hmmm
I don’t care what you say about me. Just be sure to spell my name wrong.
Barbra Streisand, 1942 – present, American singer and actress.
Chess, politics and madness
September 29, 2009
Blade was struck by this story from the FT, reporting on the uncertain political fate of Garry Kasparov, the former world chess champion who retired from chess in 2005 to become the face of opposition to Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin.
As a chess player of some ineptitude, Blade has the utmost admiration for Mr Kasparov. Confronted with the agony of 64 black and white squares, the man was a genius, regardless of the colour of his troops. But a cursory glance at chess in literature reveals that the game is inextricably linked to madness. This is a subject to which Blade will return, but at first blush, casting his eyes around his library, Blade encounters Vladimir Nabokov’s The Defence, Elias Canetti’s Auto da Fe, Lewis Carroll’s Alice Through the Looking Glass and Stefan Zweig’s The Royal Game. In none of them do chess players shine as emblems of civilian sanity. What other fate for Mr Kasparov was there, Blade wonders, than political discombobulation?
Pictured courtesy of Zee Anna: chess, a combative old game but not, perhaps, the best preparation for politics.
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