Lushin's defense

First edition

Lushin's Defense ( Russian Защита Лужина ) is the third novel by Vladimir Nabokov . The book describes the story of a chess player who perishes because of his genius; the text first appeared in 1930.

action

As a boy, Alexander Ivanovich Lushin felt unsightly, rejected and as a plaything for the jokes of his classmates. One day at his father's party he is asked if he can play chess. The event aroused his interest in the game of chess. He is so excited that he no longer goes to school and learns the basics of the game from his aunt. He quickly becomes a great player, takes part in local competitions and rises up the leaderboard. His extraordinary talent is discovered and in less than ten years he becomes a chess grandmaster. For many years he was one of the best chess players in the world, but never became world champion. During one of the competitions, he meets a young girl whose name is not mentioned in the novel. They fall in love and become a couple.

Lushin's life takes a dramatic turn when he has to face the Italian grandmaster Turati. A clash should decide who will compete against the current world champion. Before the game, Lushin suffers a mental breakdown. His situation worsens when he realizes that his carefully thought-out defense strategy against Turati fails in the first few moves. The decisive game ends in a draw. When the competition is interrupted, Lushin wanders through the city in a state of complete detachment from reality. He is being brought home and needs to recover. The doctor tells Lushin's fiancé that playing chess is to blame for his breakdown and that anything remotely reminiscent of chess should be banned from the house.

However, the game slowly finds its way back into the protagonist's world of thought. Sometimes Lushin finds a small pocket chess game in a jacket pocket, then he sees a chess game in a film. Lushin begins to see his life as a game of chess and his obsession with the game returns. He desperately looks for the decisive move so as not to lose the chess game of his life. But he has to watch the situation become increasingly hopeless. After meeting his old mentor Valentinov, Lushin realizes that he has to give up the game. He locks himself in the bathroom and jumps out the window. It remains to be seen whether Lushin dies: “The door was smashed. 'Alexander Ivanovich, Alexander Ivanovich' shouted several voices. But there was no Alexander Ivanovich. "

Creation and publication

The novel first appeared under Nabokov's pseudonym W. Sirin in the Russian-language literary magazine Sowremennyje sapiski and was then published in Russian by the Slovo publishing house in Berlin. In the preface to the English edition, Nabokov wrote that he wrote Lushin's Defense in 1929 while on vacation in Le Boulou and that he completed it in Berlin.

The figure of Lushin is based on the life of the chess master Curt von Bardeleben , whom Nabokov knew personally. Bardeleben took his own life by jumping out the window. The book was also inspired by the Soviet film " Chess Fever " (1925).

filming

The book was made into a film by director Marleen Gorris in 2000 . John Turturro plays Luzhin, Emily Watson his wife.

literature

• The Defense (Zashchita Luzhina) . In: Brian Boyd: Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian Years . Princeton University Press, Princeton 1990, pp. 321-340

Text output

• Lushin's defense . Translated by Dietmar Schulte, Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, 1999, ISBN 978-3-4992-2550-5

Web links

• Daaim Shabazz: "In Search of Luzhin's Defense" , The Chess Drum (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ David Rampton: Vladimir Nabokov: A Literary Life . Palgrave Macmillan, Hampshire 2012, Chapter 3, Footnote 5, no p.
2. ↑ Charles Kinbote: Zashchita Luzhina , libraries.psu.edu