Books, Arts & Manners: Life Itself

IN ONE of the half dozen or so truthful entries in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, chess is defined as “an art in the form of a game.” An art because the human personality expresses itself in the movement of the chess pieces; a game because chess is a struggle between two players—an aesthetic rendering of the survival of the fittest. “Life itself is a kind of chess,” wrote Benjamin Franklin in The Morals of Chess.

Of course, if one mentions the word “chess” to most of the 25 million Americans estimated to play the game, they are likely to associate it not with Franklin or with chess experts before him, but with Bobby Fischer. But Fischer dates back only to 1943, while chess goes far back to antiquity.

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Larry Parr

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Lev Alburt

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IN ONE of the half dozen or so truthful entries in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, chess is defined as “an art in the form of a game.” An art because the human personality expresses itself in the movement of the chess pieces; a game because chess is a struggle between two players—an aesthetic rendering of the survival of the fittest. “Life itself is a kind of chess,” wrote Benjamin Franklin in The Morals of Chess.

Of course, if one mentions the word “chess” to most of the 25 million Americans estimated to play the game, they are likely to associate it not with Franklin or with chess experts before him, but with Bobby Fischer. But Fischer dates back only to 1943, while chess goes far back to antiquity.