percyblakeney: Frans G. Bengtsson (1894-1954) was a Swedish author. He wrote among other things the very popular Röde Orm (English title: The Long Ships). He was also interested in chess, and one of his essays is on the subject (Schackspelare, from Sällskap för en eremit, 1938). Some freely translated quotes:<Why I, for a long time filled with the strongest obsession, never became more than a simple amateur, was something I couldn’t understand myself. For years I exclusively spent my time with chess (even though it to the very last was claimed that I was studying at the University): I played chess, read chess, dreamed chess, had my head filled with openings, variations and master games, had memorised every prize winner in all the international tournaments from 1851 onwards, and saw Doctor Emanuel Lasker as the most noble flower of German culture, after Schopenhauer.>
<I probably had some talent for the game and could find fun combinations (of a simple sort); but what I lacked was strength of character, especially balance and patience. My wish was that the games would be romantic and sensational and be finished after fireworks already in the middlegame; and this happened often enough but not in the way I had planned; since it was usually I and not the opponent that was buried under the remains of the explosions.>
<Theoretically I realised full well that you should play serious games prosaically and solidly and be happy with being pawn up after 40 moves, to go on to win slowly in the endgame; but in practice I never managed to follow this philosophy, and the endgame seemed to me like a sad occupation, something meant for eunuchs, when the queens were gone.>
<To my great surprise I thus only reached an unsatisfactory position in the only Nordic tournament I ever participated in; and I realised that my life was a failure and slowly started to occupy myself with other things, without ever being able to totally obliterate the old passion.>
<The amateurs is a big group, mainly consisting of the violently chess intoxicated and endlessly hopeful young players that live with chess day and night but for some reason not yet have become masters. Every one of them is, according to their own objective proof, clearly stronger than the others in spite of many losses and one or two last spot finishes; and why he isn’t yet club champion, champion of the district, Swedish Champion, Nordic Champion, International Master or Grandmaster is in fact a very complicated story, filled with tragical twists of fate, that he likes to inform you about.>
F Bengtsson vs E Jacobsen, 1916 was played in the tournament mentioned in the second to last quote above, where Bengtsson finished sixth. The next year Jacobsen won the Danish Championship, while Bengtsson decided to become a writer rather than a chess player.
Kibitzing
