Schachnovelle (1942)

Written just before he and his wife committed suicide, in exile in Brazil, this book is really an allegory of S.Z.'s predicament.
It concerns the oppression of a sensitive spirit, to the point of madness, by skilled Gestapo oppressors.
It then becomes a game of chess between this same sensitive spirit who taught himself during his long solitary confinement, and a brilliant but brutish opponent who's only skill is chess.
The basic story is enthralling, the message is why S.Z. killed himself. ( )

Not really about chess but about two fictional chess players, one an idiot savant-type world champion in chess, the other a cultured former Nazi prisoner who while kept in complete isolation had stolen a book of championship chess games from a guard and so with nothing else to do learns to think eight moves ahead. He happily forgets about chess until the two happen to be on the same ocean liner years later and finally play the big game.

Not enough chess to interest the chess player. Well written but very short, like a short story.

I enjoyed Zweig's autobiographical "World of Yesterday", an easy five stars, and his biography of Balzac, also five stars. The movie "The Grand Budapest Hotel" was based on his novels, his character played by Ralph Fiennes.

Zweig was a cultured Viennese Jew who identified more as a citizen of the world. He was disheartened by the destruction of Austrian culture in the first war and further dispirited by Nazism in the second. He and his wife killed themselves in Brazil in 1942.
( )

Following [book:The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition|176972], I wanted more chess-themed fiction, but I specifically wanted something I could read in a single sitting. Thus, Sweig's last work before his death, Schachnovelle (translated from the German as Chess Story), at roughly 85 pages, was the perfect fit. Far from Carroll's weaving of the structure and rules (the form) of chess into the story, Sweig explores the psychological aspects of chess and life--perhaps better stated, chess as life.

I didn't know anything about Sweig before reading this book, and, as per my rule, I saved the introduction for after taking in the story. Early on I picked up on Sweig's penchant for studying the personalities of monomaniacs. This is something I share. I have long been intrigued by people who live a life obsessed with just one thing, be it chess (Bobby Fischer), painting (van Gogh), music (Beethoven), the iPhone (Jobs), or what have you. This intrigue is certainly because it is so foreign to my own life, for I seem to be interested in everything but never to a degree of what could be called mastery. Regardless of the object of my interest at any given time, I soon grow tired of it and am ready to move on.

Sweig, who apparently wrote many biographies of monomaniacs who interested him (from Balzac to Napoleon to Mary Queen of Scots), sets his sight on the game of chess as the catalyst for the monomaniacs Dr. B and Czentovic (moths to a flames). But the respective players have quite different stories regarding how they fell into the maw of chess and where it led them. And it is this contrast that is at the forefront of Chess Story.

Psychoanalysis, given its push into popular culture by fellow Viennese Sigmund Freud, is at the heart of Zweig's writing. In fact, according to Peter Gay (scholar and translator of Freud) in this book's introduction, Sweig exchanged letters with Freud and expressed his fondness for the field. It is this psychoanalytic perspective that frames both the game of chess and its fateful players. ( )

Απλώς μια καταπληκτική ιστορία! ( )

Sin capacidad para cualquier otra actividad intelectual, Mirko Czentovicz, se reveló, ya desde niño, como un genio del ajedrez, del que llegó a ser campeón del mundo. Czentovic nunca fue capaz de jugar una sola partida de memoria o, como se suele decir en ajedrez "a ciegas". Carecía por completo de la capacidad de proyectar el tablero cobre el campo ilimitado de la fantasía. Con un cinismo tosco y grosero, trataba tan solo de obtener todo el dinero posible de su talento y su fama, satisfaciendo su más vulgar y mezquina codicia. En un viaje en barco de Nueva York a Buenos Aires, se le presenta un enigmático contrincante: el Sr. B., noble vienés que huye de los nazis. Uno de los pasajeros del vapor intercede para propiciar el enfrentamiento entre los dos personajes, lo cual representa el choque de dos naturalezas antagónicas, así como la capacidad de resistencia del ser humano sometido a presión extraordinaria. ( )