JM: Harvey Loyd's movie-still, while he is hanging from a clock, may inspire one to consider that "we are prisoners of time... hanging from it by a thread... how times flees etc etc", which is also a Nabokovian theme, if we consider the beginning of the movie when, by force of optical effects, Harvey seems to be standing behind prison bars. Nevertheless, what's been keeping me busy here is the task of locating the particular image described by Alfred Appel in his footnote to the 1970 interview with Nabokov related to "The Defense".* The one I'm posting now lacks the "American glasses" and the ledge.

I enjoyed the sighting posted by Juan Martinez and the reference in question [*Appel’s note: “In The Defense, Luzhin’s means of suicide is suggested to him by a movie still, lying on a table, showing ‘a white faced man with his lifeless features and big American glasses, hanging by his hands from the ledge of a skyscraper—just about to fall into the abyss’—the most famous scene in Harold Lloyd’s Safety Last.”] and, more particularly, this link: "And, lastly, a link to a splendid full-length TV interview with Nabokov."
I loved to see and hear Nabokov speak the damning words against Freud (and his umbrella). An accidental mishandling caused me even greater delight, though: I found that I could open all five little movies with Nabokov speaking, at the same time, to have them on sounding together and imaging away...It made a kind of sense to me in connection to what Nabokov was expounding in the first one, related to a poet's thought processes.

I've yet to locate the movie still, it must have been mentioned long before Luzhin jumped out from the window...
The Defense (last paragraph, excerpts): "'The only way out,' he said. 'I have to drop out of the game'. [...] He raised his eyes.The upper window. But how to reach it? [...]Finally he found himself on the chest [...]Raising a hand he jerked at the frame and it swung open. Black sky.[...] Before letting go he looked down...the whole chasm was seen to divide into dark and pale squares...at the instant when icy air gushed into his mouth, he saw exactly what kind of eternity was obligingly and inexorably spread out before him...there was no Aleksandr Ivanovich." This last chapter has its moments of silent-movie gesticulation and commedy, and Luzhin poking his head out of various windows in great hurry suggests some of the events in Harvey's movie.

More easy to locate is Nabokov's mention to defenestration, in LATH, chapt. 11: "The major poet, Boris Morozov, an amiable grizzly bear of a man, was
asked how his reading in Berlin had gone...and then told a funny but not memorable story...The lady next to me informed me she had adored that treacherous conversation between the Pawn and the Queen about the husband and would they really defenestrate the poor chess player? I said they would but not in the next issue, and not for good: he would live forever in the games he had played and in the multiple exclamation marks of future annotators." (and here we find again a link to Luzhin's fenestrial "eternity")

* (Wikipedia) :Curt von Bardeleben (Berlin, 4 March 1861 – Berlin, 31 January 1924) was a Count and a German chess master who committed suicide by jumping out of a window in 1924. His life and death were the basis for that of the main character in the novel The Defense by Vladimir Nabokov, which was made into the movie The Luzhin Defence. He edited the magazine Deutsche Schachzeitung from 1887 through 1891. He tied for first place with Riemann at Leipzig 1888, tied for first place with Walbrodt at Kiel 1893, was first at Berlin (SV Centrum) 1897, and tied for first place with Schlechter and Swiderski at Coburg 1904.
He is perhaps best known for the game he lost to the former world champion Wilhelm Steinitz at Hastings 1895, especially because he just left the tournament room instead of resigning: 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 Bc5 4. c3 Nf6 5. d4 exd4 6. cxd4 Bb4+ 7. Nc3 d5 8. exd5 Nxd5 9. O-O Be6 10. Bg5 Be7 11. Bxd5 Bxd5 12. Nxd5 Qxd5 13. Bxe7 Nxe7 14. Re1 f6 15. Qe2 Qd7 16. Rac1 c6 17. d5 cxd5 18. Nd4 Kf7 19. Ne6 Rhc8 20. Qg4 g6 21. Ng5+ Ke8 22. Rxe7+ Kf8 23. Rf7+ Kg8 24. Rg7+ 1-0

Related to his tragic death, an amusing kinbotean link (like Appel's play at the end of his own -"I trust you have enjoyed this note, to paraphrase a comment made by Kinbote under very different circumstances" Vintage SO,165) states: "I stand by my original definitions of defenestricide and autodefenestricide, because they invoke the idea of defenestrate, and they're fun to say. (Much more fun to say than suidefenestratothanatopathy, which is just a tongue twister by another name.).

All private editorial communications, without exception, are read by both co-editors.

Search the archive	Contact the Editors	Visit "Nabokov Online Journal"
Visit Zembla	View Nabokv-L Policies	Manage subscription options