Vojta Kosek (1882-1957)

Czech problem/study composer

Handwritten signed letter, written in Czech in pen

dated January 16, 1923

size 28 x 23 cm

Good to very good: light general signs of use, horizontal center fold.

The letter begins "Mily spoluobcane“ (= Dear Fellow Citizen), the addressee is not specified.

The letter contains Kosek's memories.

This is a translation of first quarter of this letter:

Dear Fellow Citizen, so, I am starting to write my chess autobiography. But I don't know how it will all turn out. Memories swarm through my head, my pen flies across the paper, and in a moment it's full of scribbles. And when I read it, it starts to gnaw at me, and it seems to me that even now, as I write these lines, something is pushing and grimacing outside the window in the evening twilight: "Aren't you a little ashamed, old man: your head is white, you have no teeth, your face is wrinkled, and yet you boast like this." And they push up from the bottom of your memory and say, me too, me too - - I don't know, I really don't know how it will all turn out. Why did I promise you that - - My head is swarming with memories of my friend Vetesnik, how many cards we exchanged between us. How he and Cumpe were at my house, how much we played chess. How, years later, when I went to Budapest in January 1905 to visit Blathy (a brilliant author of manymovers, and by the way, a millionaire), I visited several friends on my triumphal journey. My first letter was in Czech, and it was only at his request "in einer Weltsprache zu schreiben" that I remembered on my remains of German from my youth and military service! …

Biographical data:

Vojta Kosek (1861-1936), Czech chess composer. Author of more than 60 studies, threemovers and joke problems. He also composed manymovers and succeeded in shortening the solution of several long selfmates. In 1900, Otto Blathy organized a competition to shorten his 292-move selfmate. Kosek won the competition and the prize of 100 gold crowns.

xxx

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