Do3 - 19 Dec. The Royal Game

[french frank]

Details here about this adaptation of Stefan Zweig's Schachnovelle or Chess Story.

Usual carp (and I do mean 'carp' here!) about the adaptation of novels, but this is an interesting one. I've just realised I've read it in French under the title Le Joueur d'échecs. Don't think I've quite got time to read the 85 pages of the novella before tonight. Would that, I wonder, take less time than the 90 minutes of the play? Not quite, but it's a very short story for the full length Do3 treatment.

One of Zweig's darker works. Recommended. Hope it adapts well.

For those who aren't worried about knowing the plot in advance, there's a Wiki article on the novella. Spoiler alert!

[2LO]

FF - have left my comment on above PLATFORM 3.

[french frank]

FF - have left my comment on above PLATFORM 3.

As requested, French: Well if Stefan Zweig isn't intellectual, anyone who's heard of him and read his (in my opinion) not too wonderful stories, probably is, sort of. Anyway, er, yes, THE ROYAL GAME. Plays about chess and chess players are awfully common on radio, but this was the best one I've heard.

Despite my nodding off in the middle and losing the plot somewhat, I found Dr Berg's totally internal appropriation of numerous game strategies while in confinement fascinating. His 'going nuts' at the end was maybe a trifle melodramatic and it's either my ears or the voices seemed a little unclear. But such an unusual play well deserved its airing - and as ever a good length strengthened it. THE ROYAL GAME could have easily been condensed into a R4 Afternoon Play's 45mins but would've passed by unnoticed, I'd say.

And here it is!

By the way, I hope you perceive the appropriateness of my avatar - the Automaton Chess Player, in the Café Roland, Bratislava, just a copy of the original.

I was too busy to listen fielding queries last night, so I'm going to reread the story first.

On Zweig: a hugely popular novelist in his day but whose reputation has plummeted. I've read several in French, where they translate rather well (could be 'French novels). But I have this thing about the kernel, the nugget of a play being some single imaginative idea which is then expanded. The 'plot' of the novel seemed to me to have the makings of a good radio play. More later.

[Add. I liked this quote from the blurb: "les effets de l'isolement absolu, lorsque, aux frontières de la folie ... le cerveau humain parvient à déployer ses facultés les plus étranges."]

[french frank]

Something else to think about - this from the introduction to the French translation:

Le récit que l'on va lire ici est le dernier, écrit par Stefan Zweig, dans sa retraite de Pétropolis, sur les hauteurs de Rio de Janeiro (Brésil). "J'ai commencé une petite nouvelle sur les échecs, inspiré par un manuel que j'ai acheté pour meubler ma solitude, et je rejoue quotidiennement les parties des grands maîtres" écrivait-il le 29 septembre 1941...

So, an element of autobiography; and if you think the descent into madness in any way melodramatic, remember that less than six months later, Zweig and his wife committed suicide. The novella was published posthumously.

[2LO]

FF: Your avatar is indeed SPIFFING.
Have you seen Dir. Raymond Bernard's 1929 film THE CHESS PLAYER, which (sort of) involves said automaton? If not, seek out the BFI restoration if it's still available.

[french frank]

FF: Your avatar is indeed SPIFFING.
Have you seen Dir. Raymond Bernard's 1929 film THE CHESS PLAYER, which (sort of) involves said automaton? If not, seek out the BFI restoration if it's still available.

No, I haven't seen the film (I possess two DVDs in total)...). But the story of the Turk is very entertaining.

As for The Royal Game, I've now reread the novel(la) and am impressed (again). Very intellectual! Not too sure how well an adaptation will capture it, but hope to find out tomorrow, time permitting.

I found the idea well presented and totally 'convincing' in that way in which your head says it's very unlikely because there's no evidence that it's ever occurred. But it could have done. Dr B's description of the mental exercise he was trying to carry out, and the effect it had on him, make perfect sense. The novella's ending (is the play the same?) is also absolutely consistent.

[Forget It (U2079353)]

I think Paul Rhys played the imprisoned character very well and the length of the drama made it possible to feel his excitement at discovering a book hidden in the guards jacket. All that previous eating of soup could have been quite tedious if it wasn't for the actors voice timbre and mode of expression.
I had the benefit of listening to a recording of the play in the dark - due to a power blackout.

Echoes of :
The Count of Monte Cristo, - the excitement of a prisoner at discovering
The Luneburg Variation by Paolo Maurensig - a concentration camp internee plays chess to save his comrades - Radio 4 2006
Human Rights by Jonathan Lichtenstein - Radio 4 2000 - two men in a dark cell ...

[2LO]

I had the benefit of listening to a recording of the play in the dark - due to a power blackout.

...Obviously on batteries.
A side issue, but I find listening to plays most absorbing either in near darkness or whilst busily occupied. I was lagging pipes in my loft while Berg was thinking chess moves.

[french frank]

The novel is considerably lower key, partly because Dr B. tells his own story to the narrator, so obviously he isn't going to keep going bonkers when he describes a particularly upsetting bit. At the end he gets worked up at the length of time Czentovic takes to make each move, but having made his mistake over the position of the pieces he calms down and walks away from the scene.

What interested me was cut from the adaptation. The guard didn't find the book and take it away. Dr B. became dissatisfied with going through matches which he had memorised. He starts to create his own games and this is what causes the mental strain. The whole point of chess is to defeat your opponent. But how can you do that if you are your own opponent? He has to try to partition his brain so that the two parts are independently planning their strategy and up to eight moves ahead. He becomes 'intoxicated' with chess, playing the moves very rapidly and as soon as he finishes one game, starting a new one. This precipitates his mental breakdown and release from the interrogation. It's also (one presumes) why Czentovic's delaying tactics cause his 'chess brain' to malfunction.

[aeolium]

It's also (one presumes) why Czentovic's delaying tactics cause his 'chess brain' to malfunction.

I had thought that Czentovic's delaying tactics had disturbed Dr Berg by recalling the protracted denials of mental stimulation which he had had to suffer in his imprisonment, but probably your explanation is more plausible.

I haven't read the novella but thought the production was effective on its own terms, and Paul Rhys very good. A couple of things puzzled me, though: would Dr Berg have been so lacking in his own powers of resourcefulness and self-reliance as to be dependent on the chess-book stimulus (for someone who wasn't even interested in chess)? And would the Nazis have used such a peculiar form of intimidation - over six months or more - to try to extract the information they wanted, especially as that method was likely eventually to result in the prisoner's mental disintegration and incapacity (which was what happened)? This form of slow torture would seem to be more appropriate for one of those impersonal and nameless authorities that appear in some of Kafka's novels and short stories.

[french frank]

I suppose also the chess match did recall something of the cat-and-mouse tactics used by the Gestapo interrogators. I'm trying to think what the Viennese background would have been like at that stage. I don't know what Zweig might have known or heard of Gestapo tactics in the early part of the war (he left Austria in 1934) but the financial questions recall the situation of the Wittgensteins who were trying to keep their fortune out of the hands of the Nazis. This is covered in Alexander Waugh's The House of Wittgenstein (which I must reread).

Wasn't it suggested that the chess matches provided more than mental stimulation - they also toughened Dr B up to withstand the interrogation. Is it so unlikely that he would seize eagerly on anything that would fill an existence devoid of anything at all? How would you fill the time?

[aeolium]

Wasn't it suggested that the chess matches provided more than mental stimulation - they also toughened Dr B up to withstand the interrogation. Is it so unlikely that he would seize eagerly on anything that would fill an existence devoid of anything at all? How would you fill the time?

I didn't mean to suggest that Dr B wouldn't have leapt at any external source of mental stimulation, but in the period when he was in confinement before the chess book appeared (and without any expectation of it) wouldn't he have tried to lay down some regime drawing on the resources of his past life in books - poetry, philosophy, music, whatever? I am trying to think of comparable real situations of deprivation, such as the life of the hostages in Beirut (Waite, McCarthy, Keenan). I don't know - perhaps the play telescoped long periods of endurance into a couple of minutes and it's more convincing in the novella.

And another thing - if you had simply had a book of chess games to work through over a few months, do you think you would have become a strong enough chess player to beat the world champion? ;-)

[french frank]

One difference with the play is that you're getting an immediate minute-by-minute depiction of his life, albeit, obviously, with gaps between. In the novel Dr B is simply explaining to the journalist the situation of how it was that he hadn't seen a chessboard for over twenty years, and yet still had such a grasp of the game. He expands on what he wants to expand on and much of his life in isolation gets omitted. Perhaps he did try various mental ploys?

perhaps the play telescoped long periods of endurance into a couple of minutes and it's more convincing in the novella.

I think that is the case: it's easier to suggest a long period of time by narrative techniques in fiction.

And another thing - if you had simply had a book of chess games to work through over a few months, do you think you would have become a strong enough chess player to beat the world champion? ;-)

That, of course, is the fictional premise. Ours not to wonder...

Another feature which is different is that in the novel he doesn't 'go mad'. He has a mental breakdown which is conveyed by the fact that, abruptly, he's in a hospital with his injured hand bound up. At the end he is more agitated than mad.

[tony yyy]

Needless to say, I haven't caught up with this play yet but there were some interesting chess Essays last week. Is there a reason for R3 having a "chess week"? They don't often do anything like that now unless there's some sort of anniversary.

[french frank]

This is what was said about Chess Week on the Radio 3 blog.

Meanwhile, putting the text back on the bookshelf, I happened to see this passage quite by chance (my rough translation):

"As a way of occupying myself, I would recite or reconstruct as well as I could everything I had once learned by heart: popular songs and nursery rhymes, passages from Homer learned at school, paragraphs from the Code civil. Then I tried to do calculations, adding and dividing any old numbers. But in this vacuum, my memory could retain nothing. The same thought kept slipping in: what do they know? What did I say yesterday, what must I say next time?"

He then goes on to describe the claustrophobic oppressiveness of his room.

So that SZ's answer!