The Problem of Pattern: Nabokov's Defense
THE DEFENSE,1 Nabokov's third novel and first masterpiece, is also the first in his career in which patterns pervade in every direction. Hypersensitive since childhood to pattern and to threats lurking in the world around him, Luzhin commits suicide to escape the mysterious combinations encroaching upon him and in so doing alerts even the unwariest reader to their presence. The Defense can therefore become a test case for the patterns Nabokov weaves in time. Does he expect us merely to marvel at their intricate interlacement, as if they were so much Celtic knotwork? Does he tease us to strain nail and finger to unravel the inextricable, as readers such as Douglas Fowler suppose ("the private systems of correspondence . . . the 'wayside murmur of this or that hidden theme' . . . are annotated red herrings" [74])? Or does he overcomplicate the design inadvertently so that it can never be untied? Strother Purdy typifies many readers at first lured by the promise of significance in Nabokov's fictional patterns