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Chess

Leviathan

15 December 2018

9:00 AM

15 December 2018

9:00 AM

Last week I compared the Norwegian world chess champion Magnus Carlsen to a lurking crocodile, ready to grab its oblivious prey. Perhaps a more apt metaphor is that of the whale in Milton’s Paradise Lost: ‘haply slumbering on the Norway foam…’. Mariners in Milton’s narrative mistake the leviathan for an island, moor their craft, and are undone as the whale wakes and dives.

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