Lonely genius
If a person has advanced in any field and has surpassed fate, then we should expect that she will prevail in something else. Great people are almost always cruelly suffering people of tragic fate. In geniuses, as a rule, a certain area of physical, mental or mental defect is revealed. They are very lonely, even when surrounded by a crowd.
Lonely were Kant and Beethoven, Leonardo and Nietzsche, and this list can be continued for a long time. The talk is about a man named Robert James Fisher. In the 4th top of the book “My Great Predecessors” by G. Kasparov, the section devoted to the 11th world champion Fischer is also entitled “The Single Genius”, in which, in addition to biographies, selected parties are included. To please chess lovers, one of Fisher’s best games is at the end of the article.
Boris Spassky wrote: “He does not drink or smoke, he prefers solitude. When talking with people, it seems that he dismisses them like annoying flies. Apparently he is faced with a mass of people who are unpleasant to him. He is very proud and it is difficult for him to live in modern society. And it seems to me that Fisher is very lonely. ”
What about loneliness? Feelings, nourishing a tendency to solitude and loneliness is an aristocratic feeling. The vulgar is always sociable, the noble man more and more prefers loneliness to society. And gradually over the years he comes to the conclusion that, with the rarest exception, there is only a choice between loneliness and vulgarity. Angelus Silesius reasoned: “Loneliness is hard, but if you are not vulgar, you will be everywhere in the desert.”
Just as a teacher does not intervene unnecessarily in the noisy game of children, so an intelligent person does not have a great tendency to engage in communication with others. Veliki Walter, being naturally cheerful and sociable, admitted that: “The earth is populated by people who do not deserve to be spoken to.” Petrarch has the same idea, but in a milder form: “I always looked for a lonely life, in order to escape from short, dim minds, having lost the path leading to heaven”. And also Champhor: “Sometimes they say about a man living in solitude that he does not like society; it’s one and the same thing to say about someone that he doesn’t like to walk on the ground that he is reluctant to walk in the evening along robbery dens. ”
Conclusion: loneliness is the destiny of all outstanding minds. Sometimes it bothers them, but still they always choose it as the least of two evils. Over the years, however, people face loneliness, it becomes easier and more natural, Arthur Schopenhauer believed.
With age, active life in most cases is already over. No special plans. The generation to which a person belongs disappears from the face of the earth. A man surrounded by an alien tribe is already objectively lonely. In addition, the flight of time is accelerated. Due to many years of experience, he no longer expects much from humanity. After all, it is taken by no means such as to win at the closest acquaintance; on the contrary, the Roma of some rare happy exceptions in the world get only very defective specimens of the human type, which are best not to touch. Each outstanding, and therefore not like other person in his youth, may be suffering from loneliness sees in him to his old age his best comfort.
Only extremely miserable and vulgar people remain as sociable in old age as before; in this case, they become a burden to the society from which they are behind. At best, they are tolerated whereas before they were welcome guests.
As you know, there is no rose without thorns. In the same way, loneliness with all its advantages has insignificant burdens, which are insignificant in comparison with those that society gives us. Therefore, one who has well-known merits will find that it is much easier to do without people than to live with them.
If you want to delve into the topic of loneliness, I recommend the wonderful book by Hermann Hess, “The Steppe Wolf”. And now Fisher’s promised masterpiece:
Fisheo – Benko
Fisher – Benko
1. Rf6 !! now the threat of the movement of the e-pawn is irresistible. 1 … Kg8 2.e5 h6 3.Ke2 and Black resigned