The Luzhin Defense Quotes

“Any future is unknown – but sometimes it acquires a particular fogginess, as if some other force had come to the aid of destiny's natural reticence and distributed this resilient fog, from which thought rebounds.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, The Luzhin Defense

“But nobody yet had been able to dig down to what was most captivating about her: this was the mysterious ability of her soul to apprehend in life only that which had once attracted and tormented her in childhood, the time when the soul's instinct is infallible; to seek out the amusing and the touching: to feel constantly an intolerable, tender pity for the creature whose life is helpless and unhappy; to feel across hundreds of miles that somewhere in Sicily a thin-legged little donkey with a shaggy belly is being brutally beaten. Whenever she did come across a creature that was being hurt, she experienced a kind of legendary eclipse — when inexplicable night comes down and ash flies and blood appears on the walls — and it seemed that if at once, at once, she did not help, did not cut short another's torture (the existence of which it was absolutely impossible to explain in a world so conducive to happiness), her heart would not stand it, and she would die.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, The Luzhin Defense

“To the sound of this voice, to the music of the chessboard's evil lure, Luzhin recalled, with the exquisite, moist melancholy peculiar to recollections of love, a thousand games that he had played in the past... There were combinations, pure and harmonious, where thought ascended marble stairs to victory; there were tender stirrings in one corner of the board, and a passionate explosion, and the fanfare of the Queen going to its sacrificial doom.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, The Luzhin Defense

“The recollection also came back empty, and for the first time in all his life, perhaps, Luzhin asked himself the question – where exactly had it all gone, what had become of his childhood, whither had the veranda floated, whither, rustling through the bushes, had the familiar paths crept away?”
― Vladimir Nabokov, The Luzhin Defense

“The game of the gods. Infinite possibilities.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, The Defense: Previously published as The Luzhin Defense

“And perhaps it was precisely because she knew nothing at all about chess that chess for her was not simply a parlor game or a pleasant pastime, but a mysterious art equal to all the recognized arts. She had never been in close contact with such people — there was no one to compare him with except those inspired eccentrics, musicians and poets whose image one knows as clearly and as vaguely as that of a Roman Emperor, an inquisitor or a comedy miser. Her memory contained a modest dimly lit gallery with a sequence of all the people who had in any way caught her fancy.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, The Luzhin Defense

“And in many other cities which for him were all identical - hotel, taxi. a hall in a cafe or club. These cities, these regular rows of blurry lamps marching past and suddenly advancing and encircling a stone horse in a square, were as much a habitual and unnecessary integument as the wooden pieces and the black and white board, and he accepted this external life as something inevitable but completely uninteresting. Similarly, in his way of dressing and in the manner of his everyday life, he was prompted by extremely dim motives, stopping to think about nothing, rarely changing his linens, automatically winding his watch at night, shaving with the same safety blade until it ceased to cut altogether, and feeding haphazardly and plainly. From some kind of melancholy inertia he continued to order at dinner the same mineral water, which effervesced slightly in the sinuses and evoked a tickling sensation in the corner of his eyes, like tears for the vanished Valentinov. Only rarely did he notice his own existence, when for example lack of breath - the revenge of a heavy body - forced him to halt with open mouth on a staircase, or when he had a toothache, or when at a late hour during his chess cogitations an outstretched hand shaking a matchbox failed to evoke in it the rattle of matches, and the cigarette that seemed to have been thrust unnoticed into his mouth by someone else suddenly grew and asserted itself, solid, soulless, and static, and his whole life became concentrated in the single desire to smoke, although goodness knows how many cigarettes had already been unconsciously consumed, In general, life around him was so opaque and demanded so little effort of him that it sometimes seemed someone - a mysterious, invisible manager - continued to take him from tournament to tournament; but occasionally there were odd moments, such quietness all around, and when you looked out into the corridor - shoes, shoes, shoes, standing at all the door, and in your ears the roar of loneliness.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, The Luzhin Defense

“I may as well confess that I gave Luzhin my French governess, my pocket chess set, my sweet temper, and the stone of the peach I plucked in my own walled garden.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, The Luzhin Defense

“پتروف به طرف خانم لوژین خم شد و به نجوا سخنی از ژوکوفسکی نقل کرد: آنچه با زحمت نوشته می‌شود با سهولت خوانده می‌شود.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, La defensa

“Полежите еще, вам полезно, вы толстый».”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Защита Лужина (Вечные книги)

“«Не выходи ты за него замуж, — изменившись в лице, проговорила мать, — Не выходи. Умоляю тебя. Ну, хочешь, — я бухнусь перед тобой на колени...» И, опираясь одной рукой о кресло, она стала с трудом сгибать ногу, медленно опуская свое большое, слегка похрустывавшее тело. «Пол продавишь», — сказала дочь и, захватив книги, вышла из комнаты.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Защита Лужина (Вечные книги)

“And for a minute she became thoughtful, ac- complishing during that one minute, as sometimes hap- pens, a long leisurely journey: she set off into Luzhin's past, dragging Valentinov with her, visualizing him, from his voice, in horn rimmed spectacles and long-legged, and as she journeyed through the mi^t she looked for a spot where she could dump the slippery, repulsively wriggling Valentinov, but she could not find one because she knew almost nothing about Luzhin's youth.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, The Luzhin Defense

“Before letting go he looked down. Some kind of hasty preparations were under way there: the window reflections gathered together and leveled themselves out, the whole chasm was seen to divide into dark and pale squares, and at the instant when Luzhin unclenched his hand, at the instant when icy air gushed into his month, he saw exactly what kind of eternity was obligingly and inexorably spread out before him.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, The Luzhin Defense

“Мать не раз пробовала узнать у дочери кое-какие подробности брака и пытливо спрашивала: «Ты беременна? Я уверена, что уже беременна». — «Да что ты, — отвечала дочь, — я давно родила».”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Защита Лужина (Вечные книги)