On the Sublime II: the Sophist's Gambit

“Chess is imagination” - David Bronstein

In writing there is a compulsion towards fraudulence. By nature, words misrepresent ideas; ideas are misrepresented by words. Authors misrepresent others, even themselves. Ideas and words take on new forms, metamorphosise kaleidoscopically. The author’s aim inevitably distorts—he lacks the authority to complete his opus. This Ovidian tendency, that Vergilian half-line, compels me to throw down my sword and surrender all my intellectual affects to the enemy. But I must go on, and defy Erebus his satisfaction. I seek aesthetic fulfilment. I promote aesthetic proselytism. How can I allow the darkness to extinguish the light?

But must the medium be so base? Why not compose a Lucretian strain—honey to coat the foul taste of wormwood? Regretfully, I do believe in what I write, but it seems the vulgar mob do not! A unity of sublime ideas and sublime words cannot be so shameful, yet I fear a sort of Homeric sophistry. The poverty of my language brings me little comfort. But why not try?

Fantasia on a theme by Titus Lucretius Carus¹

I have been battered, endlessly hurled about by all the caprices of thought and mind. That Muse of Chess, cruel Caïssa, has forsaken me! So quickly had her divine spark encompassed me! So quickly did she withdraw it! The tides of my mind allow this ship of statement no rest. Must I seek calmer waters? Must I abandon ship? Or shall the refugees of my first attempt at voyage pile into this lifeboat instead? Will they, relics, find new shores, found a new Troy, a sublime Rome?

But stormy waters make for better stories; the eye of the storm has the most intense beauty. My mission was to compose a chess treatise, a worthy successor to my previous piece—unlike Caïssa, Euterpe has never abandoned me (I know her so well). Eager, I began the reconnaissance; I scouted ahead, ambitious. I tracked the footsteps of all the greatest grandmasters, hunting for the Sublime. I followed a beaten track, well-worn; and yet, I never arrived. A brief soirée with Steinitz, Morphy and Alekhine was followed by an obsession with Fischer, Karpov and Kasparov. A history of Titans, successively overthrown by the upstart son. That finite board originates infinite possibilities. It is representative of life—every battle, birth and death.

And yet, I weep, I weep for music, I weep for sight and sound, I weep for the word—but I do not weep for chess. I admire, I idolise, I appreciate the technique and the talent—but it evokes in me no real emotion, at the transcendental level I require and request. This is my quandary.

Picking up the pieces²

A change in tone—enough of the Homeric bullshit! I could write in jazz, syncopate. A solo of dirty sublimity, freakish. Smooth; scattered. Suits my subject—the mission dissolves away; the man left desolate, pure, Chet with his trumpet. Fused composition and improvisation uneasily layers thought and instinct. Fused fear. Discordant, ordered chaos—as empty and gaping as Tartarus, yet filled with Chaos (LIFE!)—this is what Erebus fears. But he is what I fear: absence, lack, emptiness, nothingness, dearth, neutrality, eunuch, castration, sophistry. 

Without feeling, without truth—there is no soul. A Mixolydian mess, Bebop bastardry, riffing on the scales of truth, practicing without performance. Forced to finish, become the tiger parent always hated—nothing but façade. Why strive to be the latter-day Gorgias?

Retinal³

“I am still a victim of chess. It has all the beauty of art—and much more. It cannot be commercialized. Chess is much purer than art in its social position.”

“The chess pieces are the block alphabet which shapes thoughts; and these thoughts, although making a visual design on the chess-board, express their beauty abstractly, like a poem. ... I have come to the personal conclusion that while all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists.”

Marcel Duchamp

I am a victim of Marcel Duchamp. These lines have all the beauty of art—and they seduced me! Was it the underlying idea, or merely the pith of the phrase? Was even the beginning of this endeavour a fraud? Was my desire to write on chess’ sublimity entirely rooted in these sentences, and these sentences alone? Duchamp championed art that stimulated the mind over the retinas—I betrayed him as well as myself from the start (maybe he betrayed himself, too?).

And yet, chess had stimulated me. I posited two interpretations: a sort of Platonic elaboration on Duchamp, and a theory-based composite grounded in chess history.

The Platonic Variation

“The chessboard is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the Universe, the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature and the player on the other side is hidden from us” (Thomas Huxley)

“Via the squares on the chessboard, the Indians explain the movement of time and the age, the higher influences which control the world and the ties which link Chess with the human soul” (Al-Masudi)

As performers, not just theorists, chess grandmasters commonly undertake simultaneous exhibitions, often blindfolded, to the total amazement of the casual fan. Of course, it is impressive—a blindfolded Magnus Carlsen can easily defeat 20 opponents at once, while I can barely defeat an anonymous chess.com troll!

Asked what his secret was, he replied:

“You don’t really need [the] board, you can just… *gestures towards temples*”

The spatial setting of the chessboard, with all its pieces, is the lens through which humanity accesses all the complicated calculations of the game. Of course, it assists our mind’s eye in picturing the state of play, but it also represents something greater. Chess notation assists us in this argument, for it represents the board state move-by-move. “1. e4 c5” records the first move of each player, that White’s pawn moved to the e4 square and Black’s pawn to the c5 square. And yet these particular numbers and letters also represent a mode of playing chess—the Sicilian Defence, one of the many passages of play that can be conducted. Elaborating on this, as every individual move is added, the notation begins to represent the total sum of all these moves—not only the combination of each player’s moves, but also the game state in its totality, which comes with its own intricacies, its own details. For example, “1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4” signifies the Open Variation of the Sicilian Defence, signifies each individual move played so far, signifies the current state of the match overall. 

But it would be a mistake to say that chess notation is merely a mirror of the arrangement of the pieces on the board. Rather, the figurines on the board, arranged as they are, and the notation on the page, composed algebraically, both represent equally the idea of the match in a more abstract sense. Both are code for the greater conflict, the conflict between two minds calculating their margin of victory, two souls clashing in a duel of wits. The idea of the match itself inhabits some form-like existence. Chess has always been more than just the board—since its very beginning as a war game, until now, it has sought to elevate the mind. There may be millions of possibilities, but all those possibilities are eternal, played out across time by millions of people—it is for those players to divine the right course.

This is why chess masters discover new lines; they do not invent them. World Champions, Grandmasters, International Masters, and all the rest, are ranked by their ability to pluck those already existing ideas from the sublime realm, and share them with the rest of us. This is their divine inspiration.⁴

The Theoretical Variation

“Alekhine is a poet who creates a work of art out of something that would hardly inspire another man to send home a picture post card” (Max Euwe)

I must return to Longinus. Recall our tenets of Sublimity:

1. have brilliant ideas;

2. inspire emotion; and finally,

3. be technically masterful.

The ‘Platonic Variation’ covers tenet one—now for the final two. This argument is composite in the sense that it relies on unifying the two competing schools of chess theory. What I call the ‘problem of chess’ in the context of sublimity lies in justifying the second tenet, but I shall elucidate the entire theory before examining its pitfalls.

First, I must define what sort of emotion I am looking for. In this sense, chess evokes what I would call ‘external’ emotion and ‘internal’ emotion. ‘External’ emotion results from the significance of the match to external parties, whether that be the players themselves, the chess world, or wider geopolitics. Garry Kasparov’s world championship victories over Anatoly Karpov were emotionally significant to him—the culmination of a great personal rivalry. Viswanathan Anand’s world championship victory was emotionally significant to Indian chess—for he was the first Indian grandmaster and the first Indian world champion. Bobby Fischer’s world championship victory over Boris Spassky was emotionally significant for world politics, representing the victory of the West over the East—much like Van Cliburn’s victory in the first International Tchaikovsky Competition.

‘Internal’ emotion results from what the game itself, in all its mathematical purity, evokes. This is the realm of sublimity in chess. Again, a difficulty arises in the fact that our phraseology does not quite align with chess jargon. Chess masters rarely call a game or match, ‘emotional’. Instead, we often find ‘beautiful’ used, and, in the extreme, ‘immortal’. The greatest chess grandmasters often have an ‘immortal game’, which will stand the test of time on account of its sublime quality. Adolf Anderssen’s 1851 Immortal Game against Lionel Kieseritzky is the most famous—Anderssen sacrificed both of his rooks to achieve checkmate. Other immortal games include Kasparov vs. Topalov 1999, with a great rook sacrifice, or games that form the most exceptional versions of particular types of games, like the 1872 ‘Immortal Draw’ or the 1923 ‘Immortal Zugzwang’.

The significance of the sacrifice invokes one school of chess, particularly dominant in the game’s early years as a professional sport—the Romantic school. Anderssen, for instance, was one of its masters. Style often seemed primary and victory secondary. Great flourishes led to dramatic sacrifices—to sacrifice a piece was to sacrifice a part of yourself, to put your material position on the line in the hope of future gain. This is the emotional in chess.⁵

But the Romantic school had opposition. Aggressive styles were countered by ‘positional’ play. A slower style, which took gains from minute details, piece by piece, established broad strategic principles that soon became orthodox in the chess world. Wilhelm Steinitz’s Scientific school, for example, promoted such principles as the “strong center, weak squares, the “bad” bishop, play against weak pawns, the two bishops, lead in development and conversion to a permanent advantage, and the queen-side majority.”⁶ Based on these broad principles, slow, incremental play dominated until the early-mid twentieth century.

Positional play’s sublimity comes in these small details. The technical mastery at play demonstrates a general understanding of each position, each board state. Chess is not just about flashy plays and dramatic sacrifices, but calculation, brainpower and intellectual brilliance. To win a game without having to sacrifice is just as much a testament to that player’s ability as a grand sacrifice.

This speaks to a broader principle in chess, beyond any individual school. Chess theory is ultimately based on prior experience, prior games, prior combinations. The modern mindset is built on hundreds of years of discovery. Countless positions have already been mapped out; chess players, particularly the masters, are expected to know these positions. Certain lines of play have been so successfully explored, like the Ruy Lopez or the Sicilian openings, that dozens of moves can pass by and still be considered ‘book moves’. Chess is essentially intertextual in nature—players reference prior matches, and elaborate on them. The classical tradition of variatio applies. Sublimity comes when a variation to these book moves is played, when you cross the border into a new territory—‘pure’ chess. 

Modern chess embraces both the positional and the aggressive, sacrificial styles. Many years of frustration at the overly-stylistic sacrificial style and the suffocating, rigid positional style caused many grandmasters to seek a synthesis. Capablanca, Lasker and Alekhine advanced new theories, but ultimately it was Mikhail Botvinnik who finally united the two strands of chess and founded a modern discipline with “a scientific and critical approach, tireless seeking of the new, and a struggle against scholastic conceptions and dogmatism.”⁷ The dominance of this Soviet ‘New Dynamism’ school characterised the 20th century—after Botvinnik reigned Smyslov, Tal, Petrosian, Spassky, Karpov and Kasparov (a succession only broken by Fischer—chess’ Glenn Gould—himself). In this way, modern chess embraces both strands of chess theory, and chess embraces both of our remaining characteristics of sublimity. 

Surveying the history of chess, we find that the sport has, over the years, been conceptualised as a sublime art—with brilliant ideas, intense emotion and technical ability. International Master Anthony Saidy offers a colourful summary:

“There is the beauty of a fine technical performance, comparable to a well-chiseled rendering of Bach. And there is the beauty produced by the unleashed imagination of the creative master who ignores the restrictions of classical rules, bursting forth like the romanticism of Tchaikovsky. It is a pity that, unlike music or painting, chess requires of the viewer an initial period of instruction before revealing its aesthetic quality.”⁸

So what is the problem then? I have elucidated my theory of chess’ sublimity—why am I not convinced? Saidy highlights one aspect of my crisis of faith—the problem of initiation. Concomitant with this quandary is also the problem of universality; how can I apply my ‘rules’ of sublimity so carelessly to every medium or art, without acknowledging their differences, forcing each one into the same mould?

Knowledge of the Waters

At this point my skiff started taking water. Had I steered into a tempest? Was I too ambitious? Was farthest Thule my journey’s end? Duchamp had set my destination; yet I knew not the route. But I was too far gone to turn back!

Rationally, chess was sublime. It fulfilled Longinus’ laws; but was I fulfilled? It activated in me the same thrill that follows the completion of a puzzle or the solving of a problem, but not that transcendant emotion that accompanies music!

I tumbled overboard. The violent waves smacked me, knocked me down, pulled me under. The wine-dark sea smothered me utterly, emptied my being of thought and will. The bitter salt of truth was shameful on my tongue. I heard a voice, womanly and wise:

“Initiate, what compels you to brave these waters? 

 This empty zealotry does not befit you!

 You wish to join my cult, though it suits you not!

 Does the fate of Attis not terrify you?

 Speak!”

I struggled to breath, struggled to speak, struggled to think.

“It is true that the shores whence you came are base and wretched.

 It is true that the shores ahead of you are white and pure, where the good and the sublime reign in unison!

You navigate steadfastly, but in steadfast ignorance—chess is not your port of call.

Refuse my admonitions, and you shall perish!”

Suddenly, my eyes were shrouded in mist. I was swept up, shaken, plucked from the murky depths. 

Hurling through the cyclonic air, I finally settled, returned to my craft. A voice, loud and booming, earth-shaking, filled the space between my temples:

“SEEK A NEW COURSE—YOU SAIL WHERE ONLY MASTERS NAVIGATE! YOU SHALL KNOW OTHER WATERS, BUT NOT THESE. THIS IS YOUR LOT. BE NOT AFRAID!”

I awoke—I understood. Chess and music are entirely different modes, different arts. Chess requires initiation, is exclusive, is sublime for its initiates, but I was not one of them. I had refused to accept this for too long, sensing the shame I would feel if I abandoned my endeavour. I had made all these claims about the universality of the sublime, and now they were dissolving away.

Misty Mountains⁹

So what were the intellectual consequences of this realisation? How did it change my conception of the sublime? I realised that while the sublime was universal, since it could be experienced by all, not all ways to the sublime were universal. Those ways are neither better nor worse, since they do attain sublimity, but may necessitate different routes to that sublimity.

We can think of it like rock-climbing, or mountaineering: climbers may take different routes to the top, but ultimately achieve the same sublime summit. There are, no doubt, differences in difficulty depending on the route, and, certainly, a route’s crux might prevent the uninitiated from continuing their climb, but the goal remains the same.

In this context, the fine arts (which I have so successfully ignored thus far) are those tougher rock-faces, that only a limited group can climb. Inevitably, as in the historical development of most arts, certain paths were favoured. The ‘fine arts’ from a western perspective encompassed non-practical arts, primarily for their aesthetic purpose (for example, painting, sculpture, architecture, music, poetry or the performing arts).¹⁰ Similar were the Chinese in their conception. Other cultures, like the Africans or the Arabs, also appreciated beauty that had a use (for example, textiles). I make no such judgement—some mountains may be taller, smaller, more difficult to traverse, but as long as they allow someone to access that divine realm about which I have endlessly harped on, I shall be content.

Indeed, there is little use in defining these phenomena so strictly. As I wrote at the beginning of my first article, the sublime is observable and beyond definition. Longinus is a useful guide; a sherpa up this Everest. It is useless, however, to treat this subject as an exercise in ticking boxes, for that is merely a tool of sophistry and rhetoric. The sublime is about truth, experience, irrationality and transcendence. Absence of belief is absence of passion. Erebus, that figure of darkness, the personified void, does nothing but smother beauty. In the end, the sophist’s gambit is always lost.

For my part, if I had attempted such a climb, either I would have fallen, and failed, or reached the peak inauthentically, assisted by all means of belays, ropes and pulleys—the rhetorical devices of sophistry. And perhaps I will reach the top one day, and Caïssa will allow me to gaze back down upon her kingdom in all its glory, but for today, I am unprepared, unskilled and unready—and that’s okay, for there are many other routes to climb in the meantime.

(Author’s note: Immediately after I completed this section, a close friend and I attempted to locate Vazelon monastery in the Pontic mountains outside Trebizond. We hiked up the trail (trial), but the track was full of rocks and inaccessible. In all his irony, God saw fit to test me. We climbed and climbed, expecting to see the monastery appear, but it was obscured. This mountain tested me; a wild vertigo was unleashed upon me. The monastery rose above the clouds—sublimity was found!)

Addendum: Marc-André Leclerc

“You sit at the board and suddenly your heart leaps. Your hand trembles to pick up the piece and move it.  But what Chess teaches you is that you must sit there calmly and think about whether its really a good idea and whether there are other better ideas” (Stanley Kubrick)

“Chess is one of the few arts where composition takes place simultaneously with performance” (Garry Kasparov)

How can we distinguish between composition and performance? Are they one and the same? An ‘immortal game’ is immortal because of its sublime quality, and it immortalises its composer too. Legend and myth so easily collide with fact; fiction becomes reality. Performance is not key; the idea itself is sublime—it enlightens, is immortal, immortalises, and connects us with heaven.

Rock-climbing prodigy Marc-André Leclerc died at 25. His life was composition, not performance. He shied from the camera, avoided the film-crews, as much as he could. Daring, but not reckless, as he climbed he entered that trance-like state, the man connected to heaven. He was utterly calm—in conscious calculation and with unconscious instinct he bounded across the rock-face. Divine inspiration filled him, as if a Muse had become his guardian angel. To him, climbing, even on frozen waterfalls or up the steepest of cliffs, was ‘like a game of chess’. Everything was considered, everything built up not just to that one single moment, the summit, but to the entire journey, every single arduous ascent.

Marc-André Leclerc was searching for a path to the top, to the summit; he was climbing towards the physical, actual sublime—where the earth met the heavens. He was the Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, but only after the total and utter dissolution of his own ego, to become imbued with that special spirit, to feel connected to all living things, to flowers, to birds, to the very earth itself from which has sprung all the beauty of human experience. Just as grandmasters discover new, beautiful variations, Leclerc discovered new routes, new pitches along the ancient rock. He elaborated on accumulated experience, not so he could achieve the first or fastest ascent of a mountain, but to break past the barriers of human limitation, to reach a sublime level, to aspire to a superhuman state, universally capable in us all.

Leclerc acknowledged the many possibilities that might end in his death. Does being closer to death make something more sublime? No, but perhaps it sharpens focus—binoculars viewing a climber many metres up a sheer wall. We no longer take for granted all the beauty of human experience; we acknowledge the composer’s declaration that his work is not trivial, but worth consideration.

Chess offers no such possibility of death. The stakes are low; and yet, it does contain infinite possibilities. Infinite possibilities mean infinite challenges, mean harnessing the whole diversity of human emotion, embracing patience, determination, passion, and many others—or so the masters say…

“Chess problems demand from the composer the same virtues that characterize all worthwhile art: originality, invention, conciseness, harmony, complexity, and splendid insincerity” (Vladimir Nabokov)

1. See Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis — Ralph Vaughan Williams.

2. See Pick Up The Pieces — Average White Band.

3. Hi Life - Wally Badarou — the ears act on behalf of the retina, directed by the stimulated mind!

4. Regarding computers, chess engines offer a brute-force method of ‘solving chess’. Of course, they will always be superior to the human player who does not have access to infinite brainpower. Nevertheless, the computer lacks that ‘spark’. Who cares if the computer can defeat anybody at chess? What matters is that human beings can battle it out, exchange ideas and bring the passion that engines cannot. The Deepblue and AlphaGo documentaries, along with Kasparov’s thoughts are particularly interesting on this.

5. Kasparov notes that some chess games that look impressive, are not actually. This is addressed to some extent by the positional style below, but a certain esotericism in chess remains. See podcast where he discusses this:

6. Anthony Saidy, The March of Chess Ideas (1994), 15-16.

7. Saidy, 44.

8. Saidy, 6.

9. Misty Mountains - Howard Shore (The Hobbit Soundtrack).

10. Of course, architecture does have a practical purpose, but the significance of its ornament warrants an exception.