April 04 2004
Hartford Courant, Hartford, Connecticut, Sunday, April 04, 2004
To Tal, Chess Was An Art, Not A Sport
By SHELBY LYMAN
For Mikhail Tal, the fabled chess magician of Riga, play and love and life itself were an indissoluble whole. Once asked to name the best game he had played, he replied: “The one with my young bride on our honeymoon.”
He was married to actress and singer Sally Landau for 17 years, but their mutual love and care endured until his death 21 years later, in 1992. They were united by a common passion for music and theater and delighted in mimicry. Both had a desire to please an audience, but the audiences were disparate. In the end, the actress heeded her calling and the now ex-World Champion of chess, his own.
For Tal, the world was a rich and magical place in which he had a special role. It was not winning that most compelled him although he was among the best at that. It was the logic, fantasy and joy of creation and the tumultuous spectacle he created for his adoring audience.
Tal bridled at the notion that chess was a sport. It was both an art and a form of play, he insisted. He painted wondrously and indefatigably on its many-dimensioned canvas.
“Sometimes I think that Mischa flew in from another planet just to play chess and then to fly home,” Sally Landau explains.
It is likely that chess added years to the life of the chronically ill grandmaster. Despite an unremitting fever, Tal won the 1988 World Blitz Championship. Four years later, not long before his death, he left his hospital bed to defeat Gary Kasparov in an individual game during the Moscow Blitz Tournament.
Tal made a unique impression on this writer. His accessibility and friendliness had an endearing quality. He responded with humor and playfulness rather than harsh criticism to what was unpleasant around him. He assumed Olympian proportions when he sat at the chessboard.
