Chequered histories

As statues are scrutinised, the tensions that existed within historical figures are thrown into relief. You can admire Churchill’s leadership and criticise his imperialism. Beyond politics, whether one can or should separate the art from the artist is a well-trodden critical minefield. How to appraise the work of sculptor Eric Gill, whose corporeal forms can hardly be detached from the unspeakable sexual behaviour which came to light decades after his death?

Bobby Fischer must be the most prominent chess player to inspire deeply conflicted feelings. His views were repugnant, and his games were sublime. But even if they are related, in that a passionate hatred fuelled his maniacal drive, it would be absurd to describe the moves as anti-Semitic or hateful. The games, in all their clarity, seem liberated from the man’s deranged personality. At least in my imagination, chess games, by their very abstraction, enjoy a kind of blessed independence, and demand to be understood on their own terms.

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Divorcing the moves from the motives is, moreover, a practical imperative, and not just something to do in retrospect. After all, no matter your distaste for the opponent seated opposite, it is the situation on the board that demands a response. Perhaps the gravest error is to take offence at the moves themselves. Dismiss a move as a ‘cheap shot’, or ‘coffeehouse chess’, and you are a whisker away from being undone by it. And finding a position ‘boring’ is a sure sign that your guard has been dropped. Bitter experience tells me that a feeling of ‘You can’t play like that’ often gives way to the grudging acceptance that actually the opponent very well can.

Alexander Alekhine, the fourth world champion, was probably a Nazi — the most damning evidence being a series of anti-Semitic articles which appeared in his name in Pariser Zeitung in 1941.