TALENT AND GENIUS

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 208, 3 September 1938, Page 3 (Supplement)

TALENT AND GENIUS

By Cyrano

NEW ZEALAND has just had a visit from a chess player who, born in Russia, has settled in Australia. He toured the Dominion playing chess and lecturing on the game. Russia is famous for its great chess players. It is a country with a chess mind. They .estimate that there are ten million players in this population of 165,000,000. But the most interesting fact, at any rate for my purpose just now, is that among these ten million players there are thirty with the rank of Master. Mr. Koshnitsky is champion of New South Wales, but he does not rank as a Master; he might if he returned to Europe. Ten million players and thirty Masters is, I think, a sobering thought. The super-cream is a very thin layer indeed. Incidence of Genius Now chess, it must be admitted, is a very special game. It is the most intellectual of all games and demands intense application. I know no more about it than the names of pieces, but a friend who plays tells me you can't be considered even reasonably good unless you know about fifty openings and the counters to them, which makes it far more frightening than contract bridge. But I think that in respect to proportion between rank and file and Masters, there is some resemblance between chess and open-air games, and between these and life generally. At any rate it is worth thinking about. Take cricket, for example. There is only one Bradman; perhaps one may say there has been only one Bradman, though when you are tempted to depose "W.G." please remember that he made modern batsmanship, and that he played on wickets so inferior to those of to-day that in one over at Lord's he had to stop three shooters. -After Bradman there are players who stand out conspicuously from the crowd of men who play in first-class cricket. How many are there? It is a matter of opinion; I should doubt if the Ma&ter class is more than thirty. Let us take the whole history of cricket and try to estimate the number of players who have shown real genius, players like Grace, Bradman, Ranjitsinhji, Alfred Shaw, Rhodes, Spofforth, Sidney Barnes and Blackham. Have there been many more than thirty? Or take tennis. Budge corresponds to Bradman; he cannot be beaten, save once in a while. Below Budge are a few

players who may extend him, and between whom there is little difference in ability, but they do not number anything like thirty. We might go further and say that in the whole history of tennis there have not been more than twenty or thirty geniuses. And there are a great many tennis players. It is calculated that in Australia alone there are between a million and a half and two millions. The estimate strikes me as high, but even if we halve it and allow for exceptional conditions in Australia, there must be many millions of players in the world. It is the same with billiards. The highest-flight billiard players, I should say, formed the smallest of such selected circles, and we know how popular the game is. Opportunity and Achievement In every game there are many grades of skill, ranging from rabbits to lions. The best player in Waipapatitiri (I hope there really isn't such a place) probably won't make a showing against the best in his nearest provincial town; the champion of the provincial town won't live with the champion of the city; the city champion wouldn't give Budge a struggle. Life is rather like this. Men and women of genius or outstanding ability are much rarer than many of us realise. It may be objected to the above remarks about games that they take no account of circumstances, that the amateur cannot hope to compete against the professional or the "all-timer," and that many an obscure player would be first-class if he could give all his time to the game and get the necessary experience. That may be so, though the "many" may be doubted, but similar restrictions operate in all activities of • life. Opportunity is not equal and never can be, though the differences between classes and individuals can be greatly reduced. This age of ours has been busy with such reduction to an extent never before achieved or attempted on a great scale, and as time goes on it will be exceedingly interesting to study the effect of this on the supply of genius and high ability. It is necessary to take a long period.

Britain has had about seventy years of universal education, but the full effects of such a change come into operation slowly. The Supplement to the Dictionary of National Biography, published last year, covers those notable persons who died between 1922 and 1930. Many of them were born before that extension of education, and a very large proportion belonged to classes not affected by it. To-day the number of boys and girls who go to secondary schools and universities at the expense of the State is very much larger than it was a generation or more ago. These council school scholars who are competing more and more successfully with children of the more favoured classes should provide the sociologist with valuable data in years to come. How many geniuses will this class provide? The general average of exerted capacity is much higher than it was. Take literature; it is pretty safe to say that there never has been so much good writing as there is to-day. Ability and genias, however, are not the same, though the one shades off into the other. Britain to-day has a large number of skilled writers, but has she as many literary geniuses as when, with a much smaller population she produced Scott, Byron, Keats. Shelley, Wordsworth and Jane Austen? Capriaousness of Supply Genius is a capricious thing In ffcs incidence. Nations have extraordinary flowering periods. There was the golden age of Greece, but that country has never since produced anything even approaching to it in glory. There was Spain in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, resplendent in the arts of war and peace; here also there has been no equal resurgence of genius. Professor W. Macneille Dixon says a similar flow and ebb may be seen within a county, "Kent, which stands with Norfolk and Suffolk highest on this roll of fame among English counties, although extremely prolific in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, decayed in the eighteenth, and wholly lost her ceniiis-producing power in the nineteenth." By the way, a Professor Cattell. whose nationality is not stated, is quoted as saying that England has produced nearly a quarter of the most eminent men the world has known.

Where do we in New Zealand stand? When we are accused of intellectual poverty it may be some consolation to reflect how few Masters there are even in very large populations. Leaving sport out of account, how many geniuses have we borne? There would be general agreement about one —Lord Rutherford, and among literary people about a second, Katherine Mansfield. I think Sir Truby King haa a claim, and so has David Low distinctly, but are there any others? Relatively, four geniuses may not be such a bad record. * * ♦ ♦ Alone You went away, and left m« there to lie Wide-eyed and staring, tearless, in the dark. And then, out of the night, yon come again And lie beside me, healing bitterness With soft, familiar phrases, old as love. You stay awhile, dose locked between my arms, Crushed fiercely lips to lips and breast to breast Until the ecstasy of passion dies. The ichisper of your garments softly fades And merges m the soughing of the | breeze; To leave again the dull and hopeless ache Of utter loneliness. —J. M. Williamson. ♦ * * ♦ Land Song The yellow kovhai rings a song, A melody of scented sound That harmonises in the breathless air With the warm smell of tea-tree shower Bleeping beside a drowsy stream. Silent and motionless around 1 crystal pool the tree-ferns stand; They seem to want to speak, or sing. But cannot till the tui stirs And listens, in a poet's dream, And with an easy and a golden voice Utters the rhythm of the land. ■—Garfield Johnson.