Nabokov's Chess Problems

I opted to to look at his chess problems, rather than do a creative writing piece, because I fancy my self a chess player just slightly more then I do a creative writer. I was initially struck by the way that the problems varied from actual game's of chess. The construction is far more intricate, and the discovered checks are by far the most valuable tactical strategy. Like Nabokov's fiction his problem often have red herrings, bishops sitting blocked off in the corner, that need not be touched to solve the problem. 

The first problem in the collection "The Irresistible try" plays with it's player like Nabokov does his reader. There is the compulsion as a chess player to promote a pawn when given the chance which in this case he is able to do, and check the king. However the problem is beautifully composed so that the Pawn is forced to move, thereby checking your king and guaranteeing you will not succeed.

Some other themes I found to be consistent in Nabokov's chess problems were points when a king would be forced to move into a place he would be checkmated the next turn, not because he is in check but because in chess the the player is forced to move. This, I think, could be a reflection of  fate, the idea that the game continues, and that even if it's toward a loss, a player must move.

A final thought: I completely saw how Nabokov enjoyed creating chess problem, he created the world on the board, by specific unmoving pieces which formed the boundaries of the game.  The problem then worked as story which he made for the characters to act it out.

The Two Humberts

The first idea that comes to mind, is trying understand Humbert Humbert; the problem of the unreliable narrator. There is of course two Humberts  in Lolita , Humbert the writer and the Humbert the character ( it is not by chance that our protagonist wears his name twice). This is problematic, because the only way in which ones learns about  Humbert the writer is through his own narration (i.e the way he portrays himself in the novel).  He is the hermeneutic circle of characters; one can only understand him ( the writer) from what he writes, but one can only understand that writing through our conception of the writer.  I suppose it is in the incongruities that we must understand Humbert, when the reader must ask him or herself why something doesn’t sound right, or perhaps sounds too right. Though even then there is still the question of whether the incongruities are part of the constructions. 

Now in a related vain, though not exactly the same, there is an observable discrepancy between the external Humbert, and internal Humbert, i.e the way Humbert the character portrays himself to other characters in the novel. I guess the question I’m trying to ask is what is the relationship between the way something is and the way that something appears, and how are these discrepancies telling of the people in the novel.This also is the perhaps the problem of Charlotte Haze who spends her whole life trying to appear in such a way that is incongruous with her actual situation. This something which Humbert hates about her that, if I were to psychologize the character, I might speculate is a result of his own in troubled relationship between how he appears and how he is. This theme is also likely to relate to the 1950’s  which is a time notorious for it’s idyllic facade. 

On Sunglasses 

As I was reading I considered the Sunglasses, As another student noted in Humbert Humbert's description of his encounter with Annabel " somebody's lost pair of sunglasses" was the only witness to there embrace. Sunglasses do not leave the book there though, when conceiving his plan to to embrace Lolita at the lake in chapter 11 he plans for his excuse to be that he has misplaced his "wristwatch or sunglasses". In this case the lost sunglasses become and overt allusion to the potentially fictional  encounter with Annabel which Humbert is fantasizing about recreating, though the author leaves it to the reader to make the connection. It appears that Humbert simply playing games with us like he did once with his therapist. The  3rd occurrence of forgotten sunglasses on a beach occurs in chapter 20 when Humbert uses them as an excuse to retreat to the woods where he conceives his plan to kill Charlotte. The latter 2 show the falsity of the former. They are both at the time his deepest fantasy, and the first is his overall fantasy, and idealized version of his relationship with his "first" nyphet. Humbert sees not through the eyes of the boy embracing the girl, but through a pair of lost sunglasses.

The Two Professors of Lolita

Lolita begins with a poorly written forward by John Ray Jr. Ph.D who gives some minor (usually overly obvious) interpretations of Lolita. When the book begins however, we are introduced to Humbert Humbert who appears to have the qualifications (and in a less overt sense the John Ray Jr. Ph.D) the writing style of an academic.

When our narrator gives his description of "nyphets" he beings with; "Now I wish to introduce the following idea" as if this is not the begging of a justification for his hebophilia; but theory which he is developing. He then goes out of his way to speak with great specificity about what a nymphet is, differentiating them by features and also by what the laws says regarding them. The narrator has a very researched and well thought out style about his obsession. This forms an interesting juxtaposition to his overly sentimental story which he has just told regarding Annebel. It shows the two ways in which this effects him, both in his analytical and emotional life.

Beyond the writing style, there are also his formal qualifications, in the first chapters he describes that he studied in Paris at the Sarbonne which would put him in the center of academia  at the time. We are also told that he spends his time writing a guide for English speakers on French literature. This serves to show his education and perhaps makes him seems like a more normal likable figure, but I also suspect his knowledge of French literature will be important in the remainder of the book. It is the trick of the author to make his  narrator well read, because it makes it makes references to literature more plausible, and can create a meta quality to the work.

As Dimitri Nabokov points out in his essay following  The Enchanter one of the most enjoyable aspects of the novella is it's sense of suspense. This feeling is derived from an expectation the reader has that is inherently moral.

In the first pages of the novella the reader is told in both poetic but certain terms that our Anti-Hero is attracted to prepubescent girls, and when this information is given it sets up a sense of wrongness, that even the narrator cannot ignore. The reader enters the novel with a sense that this attraction will likely lead to his demise. In the pages prior to the marriage one observes his blatantly unromantic courtship  with the girls mother, which juxtaposes nicely to the overly romanticized descriptions he gives of the young girl.  After the wedding the story has a 1 or 2 page lull that makes the reader wish for the protagonist's wife's death, as much as he does.  When she actually does die though, it dawns on the reader, perhaps really for the first time, what is about to transpire: the protagonist is going to gain custody of  a 12 year old girl, who he is sexually attracted to and presumably rape her. Despite knowing this has been his plan all along, it seems less disturbing when it does not feel so imminent.  However as plot comes closer to the act,which disturbs the reader so, it also begins to feel less likely it will ever happen. The narrator who is aware of the immorality of what he so longs to do, becomes increasingly nervous despite the fact he is  perfectly safe traveling with his adopted daughter. The reader experiences that nervousness as well though for different reason, dread. The tension in the hotel room is high, and the reader just waits not knowing if they are actually going to read the description of a rape of if a sudden change of fate will save a little girl whom we desperately fear for, though we  know next to nothing about.

This fear is derived from this seemingly inherent sense of morality that  Nabokov is playing with; despite the disgust one feels for the narrator there is a certain  connection with him that the reader feels. I would suggest that the average reader will even find themselves more connected to the predator then to the prey.  This is one of the aspects that Nabokov will be carry over into Lolita, even making Humbert Humbert more relatable than The Enchanter's the unnamed narrator.