Sergei
Prokofiev
The Sheer Beauty of the Game
Authored by Evgenia Golubeva
Translated by Larisa Lamb
Prokofiev at the piano
Artist Georgy Vereysky
1927
“A clever sequence of moves requires from a chess play
er the same skills as from a composer, those essential
to any form of art: an ingenious approach, resourceful
ness, concentration, harmony, precision and brilliant
pretence.” This is how Vladimir Nabokov, the famo
usentomologist and novelist, a man as ingenious with
words as he was with chess problems, outlined the sub
jectin his celebrated chess novel The Luzhin Defence.