Stefan Zweig
La novella degli scacchi

The Royal Game is considered one of the masterpieces of Austrian author Stefan Zweig and is famous for being a grand metaphor of the ruin and tragedy that befell Europe with the rise of nationalism. Since that moment, in a strict metaphorical sense, according to the author, even the game of chess, just like Great History, is no longer in the hands of men endowed with talent and culture, creativity and passion, but rather in the hands of monomaniacal, ignorant, and crude champions, like Czentovič, the world champion, a prodigious automaton of the game.

Yet, perhaps, there is much more.

I will elaborate.

The story unfolds on two temporal planes: in the first, the author, through the narrator who is his voice, recounts when, in 1940, on a ship bound from New York to Buenos Aires, he had the chance to meet and get to know the reigning world chess champion.

The talent in front of the chessboard ensured him a rapid rise to fame, but not as much success away from it: his figure remained grotesque; he had the uncouth manners and bearing of an uneducated man, comically exaggerated by gaudy and pompous clothing.

Stefan Zweig, who had matured such urbane and European, modest and gentlemanly ways, during a cosmopolitan life spent near the most reputable figures of his time, keenly noted this discord.

After various attempts to discover the arcane secret of his talent, through the efforts of a boastful, wealthy, and venal businessman, Zweig found himself across the chessboard from Czentovič, who, in exchange for money, agreed to challenge the growing group of amateurs who gradually joined the two to participate and watch the match.

Losing the first, the second, and then the third game, at the fourth, as the amateurs were about to make a fatal move, a voice behind them stopped them:

For God's sake! No!

A voice seemed to have come to their rescue from Heaven to Earth to show a miracle. In a few sentences, it predicted all future moves and found the appropriate responses, forcing the champion to declare:

Draw!

You can imagine the author's astonishment. The next day, in the most courteous manner he could muster, Zweig, after scrutinizing him attentively, decided to approach the mysterious man, who, after some pleasantries, speaking of the game, confessed to him:

I haven't played in twenty-five years.

How could it be? Who could this person be?

A brilliant biographer of exceptional men like Zweig could not let such an extraordinary event go, so, in half an hour, he managed to have the unknown player tell him his story: one of the most private stories of self-discipline ever written.

It would have been necessary to go back a few years…

From when, as an obscure administrator of ecclesiastical goods and Habsburg affairs, the eyes of the Nazi services fell on his activities.

Thus begins the climax of the novella, telling the story of the mysterious player: a story of confinement and passion. These are the most intense pages of the book, where descriptions, dialogues, actions, suspense, and climax are perfectly balanced. Zweig conveys the power with which an illicit passion manages to penetrate, conquer, and subdue every fiber of the passionate: whether this passion is a homosexual love, the reading of a forbidden book, or, as in this case, the game of chess.

In the secrecy of his cell, in a feverish access, the protagonist is excited by the infinite variety of moves and possible solutions on the chessboard and begins to practice regularly until, after repeating the same game twenty or thirty times, the excitement and surprise faded.

However, one cannot defend oneself from an obsession.

He began playing mentally against himself, thinking of nothing else from morning until night, with all his being. Thus, the pleasure of the game turned into vice, the vice became necessity, mania, anger, which permeated even sleep, and finally became a crisis.

In short, just as Zweig, before being the author of The World of Yesterday, was a creator of memorable biographical portraits, I loved the novella, not only for the grand metaphor, but for having found in it a classic and serene meeting place with exceptional souls conquered and invaded by uncontrollable passions and sentiments.