Chess player Luzhin biography. An ingenious solution to a complex multi-pass

The “warmest,” by the author’s definition, Nabokov’s novel is perhaps the most significant work in world literature related to chess, undoubtedly elevating the royal game, despite the obvious inferiority, sickness, and one-sidedness of the main character. Such is the charm of Nabokov’s wonderful, melodic prose that the mere provision of a leading role in it to a chess player, even an unattractive person, is favorable and honorable for the art of chess.
Nabokov's literary greatness, his championship in the field of literature, apparently prompted reviewers to associate the very title of the novel with the famous “Alekhine Defense” - the brilliant debut revelation of the great maestro, and many even claimed that Nabokov wrote a novel about the world champion.
Meanwhile, for Alekhine such an assumption was insulting. The first Russian world champion became famous as a man of brilliant and versatile talents. A doctor of "both rights", he was fluent in the main European languages ​​and rightfully gained fame as one of the best chess writers. It is curious that the Russian reader is familiar with the books of his great compatriot in translation, since Alekhine always wrote in the language of his publisher. Over the years, the famous maestro successfully tested himself in the fields of a criminologist and diplomat. Having excellent external characteristics, Alekhine was an impeccably socialite, enjoyed success with the fair sex and never remained aloof from the small joys of life.
Let us call Capablanca as a witness.
“A representative of the Slavic nation, over six feet tall, weighing about 200 English pounds, blond and blue-eyed, Alekhine is striking with his appearance when he appears in the tournament hall,” wrote the predecessor of the Russian maestro on the chess throne. “He speaks six languages ​​fluently, has the title of Doctor of Laws and in general development significantly exceeds the level of the average person."
recalls that when the Russian participants in the tournament in Mannheim in 1914 were interned due to the outbreak of World War II and placed in prison, the handsome and healthy Alekhine began an affair with the jailer’s daughter, which significantly eased the situation for the Russian chess players. Is it possible to imagine Luzhin in such a role?
Nabokov himself never wrote that Alekhine was the prototype of Luzhin. Why did the “sworn reviewers” ​​decide this? In the twenties described in the novel, a whole constellation of natives of the Russian Empire shone in Europe: Bogolyubov, Yanovsky, Rubinstein, Tartakover, Bernstein. Perhaps it was only Alekhine’s semi-noble origin that made him and Luzhin related.
The world champion himself once called Tartakover the prototype of Luzhin. This, of course, was a joke: also a doctor of “both rights,” a famous wit, perhaps the best pen in chess journalism of his time, Savely Grigorievich Tartakover resembled Luzhin no more than Alekhine.
Undoubtedly, Luzhin is a fictitious person, perhaps partly a collective one. By the way, can a person of the level of Luzhin or Zweig’s Czentovich become an outstanding chess player? The question is not new; it has been heard since the appearance of these heroes in world literature. Having a good understanding of the subject, being personally acquainted with a number of major grandmasters, the author of these lines will risk answering definitively: a sickly, inferior person with only a hypertrophied ability can become a decent professional chess player. But not a world champion or a contender - for this you need to be a person, an athlete with a capital “A”.
In general, unlike a number of major prose writers who are criminally ignorant of chess (Leonov and Kuprin should not have taken up the chess topic), Nabokov describes the atmosphere of chess battles very well. The great writer had an excellent understanding of chess - he played first class, was a passionate problem solver, and even published a collection of his own problems. In his descriptions of Luzhin's combats with Turati, Nabokov is not at all bad, and in the episode with Valentinov's problem one can discern not only a great writer, but also an expert in the field of chess poetry.
Let's reread it.
"Luzhin carefully raised his eyelids. Mechanically he took the piece of paper. A clipping from a chess magazine, a diagram of the problem. Checkmate in three moves. Composition by Dr. Valentinov. The problem was cold and cunning, and, knowing Valentinov, Luzhin instantly found the key. In this intricate chess trick he, I saw with my own eyes all the deceit of its author.”
In my opinion, flawless. I'm only judging the chess side. Overall, “The Defense of Luzhin,” in my opinion, is an excellent book, but I am only a grain of sand in the vast ocean of its connoisseurs.

Luzhin, who did not become Alexander Ivanovich

GALLERY

Roman MOROZOV

Luzhin, who did not become Alexander Ivanovich

In the preface to the English edition of his novel, Nabokov wrote: “Of all my Russian books, Luzhin’s Defense contains and radiates “the greatest warmth” - which may seem strange if we proceed from the popular opinion about the exclusively abstract nature of chess. In fact, Luzhin was loved even by those who do not understand chess at all and (or) are disgusted by all my other books. He is clumsy, sloppy, ugly - but, as my gentle young lady (a wonderful girl in her own way) very soon notices, there is something in him that outweighs both the coarseness of his gray flesh and the sterility of his dark genius.” It is so indeed. Alexander Ivanovich Luzhin, main character novel, the image is very complex, and at the same time very charming. The mystery of the intellectual-psychological novel is connected primarily with this image.

Nabokov called his novel The Defense of Luzhin. Why is this so? Here the emphasis is clearly placed on the word “protection”, since Russian literature is typically named after the surname of one of the characters. In the novel, Luzhin developed a chess defense that would allow him to outwit his opponent. However, as we know, it did not work because Turatti played unconventionally. But such a simple understanding of the word “protection” does not clarify anything. What is meant in the novel, of course, is not chess “defense,” but psychological “defense”: protection from a rude, vulgar, immoral environment. Such protection can be art, science, sports, etc. For Luzhin it’s chess. So Nabokov does not condemn his hero for his passion for the game. There is nothing immoral about her. Luzhin's problem is different.

Many critics note that Luzhin has a certain creative gift. As evidence, numerous parallels between chess and music are cited, which actually take place in the novel. At the same time, they forget that Nabokov himself saw in Luzhin “the futility of a dark genius.” Luzhin is a capable average chess player. He can sometimes win a game brilliantly by creatively thinking through a great combination. And yet he is not a genius. He is more Salieri than Mozart, but Salieri is good-natured, sweet, eccentric. For the reader, he is attractive not because of his chess successes, but because of his unusual character and originality.

“The futility of the dark genius” does not prevent Luzhin from being passionately in love with the game. Luzhin truly loves only chess. Apart from them, nothing exists for him. And this is already a pathology, which then developed into a mental illness. Luzhin has no spiritual breadth, unlike his bride, he is not interested in people, he has a primitive outlook on life, despite the fact that in terms of his moral qualities he is a very sympathetic character.

“Luzhin overlooked life itself,” Nabokov remarked. This is true. Of course, only in the sense that Luzhin does not see the charm of life. Therefore, he lost, “fell out of the game.”

Luzhin is unable to combine two worlds in his mind. For him, this is an impossible task: on the one hand, a game, on the other, the family life of an ordinary person, which he, in essence, is. A normal, mentally healthy person can easily combine many interests, hobbies, and passions in his soul. Nabokov himself admitted that several “realities” “live” in his mind at once: art, love, entomology, sports, chess. All of them only contributed to the physical and mental health of the writer. Luzhin has an unhealthy psyche, the causes of which must be sought in childhood (the main part of the novel), when his father, a stupid, narrow-minded character, decided at all costs to make the boy a child prodigy. For this purpose, he called his son only by his last name, without even thinking that by doing so he was contributing to the development of isolation and gloominess in the boy.

After Luzhin The bride, a cheerful, ironic girl, also began to call him. It is customary to call chess players by their last name, so she, lovingly, laughs at him.

“What attracted me most to chess were the trap moves and hidden combinations...<…>“I have no doubt about the existence of invisible connections between some of the mirages of my prose and the simultaneously shiny and matte fabric of chess problems, fairy-tale riddles, each of which is “the fruit of a thousand and one sleepless nights,” the writer asserted in one of his interviews. So what is it “ fairy tale riddle” novel “The Defense of Luzhin”? It seems that it is in the nature of Luzhin’s soul, which is not so easy for the reader to unravel. Luzhin's suicide is illogical and unmotivated. A calm family life, chess fame, the opportunity to develop your Creative skills- all this looks more like happiness rather than tragedy. Maybe we don’t know anything important about Luzhin’s inner world, or maybe the perception of the hero by other characters is completely untrue? This is a real puzzle. But in any case, to unravel the mystery of the chess player’s suicide means to understand Luzhin’s mental confusion, which is beyond doubt in the novel.

In chess, Luzhin found a way out into another, more interesting and brighter world. The game is his kind of protection from the cruel and cold world that surrounds him. Luzhin is generally a very shy and fearful person by nature. He is afraid of everything that is not part of his world, everything that is connected with ordinary, everyday life: “A bird rustled in the branches, and he got scared, quickly walked back, away from the river.” Many episodes of the novel related to the oddities of Luzhin’s character are written in a humorous manner.

While defending his hero's right to his own inner world, to his own reality, inaccessible to others, Nabokov at the same time shows the narrow and limited life of a chess player. The rational, intellectual principle not only dominates in the image of Luzhin, it almost completely displaces the sensual, emotional principle. Therefore, in the novel one can also find the author’s irony in relation to Luzhin, who sees in life only reflections of his abstract chess reality: “He... thought that with this linden tree... it was possible, with a knight’s move, to take that telegraph pole over there.”

Luzhin is torn between the desire to plunge back into the world of chess battles and the impossibility of doing this for two reasons. Firstly, because Valentinov and everything connected with him evokes unpleasant feelings and memories in the hero. Luzhin is afraid of this man, who personifies for him all the evil forces that haunt him in life. And secondly, because he does not want to part with the calm, measured life to which he is accustomed. Luzhin understands that love and playing chess are incompatible for him, and if he starts playing again, he will thereby destroy his family happiness. The conflict is insoluble. On the one hand, the world of creative chess imagination, without which the hero cannot be happy, and on the other hand, reality (the realistic image of Valentinov, family life), which does not allow Luzhin to live in the world of imagination.

The hero is faced with the question of what to choose: chess world or the world of quiet family life? Luzhin's trouble is that both of these worlds are both attractive and unacceptable for him at the same time. Perhaps this conceals a motive for suicide, which, from the point of view of common sense, is, of course, weak. For a healthy person this is not a problem at all, but only for healthy .

The world of chess is attractive because in it Luzhin feels like a creative person. He experiences the joy of a player coming up with new combinations, cunning maneuvers and dangerous traps. Chess is unacceptable to him because it not only alienates him from his immediate life, but also harms Luzhin’s health.

The world of family life is attractive to a chess player primarily because of the peace of mind that Luzhin’s fiancée provides. The grandmaster is happy in this world, but he also turns out to be unacceptable to him because in this world Luzhin is deprived of the opportunity to play chess.

He remained like this forever for everyone Luzhin, which Nabokov emphasizes in the last paragraph of his story: “But there was no Alexander Ivanovich.” Of course, first of all, he does not respond to his own name being heard for the first time because he jumped out of the window - he committed suicide. And the second reason is that he never did Alexander Ivanovich- an ordinary person, not deprived of everyday joys. I couldn't become one.

The contradictions in which the hero is entangled lead him to a tragic death. Luzhin was unable to find harmony in his soul. Life gave him a checkmate.

Was there Alexander Ivanovich?

On the chessboard of Russian literature, Nabokov is a figure of the second row, given that in the first row at the beginning of any game there are pawns, and behind them, in the second, there are more significant gentlemen. For an ardent admirer of this writer, he is a king or, at worst, a queen. For a hater, it’s not even a pawn, but a fly that accidentally flies onto the chessboard. For a calmer and more sober evaluator, Nabokov is a piece between a queen and a pawn. It is unlikely that a rook, having which, the king can checkmate another king left alone. But not a straight diagonal bishop either. Most likely, Nabokov is a horse who can walk this way and that, but strictly follows the rule of the letter G. Or the letter L, since he wrote so much in English, and there are no letters in the form of G in the English alphabet. Just like there is no L in Russian.

Now it’s even difficult to imagine that for the Russian reader who lived in the USSR half a century ago, this writer did not exist at all. He was banned as an emigrant, as the son of one of the main organizers and leaders of the Cadet Party, hostile to the Bolsheviks, as a bourgeois esthete, as a person who never intended to return to Russia in his life: “no matter how pity the soul is filled, I will not bow, I will not reconcile” . And if in a dream “a bed will float to Russia,” then immediately - “and so, they lead me to the ravine, they lead me to the ravine to kill.”

Already after Nabokov’s first publications, in 1923, a secret document from Glavlit stated: “He is hostile towards Soviet power. Politically divides the platform of the right-wing cadets.” Such a formulation in those legendary times was as almost indestructible and forever as a tattoo.

He is generally considered to be a prosperous writer, but everyone forgets that until almost sixty years of age, Nabokov did not have great fame; he was forced to constantly teach in order to feed himself, his wife and son. Only the scandal with the novel “Lolita,” which describes the love of an adult man for a minor, which in the puritanical United States looked indecent, attracted attention to him. “Lolita” freed its creator from the need to teach, gave him oxygen for free creativity and moving from unpredictable America to blessed Switzerland. Vladimir Vladimirovich began to be published abundantly, readers became interested in his other works, cash flowed into the author, who had become accustomed to the idea that until the end of his days he would have to be afraid of losing his job.

For four years in a row - 1963, 1964, 1965, 1966 - he was nominated for the Nobel Prize. Alas, to no avail. And Solzhenitsyn, who received the Nobel Prize, again tried to raise the issue of awarding this prize to Nabokov.

At the same time, in the USSR the attitude towards the writer got worse and worse, after “Lolita” it was added to everything else that he was almost a pedophile, and the Nobel recommendations from the author of “The Gulag Archipelago”, expelled from the Soviet country, only thickened the colors. Nabokov was read only under the counter, brought in secretly from overseas, passed on to each other to read for a day, two at most. It’s funny that at the same time, Aksyonov, Voinovich, the same Solzhenitsyn and other real or fictitious fighters against Soviet reality remained more popular and quick. Nabokov remained in the second row here too. However, again, in a chess sense. The pawns moved more actively.

“Chess is a powerful weapon of intellectual culture!” “Make way for chess in the working environment!” - under such slogans, starting in 1924, the chess magazine “64” (the number of squares on the board) was published in Moscow. In the era of early perestroika, it was possible to put a different motto on one of the next issues: “Make way for Nabokov!”

The chess review “64” was revived in 1968 by Alexander Roshal thanks to the assistance of the then world chess champion Tigran Petrosyan, and in 1986 Roshal decided to commit a daring act - he published the still banned Nabokov, excerpts from the novel “The Defense of Luzhin” under the pretext that they vividly describe the subtle nuances of the game of chess. Summoned to the top of the party, the editor-in-chief of “64” used precisely this pretext to hide behind him as a shield. Moreover, there was a preface by Fazil Iskander, where it was: “the time has come to publish Nabokov in his homeland,” “homeopathic doses of irony and skepticism towards the new Russia, generously scattered in his works, should not frighten anyone” and “the longing for Russia breaking through his novels are probably the most piercing current in his work."

In the end, they got away with everything, and the party bosses limited themselves to only the witty epithet “chess obscenity.”

I remember that time very well. The writer Mikhail Popov, with whom I began working together at the magazine Literary Studies, literally had the flu with Nabokov, gave me secret reading of his novels, and together with him we scoured Moscow newsstands in search of bold number chess insult. But it was already taken away. The hungry people grabbed and devoured everything. Now you won’t surprise him with anything except the price.

But soon it was possible to console ourselves - immediately after the chess review, the magazine “Moscow” became even more outrageous. Seeing how Roshal was not punished, the then editor-in-chief of Moscow, the wonderful Russian prose writer Mikhail Nikolaevich Alekseev, was the first to run along the newly laid ski track. He published “The Defense of Luzhin” in full, and Nabokov finally made his move in the USSR, putting a check on the dying Soviet censorship!

- Are we going to put up with “Lolita” too? - the officials were indignant.

Two years later, the almighty Glavlit, a censorship monster, submitted a request to the CPSU Central Committee for permission to “transfer from special funds to the general collections of libraries the works of emigrant authors who went abroad in the period from 1918 to 1988.” And Gorbachev’s Central Committee allowed it. Publications poured in as if from a cornucopia; over time, Lolita had to be tolerated, and readers were surprised to find nothing pornographic, indecent, or obscene in it; on the contrary, they heard a hymn of love.

And then, in 1986, we had to be content with a magnificent chess study called “Luzhin’s Defense.” But that was also a lot. Especially when you consider that it was this novel, published in Berlin in 1929, that brought fame to the writer. No, of course, not worldwide fame, but at least fame among connoisseurs and true gourmets of Russian literature. At the same time, Vladimir Vladimirovich’s two previous major works - the story “Mashenka” and the novel “King, Queen, Jack” - are no worse, strong both in style and in psychologism. And, nevertheless, it is “Luzhin’s Defense”.

“The issue of “Modern Notes” with the first chapters of “Luzhin’s Defense” was published in 1929,” wrote Nina Berberova. “I sat down to read these chapters and read them twice. A huge, mature, complex modern writer was before me, a huge Russian writer, like a Phoenix, born from the fire and ashes of revolution and exile. Our existence now had meaning. My entire generation was acquitted.”

There has never been such a hero as Luzhin in literature. A man hiding from the world of God in the world of chess, destroyed for the vain world, in some way a monk of a chess monastery. Moreover, he is an abbot. The madness of a chess player who everywhere sees only the moves of kings, queens, pawns, bishops, rooks and knights: “The stone pillars with urns, standing at the four corners of the garden area, threatened each other diagonally.” Or, during a conversation with his bride, Luzhin “sat, leaning on a cane, and thought that with this linden tree standing on an illuminated slope, it was possible, with a horse’s move, to take that telegraph pole over there, and at the same time tried to remember what exactly he was talking about now "

This madness is akin to the madness of an artist who sees the world in other forms and colors, a writer who lives the life of his heroes and not his own, a musician who hears a melody where for everyone else there is silence or cacophony.

Throughout the entire novel, Luzhin does not even have a name, only a conventional surname. He may be Ferzeslav Shakhmateevich, Tseitnot Rokirovitch, but even this is not his essence, and a person whose true life takes place in the bottomless multivariance of the game, a person escaping from the global flood in a box with chess, like in an Old Testament ark, cannot have a name . It appears for the first and last time at the very end of the novel and only when Luzhin dies. Like the invisible man, he regains his form, his outline, his visibility, only by becoming dead. And this name is now needed only to write it on the gravestone: “Alexander Ivanovich Luzhin.”

“He looked down. Some kind of hasty preparation was going on there: the reflections of the windows were gathering, aligning themselves, the entire abyss was disintegrating into pale and dark squares, and the moment that Luzhin unclenched his hands, the moment that swift icy air poured into his mouth, he saw exactly what eternity stretched out obsequiously and inexorably before him...

The door was knocked down.

- Alexander Ivanovich, Alexander Ivanovich! - several voices roared. But there was no Alexander Ivanovich.” These are the last words of the novel “The Defense of Luzhin.”

The signature technique used by Nabokov would later be used by Gabriel García Márquez in “The Autumn of the Patriarch,” where the main character receives a name only once and learns about it again when, having reached sclerosis, he puts notes in the peeling wallpaper and reads in one of these reminders: "My name is Sacarias."

The world tried to catch the chessman, to lead him away from the 64-cell disease, but he could not live without the ancient game, in which the more you immerse yourself, the more complex it becomes and the more it sucks you into yourself, as if into the abyss. The main and terrible secret of the hero named Luzhin is that he is incurable, although he is making an attempt to recover. He met the woman he intends to marry. This would seem to be salvation! But it’s like a drunkard who curses alcohol, is surprised that people drink it at all, but only until he sees how temptingly the intoxicating liquid glistens and gurgles, flowing from the neck of the bottle into the glass.

One major question has not been and cannot be resolved in the novel: what would have happened if Black’s defense against White’s onslaught in the game against Luzhin’s main rival, Italian grandmaster Turati, had turned out to be effective and not erroneous? Would Luzhin have received mental healing? Perhaps yes, but only until he meets another opponent capable of breaking any defense. The all-destructiveness of Turati is inexplicable for Nabokov, just as the strength of Soviet power is inexplicable for him. She, in his idea, should not have triumphed over the White Guard force, but she triumphed.

And here Luzhin is in a psychiatric hospital in Europe, from which there is no exit except through the window, onto the asphalt, into oblivion. For unfortunate Alexander Ivanovich, this non-existence is the only salvation from both evils at once - from the evil of the world of human existence and from the evil of the world of chess. The visible world of people and the invisible world of ideas.

The novel “Luzhin's Defense” is itself a complex and intricate chess game with a sad ending, which the reader has to come to terms with with a painful feeling, like when you are given an intolerable sentence:

Alexander Segen

"Luzhin's Defense" through the eyes of a chess player

Secondly, when discussing chess in the life and work of Vladimir Nabokov, it is necessary to separate two different types of activity - playing chess and chess composition. “The writing of chess problems... is connected with an ordinary game, with fighting on the board, only in the sense that, say, a juggler... and a tennis player use the same properties of a ball... It is characteristic that chess players have little interest in these elegant and bizarre puzzles and, although they feel the charm of a cunning problem, they are completely incapable of composing the problem.” (The last remark is not true: solving problems and etudes is included in the training program and preparation for competitions of chess players of any level, in addition, many outstanding chess players achieved success in composition, for example, Richard Reti, whom we will talk about later, composed sketches that became classics).

Nabokov wrote a lot about his passion for composition, and for chess, i.e. The novel “The Defense of Luzhin” is dedicated to the game of chess, the main character of which is a professional chess player, in modern terminology a grandmaster of the elite. In other works, chess is mentioned occasionally, but always with respect. The episode from “Invitation to an Execution” is typical: although it is the executioner who offers to play chess, he hardly knows how to play, but Cincinnatus just knows how to play. Thus, chess is marked as belonging to the real world, the world of Cincinnatus.

The purpose of these notes: to understand the chess realities of "Luzhin's Defense", to try to superimpose the novel on the real chess world of that time, perhaps it is better to imagine Luzhin in life and at the board, and at the same time try to find out how much Nabokov himself understood the game that he loved so much . (It is almost meaningless to ask how strong Nabokov himself played, although he claimed that he was a very strong player until he was fifty. Nothing can be said about the strength of a player who has never competed. According to modern observations, the maximum strength of an amateur is a strong first category or a weak CMS, i.e. very low - although a chess player of this level can adequately understand the grandmaster’s game if it is commented on).

Thirdly, to immediately finish with the composition: in “The Defense of Luzhin” it is mentioned once. “He composed several ingenious chess problems and was the first exponent of the so-called “Russian” theme.” So, there is no concept of a “Russian theme” in chess composition. And here is the time to make a reservation: probably, the “Russian theme” can be interpreted symbolically or metaphorically, just as Nabokov’s world of chess is generally viewed as a metaphor and one looks for similarities with a chess game in the construction of the novel. All this may very well be true, but today our tasks are much more modest - no interpretations, only “material parts”.

Fourthly, if no one has yet managed to find a prototype of Luzhin (we will return to this later), then does Turati, Luzhin’s main opponent, have a prototype? If not Turati himself, then at least his chess characteristics are quite definite: “this player, a representative of the newest trend in chess, opened the game with flank performances, not occupying the middle of the board, but dangerously influencing the center from the sides.” “The newest trend in chess” is a very real thing, it is the so-called “hypermodernism”, a revolution in opening strategy that took place at the beginning of the twentieth century. Many great chess players paid tribute to this trend, including Alexander Alekhine, the inventor hypermodernist Alekhine's defense. The opening that Nabokov describes can also be identified - this is the Reti Opening (less likely - the Opening Nimzowitsch-Larsen). This opening was developed by the outstanding Czech grandmaster Richard Reti, one of the strongest chess players in the world in the 1920s. In addition to the debut, similar surnames Reti - Turati are striking. That's where the similarities end, besides Turati is Italian, not Czech. It is worth noting that among the best chess players There were no Italians in the world of that time. But let's continue reading the description of the opening:

“Disdaining the prudent comfort of castling, he sought to create the most unexpected, most bizarre relationships of figures.” Let us leave the incomprehensible phrase “relationship of figures” to the author’s conscience. In Reti's Debut (and in Reti's Debut Nimzowitsch-Larsen) castling is done at the very beginning of the game. The description of the opening corresponds to chess reality only half. Moreover, in 1928, when the novel takes place, Reti's Debut was no longer a novelty and reliable methods of defense had been developed against it. Here it is worth noting Nabokov’s neglect of chess terminology, which was already established in those days - “middle” to mean “center”, “sides” to mean “flanks”.

Fifthly, what can we learn about the life of a chess professional from the example of Luzhin? What was it filled with, how was it structured?

In addition to playing in tournaments, Luzhin gave sessions of simultaneous blind play, “a rather expensively paid performance that he willingly gave.”

On what means did Luzhin exist? How did chess professionals live at that time? There were three main sources of income. Tournament prizes are sometimes very significant. For example, in 1927 at a tournament in New York prize fund was $5,000 (first prize $2,000). If Luzhin “was among the best international players,” then he could certainly count on prizes (albeit more modest than in New York) in most of the tournaments in which he participated. But this is not a reliable source of income; the prize still needs to be won. Next: chess literature and journalism. Almost all the leading chess players left a solid literary legacy; they wrote chess sections in magazines, commented on their own and other people's games, and reported on international tournaments. They also wrote textbooks and published collections of commentated games. And here an astonishing fact strikes the eye: Luzhin did not do anything like that! Only during the period of his marriage does he mention that somewhere he was offered to run a “chess department” - but before that he had not written chess books or collaborated with magazines (or the author kept silent about this). And, finally, public appearances: lectures and simultaneous playing sessions (how can one not remember Ostap Bender! - the action of the novel by Ilf and Petrov takes place a year or two earlier). And, of course, playing blindly paid the best. In such a game, the chess player does not see the chessboard, he is simply informed of the opponent’s moves, and he communicates his answer to the intermediary, who reproduces the move on the board. This means that a person must remember dozens of constantly changing positions and find the right moves! It’s no wonder that it made a strong impression on the public and paid well. And Luzhin earned his bread in this way.

Nabokov, apparently, was well aware of all the unsettledness and unreliability of such a life. At the end of his career, Luzhin was left with virtually no funds. Indirect evidence of the small incomes of chess players is that Valentinov left Luzhin when he left the child prodigy age. This became unprofitable - leading chess players did not have impresarios. Only rare darlings of fortune like Capablanca could afford not to think about money - and how many major chess players died in poverty!

Nabokov knew relatively correctly the number of games that could be played simultaneously. “So he played against fifteen, twenty, thirty players...” Only thirty is too much, even too much. Nobody played on thirty boards at that time; the record belonged to the already mentioned Richard Reti - 29 games simultaneously, but it was a record, and Luzhin was not a record holder. Five years after the Luzhin Defense, Alekhine broke this record, playing on thirty-two boards.

Sixth, in addition to participating in tournaments, a chess player must work, study, study new openings, and study the games of competitors. Luzhin also worked - “in the evenings, after dinner, until late at night,” and together with his bride we can spy through the window how this happens and find out that he is “sitting at an empty chessboard". This is also probably very symbolic, and is quite consistent with the “ghostly” nature of chess art. In addition, a chess player of this class can analyze a position in his head if necessary. But, of course, no one works like that; it’s tiring and irrational. In the pre-computer era, chess players worked at a board (or at two boards at once), moving pieces - this was at home or in a hotel, and when traveling they used pocket chess, like the ones Luzhin found behind the lining of an old jacket.

Seventh, Luzhin had prospects: he was “a candidate, among five or six others, for the title of world champion.” And “if he wins the tournament in Berlin, he will challenge the world champion.” This requires a little comment.

Only after the Second World War did a coherent system of struggle for chess crown. To get the right to play a world championship match, i.e. match with the champion, it became necessary to go through the sieve of qualifying competitions. Before this, formally, any chess player could challenge the champion and, having won the match, become the new world champion. There were two conditions. First: a number of victories in major tournaments, a long stay in the chess elite gave the moral right to qualify for such a match. The requirement is not formalized in any way - how many tournaments need to be won, how stable the success should be, was determined by corporate public opinion, something like an informal rating. Sometimes a victory in one exceptionally strong tournament made a player a real contender for the world championship. From this point of view, Luzhin could indeed count on the world champion to accept his challenge if he won the next tournament. The second condition, which chess players knew about, but the public usually did not know, is much more complicated - the applicant had to provide a prize fund, a huge sum of $10,000 at that time. The condition was introduced and legally enshrined by Capablanca and was called the “golden shaft” with which the champion defended his title. Of course, the first and second conditions are partly related - patrons paid attention to the tournament results, but searching for patrons and negotiating with them is a separate type of activity in which Luzhin is not seen. Perhaps Nabokov did not know about the “golden shaft”.

Eighth, Nabokov describes at length the decisive game Turati - Luzhin. Oddly enough, attempts were made not only to say something about this game, but even to find its prototype in the chess classics. Of course, these attempts failed, because from the description it is impossible to say anything about the game Turati - Luzhin except that the opponents exchanged one pawn and one more piece. “Then, out of the blue, a string began to sing softly. It was one of the Turati forces that took the diagonal line.” “The largest forces on the board called to each other several times with trumpet voices.” “Luzhin’s thought wandered in the intoxicating and terrible wilds...” - etc.etc. Such descriptions can give the reader an idea of ​​the high intensity of the struggle, they can support the musical metaphor running through the novel, but nothing - literally nothing! - they do not contain chess information. Not even a single figure is named! Of course, it is difficult to describe a chess game in words, but it is quite possible to give a general idea of ​​the nature of the struggle. What a chess game! There are still people alive who remember radio reports from football matches in pre-television an era when a commentator was able to recreate a picture of the game in real time. The point is not in the real difficulties of the description: the chess game in “Luzhin’s Defense” is a chess game in general, it has no special features.

Ninth... ninth - that's practically everything! There are no other chess realities in the novel. The literary work of Father Luzhin is described in more detail and more specifically than the life of Luzhin the chess player; even painting with watercolors is depicted more clearly and lovingly than playing chess. Maybe it’s worth looking for non-obvious realities? For example, there are secondary partners of Luzhin. What if one of them can be identified? Most often, they are indicated only by nationality, and if the information becomes more detailed, it immediately turns out that the character is fictitious, for example: “Tournaments after the war began to become more frequent. He played in Manchester, where the decrepit champion of England, after two days of struggle, forced a draw...” The champion of England in the post-war years was Frederick Yates, born in 1884 (i.e.e. the “decrepit champion” was not forty after the war).

Hoax? Joke? There are many jokes, traps and hoaxes in Nabokov's novels. But hoaxes and hoaxes are different. It’s one thing when, say, the hero of “The Gift” describes how his father, on one of his wanderings, “found himself at the bottom of the rainbow.” It’s beautiful, it’s memorable - even when you realize that a rainbow is a purely optical phenomenon and there is simply no “foundation” for it. You remember such a trap with gratitude, indirectly connecting it with the “base of the rainbow” in Irish fairy tales. And here is an example of a chess trap, one of the chess sonnets:

In the moves of the rook - iambic meter,

in the elephant's moves - anapest. Half dance

semi-calculation - that's chess. From drunkards

There is noise in the coffee shop, the air is gray from the smoke.

There Philidor fought and Duser,

now the browed, angry Spaniard is sitting

and a gnome with glasses. A strange gloss falls

on the veins of the hands, and the look is like that of chimeras.

The rook walked forward in iambic footsteps,

then again - thinking: “Karamba,

give up!” But the quiet gnome hesitates.

And pushing with iodine-colored nails

figure. So! He sacrifices an elephant:

magical checkmate in four moves.

This describes the famous Parisian café "Regence", the main arena of chess battles in X VIII century, when Paris was the chess capital of the world. Who are Philidor and Duser? Philidor (1726 - 1795) is one of the greatest players in chess history (he is mentioned in passing in “Luzhin’s Defense”), his fame is connected precisely with the Regence cafe, everything is in order here. But there was no chess player Duser, at least not a well-known one. This trick is of a completely different kind - the author simply counts on an incompetent reader who will take his word for it, and inserts a fictitious surname where rhyming requirements do not allow inserting a real one.

Tenth, and finally, Luzhin. Attempts to find a prototype of Luzhin have long ceased; the opinion is more or less established that this is a fictional collective image of a chess player. Fictional - no doubt, but collective - unlikely. One can say that the career of the child prodigy Luzhin is reminiscent of the brilliant rise of the young Alekhine, but the adult Luzhin is not like anyone else in any way except for “abnormality.” In Nabokov’s own words: “Isn’t it normal that a chess player is not normal. This is in order" . Indeed, chess is a tragic activity in which high achievements are associated with high mental risks. Severe mental illnesses killed the first world champion Wilhelm Steinitz (1836 - 1900), the “uncrowned king” Paul Morphy (1837 - 1884), contenders for the highest title Akiba Rubinstein (1882 - 1961) and Harry Pillsbury (1872 - 1906) and many other prominent chess players. But before the disease, all of them were quite adequate, socially valuable people. None of the famous chess players had anything like Luzhin’s “abnormality” . It wasn’t when the novel was written. Perhaps the closest of the chess geniuses to Luzhin in terms of social inadequacy is the 1972 world champion Robert Fischer, who was born 13 years after the novel was written. Nabokov himself denied this similarity, but even that Nabokov was asked about it

Vladimir Nabokov

Lethargy and apathy are not yet a death sentence for a person. Perhaps he is simply awake and asleep. In the same way, for the time being, a man’s dignity, which has not yet seen the object of his passion, exhibits some lethargy. The lethargy of nature is transient if a person manages to find a real passion, a sphere of application of his dormant forces. Obviously, this is what happened to the hero of the novel by the outstanding Russian writer Vladimir Nabokov, “The Defense of Luzhin.” In him we discover a kind of chess autism - one-sided concentration on one activity. However, of course, Luzhin is not an autist at all, in the narrow, medical sense of the word. Just a passion for chess game, having suddenly arisen, suppressed all other aspirations in him. And Luzhin’s main problem turned out to be that big chess requires complete dedication, to the point of self-forgetfulness, and young Luzhin in his development resembled Fonvizinsky’s undergrowth. Luzhin's childish underdevelopment is visible even in his clumsy speech; a person with a rich inner world and, as a rule, speaks beautifully! Luzhin's inner world is terribly poor, and therefore he has nothing to rest on after grueling chess battles. He simply can’t do anything else, and even a chance meeting with a woman who fell in love with him could not balance this one-sided tilt towards chess. Fischer, about whom they said about the same things as about Nabokov's Luzhin, still knew at least a few foreign languages. Fischer is a “prototype” of Luzhin from the future. In order not to go crazy, Fischer made a lot of scandals, and this brought some variety to the life of a chess fanatic. Luzhin, of course, is not Fischer. He is softer, calmer and... more helpless. It is this helplessness of the hero, combined with his genius, that gives Nabokov’s novel its dramatic lyricism.

"Contrast! Always a contrast! – pianist Vladimir Horowitz liked to talk about his creative credo. So his namesake Nabokov, in contrast, paints us a portrait of a lonely genius. Nabokov came up with a very interesting story. As a child, Luzhin did not possess any talents; rather, he was a loser and an outsider. The future chess player grew up without a mother, and therefore no one really cared for him. One day, by chance, the boy was shown how to play chess, and suddenly it turned out that it was for this game (and chess at the end of the 19th century did not have the popularity that it has today) that he had extraordinary abilities. But Luzhin might not have discovered his talent! He became interested in chess quite by accident, and very quickly this game acquired the dimensions of a genuine passion for him. He fell in love with chess the way a woman is loved once in a lifetime - hopelessly and fatally, with all the strength of his soul. His poor soul was transformed in chess and became fabulously rich. He played games in his imagination and played easily, without looking at the board, with many opponents. In chess it was Theseus, who successfully navigated the labyrinth every time. But the Minotaur, in the form of a clouding of reason, was already nesting within him. Luzhin's defense (with a small letter, how purely chess opening) develops in Nabokov’s novel into Defense - the search for salvation of the soul from the machinations of the outside world. Recently I reread the novel again, but I could not find the moment when the hero’s madness began. Everything is so inexplicable and mysterious. Here, we see, he still has a normal reaction to the world around him, but something in the subconscious has already begun its destructive work.

I think that Pushkin’s message “until Apollo demands a poet to make a sacred sacrifice... perhaps he is the most insignificant of all” is applicable not only to poets and poetry. Any genius is great in some ways, but flawed in others, and sometimes flawed in everything except the subject of his genius. However, narrow-profile geniuses are quite rare. There is, for example, Leonardo da Vinci - the complete opposite of Nabokov’s hero. Even among chess players, people like Luzhin are extremely rare. Among the world chess champions there are more versatile people, like Garry Kasparov. But great literature is often interested not in types, but precisely in exceptions to the rules. When I re-read Nabokov's novel The Defense of Luzhin, I cannot hide my admiration for the skill of the famous writer. Which fine work! It should be noted that Nabokov was not only a famous entomologist (as everyone knows), but he also played quite a lot of chess himself. Therefore, the chess theme in his work is not at all accidental. Modern chess is a precise game with a mathematical bent, where most modern openings are explored up to the 20th move. But Nabokov still saw the romantic era of chess, where there was a lot of creativity and unexplored paths. Alexander Luzhin’s romantic perception of chess is for him like “a ray of light in the dark kingdom” of the surrounding world. This ancient game Nabokov’s is a little out of this world, just like grandmaster Luzhin himself. Vladimir Nabokov depicts the madness of his hero as... a search for protection against intrigues modern world. This motive - “to leave the game” in order to save oneself, is found in Dostoevsky. But Nabokov’s “double” world impresses us no less. Nabokov always leads Luzhin along the fine line between the real and other worlds, and sometimes it is not clear where chessmen, and where are real people of flesh and blood. The ending of the novel is great. “He saw exactly what kind of eternity stretched obsequiously and inexorably before him. The door was knocked down. “Alexander Ivanovich, Alexander Ivanovich!” – several voices roared. But there was no Alexander Ivanovich.” Jumping out of the window, Luzhin disappears into the labyrinths of his chess games. And such a departure of the hero from reality into metaphysics is typical for the novels of Vladimir Nabokov.

The Soviet Union of my childhood was literally raving about chess. Chess was no less popular than football or hockey. If you play chess, it means you are very smart! In general, playing chess was prestigious. This madness began with Alekhine and Botvinnik and reached its apogee in the mid-eighties during the confrontation between Karpov and Kasparov. Around this time, the novels and poems of Vladimir Nabokov began to return to us from a long oblivion. I think the author did not even imagine what fertile soil his chess novel would fall on in his historical homeland. As a child, I played a lot of chess, defeated first-class players, but quickly realized that it was not my thing. To play chess well, you need a whole range of different qualities. For example, we need purely math skills, the ability to calculate moves. A few moves ahead - both for yourself and for your opponent. It is necessary to be able to concentrate extremely at the board, both to defend and to attack. The game is a kind of model of the “big” world. We humans are also chess pieces on the board of the world. Take it - go! Born - life-giving, sacred! We take various pieces and pawns into our hands - on the one hand. On the other hand, someone stronger can take us from above - and we can make our own move. A move that could be fatal for us.

Vladimir Nabokov thought unconventionally, and this is especially noticeable if we compare the novel with its English-French film adaptation “based on it.” There is no villain in the novel - he appears in the film; in the film, the ending was slightly replayed, naively believing that one could easily “improve” the outstanding work of the great writer. Of course, the suicide of the main character is not the most winning ending for the general viewer or reader. But Nabokov, to his credit, does not think about “despicable benefits.” The hero was unable to accomplish anything except settling scores with his life. But the novel as a work of art is wonderful! Suicide, Nabokov style, decisively ends the game between Luzhin and Turati. It is paradoxical, it is suicide, because it is only part of the game, and not a desperate act. Luzhin simply got lost between fantasy and reality, and the unexpected mania of persecution played a cruel joke on him. Just as in a good play there is theater within a theater, so in Nabokov’s “Luzhin’s Defense” we encounter a game within a Game. Maybe that’s why for those who at least once in their life unfolded the board and picked up chess pieces, “The Luzhin Defense” is more than a novel. The vanity of vanities that dominates life is overcome by subtle calculation, fearlessness and the beauty of the combinations revealed to the world. The genius of this Nabokov novel lies in the fact that it is equally successful in different levels understanding. For example, a person who plays chess well will find many purely chess allusions in it. But the reader, who has never taken chess in his hands, will also not be disappointed, since “The Defense of Luzhin” is in any case brilliant Russian prose, no matter who you compare it with, be it Tolstoy, Turgenev, or Bunin. Nabokov the artist is not inferior as a master of words to any of our great writers.