Malory. Other medieval and later authors
also wrote about Perceval ( Parzival, Parsifal).
In Wolfram from Echenbach's book we learn that
Parzival (Perceval) has a half-brother called
Feirefiz. According to WfE,
when Perceval fights against an unknown knight his sword
breaks. The other knight doesn't slay him and soon they discover that they share the same father. "I was against my
own self," says Parzival to Feirefiz.
By a stroke of luck, while reading Peter Handke's
"Wunschloses Unglück", 1972, ("A
Sorrow Beyond Dreams. A Life Story"), I learned that in Chrétien de Troyes'
version, Feirefiz's spotted face reproduces the black and white squares in
a chess-board ( I'm not sure that this is not some kind of irony by Handke,
though. Elsewhere I only found mention to b&w shapeless marks..)
I haven't been able to spot any references to this half-brother but in
TRLSK both Sebastian and Nina Rechnoy's lover are identified with a
black knight. The latter is playing chess when V. meets him.
QUERY: I wonder if any of you TRLSK's readers found any
indicative clue concerning a
disguised Feirefiz?