On Mar 20, 2010, at 9:21 AM, Jansy wrote:
Gogol: "I am following Gogol through the dismal maze of his life and have selected as basic rhythm of my book the en passant move of the Pawn ( please note this).
(Volodya to Bunny, letter 45, August 9, 1942)
JM: Could someone who knows chess-moves explain how this "move" operates and if, in fact, one finds it as "the basic rhythm" of VN's biography of Gogol?*
Probably best to say that this is some kind of obtuse, impenetrable joke,
but if you really want to know, in a few words, well, here goes...
Originally in chess a pawn could only move forward one square at a time,
and could capture onto either of its forward diagonal squares, left or right.
Somewhere along the way it was decided, to hasten engagement, that a pawn,
on its first move only, could move, optionally, two squares. But this created a problem.
If one's opponent had advanced one of his pawn to his fifth rank,
across the half-way mark of the board, then if his opponent were to
advance either of his adjacent pawns two squares, he would have
effectively by-passed the advanced pawn. This was considered unfair.
So to compensate the player whose pawn had achieved its fifth rank
and had then been by-passed, that player could on the next move,
and only on the next move, capture the pawn that was moved passed,
and is now standing adjacent to, his advanced pawn,
by moving that advanced pawn diagonally onto the square
that his opponent's pawn would have occupied had he moved it
forward only one square.
I don't imagine this is easy to understand without a chessboard or diagram.
There's probably better graphic explanations available on the web somewhere.
En passant, of course, is French for in passing, which points out that the capture
is not made into the square that the captured pawn is occupying but rather into
the square behind it.
How this can be applied as the basic rhythm of a piece of writing is not at all clear to me.
Perhaps that things, words, phrases, move obliquely pass one another
as opposed to responding directly to each other.
Perhaps a larger portion of the context would clarify things.
Hope this helps.