Of Beauty and Wisdom

 

Beauty is contextual. And that is why beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder. It is not constant. It fluctuates, like the ebb and flow of the la mar. With different pairs of eyes comes different version of beauty. Some loves flame-like passion. Some loves breeze-like grace. Some loves autumn-leave-like sorrowfulness.

While beauty is more common in entertainment circle, it has also found its own place in other fields especially in chess. There has been a comprehensive effort of documenting photogenic chess players or even grandmasters but most of them are nothing more than a list of pictures.

Beauty & Chess

Alexandra Kosteniuk  (born April 23, 1984)

Born in Perm, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, she is Women’s World Chess Champion in 2008-2010. At a tender age of 17, she already made it to the final of the Women’s World Chess Championship. When she was 20, she became the tenth woman to receive the highest title of FIDE, International Grandmaster. More interestingly, she has been the ambassador of chess while being a fashion model. There are even people who call her “Maria Sharapova of chess.” You may catch up with her podcasts through her personal website, Kosteniuk.com.

Almira Skripchenko (born February 17, 1976)

From France, she is the winner of the second European Open Women's Chess Championship in 2001. When Moldova (her birthplace) became independent of Russia, she rose to her fame by becoming the champion of World Youth Chess Championships (Under 16) in 1991. Starting to play chess at 6, she married twice. Both her ex and current husband are French Grandmaster. (Joël Lautier and then, Laurent Fressinet) Yet one more trivia of her is that she is an avid poker card player. In 2009, she bagged home $78,664 when she finished seventh in the World Series of Poker No Limit Texas hold 'em tournament.

Anastasia Gavrilova  (born 1990)

Not much information about her can be found online. According to the FIDE database, she is a Women FIDE Master from Switzerland. She got her WF Master title at the age of 15 (year 2006). She is currently ranked 746th among female player in the world.

Kateryna Lahno (born December 27, 1989)

Kateryna, from Ukraine, has obtained World Grandmaster title at the age of 12, even earlier than Anastasia. In fact, she has broken the record held by Judit Polgar for this. When she was just 15, she won the 2005 European Individual Women's Championship. She is now ranked seventh among women players in the world. Like Almira, she is also married to a Grandmaster, Robert Fontaine (also a reporter).

Kateryna Lahno when she is still young.

Monika Seps (born February 22, 1986)

Born in Switzerland and educated in biology at ETH Zurich (Albert Einstein's alma meter), Monika is a World International Master (WIM) currently ranked 442th among female players in the world. She earned her FIDE Master in 2005 and then, WIM in 2006. She has been the Swiss Female Champion for year 2001, 2002, 2005 and 2007. She lost her title to Tatiana Lematschko for the years in between.

Sanja Dedijer (born 1986)

Representing Bosnia & Herzegovina, she is now ranked 1190th among female players in the world without any FIDE title. She played in Torino Chess Olympiad 2006.


       

Sophie Milliet (born November 2, 1983)

Raised in a French town, Castelnau-le-Lez, she is now the French female champion who is ranked 74th among female players in the world. She was awarded the International Master title in March 2009, in respect of norms earned at the French Club Championship (2005), the Swiss Championship at Lenzerheide (2006) and the Béthune Open (2008)

  

Vesna Rozic (born 1987)

She is Slovenian Women International Master (WIM) currently ranked 238th among all active female players in the world. She is the female champion for the Slovenian Chess Championship 2007.

          

Zhu Chen (born March 16, 1976)

Born in Wenzhou, Zhejiang, she is a chess Grandmaster. In 2001, she became China's second women's world chess champion after Xie Jun. At the age of 25 she defeated Alexandra Kosteniuk of Russia in a tournament for the 2001/2002 Women's World Chess Championship, by 5-3. Educated in the premier college Tsinghua University, Zhu Chen is married to Qatari Grandmaster Mohamad Al-Modiahki.

 

You might be wondering why the chess players on this list are from Russia (and former Russian regimes), Ukraine, France and China. This is because that these are the countries with highest number of Grandmaster and International Master as seen from the list done by FIDE.

	Average	GMs	IMs	Total Titled
Russia	2732	204	474	2010
Ukraine	2697	76	196	467
China	2657	27	20	104
Armenia	2656	33	19	75
France	2650	42	91	326

Another thing you can notice is that most of them earned their Grandmaster title in a rather young age. Chess is, in fact, the only sport where children can par with adults. From the list, too, we can see that quite a few Grandmasters are married to fellow Grandmasters. Could it be just coincidence? I don’t have the complete statistic to make any judgment. Do share with me if you have found it.

If you can see, this list is arranged purely by their initials. The ranking is up to you. So, who among them makes it to the top of your list? Or, who have I missed?

                                                                                                                                                                  

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Tea with Mussolini & The Scorpioni

In my literature class today, I got the chance to watch a 1999 semi-autobiographic film, Tea with Mussolini directed by Franco Zeffirelli.  The Scorpioni, the group of cultured elderly English ladies who looked after Franco Zeffirelli (Luca, in the movie) as a young orphan, attracted my attention very much.  One particular scene was when they risked their lives in the line of fire to protect the frescoes in San Gimignano from demolition. A few rounds of Google search has shown that there is not much historical information about the Scorpioni. Being me, I have decided to compile all the information I can get and share with you here.

The Scorpioni, to me, is the patron of the arts and cultures. It is essentially a group of five cultured expatriates who live around Florence in the 1930s and 1940s. Their biting wit and arch humor were well known to the Italians who call them the Scorpioni (Italian word for scorpions). Other than Tea with Mussolini, they were also mentioned in the memoirs of the writer Violet Trefusis. The ladies frequented Gran Café Doney, Uffizi Gallery and English Cemetery of Florence.

The Uffizi Gallery

The leader of the clique was, as Franco Zeffirelli  recalled, an arrogant and bossy dowager of the community, whose name he could not remember. The fictional character, Lady Hester Random (played by Maggie Smith who eventually won a BAFTA for this character), was crafted by John Mortimer, the creator of the Rumpole of the Bailey series. Another member, Arabella, the patron of the frescoes, would climb up ladders and even risk her life to save frescoes in dishabille. The motherly Mary O’Neill (Mary Wallace, in the film) is perhaps, the  most pragmatic in this elite circle despite her affection towards the romanticism of William Shakespeare. To keep up with her Florentine lifestyle, unlike her wealthy counterparts, she had to work as a translator. Rounding up the group were Georgie, a lesbian archeologist and Elsa Morganthal, the former Ziegfeld Follies dancer.

One noteworthy fact about the film is that the pivotal moment where Lady Hester Random had tea with Benito Mussolini was fictional. It was based on a historical occurrence where the English writer Violet Trefusis met with Mussolini.  It was said that Violet Trefusis, one of Virginia Woolf's Bloomsbury friends, often boasted of a tete-a-tete with Il Duce (Benito Mussolini). The informal adoption of Franco Zeffirelli, though, was real. The illegitimacy of his birth was real, too. (On a unrelated note, I love how Mary Wallace exclaimed “There is no illegitimate child in the world! Only illegitimate parents!)

Born in the post-WWI Florence, Zeffirelli (then, Gianfranco Corsi) was the illegitimate son of the mercer Ottorino Corsi and his mistress, Adelaide Garosi, who was later looked after by the group. Speaking from New York City, he recounted that the Scorpioni has taught him about life. He had learnt to appreciate the world, both outside and inside. If it weren’t for the Scorpioni, Franco Zeffirelli would not have known so much about his own city, culture, and upbringing.  “If you were born and live in Florence, after a while you get to be fed up with it,” Zeffirelli stated, “they brought me to see things with new fresh eyes. I'll never forget how they contributed to my growth." Mary O’Neill, especially, was kind of a surrogate mother for him. She introduced him to the beauty of English literature and theatrical art, particularly the Shakespeare. 

As for the part where the ladies protected San Gimignano (the medieval hill town in the province of Siena, Tuscany)  from being blown up by the retreating Germans, no historical evidence is available to attribute this to the Scorpioni.(Please correct me if I am wrong) It was thanks to the local citizens who buried it in stones in 1944, to keep the Nazi Army from blowing it up as a means to stop the advancing Allies.

                                                                                                                                                                  

Comments are welcomed and encouraged on ZewSays.com, but there are some instances where comments will be edited or deleted as follows:
1) Comments deemed to be spam or questionable spam will be deleted. Including a link to relevant content is permitted, but comments should be relevant to the post topic.
2) Comments including profanity will be deleted.
3) Comments containing language or concepts that could be deemed offensive will be deleted.
4) Comments that attack a person individually will be deleted.
The owner of this blog reserves the right to edit or delete any comments submitted to this blog without notice. This comment policy is subject to change at anytime.

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