Ah Cheng: The Chess Master

[nnyhav]

Ah Cheng: The Chess Master (bilinguil,trans WJF Jenner) ****0

While Stefan Zweig's Schachnovelle remains the acme of gamewriting, this is a worthy contender (along with Kawabata's The Master of Go), and is of particular interest in merging modernity with tradition in both theme and composition (more thereon, not cited in a skewed intro). One of only two citations of Western writing, as a basis for story-telling within the story, Jack London's "Love of Life". As to chess, the Chinese form of the game, xiangqi, is probably played by more people than any other chess variant, including the Western version, but remains relatively unknown outside China; within this story it serves to transmit tradition, albeit in a debased form, across the Cultural Revolution, and to preserve Tao -- the author clearly gets the development of prodigy through early tactical wizardry to mature appreciation, which includes the proper appreciation for the modest place of chess in life. As per one of the taglines, how may melancholy be dispelled, save through chess?

 

[Jan Mbali]

Ah Cheng: The Chess Master (bilinguil,trans WJF Jenner) ****0

While Stefan Zweig's Schachnovelle remains the acme of gamewriting, this is a worthy contender (along with Kawabata's The Master of Go), and is of particular interest in merging modernity with tradition in both theme and composition (more thereon, not cited in a skewed intro). One of only two citations of Western writing, as a basis for story-telling within the story, Jack London's "Love of Life". As to chess, the Chinese form of the game, xiangqi, is probably played by more people than any other chess variant, including the Western version, but remains relatively unknown outside China; within this story it serves to transmit tradition, albeit in a debased form, across the Cultural Revolution, and to preserve Tao -- the author clearly gets the development of prodigy through early tactical wizardry to mature appreciation, which includes the proper appreciation for the modest place of chess in life. As per one of the taglines, how may melancholy be dispelled, save through chess?

Some contributors to this forum could sell ice to an Inuit. In spite of the global economic meltdown, I have to get hold of this book. I regularly plays chess with a better player, only beating him when he is depressed or stressed. Likewise, my game is even worse when my stress levels rise above a certain threshhold. Focus with strategy is what chess is all about. My game improved slightly by a read of the Art of War and by employing some insights gained from battle strategies adopted by great commanders I learnt about on the history channel. The battles of Cannae (Hannibal) and Stalingrad are particularly useful. Unfortunately, I am not a good enough player to apply lessons learnt from chess to life, although I am employed primarily as a strategist. But chess is still somehow an unequal charm against melancholy, not least because of the shouting and boozing that can go with playing the game in a sociable way.

By the way, the magnificent Chess Players by Sajita Ray is a film you must see or see again. Two Indian aristocrats playing chess obsessively while the British overun their kingdom. One of their neglected wives destoys their set, but they play on with stones and such. Exactly that happened when I began to play endless games with a couple of opponents while in exile in a camp in Tanzania. My wife burnt our set. I remembered the film and we used vegetables as pieces! Art can teach life. And there is of course the Bergman film about playing chess with Death, but that game is always rigged.

 

[kpjayan]

Jan Mbali, The name of the director of 'Magnificent Chess Players" is Satyajit Ray.

Talking about Chess, I had noted this small poem by Mexican Poet Rosario Castellanos , long ago. I think the title is Chess.


Because we were friends and sometimes loved each other,
Perhaps to add one more tie
To the many that already bound us,
We decided to play games of the mind.
We set up a board between us:
Equally divided into pieces, values,
And possible moves.
We learned the rules, we
Swore to respect them,
And the match began.

We've been sitting here for
Centuries, meditating ferociously
How to deal the one last blow
That will finally
Annihilate the other one forever.

--

 

[Jan Mbali]

Jan Mbali, The name of the director of 'Magnificent Chess Players" is Satyajit Ray.

Talking about Chess, I had noted this small poem by Mexican Poet Rosario Castellanos , long ago. I think the title is Chess.


Because we were friends and sometimes loved each other,
Perhaps to add one more tie
To the many that already bound us,
We decided to play games of the mind.
We set up a board between us:
Equally divided into pieces, values,
And possible moves.
We learned the rules, we
Swore to respect them,
And the match began.

We've been sitting here for
Centuries, meditating ferociously
How to deal the one last blow
That will finally
Annihilate the other one forever.

--

Wonderful poem, and very much in the spirit of the the Bergman film. Thanks for providing the correct spelling of Ray's first name. I must force myself to be less lazy about doing research before I post. Sat through the whole of Ray's Apu trilogy in my high school's film club. Can still see few scenes clearly in my head - somehow easier with those well-composed black and white classics. The Chess Players was the only film I saw of his that was in colour.

Mind you, Bobby Fisher (was that his name?) destroyed forever any romantic notions about the kind of intellectual who becomes an absolute master of chess. On the other hand, I don't care that super-computers and their programmers now consistently beat grandmasters, or so I have heard. Chess for me is a profoundly social game. Perhaps there is a deep psychological structure underlying the strategy, which the culturally challenged Fisher appeared to be the master of. However, chess typically is associated with diverse characters in lliterature and films, but most often with smooth upper class types in Western literature (Phillip Marlow is an exception).

 

[nnyhav]

Mind you, Bobby Fisher (was that his name?) destroyed forever any romantic notions about the kind of intellectual who becomes an absolute master of chess.

And before Fischer, Alekhine. And before him ... but there was also something disreputable about chess masters. (Ask Morphy.)

On the other hand, I don't care that super-computers and their programmers now consistently beat grandmasters, or so I have heard. Chess for me is a profoundly social game. Perhaps there is a deep psychological structure underlying the strategy, which the culturally challenged Fisher appeared to be the master of. However, chess typically is associated with diverse characters in lliterature and films, but most often with smooth upper class types in Western literature (Phillip Marlow is an exception).

Fischer lived and breathed chess. And had his own deep psychological structure (deeply flawed). As the poem alludes, Fischer wanted annihilation for his opponent. Over the board, that is.

But, in life, chess has a profound resonance with the arts in the West. Marcel Duchamp ceased being an artist to become a chessplayer (and got pretty good at it, master level in France). Vladimir Nabokov published chess problems (one of his books is Poems and Problems), and compared composing them to writing (and solving them to reading).

As to films, I'm reminded that there was a chess game in Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddles ...

 

[cuchulain]

Thanks for the rec, nnyhav. Looks good.


I play a lot of computer chess these days. Have gotten better, but am only at Level Two.

I loved Searching for Bobby Fisher. Based on a true story about another chess master.

 

[nnyhav]

Congratulations to Larry Kaufman, 1st American Senior World chess champ and newly minted grandmaster:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/16/crosswords/chess/16chess.html

I knew him (not well) from Maryland chess circles, where he put us on to shogi, the Japanese variant (closer to xiangqi than to Western chess), in which he's long been the highest ranked Western player. The article linked misleads a bit on computer chess: his involvement in construction was early, but he also analysed chess programs comparatively, and was the go-to guy on the state of development for many years.

Anyway, couldn't happen to a nicer guy. And I mean that without any irony.

 

[Kingbee]

A bit late to the party, but as kpjayan else added a great poem about chess, I thought I'd add Borges' too.

Chess-Jorge Luis Borges

In their solemn corner, the players move
The slow pieces. The board detains them
Until the dawn in its severe world
In which two colors hate each other.

Within the forms irradiates magic
Strictness: Homeric rook, swift
Knight, armed queen, crucial king,
Oblique bishop and aggressive pawns.

Once the players have finally left,
Once time has devoured them,
Surely the ritual will not have ended.

In the orient like this very war flared up
Whose amphitheater today is the earth entire.
Like the other, the game is infinite.
II
Weakling king, slanting bishop, relentless
Queen, direct rook and cunning pawn
Seek and wage their armed battle
Across the black and white of the field.

They know not that the player’s selected
Hand governs their destiny,
They know not that a rigor adamantine
Subjects their will and rules their day.

The player also is a prisoner
(The saying is Omar’s) of another board
Of black nights and of white days.

God moves the player, and he, the piece.
Which god behind God begets the plot
Of dust and time and dream and agonies?

 

[kpjayan]

Awesome.. Thank you for sharing this..