Filter By Topic

Filter By Subject

Filter By Volumes

Filter by Years

  •  
  • 1 of 3
  • »

The "Overcoat" of Nabokov's Luzhin: Defense as Self-Destruction

  • Irene Masing-Delic

Date Published:

1 Jan, 2017

Abstract:

This essay examines the protagonist of Nabokov’s 1930 novel The Defense as a character who has much in common with Gogol’s Bashmachkin from “The Overcoat” (1842). Both seek refuge from “real” life in their respective art: calligraphy in Bashmachkin’s case, and chess in Luzhin’s. The two protagonists’ fascination with abstract patterns and disinterest in “real” life results in a transfer of their sexuality from individuals to personified objects, or objectified people: Bashmachkin turns his overcoat into his “wife”; Luzhin gets married but turns his wife into an “overcoat” whose function it is to protect him from the chills of life. There is no “defense” against the games life that plays with the characters, however, and, like Akaky Akakievich, Luzhin destroys himself in his very quest for a protective wrap.

 

January 2017: Professor Irene Masing-Delic retired from the Ohio State University a few years ago and is now Editor of The Slavic and East European Journal, currently housed at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her publications include Abolishing Death (1992), Exotic Moscow under Western Eyes (2009), and From Symbolism to Socialist Realism: A Reader (2011), as well as numerous articles on the “Silver Age.”

 

 

Publisher's Version

Last updated on 04/12/2020