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?
......................................................