Subject
attempt at Italian Chess problem translation
From
Date
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Dear Stan,
I decided to take a stab at a translation of the Italian page you referred to.
And now, having done so, I understand my problem with chess problems - they are
quite another game than the game of chess. They have their own
vocabulary,conventions and their own history. I am quite relieved to discover
this, as I no longer feel quite the dummy I did before.
My Italian was not quite up to the task however, I'm afraid. I did my best. Here
is my attempt:
"VN, author of the famous 'Lolita', was also passionate about chess. Few are
aware of his love of devising chess problems - in particular problems of mating
in 2 or 3 moves - to which he dedicated himself with interest and passion.
Nearly twenty of these were devised, the majority during his time in Montreux,
and three during time spent in Italy.
"The first problem was composed in Paris in May of 1940, a few days prior to his
emigration to the United States, the last one 30 years later in August of 1970
in Montreux. All of the problems were published by the author in other novels,
but none of them has anything to do with the plot and none, from the chess point
of view is a true peccato [peccato = sin of course, but I'm not sure of the
meaning in this context - other meanings are pity, error, mistake].
"Nabokov however did write a novel based on the subject of chess, The
Defense, in which the plot revolves around a champion chess player who is
obsessed with the game to the point of insanity.
"In 1932 Nabokov also composed una bizzarria dedicated to the chess master
Evgeny Znosko-Borovski, on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of his
victory in the Paris championship. In the diagram of this problem, he attempts
to retake the final move by white and proposes an alternate way achieve
checkmate."
Nabokov on the composition of chess problems:
"The composition of chess problems requires the same level of artistic ability
as the composition of any other type of art: originality, inventiveness, the
ability to harmonize [perhaps compose is a better translation], conciseness and
... the total lack of so-called sincerity.
"One must be able to condense all these qualities from [ebani e avori ?] and
[add to these] a gift that few have: to realize [compose &/or solve?] chess
problems is a self-indulgent and sterile occupation, but such is all art -
useless, divinely so - in comparison to the vast majority of human endeavors.
"Problems are the poetry of chess and in order to produce the poetry, to a
certain extent, one must intervene in the various conflicts that characterize
the older and newer schools of thought [that's the best I can do]. I am as put
off by modern chess conventions as I am by socialist realism and astratta
sculpture [I was unable to find out what this is].
"To speak perfectly candidly, I detest so-called "tasks"* and avoid duals**like
the plague."
*A highly unusual or bizarre theme, e.g. Babson-task or Valladao-task
**Ideally, white should have only one move at each juncture which solves a
problem - if white has an alternative at any stage other than the first move,
this is a dual. A dual is not as serious a flaw as a cook, and in minor lines,
duals may be permissible (opinions differ on this point). Some problems make a
virtue out of dual avoidance - of two apparently equivalent white moves, only
one works.
________________________________
From: "stan@bootle.biz" <stan@BOOTLE.BIZ>
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Sent: Sat, May 25, 2013 7:25:18 PM
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] Chess problem
Re: [NABOKV-L] Chess problem Carolyn/Jansy: I’m delighted you have triggered
some serious, professional comments on VN’s diverse interactions with the
wonderfully wide world of Chess. Especially the two links offered by Dave Haan,
both dripping with goodies previously unknown to moi:
The problem referred to (described) in Speak, Memory is the first of those
listed in
http://www.italiascacchistica.com/a_nabokov.htm
(This is the only online reference I've found; for further discussion see
http://nnyhav.blogspot.com/2005/09/nabokovs-theme.html
My limited command of Italian, Dio sia lodato,is no impediment to following VN’s
problems’ and annotated solutions. But, I’m sure many of us would welcome an
English translation of those “non-technical literary” sections not found in
“Speak, Memory.” Any offers? Also, I remain confused about which “Speak, Memory”
problem* it was that VN claimed to have resisted solution?
* For the complex titular& publicational variants, see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speak,_Memory
The nnyhav.blogspot deserves the highest Nabokovian praise, although its
author’s name seems modestly concealed. Note the sweet pun: “going out on a
LIMB/LIMN.”
Nabokov himself makes use of this cross-over potential in a variety of ways,
some less obvious than others. It may be going out on a limn to assert the
relevance of Poe and Carroll, two prime resources for Lolita, sharing not only a
predeliction for too-young girls (asked what scenes he would have liked to seen
filmed, Nabokov included: "Poe's wedding. Lewis Carroll's picnics."), but also
for essaying chess (Poe in Maelzel's Chess-Player, Carroll in Wonderland);
nevertheless, Humbert's relation to Quilty is much that of would-be solver to
composer.
Less-well-known are Poe’s genuinely ORIGINAL solutions to long-standing
ASTROPHYSICAL problems. E.g., OLBERS’ Paradox asks why the SKY gets DARK at
NIGHT?! Edgar Allan Poe's essay Eureka (1848) cleverly anticipated some
qualitative aspects of Kelvin's explanation:
Were the succession of stars endless, then the background of the sky would
present us a uniform luminosity, like that displayed by the Galaxy – since there
could be absolutely no point, in all that background, at which would not exist a
star. The only mode, therefore, in which, under such a state of affairs, we
could comprehend the voids which our telescopes find in innumerable directions,
would be by supposing the distance of the invisible background so immense that
no ray from it has yet been able to reach us at all.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olbers'_paradox#The_paradox
and
http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/science/2011/01/edgar-allan-poe-and-the-world-of-astronomy/
Stan Kelly-Bootle, MA (Cantab), ACM, MAA, AMS, ASCAP.
------------
On 22/05/2013 01:10, "Jansy" <jansy@AETERN.US> wrote:
Carolyn Kunin: "... it got me to thinking about Nabokov as a chess player.Google
led me to an interview done with the author before fame struck, but in 1951, the
latest book was .a volume called "Conclusive Evidence." It was an autobiography
and yet it wasn't altogether so. Would Mr. Nabokov talk a bit about it? He
would.[ ] The memoir became the meeting point of an impersonal art form and a
very personal life story."[ ] "With me, Mr. Nabokov said, 'it is a kind of
composition. I am a composer of chess problems. Nobody,' he said, 'has yet
solved the chess problem in 'Conclusive Evidence' ." What about a professional,
a Reuben Fine, a Reshevsky, or someone like that? 'I'm waiting for one to come
along,' Mr. Nabokov said in a voice that could have been as ambivalent as
Joyce's when people were starting to guess at the title of what turned out to be
'Finnegans Wake'."
>
>Jansy Mello: You reminded me of two things. In the first place, that Nabokov
>wasn't as keen on playing chess as he was in devising chess problems.So, his
>invitation in "Conclusive Evidence" turns the reader into a chess player and
>this promotes a distancing distinction bt. him and those readers whose joy
>depends on solving the problem and winning the game, instead of following the
>malicious turns and clever devices of his mind (another kind of "discovery
>game").
>
>
>Still stuck with Kinbote's mention of Proust's "flora of metaphors," I started
>to read again Beckett's essay, which was not a true academic work, filled with
>footnotes, references and quotes, although his work already carried the mark of
>his future writings (a variation of VN's Memoir that isn't just a Memoir, i.e,
>an Essay that's not an academic feat). Beckett became close to James Joyce
>during his stay in Paris. Joyce, noticing the young man's talent, invited him to
>join a collective travail evolving around what he'd been writing in 1922,
>namely, his "Work in Progress, published much later, in 1939, as Finnegans Wake
>(Beckett was in charge of researching Bruno, Vico and Dante and his results were
>published as a part of "Our Exagmination Round his Factification for
>Incamination of Work in Progress") ..
>
>Factifications, indeed! And these carry me to the second association to your
>comment. It's a quote, from Mark Twain's Autobiography (which I haven't read)
>After all, if Clement's observation is true, he must have inadvertently
>transformed his "very personal life story" into literary fiction then and there.
>( "When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or
>not; but my faculties are decaying now and soon I shall be so I cannot remember
>any but the things that never happened.")
>
Google Search the archive Contact the Editors Visit "Nabokov Online Journal"
Visit Zembla View Nabokv-L Policies Manage subscription options Visit AdaOnline
View NSJ Ada Annotations Temporary L-Soft Search the archive
All private editorial communications are read by both co-editors.
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/
I decided to take a stab at a translation of the Italian page you referred to.
And now, having done so, I understand my problem with chess problems - they are
quite another game than the game of chess. They have their own
vocabulary,conventions and their own history. I am quite relieved to discover
this, as I no longer feel quite the dummy I did before.
My Italian was not quite up to the task however, I'm afraid. I did my best. Here
is my attempt:
"VN, author of the famous 'Lolita', was also passionate about chess. Few are
aware of his love of devising chess problems - in particular problems of mating
in 2 or 3 moves - to which he dedicated himself with interest and passion.
Nearly twenty of these were devised, the majority during his time in Montreux,
and three during time spent in Italy.
"The first problem was composed in Paris in May of 1940, a few days prior to his
emigration to the United States, the last one 30 years later in August of 1970
in Montreux. All of the problems were published by the author in other novels,
but none of them has anything to do with the plot and none, from the chess point
of view is a true peccato [peccato = sin of course, but I'm not sure of the
meaning in this context - other meanings are pity, error, mistake].
"Nabokov however did write a novel based on the subject of chess, The
Defense, in which the plot revolves around a champion chess player who is
obsessed with the game to the point of insanity.
"In 1932 Nabokov also composed una bizzarria dedicated to the chess master
Evgeny Znosko-Borovski, on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of his
victory in the Paris championship. In the diagram of this problem, he attempts
to retake the final move by white and proposes an alternate way achieve
checkmate."
Nabokov on the composition of chess problems:
"The composition of chess problems requires the same level of artistic ability
as the composition of any other type of art: originality, inventiveness, the
ability to harmonize [perhaps compose is a better translation], conciseness and
... the total lack of so-called sincerity.
"One must be able to condense all these qualities from [ebani e avori ?] and
[add to these] a gift that few have: to realize [compose &/or solve?] chess
problems is a self-indulgent and sterile occupation, but such is all art -
useless, divinely so - in comparison to the vast majority of human endeavors.
"Problems are the poetry of chess and in order to produce the poetry, to a
certain extent, one must intervene in the various conflicts that characterize
the older and newer schools of thought [that's the best I can do]. I am as put
off by modern chess conventions as I am by socialist realism and astratta
sculpture [I was unable to find out what this is].
"To speak perfectly candidly, I detest so-called "tasks"* and avoid duals**like
the plague."
*A highly unusual or bizarre theme, e.g. Babson-task or Valladao-task
**Ideally, white should have only one move at each juncture which solves a
problem - if white has an alternative at any stage other than the first move,
this is a dual. A dual is not as serious a flaw as a cook, and in minor lines,
duals may be permissible (opinions differ on this point). Some problems make a
virtue out of dual avoidance - of two apparently equivalent white moves, only
one works.
________________________________
From: "stan@bootle.biz" <stan@BOOTLE.BIZ>
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Sent: Sat, May 25, 2013 7:25:18 PM
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] Chess problem
Re: [NABOKV-L] Chess problem Carolyn/Jansy: I’m delighted you have triggered
some serious, professional comments on VN’s diverse interactions with the
wonderfully wide world of Chess. Especially the two links offered by Dave Haan,
both dripping with goodies previously unknown to moi:
The problem referred to (described) in Speak, Memory is the first of those
listed in
http://www.italiascacchistica.com/a_nabokov.htm
(This is the only online reference I've found; for further discussion see
http://nnyhav.blogspot.com/2005/09/nabokovs-theme.html
My limited command of Italian, Dio sia lodato,is no impediment to following VN’s
problems’ and annotated solutions. But, I’m sure many of us would welcome an
English translation of those “non-technical literary” sections not found in
“Speak, Memory.” Any offers? Also, I remain confused about which “Speak, Memory”
problem* it was that VN claimed to have resisted solution?
* For the complex titular& publicational variants, see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speak,_Memory
The nnyhav.blogspot deserves the highest Nabokovian praise, although its
author’s name seems modestly concealed. Note the sweet pun: “going out on a
LIMB/LIMN.”
Nabokov himself makes use of this cross-over potential in a variety of ways,
some less obvious than others. It may be going out on a limn to assert the
relevance of Poe and Carroll, two prime resources for Lolita, sharing not only a
predeliction for too-young girls (asked what scenes he would have liked to seen
filmed, Nabokov included: "Poe's wedding. Lewis Carroll's picnics."), but also
for essaying chess (Poe in Maelzel's Chess-Player, Carroll in Wonderland);
nevertheless, Humbert's relation to Quilty is much that of would-be solver to
composer.
Less-well-known are Poe’s genuinely ORIGINAL solutions to long-standing
ASTROPHYSICAL problems. E.g., OLBERS’ Paradox asks why the SKY gets DARK at
NIGHT?! Edgar Allan Poe's essay Eureka (1848) cleverly anticipated some
qualitative aspects of Kelvin's explanation:
Were the succession of stars endless, then the background of the sky would
present us a uniform luminosity, like that displayed by the Galaxy – since there
could be absolutely no point, in all that background, at which would not exist a
star. The only mode, therefore, in which, under such a state of affairs, we
could comprehend the voids which our telescopes find in innumerable directions,
would be by supposing the distance of the invisible background so immense that
no ray from it has yet been able to reach us at all.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olbers'_paradox#The_paradox
and
http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/science/2011/01/edgar-allan-poe-and-the-world-of-astronomy/
Stan Kelly-Bootle, MA (Cantab), ACM, MAA, AMS, ASCAP.
------------
On 22/05/2013 01:10, "Jansy" <jansy@AETERN.US> wrote:
Carolyn Kunin: "... it got me to thinking about Nabokov as a chess player.Google
led me to an interview done with the author before fame struck, but in 1951, the
latest book was .a volume called "Conclusive Evidence." It was an autobiography
and yet it wasn't altogether so. Would Mr. Nabokov talk a bit about it? He
would.[ ] The memoir became the meeting point of an impersonal art form and a
very personal life story."[ ] "With me, Mr. Nabokov said, 'it is a kind of
composition. I am a composer of chess problems. Nobody,' he said, 'has yet
solved the chess problem in 'Conclusive Evidence' ." What about a professional,
a Reuben Fine, a Reshevsky, or someone like that? 'I'm waiting for one to come
along,' Mr. Nabokov said in a voice that could have been as ambivalent as
Joyce's when people were starting to guess at the title of what turned out to be
'Finnegans Wake'."
>
>Jansy Mello: You reminded me of two things. In the first place, that Nabokov
>wasn't as keen on playing chess as he was in devising chess problems.So, his
>invitation in "Conclusive Evidence" turns the reader into a chess player and
>this promotes a distancing distinction bt. him and those readers whose joy
>depends on solving the problem and winning the game, instead of following the
>malicious turns and clever devices of his mind (another kind of "discovery
>game").
>
>
>Still stuck with Kinbote's mention of Proust's "flora of metaphors," I started
>to read again Beckett's essay, which was not a true academic work, filled with
>footnotes, references and quotes, although his work already carried the mark of
>his future writings (a variation of VN's Memoir that isn't just a Memoir, i.e,
>an Essay that's not an academic feat). Beckett became close to James Joyce
>during his stay in Paris. Joyce, noticing the young man's talent, invited him to
>join a collective travail evolving around what he'd been writing in 1922,
>namely, his "Work in Progress, published much later, in 1939, as Finnegans Wake
>(Beckett was in charge of researching Bruno, Vico and Dante and his results were
>published as a part of "Our Exagmination Round his Factification for
>Incamination of Work in Progress") ..
>
>Factifications, indeed! And these carry me to the second association to your
>comment. It's a quote, from Mark Twain's Autobiography (which I haven't read)
>After all, if Clement's observation is true, he must have inadvertently
>transformed his "very personal life story" into literary fiction then and there.
>( "When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or
>not; but my faculties are decaying now and soon I shall be so I cannot remember
>any but the things that never happened.")
>
Google Search the archive Contact the Editors Visit "Nabokov Online Journal"
Visit Zembla View Nabokv-L Policies Manage subscription options Visit AdaOnline
View NSJ Ada Annotations Temporary L-Soft Search the archive
All private editorial communications are read by both co-editors.
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/