{"id":6932,"date":"2015-10-12T13:27:09","date_gmt":"2015-10-12T13:27:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2015\/10\/12\/a-pawn-sacrifice\/"},"modified":"2015-10-12T13:27:09","modified_gmt":"2015-10-12T13:27:09","slug":"a-pawn-sacrifice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2015\/10\/12\/a-pawn-sacrifice\/","title":{"rendered":"A Pawn Sacrifice<\/i>"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Pawn_sacrifice\"<\/a>Despite the lukewarm reviews, I thoroughly enjoyed the movie.  But then I am a chess player who lived through the Fischer era and who remembers that far-off summer of '72 when Caissa and Mars colluded to give a chess match geopolitical significance.<\/span><\/p>\n

Boris Spassky had the support of the Soviet state; Fischer stood alone, his sole state support consisting in a phone call from Nixon's Secretary of State Henry Kissinger urging him to play.  In some Cold War calculus there is perhaps a computation of the contribution of Fischer's victory to the ultimate demise of the Evil Empire.  <\/span><\/p>\n

Who is Caissa, you ask<\/a>?<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Caissa is the "patron goddess" of chess players.<\/span><\/p>\n

She was created in a poem called Ca\u00efssa<\/em> written in 1763 by English poet and philologist Sir William Jones.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the poem, the god Mars falls in love with the goddess Caissa, portrayed as a Thracian dryad. Caissa rebuffs his advances and suggests he take solace in the company of the god Euphron\u2014the god of sport. After hearing Mars' laments, Euphron<\/span><\/p>\n

…fram'd a tablet of celestial mold,<\/span>
Inlay'd with squares of silver and of gold; <\/span>
Then of two metals form'd the warlike band, <\/span>
That here compact in show of battle stand; <\/span>
He taught the rules that guide the pensive game, <\/span>
And call'd it Caissa from the dryad's name: <\/span>
(Whence Albion's sons, who most its praise confess, <\/span>
Approv'd the play, and nam'd it thoughtful Chess.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Mars then presents the game of chess to Caissa in an attempt to win her affection.<\/span><\/p>\n

Jones' work was inspired by the poem Scacchia ludus<\/em> ("The game of Chess"), written by Italian poet Marco Girolamo Vida in 1510.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nRelated articles<\/legend>\n
\n
\"\"<\/a>Rogoff on the Fischer movie "Pawn Sacrifice"<\/a><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>Pawn Sacrifice<\/a><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>Bobby Fischer, a troubled genius in the pre-internet age<\/a><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>Watch a Russian-Speaking Liev Schreiber Throw Down the Chess Gauntlet<\/a><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>Fischer v. Spassky<\/a><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>Review: 'Pawn Sacrifice,' Another Take on the Royal Game<\/a><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>A compelling portrait of the rise and fall of Bobby Fischer<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/fieldset>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Despite the lukewarm reviews, I thoroughly enjoyed the movie.  But then I am a chess player who lived through the Fischer era and who remembers that far-off summer of '72 when Caissa and Mars colluded to give a chess match geopolitical significance. Boris Spassky had the support of the Soviet state; Fischer stood alone, his … Continue reading “A Pawn Sacrifice<\/i>“<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[169,309,385],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chess","category-cinema","category-film"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6932"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6932\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}