Stefan Zweig was an Austrian Jew, an intellectual who befriended Rilke, Freud, Thomas Mann… Rainer Maria Rilke died in 1926 and escaped pagan times, Freud died in exile in London in 1939 and Thomas Mann in 1955 in Switzerland. Thus Nazism got rid of its most valuable people, all in the name of an undeveloped painter and an ambitious corporal. Stefan Zweig also had to flee his native Austria. He and his wife Lotte committed suicide in Brazil in 1942.
"Novel about chess" is his farewell to the poisoned world and confrontation with Nazism. People are chess pieces, they move along marked paths and cannot deviate from their paths. Interestingly, the novella was published immediately after the author's death in Brazil, Sweden, America, and experienced a German edition in 1974.
The plot of the novel takes place on a luxury passenger ship sailing from New York to Buenos Aires, and is presented by the narrator. On board are young chess grandmaster Mirko Čentović, doctor B. and millionaire Mc Connor.
Dr. B. was placed under house arrest by the Nazis. He stole a small booklet during an interrogation. He hoped she would understand his monotony and depression. He was disappointed to see that it was just a chess booklet. But she was the finger of fate. He would read every other book quickly, and the chess booklet filled his thoughts in isolation, so he soon learned it by heart. He begins to play against himself in his mind, chess becomes his obsession, his whole world is black and white, and he becomes both a winner and a loser at the same time.
Now, as the boat engines take the boat to Brazil, he has a chance to mirror himself with the world champion. He gets the first game. In the second game, Čentović deliberately delays the move, because he noticed the nervousness of Dr. B., who wants to end the game as soon as possible. Only when he loses the game does Dr. B return to the real world and the obsession disappears.
Somehow this novel reminds me of the life of Bobby Fischer, the greatest chess genius of all time.
He was born in 1943 and was the son of two incredibly intelligent people. His mother, Regina Fischer, was Jewish and spoke six languages fluently, and had a doctorate in medicine. Bobby Fischer is believed to have been the result of an affair between his mother - who was married to Hans-Gerhart Fischer at the time of his birth - and the eminent Hungarian scientist of Jewish descent, Paul Nemeni, who wrote a great textbook on mechanics, and for a time he also worked with Albert Einstein's son in his hydrology laboratory.
His life was chess. Fischer was determined to become the world champion in this game. His amazing game against international master Donald Byrne marked Fischer as one of the greats. Fischer defeated him in the match by sacrificing his queen to attack Byrne, and the victory was praised as "one of the best in the history of chess matches".
Twenty-one-year-old Bobby Fisher plays simultaneous with 50 people. On that occasion, he had 47 wins, two draws and only one lost game. It is a fascinating fact that he was self-taught, he played against himself and thus revealed many secrets of chess.
From 1957 to 1967, Fischer won eight championships in the United States, and during the tournament he achieved the best result in history with a score of 11: 0. As his chess skills strengthened, so mentally he began to decline more and more. Already at the time, Fischer was making a series of anti-Semitic comments to reporters.
But Bobby Fisher's fame would be short-lived. As soon as the game was over, he boarded the plane and flew home. He did not give speeches, he did not sign autographs. He turned down millions of dollars in sponsorship offers and excluded himself from the focus of the public, living in complete anonymity.
He did not play a single match in the next 20 years. In the next three alone, he turned down 179 challenges. In the end, he lost the title of the best without making any more moves.
He was arrested in 2004 on his way to Japan and his American passport was confiscated. That is why in 2005 he applied for Icelandic citizenship and obtained it. He spent the last years of his life in Iceland and fell more and more into complete madness.
When he passed away, he was 64 years old - exactly as many as there are fields on the chessboard.
Very nice article