Chess, Mirror of Life
Sonja M. Musser This essay is dedicated to Prof. Gyürk Lanin, Peter and Fernando
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METAJEDREZ
In Ceremonies of the horseman, Even the pawn must-hold a grudge. - Bob Dylan
Both geniuses realistic fantasy literature of Argentina, Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortazar, were inspired by chess, using the image, analogy and model in his works. This test will show the impact of this game important to human culture in literature, tracing its history and a significant appearance in the literature up to and including Borges and Cortazar them. Also, a reference to the parallel use of chess in the art of MC Escher.
sabencon not precisely the origins of chess. As the sun originated in the Levant and its popularity circumnavigated the probable mundo.Es The first version, Chaturanga, was invented before 600 AD in China or India and spread to the pilgrimages to Buddhist monks. He came to Persia where it was called then in Arabic Chatrang Shatranj. Chess reached Europe by way of three routes: the invasion of Spain and Sicily by the Muslims and the Byzantine Empire. From Europe traveled to the New World with the conquistadors. In art, the Manichean struggle that is depicted between the two opposite sides, black and white or red and white bloodiest, the analogy becomes a battle, a war, life, mankind, the world, the universe God and His power. The importance of chess is also seen in the use of terminology outside the context of everyday language game. It is curious that two of the most important terms are negative: stalemate (smothered mate) and pawn.
The first mention of chess in the English language appears in the Discipline Clericalis (XII) by Pedro Alfonso, where he was among the list of seven qualities of the perfect gentleman. In the next century, came the best game medieval book, the Book of dice and tables acedrex (1283) of Alfonso X the Wise, King of Castile and Leon. In this book richly illuminated problems, mostly translated from Arabic works, Alfonso the Wise stated the importance of this intellectual game in his time. By devoting so much effort into creating a work so beautiful and great, we know that games, particularly chess, which occupies the first and most of the volume, were of paramount importance to the medieval king. The introduction explains that God wanted men to have all sorts of fun and chess problems themselves indicate that Alfonso was an intellectual game that showed much more challenge, for example, about war strategies, policy, yet of life. Highlights show that all participate equally in the game (as in life), noble and poor, men and women, Arabs and Christians, old and young. With the typical duality of the Middle Ages, Alfonso the Wise, was a dual role of translatio studii, tranfiriéndonos oriental wisdom and give us a command to play in the game of acedrex.
chess Since the arrival of the West, has ceased to be included in the literature. The 64-Square Looking Glass: The Great Game of Chess in World Literature (Times Book, 1993), edited by Burt Hochberg, is a collection of chess literature selections from many authors. Its table of contents reads like a Who's Who of world literature. Some of the most famous are Woody Allen, Poul Anderson, Fernando Arrabal, Samuel Beckett, Jorge Luis Borges, Anne Brontë, Lewis Carroll, Ian Fleming, EM Forster, Thomas Hardy, Sinclair Lewis, Vladimir Nabukov, Ezra Pound, Alfred, Lord Tennyson , Miguel de Unamuno, and Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. We will examine these to a series of chess that influenced Lewis Carroll, Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortázar.
Lewis Carroll in Through the Looking Glass (1871) suggested a game annotated as base the entire book. In the annotation, Alice appears as a white pawn though at first not aware of their role. Notation also indicates that Alice can win in eleven moves. After talking with the Red Queen, and other characters, chess pieces, she realizes:
It's a great huge game of chess that's Being played - all over the world - if this is the world at all, you know. O What fun it is! How I wish I WAS one of them! I Would not Mind Being a Pawn, if only I Might join - Though of course I Should like to Be a Queen, best. [1]
The naive protagonist becomes chessman, not only the author's literary Carroll but also literally in this chess game and live large as played in the royal courts in the fifteenth century, and figuratively as we are all in the game world. Innocent as a child sees everything as fun and she wants to play, even if you can only play the role of a pawn, so it is important to participate. Carroll invites his reader to participate in the game, giving the notation of the same and the challenge trying to play the role of Alice, playing as a pawn and win in eleven moves.
For Borges, Bob Dylan to be a pawn becomes more frustrating, more sinister. In my opinion, Borges not seen as a player, he looked more like a pawn in the power of another. Pawns are the most numerous and weak chess pieces. The pawn, as the word is used in everyday language, describes a person helpless, unimportant and that sacrifices a pawn for unknown reasons. He feared that the final position in the universe was one of stalemate, ie could not win because he was not playing but played. In a couple of sonnets, entitled "Chess", Borges cataloged all the elements that fascinated him about this intellectual game.
I
In their serious corner, players Guiding
slow pieces. The board
The delay until dawn in its severe
area in which colors are hateful. Inside
rigors
radiate magical forms: Homeric tower, light horse
, armed queen, last king, oblique bishop and pawns
aggressors.
When players are gone,
When time has been consumed,
certainly not have ended the rite.
In the East the war went on Cuyo
amphitheater is today all the earth.
As the other this game is infinite.
II
Subtle King, bias bishop, fierce
Queen, rook and pawn Ladino
directly on the black and white path
searching and fighting their armed campaign.
not know that the hand of the player designated
governs his destiny,
not know an adamantine
Hold your will and day.
The player is
prisoner (the sentence is Omar) on another board
of black nights and white days.
God moves the player, and he, the piece.
What god behind God begins
of dust and time and dream and agonies? [2]
For Borges, everything about the game has its mystery, its importance and challenge from the symbolism of the chess pieces, vague and timeless origin in Asia, reflected in blocks innumerably opposed to, most importantly, who plays whom in this game and on the "other" game of life?
In his article "The Manipulator manipulated: chess in Borges determinism" (Kanin, Vol X (2) 1986, 29-33), Clark M. Zlotchew says the players opponents of the tales of Borges "the fight is not seen as that occurring between forces of good and evil "but seen cold and fairly" in the same way that the loser of a friendly game of chess could talk to your opponent. " The very title of the article captures the essence of the poem mentioned above - that which is in turn manipulated manipulated by another. Borges, author plays with us homo ludens manipulating readers for his writing as referred to another creative power greater than theirs that he manipulates. You feel trapped in the magic rules and enamel of the game / life / universe and feel without free will. However, at the same time realize that a game is a game and there is another larger perspective. Similarly
Borges made many references to the game in his stories and is also the inspiration of the game in the form of their arguments which protagonist and antagonist are seen as chess opponents. Refers to game five of the eight stories in The Garden of Forking Paths of chess Ficciones.El often appears as a symbol in the detective genre, especially in the works of Edgar Allen Poe. [3] In "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, "Borges portrays the creators of new worlds and taciturn men playing chess. The quotation that begins "The Circular Ruins is Through the Looking-Glass and Carroll discussed. In "The Garden of Forking Paths" the protagonists, a the east and one west, are opposed in a battle of wits much like a chess game. Each move a player makes determines the other options, like good chess players can guess the outcome of many plays and come. Within the text itself, the author tells us that the key is that it is a game. "In a riddle whose answer is chess, what is the only prohibited word?" In the second part of Ficciones, Borges Carroll was modeled by setting the game's entire story based on "The Secret Miracle." A dream of a chess game played by generations of a family that has forgotten that or why they play this game. In "The Cult of the Phoenix" clearly tells us Orbis terrarum est speculum ludi, ie that the earth is a mirror or a reflection of the (United) game.
An article called "Chess and Mirrors: Form as Metaphor in Three Sonnets of Jorge Luis Borges" by Nancy B. Mandlová, published in the Kentucky Romance Quarterly (P1.K4 UA) in 1980 could possibly add to this study. Unfortunately, as the input for Uqbareste article does not appear in the number with the library.
Cortázar, in my opinion, vemás as a player and good player. Many references to the game as Borges, for example in the title of a collection of stories, Endgame. The final the game or endgame, is one of the critical parts of the game of chess to win. Also used the pattern of a chess game for a plot as Carroll and Borges. In "Letters from Mom", the protagonist realizes that it's like playing chess, but not one person but three or four. His opponent is not his wife just as I thought, but also oppose him his mother and brother dead. Each made of them is described in chess notation, as Carroll: "Pawn four king. Four king pawn. Perfect. "," Horse King Bishop three. "And as Alice saw that he played a move."
A contemporary artist Borges and Cortazar, MC Escher also used chess in his art as a symbol, invitation and intellectual challenge to the observer. In his work Metamorphosis II (1939-1940) there are a number of things that metamorphose, a favorite subject for him and like Cortazar's short story "The secret weapons." Begins with the word repeatedly metamorphose and in the form of a puzzle, it becomes a chess board, which becomes lizards that become hexagrams, which become comb, which becomes bees, which become moths, which are converted into fish, which become birds, which become hubs, which are converted into blocks, which becomes a hilltop villa on the coast, where sea is again a chessboard with chess pieces. The wall around the villa has a bridge leading to the white rook. Beyond the end of the long pattern that looks realizes that he has the move. The other chess pieces are mostly in the corner of the board where the board edges are folded and descend into supposedly Nothing. Escher Another favorite character was the rider and horse in the game of chess. Riders In his work is painted in the form of a mobius strip infinity (moebius strip), the rider white and red rider recur and intersect to form the board itself in the center impossible but theoretical or visual. Developed this theme in another larger drawing only on its link. In the use of chess and other images as mirrors, metamorphosis and tricks to play with perspective and perception of his audience, Escher and Borges are very similar.
Riders MC Escher, 1946 The game of chess
intellectually fascinated by both the homo ludens Borges and Cortazar as a Carroll student, Escher and many others. In chess lies a perennial problem for men who never meets twice in the same way. It is said that throughout history has never been played the same game twice and never live the same life. In ancient and in modern fantasy, chess inspires us to contemplate the big game.
Works Consulted
Alfonso X. Book Acedrex dice and tables, ed. Edil facsimile. Valencia: Artes Gráficas Vincent, SA, 1987.
Borges, Jorge Luis. Fictions. Madrid: Alianza Editorial, The Book of pocket, 1991.
Carroll, Lewis. Through the Looking-Glass. New York: Bantam Books, 1981.
Cortázar, Julio. Bestiary.
--. Secret Weapons.
--. Endgame.
Hochberg, Burt, ed. The 64-Square Looking-Glass. New York: Times Books, 1993.
Hooper, David and Kenneth Whyld. The Oxford Companion to Chess. New York: Oxford UP, 1992.
Locher, JL, ed. MC Escher: His Life and Complete Graphic Work with a Fully Illustrated Catalogue. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1982.
Monegal Rodríguez, Emir and Alastair Reid, eds. Borges. New York: Elsevier-Dutton Publishing Co., Inc., 1981.
Notes:
[1] Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass, 126.
[2] Jorge Luis Borges. Borges. eds. Rodriguez Monegal and Alastair Reid. New York: EP Dutton, 1981. 280-281.
[3] John T. Irwin. The False Artaxerxes: Borges and the Dream of Chess. New Literary History: A Journal of Theory and Interpretation, 1993.
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