Sergey Sakoun writes:

New article on my (devoted to analysis of the Nabokov’s “Defense”) website. http://sersak.chat.ru/index.htm

ПРЕВРАЩЕНИЕ МЕДНОГО ВСАДНИКА В ФИГУРУ ЧЕРНОГО ШАХМАТНОГО КОНЯ.
(Или введение в проблему религиозно-философского высказывания в романе)

TRANSFORMATION OF THE BRONZE HORSEMAN IN THE BLACK CHESS KNIGHT.
(Or introduction to the issue of religious-philosophical statements in
the novel)


http://sersak.chat.ru/Bronze%20Horseman.htm


In the article is reading Knight-chess composition of the “Defense”
within context of the “symbolism” of the early 20th century.

Main theses in short:

D.S. Merezhkovsky in his early critical works has made
religious-philosophical symbol from the Pushkin’s image of the “Bronze
horseman". This symbol (Bronze horseman, lifted up on high “a sloping
slab of rock”*, at the brink of dark abyss) he sees as a limit point
in the development of human culture. At this point Russian’s line of
development (from Peter 1 (in the Pushkin’s image of the Bronze
horseman) to Tolstoy and Dostoevsky) come together with the European
philosophy that has reached its peak in Nietzsche's works. Further
(according to Merezhkovsky) - flight or descent. Merezhkovsky puts
religious-philosophical task for contemporaries - to find a "third
way".

Responded on this task:
- V. Brusov, in poetic and critical-methodological texts.
- A. Bely, in his novel “Petersburg”
- V. Nabokov, in the "Luzhin Defense"

In the novel "Petersburg", the figure of the Bronze horseman (the
central symbol of the novel) reduced turns into a caricature mad
Alexander Ivanovich Dudkin sitting on the corpse of Lippanchenko.

In the Nabokov’s novel the Bronze horseman reduced turns into an
allegorical prototype of the mad chess player, Alexander Ivanovich
Luzhin – King’s black chess Knight.

This transformation of the image
of the Bronze horseman is clearly traceable Nabokov’s debate with A.
Bely, V. Brusov and D. Merezhkovski.

At first, the Pushkin’s image of the Bronze horseman turned into
symbol, and next, at the new turn of the spiral, it became Bely’s and
Nabokov’s descent allegorical fiction images with inward symbolic
subtext.

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