Subject
Re: Chess problem
From
Date
Body
Kinbote is mad...he suffers and knows it at times.
-----Original Message-----
From: Hyman, Eric <ehyman@UNCFSU.EDU>
To: NABOKV-L <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
Sent: Thu, May 23, 2013 9:10 pm
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] Chess problem
Some of the chess problems are in VN’s Poems andPuzzles. I don’t know offhand whether the specific problemreferred to in Conclusive Evidence [Speak, Memory] is one of the ones inPoems and Puzzles. In 1986 I gave a paper, “The Affinity between Nabokov’s ShortStories and Chess Problems,” at the VladimirNabokov Society Meeting, Modern Language Association Convention, New York(abstract published in The Nabokovian, 18 [1987]). Therein Iargued that novels (or memoirs) and chess problems are very different: chessgames, novels and memoirs are developing, sequential narratives, whereas shortstories and chess problems depend on single key moves that determine everythingelse, that the author sets for the reader/solver to figure out.
PaleFire thus would be sort of a hybrid:it has two more or less sequential narratives, Shade’s poem and Kinbote’sZemblan fantasy; and is also akin to a chess problem, where the key move isthat reader needs to figure out that Kinbote is mad (and/or might be Botkin).
Eric Hyman
Professor ofEnglish
Department ofEnglish
Butler 133
FayettevilleState University
1200 MurchisonRoad
Fayetteville,NC 28301-4252
(910) 672-1901
ehyman@uncfsu.edu
From: Vladimir Nabokov Forum[mailto:NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU] On Behalf Of Carolyn Kunin
Sent: Monday, May 20, 2013 7:49 PM
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Subject: [NABOKV-L] Chess problem
I was working on a chessproblem in the New York Times on Saturday and I did as well as the two winners(both playing black). Which surprized me. But in any event, it got me tothinking about Nabokov as a chess player.
Google led me to an interviewdone with the author before fame struck, but in 1951, the latest book was ...
avolume called "Conclusive Evidence." It was an autobiography and yetit wasn't altogether so. Would Mr. Nabokov talk a bit about it? He would.
"It is a memoir," he said,"and true. There is a good deal of selection in it, of course. Whatinterested me is the thematic lines of my life that resembles fiction. Thememoir became the meeting point of an impersonal art form and a very personallife story."
Was there any precedent for the memoir thatis to some extent manipulated or constructed or conceived as a novel? Mr.Nabokov didn't think too long. "There isn't any precedent that I knowof," he said. "It is a literary approach to my own past. There issome precedent for it in the novel, in Proust, say, but not in the memoir. Withme," Mr. Nabokov said, "it is a kind of composition. I am a composerof chess problems. Nobody," he said, "has yet solved the chessproblem in 'Conclusive Evidence.'" What about a professional, a ReubenFine, a Reshevsky, or someone like that? "I'm waiting for one to comealong," Mr. Nabokov said in a voice that could have been as ambivalent asJoyce's when people were starting to guess at the title of what turned out tobe "Finnegans Wake."
Now, as thereader may imagine, the question perhaps not so much begged as raised by allthis is does anyone know about the chess problems referred to? are theyrepeated in Speak, Memory? has anyone solved them?
Carolyn
February 18,1951 Talk with Mr. Nabokov by Harvey Breit
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-----Original Message-----
From: Hyman, Eric <ehyman@UNCFSU.EDU>
To: NABOKV-L <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
Sent: Thu, May 23, 2013 9:10 pm
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] Chess problem
Some of the chess problems are in VN’s Poems andPuzzles. I don’t know offhand whether the specific problemreferred to in Conclusive Evidence [Speak, Memory] is one of the ones inPoems and Puzzles. In 1986 I gave a paper, “The Affinity between Nabokov’s ShortStories and Chess Problems,” at the VladimirNabokov Society Meeting, Modern Language Association Convention, New York(abstract published in The Nabokovian, 18 [1987]). Therein Iargued that novels (or memoirs) and chess problems are very different: chessgames, novels and memoirs are developing, sequential narratives, whereas shortstories and chess problems depend on single key moves that determine everythingelse, that the author sets for the reader/solver to figure out.
PaleFire thus would be sort of a hybrid:it has two more or less sequential narratives, Shade’s poem and Kinbote’sZemblan fantasy; and is also akin to a chess problem, where the key move isthat reader needs to figure out that Kinbote is mad (and/or might be Botkin).
Eric Hyman
Professor ofEnglish
Department ofEnglish
Butler 133
FayettevilleState University
1200 MurchisonRoad
Fayetteville,NC 28301-4252
(910) 672-1901
ehyman@uncfsu.edu
From: Vladimir Nabokov Forum[mailto:NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU] On Behalf Of Carolyn Kunin
Sent: Monday, May 20, 2013 7:49 PM
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Subject: [NABOKV-L] Chess problem
I was working on a chessproblem in the New York Times on Saturday and I did as well as the two winners(both playing black). Which surprized me. But in any event, it got me tothinking about Nabokov as a chess player.
Google led me to an interviewdone with the author before fame struck, but in 1951, the latest book was ...
avolume called "Conclusive Evidence." It was an autobiography and yetit wasn't altogether so. Would Mr. Nabokov talk a bit about it? He would.
"It is a memoir," he said,"and true. There is a good deal of selection in it, of course. Whatinterested me is the thematic lines of my life that resembles fiction. Thememoir became the meeting point of an impersonal art form and a very personallife story."
Was there any precedent for the memoir thatis to some extent manipulated or constructed or conceived as a novel? Mr.Nabokov didn't think too long. "There isn't any precedent that I knowof," he said. "It is a literary approach to my own past. There issome precedent for it in the novel, in Proust, say, but not in the memoir. Withme," Mr. Nabokov said, "it is a kind of composition. I am a composerof chess problems. Nobody," he said, "has yet solved the chessproblem in 'Conclusive Evidence.'" What about a professional, a ReubenFine, a Reshevsky, or someone like that? "I'm waiting for one to comealong," Mr. Nabokov said in a voice that could have been as ambivalent asJoyce's when people were starting to guess at the title of what turned out tobe "Finnegans Wake."
Now, as thereader may imagine, the question perhaps not so much begged as raised by allthis is does anyone know about the chess problems referred to? are theyrepeated in Speak, Memory? has anyone solved them?
Carolyn
February 18,1951 Talk with Mr. Nabokov by Harvey Breit
Google Search the archive
Contact the Editors
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal"
Visit Zembla
View Nabokv-L Policies
Manage subscription options
Visit AdaOnline
View NSJ Ada Annotations
Temporary L-Soft Search the archive
All private editorial communications are read by bothco-editors.
Google Search the archive
Contact the Editors
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal"
Visit Zembla
View Nabokv-L Policies
Manage subscription options
Visit AdaOnline
View NSJ Ada Annotations
Temporary L-Soft Search the archive
All private editorial communications areread by both co-editors.
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/