Chess Story (Warbler Classics Annotated Edition)

By Stefan Zweig and Ulrich Baer

Stefan Zweig's posthumously published Chess Story is the tale of a legendary chess match played on an ocean liner leaving Nazi-occupied Europe. The world champion and a man who attained mastery of chess during a harrowing ordeal are locked in a battle that becomes far more than merely a game. Gripping and viscer

• Language: English
• Publisher: Warbler Classics
• Release date: Mar 8, 2023
• ISBN: 9781959891468

Stefan Zweig

Stefan Zweig (1881-1942), novelist, biographer, translator, and poet, was born in Austria and became one of the bestselling European authors of the 1920s and 30s. He is renowned for his psychologically astute fiction as well as enthralling studies of seminal figures such as Montaigne, Mary Queen of Scots, Marie Antoinette, Balzac, Nietzsche, and Freud. His work has inspired stage and screen adaptations, including the films Letters from an Unknown Woman and The Grand Hotel Budapest by Wes Anderson. Exiled from Europe by the Nazis, he committed suicide in Petrópolis, Brazil, in 1942.

Book preview

Zweig_Chess_Story_cover_half-o.jpg

CHESS STORY

First Warbler Classics Edition 2023

Chess Story originally published in German in 1942 as Schachnovelle by Pigmalion, Buenos Aires

Translation © 2023 Ulrich Baer

In This Dark Hour PEN lecture held in English and originally published in German in Aufbau, New York, May 16, 1941

My Last Conversations with Stefan Zweig by Ernst Feder first appeared in Books Abroad, Winter, 1943, Vol. 17, No. 1 (Winter, 1943), pp. 2–9. Published by Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma State. Reprinted with permission.

Biographical Timeline © 2023 Warbler Press

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the publisher, which may be requested at [e-mail].

isbn

978-1-959891-45-1 (paperback)

isbn

978-1-959891-46-8 (e-book)

warblerpress.com

CHESS STORY

STEFAN ZWEIG

Translation by Ulrich Baer

Contents

CHESS STORY

In This Dark Hour

My Last Conversations with Stefan Zweig by Ernst Feder

Biographical Timeline

CHESS STORY

T

he great ocean

liner, due to depart New York for Buenos Aires at midnight, was brimming with the usual last-minute bustle and commotion. Shore guests jostled to see their friends off, telegraph boys in cocked caps raced through the grand salons shouting names, suitcases and flowers were carried through, curious children raced up and down stairs, all while the orchestra imperturbably played its upper deck show. As I was standing a little apart from the commotion on the promenade deck, chatting with an acquaintance, two or three flashbulbs flared up—apparently some celebrity had given a last-minute interview and was now being photographed by the press just before the ship sailed. My friend glanced over and smiled. That’s a rare bird you’ve got on board here—it’s Czentovic. I must have given him a rather blank stare after this announcement, since he proceeded to explain: Mirko Czentovic, the world champion in chess. He’s traveled all over America from east to west playing tournament games, and now he’s off to Argentina for fresh triumphs.

Indeed, I now remembered this young world champion and even some details of his meteoric career—to which my friend, who read the papers more closely than I, was able to add a few anecdotes. About a year ago, Czentovic had burst into the ranks of the greatest chess masters, such as Alekhine, Capablanca, Tartakower, Lasker, and Bogoljubov. Not since the prodigy Rzecewski appeared at the age of seven at the New York tournament in 1922, had the sudden arrival of a complete unknown in this glorious guild attracted such enormous attention. For Czentovic’s intellectual traits certainly did not seem to promise such a dazzling career. Soon the secret leaked out that in his private life this chess champion was incapable of writing even one correctly spelled sentence in any language, and as one of his irritated colleagues grimly scoffed, His ignorance is universal in all fields.

Born the son of an anemic Yugoslavian boatman whose tiny barge was crushed one night on the Danube by a grain steamer, the twelve-year-old boy had been taken in after his father’s death by the village parson as an act of charity. The good reverend tried his best to make up with home schooling what the taciturn, dense, broad-browed boy was unable to learn in the village school.

But the parson’s efforts were in vain. Mirko kept staring at the letters of the alphabet that had been explained to him a hundred times before as if seeing them for the first time; his sluggish brain could not retain anything, even in the simplest subjects in school. When asked to do basic math, he still had to use his fingers at the age of fourteen, and reading a book or a newspaper still required a special effort for the adolescent boy. And yet Mirko could by no means be called unwilling or unruly. He obediently did as he was told, fetched water, split wood, worked in the fields, tidied up the kitchen, and reliably performed every required task, if with annoying slowness. But what most frustrated the good parson about the thick-headed boy was his complete indifference. He did nothing without being asked to do so, never posed a question, did not play with other boys, and did not find anything to do of his own accord, unless it was expressly ordered; as soon as Mirko had completed the household chores, he sat in his room with a blank stare like that of sheep in the pasture, without taking the slightest interest in what was going on around him. When the parson, smoking his long farmer’s pipe, played his habitual three games of chess with the police constable in the evening, the blond lad silently squatted next to them with his heavy-lidded stare fixed on the checkered board, nearly dropping off to sleep and utterly indifferent.

One winter evening while the two men were absorbed in their regular game, the sound of sleigh bells were heard approaching from the nearby village street. A farmer with a snow-dusted cap trudged in to tell the parson that his old mother was dying and asked whether the cleric could rush to administer the last rites to her. The parson immediately left with him. The constable, who had not yet finished his beer, lit his pipe once more before leaving and was about to put on his heavy boots when he noticed that Mirko’s gaze was still immovably fixed on the chessboard with the unfinished game.

Well, do you want to play it out? he joked, completely convinced that the sleepy boy did not know how to move a single piece on the board correctly. The lad looked up shyly, nodded, and then sat down in the parson’s place. After fourteen moves the constable had been beaten, and, he was forced to admit, through no accidentally careless move on his own. The second game ended no differently.

Balaam’s ass! exclaimed the parson in astonishment upon his return, and then explained to the constable, who was less well-versed in scripture, that a similar miracle had occurred two thousand years ago when a mute person suddenly discovered the language of wisdom. Although it was already late, the parson could not resist challenging his semiliterate charge to a duel. Mirko beat him also with ease. He played doggedly, slowly, imperturbably, without once raising his lowered broad forehead from the board. But he played with irrefutable certainty; neither the constable nor the parson was able to win a game against him during the next few days. The parson, better qualified than anyone to judge the backwardness of his pupil in all other areas, now became quite curious as to how far this one-sided, peculiar talent would stand up to a stricter test. After having the village barber trim Mirko’s shaggy, straw-blond hair to make him somewhat presentable, he took him in his sleigh to the small neighboring town, where he knew several committed chess players who gathered regularly in a corner of the café on the town square and who had always outmatched him. The circle of players was quite astonished when the parson pushed the fifteen-year-old blond and rosy-cheeked boy, in his fur-lined sheepskin coat and heavy thigh-high boots, into the café. There the boy stood in a corner, rooted to the ground with shyly downcast eyes, until