- During this period, Vladimir developed a hobby of writing chess problems.
- Writing chess problems is different than playing chess: it is finding a circumstance of the game that feels particularly challenging, even hopeless, and offering it to those who care.
- (Nabokov admits that most people, even those who are passionate chess players, don't.)
- For Vladimir, writing chess problems is as lyric as composing a poem.
- Different schools of different chess problem writers value things like patterned strategy, rigid rules, or end-games.
- Nabokov attempts to explain: "Themes in chess, it may be explained, are such devices as forelaying, withdrawing, pinning, unpinning and so forth; but it is only when they are combined in a certain way that a problem is satisfying. Deceit, to the point of diabolism, and originality, verging upon the grotesque, were my notions of strategy…" (14.3.3)
- For those not in the know, even this explanation can seem really confusing. But if you think of Nabokov as a writer who values drama, beauty, and weirdness, his approach clarifies a bit.
- Vladimir labors at his hobby, understanding a connection between it and his writing, a strengthening of his creativity via chess.
- The hobby is comforting to Vladimir, with its clear rules and boundaries.
- Vladimir, in working on these problems, becomes entranced: "I remember slowly emerging from a swoon of concentrated chess thought, and there, on a great English board of cream and cardinal leather, the flawless position was at last balanced like a constellation." (14.3.6)
- In mid-May of 1940, he is working relentlessly on a chess problem, living in Paris.
- The day before, Vladimir and his family have finally received their visa to leave Europe and journey to the U.S., where he will be able to develop his writing career.
- He finishes writing the problem.
- "All of a sudden, I felt that with the completion of my chess problem a whole period of my life had come to a satisfactory close." (14.3.7)
- Nabokov, in writing this, has that chess problem diagram in front of him, and includes the particulars of the problem.
- In their passage out of France, all of his papers were inspected, and this paper bears a stamp from the French government, clearing it.