World Chess Championship: Anand - Carlsen: Rest Day 1

I suspect a storm brewing - a premonition caused by the uneasy calmness of the moves in the preceding two games. As the players catch up some breath and tranquility on their first rest day, we shall look at 'a certain aspect' which is the heartthrob of any art form.

"Harmony" (of-course!)

Certain things in life are indescribable: time, beauty, happiness……to list a few!

"What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know." - Saint Augustine

And for Beauty, your perception of what is beauty and mine may be divergent. Ask anyone who says something is beautiful to describe qualitatively what they mean by that expression? They will fall appallingly short of any aesthetic description.

Coming to my pet topic- harmony! I will leave here some open ended questions for you to probe, before proceeding with some examples from Chess:

1) Can anything that is beautiful can be called a harmony?

2) Can anything that falls in correct sequence, be called harmony?

3) Is harmony temporal?

4) Is harmony describable!?

As a prelude, I quote Gerald Abrahams, "In Chess, the mind comes as near as possible to pure vision, to the spontaneous act of intuition which apprehends and controls processes and relationships without being forced to do so. With it we get the illusion of passivity and clam as the normal state of the Chess player's mind. It is as if his mind lay open, and facts and ideas were flowing into it. That apparently passive receptivity is due to our unconsciousness of the provident activity of imagination, working as it does in darkness to create light. The calmness is as superficial as the calmness on the surface of a waterfall."

Water falls where there is a gorge. Mind falls likewise - in the gorge between conscious and unconsciousness! As water fall produces energy, so is with mind when we drop it to redeem awareness - the creative energy peaks and lifts the artist and the art to a dizzy zone! When mind drops, harmony manifests - as various forms that fall under the term "creation"

I explain the above through an example from the chess bible - "The Chess Struggle in Practice: Lessons from the famous Zurich Candidates tournament of 1953" by David Bronstein

I will fall short of any description, if I were to attempt, to express how I love this book!

This position occurred in the game between Alexander Kotov and Paul Keres. White had just played 12) Nd4 x Nc6. Here Bronstein suggested the logical 12)....bxc6; 13) O-O Qb6; 14) Rd1 Ba6; 15) Qc2 Rad8 with clear positional advantage to black.

Keres, the artist, was however tempted by the fine intermezzo - the check on d3!
How can we confine harmony in logic!? Is there not beauty in certain illogical scenarios - say for example 'magic' - where we know it is delusion and still we allow ourselves to be deluded and pay for it!!

There are magicians in chess (as in any other creative endeavour) who defy logic and sign a pact with harmony in their own illogical ways and produce great piece of art!

Keres the magician was prepared to part with a pawn in exchange for his perceived beauty visualised by him - which Abrahams noted as "illusion"!

12...Nd3+ 13.Kd2 Nxc1+ 14.Nxd8 Nxe2 15.Nxb7 Nxc3 16.bxc3 Be6?! 

Keres makes a slight mistake with his last move. Bronstein - another sorcerer of that era, considers this position as lost for white, notwithstanding the additional pawn and not without reasons!

However, he suggested 16).....Bf5 from where the bishop controls the b1 square and blacks both bishops are real dynamites - they cut the board into two! White can displace this bishop from f5 at the cost of shutting his own bishop, which is the point of Bf5!

One of the chief reason for Bronstein to arrive at that conclusion was the inherent 'harmony' in the black's pieces which coordinate like synchronised skaters and was also based on the lack of it or the non cooperation between white's bishop on g2 and the distant knight on b7; not to mention about the king on d2 - despite the fact that the king belongs to center when the queens go off the board!

Chess engines 'may not' (I am trying to be very careful in this engine driven world, for the fear of becoming an outcast!!) come to such conclusions. Engines are materialistic, and materialism is profanity when we deal with art!

17.Rhc1! 

Kotov immediately capitalises on the slight error and deploys his king rook on the best square: to safeguard and enable the passed pawn to advance!

17...Rac8 18.Rc2 Rc7 19.Rac1 Bf5 20.Rb2 Rd7+ 21.Ke2 Rc8 

The power of the two bishops and the coordination of black pieces still ensure that the extra pawn falls!

22.Rb3 Bg4+ 23.Bf3 Bxf3+ 24.Kxf3 Rdc7 25.c4! 

Bronstein loved this move! The idea is to retain one rook to attack black's a-pawn!

25...Rxc4 26.Rxc4 Rxc4 27.Ra3 h5 

Another beautiful point! If now white plays 28) h4 preventing black's g5; then 28)....Rc7; 29) Ra7 Kh7; 30) a4 Bc3 and white will have to give back the pawn and the game ends in a draw!

28.Rxa7 g5 29.Na5 Rc2 30.Nb3 g4+ 31.Kg2 e6 32.a4 Bh6 33.Kf1 Rb2 34.Rb7 Rb1+ 35.Kg2 Rb2 36.Kf1 Rb1+ 37.Kg2 Rb2 38.Nc5? 

Desire triumphs over reason for Kotov, who disagreed for truce here, only to find a study like draw later!

38...Rc2 39.Ne4 Bxe3 40.Kf1 Bd4 41.Rd7 e5 42.Rd8+ Kg7 43.Rd6! 

I quote Bronstein verbatim to conclude this position:

"The beauty of this move shows up in the main variation: 43)....f5; 44) Rd7+ Kf8; 45) Nf6 Rf2+; 46) Ke1!=

An exclamation mark is deserved not only for 43) Rd6! but also for 42) Rd8+!, by which white forced the black king to its second rank.

Had white played 42) Rd6 (instead of the intermezzo check), then black would have won with 42).....f5; 43) Rd8+ Kf7! (which is denied by the presence of pawn in the main variation!).

Now, if black tries to get his king to f7, in order to avoid perpetual checks, he will lose his f5 pawn: 43) ....f5; 44) Rd7+ Kg6; 45) Rd6+ Kf7; 46) Rf6+ and 47) Rxf5.

For practical realisation of his conception, white makes good use of the fact that black's f7 is occupied by his pawn!" - Bronstein

The rest of the game need no mention (it ended in draw after some moves), as the main aim of showing this game is to drive through the point of harmony in chess!

So, what is the take on the question on harmony?

When a player plays with his heart (instead of his head), the pieces gets liberated and they somehow find their best squares - despite the player! Harmony emerges from heart and there lies the art!

"There is that in me - I do not know what it is- but I know it is in me.
Wrench'd and sweaty - calm and cool then my body becomes, I sleep- I sleep long.
I do not know it - it is without name - it is a word unsaid,
It is not in any dictionary, utterance, symbol.
Something it swings on more than the earth I swing on,
To it the creation is the friend whose embracing awakes me.

Perhaps I might tell more. Outlines! I plead for my brothers and sisters.
Do you see O my brothers and sisters?
It is not chaos or death - it is form, union, plan - it is eternal life - it is Happiness."
                                                                                                       - Walt Whitman

Lights on, take three....action!