White saviours, Black saved: the chessboard as a battlefield
The game of chess is predicated on the clash between White and Black, two eternal opposites in a Manichaean struggle. Chess can serve, and has served, as a metaphor for any archetypal battle, for example between Faust and Mephistopheles, the Kaiser and King George V, Vladimir Putin and the West or God and the Devil.
The annals of Eutychianus of Adana tell us of Saint Theophilus the Penitent or Theophilus of Adana (died c. 538 AD) an officer of the sixth century Byzantine Christian Church. Theophilus is alleged to have been one of the first, if not the first, to strike a pact with the Devil, in this case to gain an important ecclesiastical position.
Theophilus was initially offered the position of bishop, but in an excess of virtue signalling humility, he declined the honour, only later to regret his act of self denial. By summoning the Prince of Darkness, Theophilus hoped to regain the position which he had rashly rejected, but, fearful for his soul, Theophilus repented and prayed to the Virgin Mary for forgiveness. After forty days of abstinence, the Virgin appeared to him in a vision and promised to intercede with God. Theophilus, doubtless by now in a much thinner version of himself, then fasted a further thirty days, after which Mary appeared once again to grant him absolution.
This salutary story finds an echo in the early 17th play by Jacob Bidermann, Cenodoxus, a doctor of letters and medicine, seemingly so learned and philanthropic, that he was virtually destined for sainthood. Yet, as his body lay in church before burial it thrice cried out, I am accused, I am judged, I am condemned. But what was his crime?
Puzzled mourners could only conclude that it must have been the mortal, yet invisible, sin of pride. The good doctor ’ s charitable deeds were performed in the interests of his own self esteem, not primarily for the good of those helped by his works.
As Shakespeare wrote in Macbeth, there ’ s no art to find the mind ’ s construction in the face. But what if the mind puts its thoughts in writing and in so doing runs serious risks? Last month I wrote of the forty-four Russian Grandmasters who took their lives in their hands and risked all by condemning the Ukrainian war in an open letter to Putin. They thus earned acclaim from the world, but possibly savage repercussions from the dictator in The Kremlin.
On the other side of the scales, Sergei Karjakin, a former challenger for the world title, is one of the few Russian Grandmasters (along with the lesser known Sergei Shipov) to have come out strongly in favour of the attempted Russian annihilation of its neighbour. This duo now risks the opprobrium of the world in exchange for the approbation of their Dark Lord in Moscow.
By and large the older generation of Russian grandmasters have steered clear of the controversy, with the exception of Garry Kasparov (a former Soviet, but never an actual Russian of course) and Anatoly Karpov. These rival ex-world champions have taken opposing stances. As we saw in my column, ‘ But I am a Ukrainian’ , Kasparov is and always has been virulently anti-Putin. Karpov, on the other hand, has lamented the intrusion of politics into chess, marked not least by the imminent substitution of India for Russia, as the venue for this year ’ s Chess Olympiad.
Perhaps Anatoly has forgotten about the lengthy Soviet boycott of the defector Viktor Korchnoi after the latter ’ s escape from the USSR in 1976. The political boycott lasted until 1983, when I was personally instrumental in bringing the blockade crashing down at the World Chess Federation Congress in Manila of that year.
Five years earlier I had served as Korchnoi ’ s chief second in his world title challenge to Karpov. This was an ordeal (Soviet defector pitted against the Golden Boy of the Soviet establishment) which the heirs of Lenin could not avoid, since Korchnoi had qualified through official channels. If Karpov, like Bobby Fischer before him, had refused to play, then the world chess federation would have simply declared Korchnoi to be world champion.
The ground between the two mental matadors remained so frostbitten and iron hard, that any personal attempt to bury the political hatchet would have been impossible. I recall, as a modest indication, our respective trips to pay our respects to the hosting President of the Philippine chess federation. The President had broken his leg which was in a plaster cast; therefore both delegations had to visit him separately at his home residence.
Our car journey to the house seemed to last forever. I put this down to taking the scenic route. When we finally arrived for the reception, none of the waiting Filipino officials seemed hungry, in spite of copious snacks on display. Finally, there was a small sticking plaster on the large cast encasing the President ’ s wounded leg. I hardly noticed. Korchnoi was duly invited to autograph the cast.
On the drive back to the Philippine Plaza Hotel, Korchnoi, a grandmaster of paranoia who missed no clue which might indicate any slighting or hostile action, was quick to explain our experience:
“ Karpov ’ s delegation had been received first that evening; they departed later than scheduled, hence our long drive. Nobody there was hungry because they had already eaten with Karpov. The small sticking plaster in fact concealed Karpov ’ s signature, who had been the first to inscribe the President ’ s plaster leg cast. “
Crazy, perhaps, but undoubtedly correct. Congratulations! One hundred percent in the paranoia exam, Mr Korchnoi.
I like to think that chess inspires critical and individual thinking, and I have expressed this thought many times in this column. It, therefore, distresses me to see the unblinking staring faces at Putin ’ s Moscow rallies, with thousands of young students seemingly swallowing the official version of the “special operation” hook, line and sinker. It makes me feel that Orwell ’ s classics Animal Farm (which explains how totalitarianism came about) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (what happens next) should be required reading in every school where they are allowed — and in Samizdat versions where they are not.
Western civilisation is in peril, plagued by cancel culture, obliteration of Memory and the thousand mortal shocks the flesh politic is heir to. I have, for example, been particularly perplexed by the excoriations hurled by the Labour MP and Shadow Foreign Secretary David Lammy, concerning the undesirability of so called “White Saviours”. This has placed would-be charitable supporters of Comic Relief into a Cenodoxan quandary of conscience, resulting in a tangible reduction in this year’s public donations (excluding Government support). Indeed, questions are now being raised about remuneration to that charity‘s officers.
I am further baffled by the inexplicable failure of the Labour Party’s leaders to define a woman, invasion of female safe spaces, sporting and otherwise, by strapping male-bodied youths (such as the swimming star “ Lia” Thomas ). Then there is the cancellation of free-thinkers, such as JK Rowling. Perhaps the great children’s writer is harbouring second thoughts concerning the million pounds she once donated to the Labour Party, now so evidently confused about the status of women, including their generous donor.
Another of these free spirits is the celebrated and controversial historian Dr David Starkey. In academic circles Starkey has achieved the status of Lord Voldemort, “ he who must not be named”. Sometimes, independently and coincidentally, along with another robustly independent historian, Professor Niall Ferguson, I wonder whether we are not in a similar state of danger to the values of our civilisation as Rome faced when assaulted by Alaric the Goth in 410 AD.
Yet this diverse Babel of conflicting and, at times, patently idiotic opinion is surely preferable to the manic glaze of conformity, etched on the faces of those regimented Muscovite youths at the Putin rallies. This week ’ s game is taken from Korchnoi ’ s great fightback against Karpov from their world championship match in the Philippines in 1978. With his back to the abyss, on a score of five wins against two (one more win would have clinched the title for Karpov) Korchnoi needed a win to save his chances of even continuing the match. By winning with the Black pieces, Korchnoi opened up a victorious sequence which brought him to a barely credible five wins each, and on the brink, not just of salvation, but of seizing the supreme title.
Sadly for the defector, he went on to lose the thirty second, final and decisive game. This left Karpov (nowadays an MP in the Russian Parliament, and thus exposed to anti-Putin sanctions) in possession of the championship, which he had inherited by default, when Bobby Fischer declined the Russian ’ s challenge in 1975.
Game Korchnoi v Karpov (Game 28)
Raymond Keene’s latest book “Fifty Shades of Ray: Chess in the year of the Coronavirus”, containing some of his best pieces from TheArticle, is now available from Blackwell’s .
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