The Chess Art Thread

"Chess"

Moving Blog

"Playing Chess"       Brett Dugan

The Chess Players

Kasparov v. Karpov  1986

Fance Championships   poster Marcel Duchamp

Mate

"On The Origins of Chess"

"Alien vs Predator: Chess" by Benjamin Parry

Chess brains

Knight

Internationale

Anand v Topalov  Leon

Canadian Youth Championship

"Chess01"     Bebop

Queen

"Rachel en la Ciudad"     Anibal Lenci

                   Slow River

There has not been for a long time a spring
as besutiful as this one; the grass, just before mowing,
is thick and wet with dew.  At night bird cries
come up from the edge of the marsh, a crimson shoal
lies in the east till the morning hours.
In such a season, every voice becomes for us
a shout of triumph.  Glory, pain and glory
to the grass, to the clouds, to the green oak wood.
The gates of the earth torn open, the key
to the earth revealed.  A star is greeting the day.
Then why do your eyes hold an impure gleam
like the eyes of those who have not tasted
evil and long only for crime?  Why does this heat
and depth of hatred radiate from your narrowed eyes?  To you the rule,
for you clouds in golden rings
play a music, maples by the road exalt you.
The invisible rein on every living thing
leads to your hand--pull, and they all
turn a half-circle under the canopy
called cirrus.  And your tasks?  A wooded mountain
awaits you, the place for cities in the air,
a valley where wheat should grow, a table, a white page
on which, maybe, a long poem could be started,
joy and toil.

                     Czeslaw Milosz

Excerpt from Slow River 

The Royall Game of Chesse-Play, 1656

"Spaniard Rui Lopez's Game of Chess,  newly translated into Italian language" - 1584.

"Black Bishop"     Jia Wang

                  And Yet

                           in memory of Milan Füst

And everything repeats itself.  And I, who have
spent most of my life standing around, and at night
stay awake so often even now, while you're asleep,
what do I know that you don't?  Maybe
I'm less afraid to be afraid, and don't hope
to find refuge in escape; you're here,
and I'm here, and we disperse our forces.

And what else could we do?  There's no other way, no other world,
I swear to the rocks of the Rocky Mountains,
everything that's alive devours and drops
and the colicky infant screams for more milk,
the mother's possession, the father's claim,
a tiny tangle of desire ringed with other desires,
beneath it and above it mud, grass, stone, stones.

And wings too, yes.  Wings soaked in blood,
in charcoal and ash, and in the bones
of all animals living and dead.
This world is full of feathers everywhere.
White and dark feathers, white and dark flesh,
white and dark solace: It's all right.  It'll be all right.
There's nothing else, no need for it either.
There's nothing else, there shouldn't be.

And yet... In dreams, I soar.

            Michael Blumenthal

Translated by Eszter Füséki and the author