Chess Story

by Stefan Zweig

But is it not already an insult to call chess anything so narrow as a game? Is it not also a science, an art, hovering between these categories like Muhammad’s coffin between heaven and earth,

an art without an artwork,

In principle I have always found it easy to understand that such a unique, ingenious game would have to produce its own wizards.

But, in chess as in love, a partner is indispensable, and at that time I did not yet know if there were other chess lovers on board apart from us.

There was something supernatural about his sudden appearance and intervention at such a critical juncture.

For four months I had not held a book in my hands, and there was something intoxicating and at the same time stupefying in the mere thought of a book, in which you could see words one after another, lines, paragraphs, pages, a book in which you could read, follow, take into your mind the new, different, diverting thoughts of another person.

I stepped back into my hell, alone at last and yet no longer alone!

this perfectly sums up how books make me feel

In fact what is presupposed by this kind of duality of thought is a total division of consciousness, an ability to turn the workings of the brain on or off at will, as though it were a machine; playing chess against oneself is thus as paradoxical as jumping over one’s own shadow.

My pleasure in playing became a desire to play, the desire to play became a compulsion to play, a mania, a frenzy, which permeated not only my waking hours but gradually my sleep too.

me with books 😭

‘You’re dreaming! Whatever you do, don’t open your eyes! Let it go on, this dream, or you’ll see that accursed room around you again,