Or, 'That wacky Brecht: what will he think of next?'
SchemingWalter Benjamin, 'Conversations with Brecht', 12 July 1934.
Saturday, February 07, 2009
A Short Organum for Chess
SchemingWalter Benjamin, 'Conversations with Brecht', 12 July 1934.
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6 comments:
Hmm. I can just imagine Bertie and Walt and Karl all sitting around deciding that Chess wasn't creative enough for them. But were any of them actually any good?
http://www.librislondon.co.uk/ has a picture of "Brecht and Benjamin in Danish exile" playing chess.
Looks like Brecht (white) and Benjamin (black) and these moves:
1 e4 e6 2 f4 d5 3 e5 c5 4 g3 f6
5 f6 Qxf6
Brecht ECF 100; Benjamin ECF 120 maybe?
I trust you're asking whether any of them were any good at *chess*, Justin? There are various references to the game throughout WB, but I doubt he was ever any good. He uses The Turk in his treatise on history (http://www.efn.org/~dredmond/ThesesonHistory.html) and there are various snippets about the Cafe de la Regence in the Passagenwerk. Benjamin did also mention his chesscapades with Brecht on a few occasions, including this:
'I have a large garden at my disposal, in peace and quiet, and my desk in front of a window with a clear view of the sound. The small ships that sail past therefore represent my only distraction, apart from the daily chess interlude with Brecht.'
Letter to Gerhard Scholem, 8 July, 1938
Great find Martin! Perhaps Waltie would have been less keen to play 1...e6 if he'd known that the failure of the French defence would in part cause his death.
Oh, good taste.
I'm sorry. Don't get me wrong, Walter's my king and all. Red Star Streatham, what?
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