Partial Answers: Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas

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.