Grief and Chess

More housekeeping to begin: I received a notice from Google (although it could have been someone pretending to be Google) that certain pages on my site could not be viewed because they were “blocked by robots.” I would like the robots to stop this activity. Don’t they have something better to do? Malicious mischief. If there is any truth to this problem, and anyone is having trouble with the site, please let me know.

Now then.

In my first post about Sally Rooney’s Intermezzo, I mentioned the epigraph before the story begins. It’s a quote from philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein:

But don’t you feel grief now?

(But aren’t you now playing chess?)

Today, let’s consider how this guides the book. As always, there will be spoilers.

The story begins with Peter walking along a Dublin street, musing. We learn straight off that there’s been a recent (eleven or twelve days past) funeral that his younger brother, Ivan, a chess master, attended as mourner, and finally, that this funeral was for their father. These thoughts, occurring on page one and two, are critical to the overall story, but may be lost because of the way they’re presented—yes, best beloved, the style.

This essential information—the father’s death and the brother’s chess vocation—are embedded in the novel’s key stylistic device—the presentation of Peter’s stream of consciousness, and this device demands the reader’s attention—overshadowing the content  I’ve quoted this passage before and won’t do so again, but the content is that Peter is thinking affectionately and with caring toward Ivan. He seems to deny his own grief, particularly in the scene he’s about to walk into. In this scene, he tells Naomi that his father died but that he doesn’t want to talk about it, and that he doesn’t know how his brother is doing emotionally. Of course, this contradicts the opening stream of consciousness passage. While with Naomi, he remembers being with Sylvia, at and immediately after the funeral, and this reveals a central theme of the story, the love triangle that torments him and pre-occupies him so that he avoids grieving. But at heart we get a sense in the story’s opening of a man who feels something is missing. His father has recently died but he focuses (to himself) on worrying whether his younger brother is okay and on his erotic fixation on a younger girlfriend.

In the next chapter, we are introduced to Ivan and Margaret in scenes that may occur around the same time as Chapter One—eleven or twelve days after the funeral. The reader is not initially cued to this. Although we are privy to Ivan’s thoughts, there is no mention of his father’s death, and, as a result, Margaret knows nothing about it. Ivan thinks about chess; he’s about to play an exhibition chess match, playing simultaneous games against the members of a local chess club. 

He also thinks about Margaret.

Several pages along, we get the first cue: “…he has to admit that Peter organized pretty much everything around the funeral.” He muses about his brother yet ultimately thinks about eating a chocolate bar, deciding: “These are the right kind of things for him to think about at this moment: precise things, tangible, replete with sensory detail.  And then the games will begin.”

So, in the opening of the story, we are presented with two brothers who deny their connection with each other. They’ve both experienced a major loss but deny it, focusing instead on erotic attractions. And chess.

Certainly for Ivan, indirectly for Peter, the game of chess serves to take them out of the past and away from grief. While playing chess or planning to, Ivan actively avoids grief.

The brothers have a history of competition and conflict which predates their father’s death. It would seem they get along best when not together. At a restaurant dinner, written from Ivan’s perspective, they talk about everything but their father’s recent death, although they’re both thinking about it.

Ivan thinks about Peter giving the eulogy at the funeral and wishes he’d given it. Peter asks him if he’s been back to their father’s house since the funeral and Ivan says no. They talk about the house in terms of whether their mother will sell it and how that would feel. Ivan says, it would be sad never to be able to go back to the house again. He doesn’t like to think of it empty and no one living there.

“An expression comes over Peter’s face, a difficult expression to describe, and then immediately it’s gone again, and he answers: I know what you mean…it wouldn’t be practical for either of us to live there. Ivan agrees.”

They dance around their grief, talking about it in these once-removed terms of empty houses.

Ivan thinks about their father’s final illness, about how Peter had trouble sitting bedside along with Ivan.

The dinner deteriorates quickly when Ivan tells Peter about Margaret, Ivan’s thirty-six years old paramour. Peter disapproves of the age gap, and Ivan becomes angry:

“In a deliberately quiet, almost hissing voice Ivan says: I actually hate you. I’ve hated you my entire life.

Without stirring, without looking around to see if the other diners or staff are watching, Peter just answers: I know.”  

Days later, when Ivan is staying at their father’s house, Peter visits in a drunken state and the brothers’ relationship erupts into a physical altercation. Here’s Peter’s perspective:

“Seems to feel before he sees. The sensation, sudden, jarring more than painful, shoved backwards against the hearth, and he has to step back, find his footing. Ivan has pushed him…Heat of rage flaring inside him now, hot light. Peter reaches out and slaps him hard across the face with the back of his hand…Peter grasps him by his sweatshirt, both hands, holding hard, and throws him down on the floor, where his body lands heavily…Peter feels himself draw back to put the weight of his body into his foot, ready to slam it into his ribs, who’s sorry now, you little worm, I’ll fucking kill you. Before he can move however, he catches in the eyes a glimpse, eye’s looking at him. Ivan’s. Turned up to him, widened in horror, pleading, whole face ashen sick, beyond white, grey. Terrified…Frightened, he’s really frightened, and Peter steps back now, steps away, clearing his throat…He wouldn’t really. It was just. I wasn’t going to do anything, he says aloud.”

So the brothers, who feel enraged by death, act out the rage against one another—and, of course, there is real bitterness between them. By the way, the above passage is a great example of the jagged, stream-of-consciousness thought that characterizes Peter.

‘Kay, I don’t want those robots after me. I’ll stop here, and next time, we’ll cover the story’s conclusion that connects to the beginning.

Grief and chess, my bro. That is the key.

Till then.

#Intermezzo #SallyRooney #AlanBray