Anabasis and the perfect move in chess

The Eystein style of painting is the key to it all.
I got this from the short story Solus Rex by Nabokov. It was the final words of short story that changed my thought process. It is written "As K advanced toward the exit, he had the nightmare sensation that, maybe, the door was a stil-life painting, that its handle was en rompe-l'oeil, and could not be turned. But all at once the door became real, and, escorted by a youth, who had softly come out of some other room in his bedslippers with a bundle of keys, K proceeded to go down a long and dark staircase." (And just for the readers sake the french phrase above means "deceive the eye").
The object of chess is to capture the opponents king which is called check mate. K stands for Solus Rex or  Lone Black King. The story of K is related to the lone black king being chased around a board. Anabasis is "an expedition from coastline up into the interior of a country" (Wikipedia). The strategy of keeping your king in the middle of the chess board, which is the goal when a player only has one piece, correlates with Anabasis. This strategy could go on for ever but it is to be a good Nabokovian player to go through the tedious step 50 to be exact to turn a lost game into a draw.
Besides the obvious topic of a draw in Pale Fire which is the result of all the games played in the novel (example is on page 83 of Pale Fire where Beauchamp and Campbell end their game in a draw), there is a huge emphasis on trickery and trap doors which is also the best strategy for winning at chess. I plan to tie this topic in with the idea of love and loss. The chess game of Pale Fire is played by Nabokov and himself alone. He separates himself into two alter egos that is neither himself nor representation of himself. I thought to myself that no wonder all the games end in draws if he is playing himself. But within the context of love and loss there has to be a winner that differs from either player (an outsider or third wheel). It is Platonic idea of love that is displayed in this romantic chess game. As Mary McCarthy put it "Love is felt as a kind of homesickness, that yearning for union described by Plato, the pining for the other half of a once-whole body, the straining of the soul's black horse to unite with the white"(McCarthy). Love is the reason the game must be played but it is loss that is how the game must be played. Loss, which can sometimes be confused by the opponent for love or the sadness of loss, is the trickery or trap that leads to an overall gain. All chess game traps consist of major pieces being lost. In pale fire the game had been won and it was the death of Shade that set up the trap for the game to be won.
Another topic of my paper will be the idea of combining the two halves so a new whole can be transformed. How a draw can be transformed into a win. That we allow ourselves to be tricked by what we perceive to be real.
My paper will also deal with the topic of the details of history and how knowing all the past moves will lead to a chess player making the right move. Going back to my chapter in Nabokov's Blues and page 306 where Nabokov is quoted saying "In high art and pure science detail is everything." and before this quote where they talk about connecting details to find the overall picture.
Now going back to the first line of this blog which I think is the solution to the missing crown jewels. The two Soviet professionals had come so close but were so far away blinded by the real world. It was the flaw of Eystein's painting that was the detail the Russians should have been looking at. The Picture contained the jewels it was art that has no real purpose that contained the most valued objects. True art is the answer not the goal, "the basic fact that "reality" is neither the subject nor the object of true art which creates its own special reality having nothing to do with the average "reality" perceived by the communal eye" (Nabokov).