Chess & Brod

[John Cage. Chess pieces]

In Max Brod’s novel The Kingdom of Love (London: Martin Secker, 1930. Translated by Eric Sutton), chess is mentioned three times:

“In the so-called Unicorn Bar the chess players sat on undisturbed. The ladies in their deck-chairs lay, enveloped in their plaid rugs, immovable in a sort of lizard- like petrifaction. The white-haired Don Juan was staring calmly into his coffee-cup” (op. cit., p. 9).

“And now, - it seemed uncommonly as though he lay, check-mated, on the barbed wire” (op. cit., p. 204).

“This started one of those arguments that are like the conventional moves in the opening of a game chess. No surprises are possible. The rules are always kept” (op. cit., p. 243).