Vladimir Nabokov’s vertiginous games

Nabokov’s first two major novels are inspired by the game of chess, as is evident from their very titles: The Luzhin Defense and King, Queen, Knave. The name Luzhin, explains Nabokov in the preface to his book, “rhymes with illusion”, as if to say the connection between play and illusion is so close as to be proverbial. In his stubborn artistic coherence, he would never relinquish this idea, not even in the great novels of his maturity, written in an extremely expressive, playful and artificial English. Moreover, as kids and champion pool players know, game playing - perhaps because of ridiculous, indisputable rules - involves dignified self-denial and algebraic precision. Play is a serious thing.

When Nabokov was asked why he wrote Lolita, he replied: “I just like composing riddles with elegant solutions”. Alessandro Piperno aims to verify this claim by examining one of Nabokov’s masterpieces.