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Darkness at Noon
Darkness at Noon is a fictional portrayal of the nightmare politics of our time. Its hero is an aging revolutionary, imprisoned and psychologically tortured by the Party to which he has dedicated his life. As the pressure to confess preposterous crimes increases, he relives a career that embodies the terrible ironies and human betrayals of a totalitarian movement masking itself as an instrument of deliverance. Almost unbearably vivid in its depiction of one man's solitary agony, it asks questions about ends and means that have relevance not only for the past but for the perilous present. It is —- as the Times Literary Supplement has declared —- "A remarkable book, a grimly fascinating interpretation of the logic of the Russian Revolution, indeed of all revolutionary dictatorships, and at the same time a tense and subtly intellectualized drama."
Darkness at Noon (from the German: Sonnenfinsternis) is a novel by the Hungarian-born British novelist Arthur Koestler, first published in 1940. His best-known work tells the tale of Rubashov, a Bolshevik 1917 revolutionary who is cast out, imprisoned and tried for treason by the Soviet government he'd helped create.
Darkness at Noon (from the German: Sonnenfinsternis) is a novel by the Hungarian-born British novelist Arthur Koestler, first published in 1940. His best-known work tells the tale of Rubashov, a Bolshevik 1917 revolutionary who is cast out, imprisoned and tried for treason by the Soviet government he'd helped create.
216 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1940
About the author
Arthur Koestler
265 books846 followers
Darkness at Noon
(1940), novel of Hungarian-born British writer Arthur Koestler, portrays his disillusionment with Communism; his nonfiction works include
The Sleepwalkers
(1959) and
The Ghost in the Machine
(1967).
Arthur Koestler CBE [*Kösztler Artúr] was a prolific writer of essays, novels and autobiographies.
He was born into a Hungarian Jewish family in Budapest but, apart from his early school years, was educated in Austria. His early career was in journalism. In 1931 he joined the Communist Party of Germany but, disillusioned, he resigned from it in 1938 and in 1940 published a devastating anti-Communist novel, Darkness at Noon, which propelled him to instant international fame.
Over the next forty-three years he espoused many causes, wrote novels and biographies, and numerous essays. In 1968 he was awarded the prestigious and valuable Sonning Prize "For outstanding contribution to European culture", and in 1972 he was made a "Commander of the British Empire" (CBE).
In 1976 he was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease and three years later with leukaemia in its terminal stages. He committed suicide in 1983 in London.
Arthur Koestler CBE [*Kösztler Artúr] was a prolific writer of essays, novels and autobiographies.
He was born into a Hungarian Jewish family in Budapest but, apart from his early school years, was educated in Austria. His early career was in journalism. In 1931 he joined the Communist Party of Germany but, disillusioned, he resigned from it in 1938 and in 1940 published a devastating anti-Communist novel, Darkness at Noon, which propelled him to instant international fame.
Over the next forty-three years he espoused many causes, wrote novels and biographies, and numerous essays. In 1968 he was awarded the prestigious and valuable Sonning Prize "For outstanding contribution to European culture", and in 1972 he was made a "Commander of the British Empire" (CBE).
In 1976 he was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease and three years later with leukaemia in its terminal stages. He committed suicide in 1983 in London.
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August 19, 2019
”This is a diseased century.
We diagnosed the disease and its causes with microscopic exactness, but wherever we applied the healing knife a new sore appeared. Our will was hard and pure, we should have been loved by the people. But they hate us. Why are we so odious and detested?
We brought you truth, and in our mouth it sounded a lie. We brought you freedom, and it looks in our hands like a whip. We brought you the living life, and where our voices is heard the trees wither and there is a rustling of dry leaves. We brought you the promise of the future, but our tongue stammered and barked....
Nicholas Salmanovitch Rubashov is arrested.
Soviet Prison Doors Similar to the one that Rubashov found himself behind.
The Old Bolsheviks that brought communism to power in Russia are being eliminated one by one by their once friend and colleague referred to in the book as No. 1, but of course he is none other than Joseph Stalin.
The young revolutionary Joseph Stalin.
Rubashov has been in trouble with the party before, but had always managed to do what was necessary to survive. The new generation of revolutionaries are not as well educated, meaner, and barely recognize the names of those that were once heralded as heroes by the revolution. As Rubashov sits in prison he is left to ponder what has went wrong.
”We whip the groaning masses of the country towards a theoretical future happiness, which only we can see. For the energies of this generation are exhausted; they were spent in the Revolution; for this generation is bled white and there is nothing left of it but a moaning, numbed apathetic lump of sacrificial flesh....Those are the consequences of our consequentialness. You called it vivisection morality. To me it sometimes seems as though the experimenters had torn the skin off the victim and left it standing with bared tissues, muscles and nerves....
Rubashov does not have a safety net of friends, most have perished, some were betrayed by his silence when he was in a position to save them. He is left with his mind and his words to try to once again escape ”PHYSICAL LIQUIDATION” His fellow inmates communicate with him through a tapping code. They are less than impressed to find out who he is; in fact, the only use he has to #402 is to share his last sexual encounter...in detail please.
”WHEN DID YOU LAST SLEEP WITH A WOMAN?”
“THREE WEEKS AGO.”
“TELL ME ALL ABOUT IT.”
“SNOWY BREASTS FITTING INTO CHAMPAGNE GLASSES.”
“GO ON. DETAILS.”
“THIGHS LIKE A WILD MARE.”
“GOOD CHAP! GO ON.”
“THAT’S ALL.”
“GO ON- PLEASE, PLEASE...”
Rubashov becomes too embarrassed to go on. He has more thinking to do. More explaining to do to himself. He has two interrogators. One is Ivanov an old friend and comrade from the revolution and the other is Gletkin a man of the new generation whose stiff uniform “creaks and groans” every time he moves. One is trying to save him and one is trying to kill him. In his diary Rubashov is still justifying his past decisions. He still believes in the movement, but is disenchanted with the people.
”In periods of maturity it is the duty and the function of the opposition to appeal to the masses. In periods of mental immaturity, only demagogues invoke the higher judgment of the people. In such situations the opposition has two alternatives: to seize the power by a coup d’etat, without being able to count on the support of the masses; or in mute despair to throw themselves out of the swing--to die in silence.”
He is an intellectual intellectualizing what is looking like a failed improvement in government. Lots of people die and more will continue to die and when you ask the peasants if their lives are better than they were four years ago or forty years ago or two hundred and forty years ago the answer is the same....no. The revolutionaries turn out to be as brutal as the Czarist government they overthrew and since we know that Stalin is only warming up by the publication date (1940) of this book we know it will get much, much worse.
Stalin had nearly a million of his own citizens executed, beginning in the 1930s. Millions more fell victim to forced labor, deportation, famine, massacres, and detention and interrogation by Stalin's henchmen.
"In some cases, a quota was established for the number to be executed, the number to be arrested," said Naimark. "Some officials overfulfilled as a way of showing their exuberance."
Joseph Stalin
Things do not go well for Rubashov. His mind has been degraded from lack of sleep and he has decided the easiest way to go is to admit guilt on certain points. ”He had believed that he had drunk the cup of humiliation to the dregs. Now he was to find that powerlessness had as many grads as power; that defeat could become as vertiginous as victory, and that its depths were bottomless.”
I do not really like Rubashov. I do though identify with him enough to feel uncomfortable. I find that most revolutionary/ideological people are frankly irresponsible. They overthrow a government, but are generally so paranoid that they resort to the same or worse tactics as the original government to keep control. They justify their actions by saying such things are necessary for “the cause”. We were lucky in our revolution in the United States because it was more about expelling a foreign power from our shores than it was about overthrowing a government. Our Revolutionary Heroes, after the war, were willing to share a certain amount of power with the people. Freedom was more important to them than power. Although the revolution was more about greed (how dare thee tax me) than about being oppressed. This country, by the wisdom of our forefathers,was built on a foundation of freedom and sometimes we have to remind ourselves of those principles. Russia is a country that continues to wrestle with their identity. They need strong leadership confident enough to allow their society to be ruled by freedom rather than by fear. I do hope they find a way to throw off the shackles of their history and become the amazing country I know they are capable of being. Bucket list: grand tour of Russia.
Arthur Koestler
Arthur Koestler, Hungarian by birth, certainly was a man with a controversial past. He joined the Foreign Legion during World War Two and deserted. He attempted suicide when he thought that his manuscript of this book along with his girlfriend Daphne Hardy had been sunk by the Germans. It turned out not to be true. It is unclear which he was more upset about losing. He became a British citizen and later in life he successfully committed suicide when he found out he was terminally ill with cancer. He convinced his much younger wife to commit suicide as well. Their mutual friends felt that he must have bullied her into it. He was also accused of being a "serial rapist" although some of this was “explained away” by the fact that he was a “rough lover”. Despite his failings as a human being he did write an important book that will be read and quoted long past the time when anyone will really remember there ever was a USSR.
If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
I also have a Facebook blogger page at: https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten
We diagnosed the disease and its causes with microscopic exactness, but wherever we applied the healing knife a new sore appeared. Our will was hard and pure, we should have been loved by the people. But they hate us. Why are we so odious and detested?
We brought you truth, and in our mouth it sounded a lie. We brought you freedom, and it looks in our hands like a whip. We brought you the living life, and where our voices is heard the trees wither and there is a rustling of dry leaves. We brought you the promise of the future, but our tongue stammered and barked....
Nicholas Salmanovitch Rubashov is arrested.
Soviet Prison Doors Similar to the one that Rubashov found himself behind.
“Occasionally words must serve to veil the facts. But this must happen in such a way that no one become aware of it; or, if it should be noticed, excuses must be at hand, to be produced immediately.” Machiavelli
The Old Bolsheviks that brought communism to power in Russia are being eliminated one by one by their once friend and colleague referred to in the book as No. 1, but of course he is none other than Joseph Stalin.
The young revolutionary Joseph Stalin.
Rubashov has been in trouble with the party before, but had always managed to do what was necessary to survive. The new generation of revolutionaries are not as well educated, meaner, and barely recognize the names of those that were once heralded as heroes by the revolution. As Rubashov sits in prison he is left to ponder what has went wrong.
”We whip the groaning masses of the country towards a theoretical future happiness, which only we can see. For the energies of this generation are exhausted; they were spent in the Revolution; for this generation is bled white and there is nothing left of it but a moaning, numbed apathetic lump of sacrificial flesh....Those are the consequences of our consequentialness. You called it vivisection morality. To me it sometimes seems as though the experimenters had torn the skin off the victim and left it standing with bared tissues, muscles and nerves....
Rubashov does not have a safety net of friends, most have perished, some were betrayed by his silence when he was in a position to save them. He is left with his mind and his words to try to once again escape ”PHYSICAL LIQUIDATION” His fellow inmates communicate with him through a tapping code. They are less than impressed to find out who he is; in fact, the only use he has to #402 is to share his last sexual encounter...in detail please.
”WHEN DID YOU LAST SLEEP WITH A WOMAN?”
“THREE WEEKS AGO.”
“TELL ME ALL ABOUT IT.”
“SNOWY BREASTS FITTING INTO CHAMPAGNE GLASSES.”
“GO ON. DETAILS.”
“THIGHS LIKE A WILD MARE.”
“GOOD CHAP! GO ON.”
“THAT’S ALL.”
“GO ON- PLEASE, PLEASE...”
Rubashov becomes too embarrassed to go on. He has more thinking to do. More explaining to do to himself. He has two interrogators. One is Ivanov an old friend and comrade from the revolution and the other is Gletkin a man of the new generation whose stiff uniform “creaks and groans” every time he moves. One is trying to save him and one is trying to kill him. In his diary Rubashov is still justifying his past decisions. He still believes in the movement, but is disenchanted with the people.
”In periods of maturity it is the duty and the function of the opposition to appeal to the masses. In periods of mental immaturity, only demagogues invoke the higher judgment of the people. In such situations the opposition has two alternatives: to seize the power by a coup d’etat, without being able to count on the support of the masses; or in mute despair to throw themselves out of the swing--to die in silence.”
He is an intellectual intellectualizing what is looking like a failed improvement in government. Lots of people die and more will continue to die and when you ask the peasants if their lives are better than they were four years ago or forty years ago or two hundred and forty years ago the answer is the same....no. The revolutionaries turn out to be as brutal as the Czarist government they overthrew and since we know that Stalin is only warming up by the publication date (1940) of this book we know it will get much, much worse.
Stalin had nearly a million of his own citizens executed, beginning in the 1930s. Millions more fell victim to forced labor, deportation, famine, massacres, and detention and interrogation by Stalin's henchmen.
"In some cases, a quota was established for the number to be executed, the number to be arrested," said Naimark. "Some officials overfulfilled as a way of showing their exuberance."
Joseph Stalin
Things do not go well for Rubashov. His mind has been degraded from lack of sleep and he has decided the easiest way to go is to admit guilt on certain points. ”He had believed that he had drunk the cup of humiliation to the dregs. Now he was to find that powerlessness had as many grads as power; that defeat could become as vertiginous as victory, and that its depths were bottomless.”
I do not really like Rubashov. I do though identify with him enough to feel uncomfortable. I find that most revolutionary/ideological people are frankly irresponsible. They overthrow a government, but are generally so paranoid that they resort to the same or worse tactics as the original government to keep control. They justify their actions by saying such things are necessary for “the cause”. We were lucky in our revolution in the United States because it was more about expelling a foreign power from our shores than it was about overthrowing a government. Our Revolutionary Heroes, after the war, were willing to share a certain amount of power with the people. Freedom was more important to them than power. Although the revolution was more about greed (how dare thee tax me) than about being oppressed. This country, by the wisdom of our forefathers,was built on a foundation of freedom and sometimes we have to remind ourselves of those principles. Russia is a country that continues to wrestle with their identity. They need strong leadership confident enough to allow their society to be ruled by freedom rather than by fear. I do hope they find a way to throw off the shackles of their history and become the amazing country I know they are capable of being. Bucket list: grand tour of Russia.
Arthur Koestler
Arthur Koestler, Hungarian by birth, certainly was a man with a controversial past. He joined the Foreign Legion during World War Two and deserted. He attempted suicide when he thought that his manuscript of this book along with his girlfriend Daphne Hardy had been sunk by the Germans. It turned out not to be true. It is unclear which he was more upset about losing. He became a British citizen and later in life he successfully committed suicide when he found out he was terminally ill with cancer. He convinced his much younger wife to commit suicide as well. Their mutual friends felt that he must have bullied her into it. He was also accused of being a "serial rapist" although some of this was “explained away” by the fact that he was a “rough lover”. Despite his failings as a human being he did write an important book that will be read and quoted long past the time when anyone will really remember there ever was a USSR.
If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
I also have a Facebook blogger page at: https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten
November 12, 2021
Sonnenfinsternis = Darkness at Noon, c1940, Arthur Koestler
Darkness at Noon is a novel by Hungarian-born British novelist Arthur Koestler, first published in 1940. His best known work, it is the tale of Rubashov, an Old Bolshevik who is arrested, imprisoned, and tried for treason against the government that he had helped to create.
Darkness at Noon is divided into four parts: The First Hearing, The Second Hearing, The Third Hearing, and The Grammatical Fiction.
In the original English translation, Koestler′s word that Hardy translated as ″Hearing″ was ″Verhör.″ In the 2019 translation, Boehm translated it as ″Interrogation.″
In his introduction to that translation, Michael Scammell writes that ″hearing″ made the Soviet and Nazi ″regimes look somewhat softer and more civilized than they really were.″
عنوانهای چاپ شده در ایران: «ظلمت و نیمروز»؛ «ظلمت در نیمروز»؛ نویسنده: آرتور کستلر؛ تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز بیستم ماه سپتامبر سال2001میلادی
عنوان: ظلمت و نیمروز؛ نویسنده: آرتور کستلر؛ در سال1331؛ توسط جناب ناصرقلی نوذری؛ در184ص؛موضوع: داستانهای نویسندگان مجارستان - سده 20م
عنوان: «ظلمت در نیمروز» در سال1361 توسط جنابان محمود ریاضی و علی اسلامی؛ در230ص؛
عنوان: ظلمت در نیمروز؛ نویسنده: آرتور کوستلر (کستلر)؛ مترجم: اسدالله امرایی؛ ویراستار غلامحسین سالمی؛ تهران، نقش و نگار، سال1379؛ در240ص؛ شابک9646235239؛
مترجم: مژده دقیقی؛ تهران، ماهی، سال1391؛ در245ص؛ شابک9789642091324؛
عنوان کتاب برگرفته از کتاب مقدس و کنایه از: بیگناه پای دار رفتن است؛ «ظلمت در نیمروز»، بازنمایی دادگاههای نمایشی، و تصفیه های «استالینیستی» است، که یکسال پیش از جنگ جهانگیر دوم، در «شوروی» اوج گرفت؛ «روباشوف»، شخصیت اصلی داستان، از رهبران انقلاب سال1917میلادی است، که تحت بازجوییهای دشوار، به اعمالی اعتراف میکند، که هرگزی از او سر نزده اند؛ «روباشوف»، شخصیتی خیالی است، اما «کوستلر»، او را، براساس ویژگیهای رهبران فکری انقلاب «بلشویکی»، و سیاستمداران برجسته ی «شوروی»، آفریده است، و شرح زندان، و اعترافات او، بازتابش آرای سیاسی آنروزهاست؛ «ظلمت در نیمروز»، از تأثیرگذارترین رمانهای سیاسی سده بیستم میلادی، و در زمره ی مهمترین آثار روشنفکری، علیه «کمونیسم» به شمار میرود؛ بسیاری این کتاب را، نقطه ی عطفی، برای گذر از دهه ی1930میلادی، در سالهای جنگ سرد برشمرده اند
نقل از متن: (بین خودشان اسمهای زیادی روی او گذاشتند، ولی «شخص اول» بهتر به او میآمد، رعبی ایجاد کرده بود، انگار حق داشت، و کسانی که با هفت تیر به پشت گردنشان شلیک میشد، باید به حق او گردن میگذاشتند...)؛ پایان نقل
تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 08/12/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 20/08/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی
Darkness at Noon is a novel by Hungarian-born British novelist Arthur Koestler, first published in 1940. His best known work, it is the tale of Rubashov, an Old Bolshevik who is arrested, imprisoned, and tried for treason against the government that he had helped to create.
Darkness at Noon is divided into four parts: The First Hearing, The Second Hearing, The Third Hearing, and The Grammatical Fiction.
In the original English translation, Koestler′s word that Hardy translated as ″Hearing″ was ″Verhör.″ In the 2019 translation, Boehm translated it as ″Interrogation.″
In his introduction to that translation, Michael Scammell writes that ″hearing″ made the Soviet and Nazi ″regimes look somewhat softer and more civilized than they really were.″
عنوانهای چاپ شده در ایران: «ظلمت و نیمروز»؛ «ظلمت در نیمروز»؛ نویسنده: آرتور کستلر؛ تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز بیستم ماه سپتامبر سال2001میلادی
عنوان: ظلمت و نیمروز؛ نویسنده: آرتور کستلر؛ در سال1331؛ توسط جناب ناصرقلی نوذری؛ در184ص؛موضوع: داستانهای نویسندگان مجارستان - سده 20م
عنوان: «ظلمت در نیمروز» در سال1361 توسط جنابان محمود ریاضی و علی اسلامی؛ در230ص؛
عنوان: ظلمت در نیمروز؛ نویسنده: آرتور کوستلر (کستلر)؛ مترجم: اسدالله امرایی؛ ویراستار غلامحسین سالمی؛ تهران، نقش و نگار، سال1379؛ در240ص؛ شابک9646235239؛
مترجم: مژده دقیقی؛ تهران، ماهی، سال1391؛ در245ص؛ شابک9789642091324؛
عنوان کتاب برگرفته از کتاب مقدس و کنایه از: بیگناه پای دار رفتن است؛ «ظلمت در نیمروز»، بازنمایی دادگاههای نمایشی، و تصفیه های «استالینیستی» است، که یکسال پیش از جنگ جهانگیر دوم، در «شوروی» اوج گرفت؛ «روباشوف»، شخصیت اصلی داستان، از رهبران انقلاب سال1917میلادی است، که تحت بازجوییهای دشوار، به اعمالی اعتراف میکند، که هرگزی از او سر نزده اند؛ «روباشوف»، شخصیتی خیالی است، اما «کوستلر»، او را، براساس ویژگیهای رهبران فکری انقلاب «بلشویکی»، و سیاستمداران برجسته ی «شوروی»، آفریده است، و شرح زندان، و اعترافات او، بازتابش آرای سیاسی آنروزهاست؛ «ظلمت در نیمروز»، از تأثیرگذارترین رمانهای سیاسی سده بیستم میلادی، و در زمره ی مهمترین آثار روشنفکری، علیه «کمونیسم» به شمار میرود؛ بسیاری این کتاب را، نقطه ی عطفی، برای گذر از دهه ی1930میلادی، در سالهای جنگ سرد برشمرده اند
نقل از متن: (بین خودشان اسمهای زیادی روی او گذاشتند، ولی «شخص اول» بهتر به او میآمد، رعبی ایجاد کرده بود، انگار حق داشت، و کسانی که با هفت تیر به پشت گردنشان شلیک میشد، باید به حق او گردن میگذاشتند...)؛ پایان نقل
تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 08/12/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 20/08/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی
July 30, 2021
“The fact is: I no longer believe in my infallibility. That is why I am lost.”
For me, this a perfect book, a masterpiece- it has it all - the suffering, the guilt, discussions on morality, politics, tyranny, philosophy, spirituality, meaning and death, one not overshadowing other, all perfectly interwoven in the story, without the final conclusion it is trying to impose on the reader, just telling a story in a way it expands consciousness. Due to the controversy of the author I haven't read it sooner which I deeply regret now.
Meet Rubashov, an Old Bolshevik who is arrested, imprisoned, and tried for treason against the government that he helped to create. The novel is set in 1938, during the Great Purge and Moscow trials even though Koestler didn't name directly USSR or Stalin, referring to him as "Number One", giving the novel less factual historian and vaguer dystopian feeling similar to 1984 and Kafkaesquein events. Novel in a way transcends mere historical events and embodies the eternal drama of individual vs. tyrannical collective oppression. Rubashov is not a typical martyr or a hero, an innocent person persecuted for race or religion, or his opposition to repression, he is a morally gray character that has blood on his hands, a Revolutionist eaten by Revolution he was fighting for, creating a monster that will ultimately destroy him in, which makes his struggles and existential and moral crises even more relatable because we see the destructive aspect of collective mirrored in himself.
“I was one of those. I have thought and acted as I had to; I destroyed people whom I was fond of, and gave power to others I did not like. History put me where I stood; I have exhausted the credit which she accorded me; if I was right I have nothing to repent of; if wrong, I will pay.“
Rubashov is a man for devoted his life to the cause in which he believed in, communism. From an early age, he was a member of the Party, fought in the civil war, endured 2 years of torture from Gestapo, betrayed other communists who deviated from the Party line and proven over and over again that he is unscrupulously loyal to the cause of communism. That was indeed, his meaning and purpose.
“For forty years he had lived strictly in accordance with the vows of his order, the Party. He had held to the rules of logical calculation. He had burnt the remains of the old, illogical morality from his consciousness with the acid of reason. He had turned away from the temptations of the silent partner, and had fought against the “oceanic sense” with all his might. And where had it landed him? Premises of unimpeachable truth had led to a result which was completely absurd; Ivanov’s and Gletkin’s irrefutable deductions had taken him straight into the weird and ghostly game of the public trial. Perhaps it was not suitable for a man to think every thought to its logical conclusion.”
Now imprisoned by the Party to which he sacrificed everything and above all, his conscience, he faces an existential crisis, now struggling to find meaning and logic in Marxist philosophy and interpretation of history. Ultimately he finds despair in a revelation that promised utopia is mere dictatorship imposing the suffering on millions of people. Rubashov can no longer cling to Machiavellian philosophies, where historical processes, no matter how vile they may seem, are justified for the cause of socialist utopia and the happiness of future generations. He sees clearly that the vision of a better world is fading and from dread with the promise of a glowing future, there is only death and terror left in the Soviet world. Stripped down from his faith in communism all he has left is the inner voice of his conscience that is condemning him. His consciousness of guilt, called “moral exaltation”, could not be expressed in logical formula.
Rubashov was a logical man that was hiding all his guilt and sense of morality in an entanglement of intellectualization and rationalization. But his reason was adequate shelter only when he was not face to face with human suffering. The soviet prison gives him that side of reality, one that is more difficult to argue with reason, the one that shatters most of the philosophical argument and ends debates, the face of a suffering man
.
“Rubashov, Rubashov. ...” that last cry was branded ineffaceably in his acoustic memory. ... Up till now, he had never imagined Arlova’s death in such detail. It had always been for him an abstract occurrence; it had left him with a feeling of strong uneasiness, but he had never doubted the logical rightness of his behaviour. Now, in the nausea which turned his stomach and drove the wet perspiration from his forehead, his past mode of thought seemed lunacy. The whimpering of Bogrov unbalanced the logical equation. Up till now Arlova had been a factor in this equation, a small factor compared to what was at stake. But the equation no longer stood. ”
The newfound emotional and psychological revelation, as well as moral exaltation, is challenged by his old comrade Ivanov, one of the most intelligent and charming voices of communist reasoning I've read in literature.
“My point is this,” he said; “one may not regard the world as a sort of metaphysical brothel for emotions. That is the first commandment for us. Sympathy, conscience, disgust, despair, repentance, and atonement are for us repellent debauchery. To sit down and let oneself be hypnotized by one’s own navel, to turn up one’s eyes and humbly offer the back of one’s neck to Gletkin’s revolver—that is an easy solution. The greatest temptation for the like of us is: to renounce violence, to repent, to make peace with oneself. Most great revolutionaries fell before this temptation, from Spartacus to Danton and Dostoevsky; they are the classical form of betrayal of the cause. The temptations of God were always more dangerous for mankind than those of Satan. As long as chaos dominates the world, God is an anachronism; and every compromise with one’s own conscience is perfidy. When the accursed inner voice speaks to you, hold your hands over your ears. ...”
“Beware of these ecstasies,” he said: “Every bottle of spirits contains a measurable amount of ecstasy. Unfortunately, only few people, particularly amongst our fellow countrymen, ever realize that the ecstasies of humility and suffering are as cheap as those induced chemically. ”
“If I had a spark of pity for you,” he said, “I would now leave you alone. But I have not a spark of pity. I drink; for a time, as you know, I drugged myself; but the vice of pity I have up till now managed to avoid. The smallest dose of it, and you are lost. Weeping over humanity and bewailing oneself—you know our race’s pathological leaning to it. Our greatest poets destroyed themselves by this poison. Up to forty, fifty, they were revolutionaries—then they became consumed by pity and the world pronounced them holy. You appear to have the same ambition, and to believe it to be an individual process, personal to you, something unprecedented. ...
“The greatest criminals in history,” Ivanov went on, “are not of the type Nero and Fouché, but of the type Gandhi and Tolstoy. Gandhi’s inner voice has done more to prevent the liberation of India than the British guns. To sell oneself for thirty pieces of silver is an honest transaction; but to sell oneself to one’s own conscience is to abandon mankind. History is a priori amoral; it has no conscience. To want to conduct history according to the maxims of the Sunday school means to leave everything as it is.”
One of the most prominent themes and contrasts in the story is one between Christian and communist worldview, the philosophy that celebrates the value of individual, moral and ethical norms that have to be honored no matter the price, the voice of human conciseness vs. world view that elevates collective before all else, before individual life, and all moral and ethical values that can be overlooked in the pursuit for the greater good. The debate between Ivanov and Rubashov is one of the most brilliant ones I have ever read. Some things that are almost overemphasized in Dostoyevski, which I know annoy some people, Koestler does in such a subtle, elegant manner. He gives both sides fair argument, without being overly pretentious and patronizing. His arguments are vibrant and lived-through, not merely abstract ideas. The Christian symbolism is not in your face loud, but quietly and naturally embroidered in the story.
“I don’t approve of mixing ideologies,” Ivanov continued. “’There are only two conceptions of human ethics, and they are at opposite poles. One of them is Christian and humane, declares the individual to be sacrosanct, and asserts that the rules of arithmetic are not to be applied to human units. The other starts from the basic principle that a collective aim justifies all means, and not only allows, but demands, that the individual should in every way be subordinated and sacrificed to the community—which may dispose of it as an experimentation rabbit or a sacrificial lamb. The first conception could be called anti-vivisection morality, the second, vivisection morality. Humbugs and dilettantes have always tried to mix the two conceptions; in practice, it is impossible. Whoever is burdened with power and responsibility finds out on the first occasion that he has to choose; and he is fatally driven to the second alternative. Do you know, since the establishment of Christianity as a state religion, a single example of a state which really followed a Christian policy? You can’t point out one. In times of need—and politics are chronically in a time of need—the rulers were always able to evoke ‘exceptional circumstances’, which demanded exceptional measures of defence. Since the existence of nations and classes, they live in a permanent state of mutual self-defence, which forces them to defer to another time the putting into practice of humanism. ...”
Death is also one of the themes that Koestler subtly, but beautifully touched upon. Death in the totalitarian regime is impersonal, just a mere means to an end for a governing regime.
“In the Party death was no mystery, it had no romantic aspect. It was a logical consequence, a factor with which one reckoned and which bore rather an abstract character. Also death was rarely spoken of, and the word “execution” was hardly ever used; the customary expression was “physical liquidation”. The words “physical liquidation” again evoked only one concrete idea: The cessation of political activity. The act of dying in itself was a technical detail, with no claim to interest; death as a factor in a logical equation had lost any intimate bodily feature.”
Bit Rubashov finds his own liberation in returning to his true self in the face of death, and a kind of similar metaphysical liberation as in Stranger is implied. He regains all parts of himself he had to repress in order to serve the Party perfectly - the emotional, moral, spiritual and even intellectual parts of himself. On his deathbed, he contemplates the vastness of the universe and returns to the key questions of his youth - the meaning of suffering. The novel ends with Rubashov's utopian hopeful vision of a future in which collectivism and individualism, economic and spiritual growth merge, with a painful realization that that is the world he will never get to see and the darkness he is leaving behind in reality.
“Perhaps later, much later, the new movement would arise—with new flags, a new spirit knowing of both: of economic fatality and the “oceanic sense”. Perhaps the members of the new party will wear monks’ cowls, and preach that only purity of means can justify the ends. Perhaps they will teach that the tenet is wrong which says that a man is the quotient of one million divided by one million, and will introduce a new kind of arithmetic based on multiplication: on the joining of a million individuals to form a new entity which, no longer an amorphous mass, will develop a consciousness and an individuality of its own, with an “oceanic feeling” increased a millionfold, in unlimited yet self-contained space.”
“I bow my knees before the country, before the masses, before the whole people. ...” And what then? What happened to these masses, to this people? For forty years it had been driven through the desert, with threats and promises, with imaginary terrors and imaginary rewards. But where was the Promised Land? Did there really exist any such goal for this wandering mankind? That was a question to which he would have liked an answer before it was too late. Moses had not been allowed to enter the land of promise either. But he had been allowed to see it, from the top of the mountain, spread at his feet. Thus, it was easy to die, with the visible certainty of one’s goal before one’s eyes. He, Nicolas Salmanovitch Rubashov, had not been taken to the top of a mountain; and wherever his eye looked, he saw nothing but desert and the darkness of night.”
This book has an element of regaining internal freedom in the midst of physical imprisonment, similar to Alone in Berlin, existential dread and finding meaning in meaninglessness as in The Stranger, entanglemnet with the machinery of cold and brutal bureaucracy as in the The Trail, and contemplation on guilt as in Crime and Punishment (mentioned in the book and even mocked by Ivanov). If you like any of mentioned works, I highly recommend you try Koestler.
“I plead guilty to not having understood the fatal compulsion behind the policy of the Government, and to have therefore held oppositional views. I plead guilty to having followed sentimental impulses, and in so doing to have been led into contradiction with historical necessity. I have lent my ear to the laments of the sacrificed, and thus became deaf to the arguments which proved the necessity to sacrifice them. I plead guilty to having rated the question of guilt and innocence higher than that of utility and harmfulness. Finally, I plead guilty to having placed the idea of man above the idea of mankind. ...”
For me, this a perfect book, a masterpiece- it has it all - the suffering, the guilt, discussions on morality, politics, tyranny, philosophy, spirituality, meaning and death, one not overshadowing other, all perfectly interwoven in the story, without the final conclusion it is trying to impose on the reader, just telling a story in a way it expands consciousness. Due to the controversy of the author I haven't read it sooner which I deeply regret now.
Meet Rubashov, an Old Bolshevik who is arrested, imprisoned, and tried for treason against the government that he helped to create. The novel is set in 1938, during the Great Purge and Moscow trials even though Koestler didn't name directly USSR or Stalin, referring to him as "Number One", giving the novel less factual historian and vaguer dystopian feeling similar to 1984 and Kafkaesquein events. Novel in a way transcends mere historical events and embodies the eternal drama of individual vs. tyrannical collective oppression. Rubashov is not a typical martyr or a hero, an innocent person persecuted for race or religion, or his opposition to repression, he is a morally gray character that has blood on his hands, a Revolutionist eaten by Revolution he was fighting for, creating a monster that will ultimately destroy him in, which makes his struggles and existential and moral crises even more relatable because we see the destructive aspect of collective mirrored in himself.
“I was one of those. I have thought and acted as I had to; I destroyed people whom I was fond of, and gave power to others I did not like. History put me where I stood; I have exhausted the credit which she accorded me; if I was right I have nothing to repent of; if wrong, I will pay.“
Rubashov is a man for devoted his life to the cause in which he believed in, communism. From an early age, he was a member of the Party, fought in the civil war, endured 2 years of torture from Gestapo, betrayed other communists who deviated from the Party line and proven over and over again that he is unscrupulously loyal to the cause of communism. That was indeed, his meaning and purpose.
“For forty years he had lived strictly in accordance with the vows of his order, the Party. He had held to the rules of logical calculation. He had burnt the remains of the old, illogical morality from his consciousness with the acid of reason. He had turned away from the temptations of the silent partner, and had fought against the “oceanic sense” with all his might. And where had it landed him? Premises of unimpeachable truth had led to a result which was completely absurd; Ivanov’s and Gletkin’s irrefutable deductions had taken him straight into the weird and ghostly game of the public trial. Perhaps it was not suitable for a man to think every thought to its logical conclusion.”
Now imprisoned by the Party to which he sacrificed everything and above all, his conscience, he faces an existential crisis, now struggling to find meaning and logic in Marxist philosophy and interpretation of history. Ultimately he finds despair in a revelation that promised utopia is mere dictatorship imposing the suffering on millions of people. Rubashov can no longer cling to Machiavellian philosophies, where historical processes, no matter how vile they may seem, are justified for the cause of socialist utopia and the happiness of future generations. He sees clearly that the vision of a better world is fading and from dread with the promise of a glowing future, there is only death and terror left in the Soviet world. Stripped down from his faith in communism all he has left is the inner voice of his conscience that is condemning him. His consciousness of guilt, called “moral exaltation”, could not be expressed in logical formula.
Rubashov was a logical man that was hiding all his guilt and sense of morality in an entanglement of intellectualization and rationalization. But his reason was adequate shelter only when he was not face to face with human suffering. The soviet prison gives him that side of reality, one that is more difficult to argue with reason, the one that shatters most of the philosophical argument and ends debates, the face of a suffering man
.
“Rubashov, Rubashov. ...” that last cry was branded ineffaceably in his acoustic memory. ... Up till now, he had never imagined Arlova’s death in such detail. It had always been for him an abstract occurrence; it had left him with a feeling of strong uneasiness, but he had never doubted the logical rightness of his behaviour. Now, in the nausea which turned his stomach and drove the wet perspiration from his forehead, his past mode of thought seemed lunacy. The whimpering of Bogrov unbalanced the logical equation. Up till now Arlova had been a factor in this equation, a small factor compared to what was at stake. But the equation no longer stood. ”
The newfound emotional and psychological revelation, as well as moral exaltation, is challenged by his old comrade Ivanov, one of the most intelligent and charming voices of communist reasoning I've read in literature.
“My point is this,” he said; “one may not regard the world as a sort of metaphysical brothel for emotions. That is the first commandment for us. Sympathy, conscience, disgust, despair, repentance, and atonement are for us repellent debauchery. To sit down and let oneself be hypnotized by one’s own navel, to turn up one’s eyes and humbly offer the back of one’s neck to Gletkin’s revolver—that is an easy solution. The greatest temptation for the like of us is: to renounce violence, to repent, to make peace with oneself. Most great revolutionaries fell before this temptation, from Spartacus to Danton and Dostoevsky; they are the classical form of betrayal of the cause. The temptations of God were always more dangerous for mankind than those of Satan. As long as chaos dominates the world, God is an anachronism; and every compromise with one’s own conscience is perfidy. When the accursed inner voice speaks to you, hold your hands over your ears. ...”
“Beware of these ecstasies,” he said: “Every bottle of spirits contains a measurable amount of ecstasy. Unfortunately, only few people, particularly amongst our fellow countrymen, ever realize that the ecstasies of humility and suffering are as cheap as those induced chemically. ”
“If I had a spark of pity for you,” he said, “I would now leave you alone. But I have not a spark of pity. I drink; for a time, as you know, I drugged myself; but the vice of pity I have up till now managed to avoid. The smallest dose of it, and you are lost. Weeping over humanity and bewailing oneself—you know our race’s pathological leaning to it. Our greatest poets destroyed themselves by this poison. Up to forty, fifty, they were revolutionaries—then they became consumed by pity and the world pronounced them holy. You appear to have the same ambition, and to believe it to be an individual process, personal to you, something unprecedented. ...
“The greatest criminals in history,” Ivanov went on, “are not of the type Nero and Fouché, but of the type Gandhi and Tolstoy. Gandhi’s inner voice has done more to prevent the liberation of India than the British guns. To sell oneself for thirty pieces of silver is an honest transaction; but to sell oneself to one’s own conscience is to abandon mankind. History is a priori amoral; it has no conscience. To want to conduct history according to the maxims of the Sunday school means to leave everything as it is.”
One of the most prominent themes and contrasts in the story is one between Christian and communist worldview, the philosophy that celebrates the value of individual, moral and ethical norms that have to be honored no matter the price, the voice of human conciseness vs. world view that elevates collective before all else, before individual life, and all moral and ethical values that can be overlooked in the pursuit for the greater good. The debate between Ivanov and Rubashov is one of the most brilliant ones I have ever read. Some things that are almost overemphasized in Dostoyevski, which I know annoy some people, Koestler does in such a subtle, elegant manner. He gives both sides fair argument, without being overly pretentious and patronizing. His arguments are vibrant and lived-through, not merely abstract ideas. The Christian symbolism is not in your face loud, but quietly and naturally embroidered in the story.
“I don’t approve of mixing ideologies,” Ivanov continued. “’There are only two conceptions of human ethics, and they are at opposite poles. One of them is Christian and humane, declares the individual to be sacrosanct, and asserts that the rules of arithmetic are not to be applied to human units. The other starts from the basic principle that a collective aim justifies all means, and not only allows, but demands, that the individual should in every way be subordinated and sacrificed to the community—which may dispose of it as an experimentation rabbit or a sacrificial lamb. The first conception could be called anti-vivisection morality, the second, vivisection morality. Humbugs and dilettantes have always tried to mix the two conceptions; in practice, it is impossible. Whoever is burdened with power and responsibility finds out on the first occasion that he has to choose; and he is fatally driven to the second alternative. Do you know, since the establishment of Christianity as a state religion, a single example of a state which really followed a Christian policy? You can’t point out one. In times of need—and politics are chronically in a time of need—the rulers were always able to evoke ‘exceptional circumstances’, which demanded exceptional measures of defence. Since the existence of nations and classes, they live in a permanent state of mutual self-defence, which forces them to defer to another time the putting into practice of humanism. ...”
Death is also one of the themes that Koestler subtly, but beautifully touched upon. Death in the totalitarian regime is impersonal, just a mere means to an end for a governing regime.
“In the Party death was no mystery, it had no romantic aspect. It was a logical consequence, a factor with which one reckoned and which bore rather an abstract character. Also death was rarely spoken of, and the word “execution” was hardly ever used; the customary expression was “physical liquidation”. The words “physical liquidation” again evoked only one concrete idea: The cessation of political activity. The act of dying in itself was a technical detail, with no claim to interest; death as a factor in a logical equation had lost any intimate bodily feature.”
Bit Rubashov finds his own liberation in returning to his true self in the face of death, and a kind of similar metaphysical liberation as in Stranger is implied. He regains all parts of himself he had to repress in order to serve the Party perfectly - the emotional, moral, spiritual and even intellectual parts of himself. On his deathbed, he contemplates the vastness of the universe and returns to the key questions of his youth - the meaning of suffering. The novel ends with Rubashov's utopian hopeful vision of a future in which collectivism and individualism, economic and spiritual growth merge, with a painful realization that that is the world he will never get to see and the darkness he is leaving behind in reality.
“Perhaps later, much later, the new movement would arise—with new flags, a new spirit knowing of both: of economic fatality and the “oceanic sense”. Perhaps the members of the new party will wear monks’ cowls, and preach that only purity of means can justify the ends. Perhaps they will teach that the tenet is wrong which says that a man is the quotient of one million divided by one million, and will introduce a new kind of arithmetic based on multiplication: on the joining of a million individuals to form a new entity which, no longer an amorphous mass, will develop a consciousness and an individuality of its own, with an “oceanic feeling” increased a millionfold, in unlimited yet self-contained space.”
“I bow my knees before the country, before the masses, before the whole people. ...” And what then? What happened to these masses, to this people? For forty years it had been driven through the desert, with threats and promises, with imaginary terrors and imaginary rewards. But where was the Promised Land? Did there really exist any such goal for this wandering mankind? That was a question to which he would have liked an answer before it was too late. Moses had not been allowed to enter the land of promise either. But he had been allowed to see it, from the top of the mountain, spread at his feet. Thus, it was easy to die, with the visible certainty of one’s goal before one’s eyes. He, Nicolas Salmanovitch Rubashov, had not been taken to the top of a mountain; and wherever his eye looked, he saw nothing but desert and the darkness of night.”
This book has an element of regaining internal freedom in the midst of physical imprisonment, similar to Alone in Berlin, existential dread and finding meaning in meaninglessness as in The Stranger, entanglemnet with the machinery of cold and brutal bureaucracy as in the The Trail, and contemplation on guilt as in Crime and Punishment (mentioned in the book and even mocked by Ivanov). If you like any of mentioned works, I highly recommend you try Koestler.
“I plead guilty to not having understood the fatal compulsion behind the policy of the Government, and to have therefore held oppositional views. I plead guilty to having followed sentimental impulses, and in so doing to have been led into contradiction with historical necessity. I have lent my ear to the laments of the sacrificed, and thus became deaf to the arguments which proved the necessity to sacrifice them. I plead guilty to having rated the question of guilt and innocence higher than that of utility and harmfulness. Finally, I plead guilty to having placed the idea of man above the idea of mankind. ...”
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March 21, 2022
IL SOGNO CONSISTE IN UN'UNICA PAROLA SCRITTA SULLA PORTA DEL CIMITERO DEI VINTI: DORMIRE
Ecco un libro che mi colpì molto ed è rimasto profondo nella mia memoria, forse perché è stato il primo che ho letto sull'argomento (le purghe staliniane, per usare una definizione riduttiva).
Forse invece perché è proprio bello e magari meriterebbe la quinta stella.
Altro elemento che colpisce è che fu scritto nel 1940, pochi anni dopo l'inizio di quel mostruoso periodo storico, e viene da pensare che se non è il primo su questo tema, ci vada molto vicino.
Colpisce anche la biografia dello stesso Koestler: all'università studia scienze, ma poi abbandona e si unisce a un'organizzazione sionista in Palestina (1926).
Diventa giornalista proprio in Medio Oriente.
Cinque anni dopo lascia tutto e si trasferisce a Berlino: sta crescendo l'onda nazista, e lui, tanto per essere in armonia col paese che lo ospita, s’iscrive al Partito Comunista e attraversa Russia, Ucraina, Caucaso e Asia Centrale per raccontare i risultati del primo piano quinquennale.
A questo punto è il 1934 e non può più tornare a Berlino perché Hitler ha preso il potere e non è sano vivere in Germania se si è ebrei.
Così va a Parigi.
E da qui in Spagna, dove, catturato dai franchisti, è condannato a morte, e salvato grazie a una campagna internazionale che ha al suo centro la diplomazia inglese.
Dopo altre peripezie torna nuovamente in Francia, ma in quella occupata, e quindi lo tengono per qualche mese in un campo di detenzione.
Poi lo liberano, ma rischia brutto, Petain collabora coi nazisti invasori: allora si arruola nella Legione Straniera e riesce a raggiungere Londra, dove si stabilisce definitivamente, prendendo anche la cittadinanza britannica.
Nel '41 pubblica questo romanzo, che certo non piacque al potere sovietico: e infatti Koestler diventerà oggetto di un'intensa campagna denigratoria che lo spinse quasi al suicidio.
A dormire.
Suicidio che comunque commise nel 1983, ormai quasi ottantenne, malato di Parkinson e leucemia, se ne andò insieme alla terza moglie Cynthia.
Ecco un libro che mi colpì molto ed è rimasto profondo nella mia memoria, forse perché è stato il primo che ho letto sull'argomento (le purghe staliniane, per usare una definizione riduttiva).
Forse invece perché è proprio bello e magari meriterebbe la quinta stella.
Altro elemento che colpisce è che fu scritto nel 1940, pochi anni dopo l'inizio di quel mostruoso periodo storico, e viene da pensare che se non è il primo su questo tema, ci vada molto vicino.
Colpisce anche la biografia dello stesso Koestler: all'università studia scienze, ma poi abbandona e si unisce a un'organizzazione sionista in Palestina (1926).
Diventa giornalista proprio in Medio Oriente.
Cinque anni dopo lascia tutto e si trasferisce a Berlino: sta crescendo l'onda nazista, e lui, tanto per essere in armonia col paese che lo ospita, s’iscrive al Partito Comunista e attraversa Russia, Ucraina, Caucaso e Asia Centrale per raccontare i risultati del primo piano quinquennale.
A questo punto è il 1934 e non può più tornare a Berlino perché Hitler ha preso il potere e non è sano vivere in Germania se si è ebrei.
Così va a Parigi.
E da qui in Spagna, dove, catturato dai franchisti, è condannato a morte, e salvato grazie a una campagna internazionale che ha al suo centro la diplomazia inglese.
Dopo altre peripezie torna nuovamente in Francia, ma in quella occupata, e quindi lo tengono per qualche mese in un campo di detenzione.
Poi lo liberano, ma rischia brutto, Petain collabora coi nazisti invasori: allora si arruola nella Legione Straniera e riesce a raggiungere Londra, dove si stabilisce definitivamente, prendendo anche la cittadinanza britannica.
Nel '41 pubblica questo romanzo, che certo non piacque al potere sovietico: e infatti Koestler diventerà oggetto di un'intensa campagna denigratoria che lo spinse quasi al suicidio.
A dormire.
Suicidio che comunque commise nel 1983, ormai quasi ottantenne, malato di Parkinson e leucemia, se ne andò insieme alla terza moglie Cynthia.
April 10, 2017
The back of my 1972 copy of Darkness at Noon claims that it is "one of the few books written in this epoch which will survive it." To me, Darkness at Noon seems like a book on the verge of being forgotten. It's almost never on the shelves in bookstores or libraries, and I rarely hear it discussed. I don't think it's taught in schools, at least in my part of the world. Perhaps with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of communism and the Cold War, the importance of the great revolutions of the 20th Century and their ensuing brutal authoritarian regimes is appearing less and less relevant to the current and future global political landscape. Maybe they are being interpreted as more of a political aberration - an anomaly, rather than an important and lasting historical trend.
Stalin is long gone, taking the immediacy of Darkness at Noon with him. But this is a book to be viewed through a much wider lens. I will concede that Darkness at Noon certainly doesn't resonate as clearly with the current state of the world as does Nineteen Eighty-Four, with which it is often compared. But Darkness at Noon is nonetheless a wonderfully profound and important book. It can be compared to Orwell's novel not only for its vision of a totalitarian political state, but also for its penetrating insights into human nature and psychology. Koestler explores the nature and substance of conviction: how belief in an ideology can skew moral judgement and cause people to rationalise their actions within the ideological framework. He exposes logic as a dangerously unreliable tool - one that can be used to justify any course of action, given a sufficiently corrupt set of starting assumptions. He offers a glimpse into the means by which idealistic intentions can develop into totalitarian realities, and how ideology can propagate throughout the political ranks in a process that selects for proponents and perpetuates and reinforces itself.
Although the tone of the writing itself may be somewhat simple and declarative, the execution of these ideas and themes within the narrative is expertly done. There is bleakness, but also humour in the writing. There is a close narrative voice that draws the reader by degrees into the mind of Rubashov. It is a slow untangling of a convoluted web of beliefs, actions and justifications. We observe the internal oscillation in perspective that both creates and dismisses crimes when actions align with or oppose a particular ideological position, and in the next moment we see the inversion of Rubashov's previous judgement when its axioms are called into question. This is a corrupted morality based on the perpetuation of the system, rather than on any real concept of right and wrong.
At the core of Rubashov's story is the struggle of youth against age. Those who become old earn the wisdom to see the folly of their own youthful ideals, but they must now be judged by the young, whose values have been shaped by the systems that those very ideals put into place. There is a twisted irony to this perpetual struggle, and an inevitability which favors the side with energy, boldness and conviction, against that with patience, wisdom and reflection.
Stalin may be gone, but human nature remains unchanged.
Stalin is long gone, taking the immediacy of Darkness at Noon with him. But this is a book to be viewed through a much wider lens. I will concede that Darkness at Noon certainly doesn't resonate as clearly with the current state of the world as does Nineteen Eighty-Four, with which it is often compared. But Darkness at Noon is nonetheless a wonderfully profound and important book. It can be compared to Orwell's novel not only for its vision of a totalitarian political state, but also for its penetrating insights into human nature and psychology. Koestler explores the nature and substance of conviction: how belief in an ideology can skew moral judgement and cause people to rationalise their actions within the ideological framework. He exposes logic as a dangerously unreliable tool - one that can be used to justify any course of action, given a sufficiently corrupt set of starting assumptions. He offers a glimpse into the means by which idealistic intentions can develop into totalitarian realities, and how ideology can propagate throughout the political ranks in a process that selects for proponents and perpetuates and reinforces itself.
Although the tone of the writing itself may be somewhat simple and declarative, the execution of these ideas and themes within the narrative is expertly done. There is bleakness, but also humour in the writing. There is a close narrative voice that draws the reader by degrees into the mind of Rubashov. It is a slow untangling of a convoluted web of beliefs, actions and justifications. We observe the internal oscillation in perspective that both creates and dismisses crimes when actions align with or oppose a particular ideological position, and in the next moment we see the inversion of Rubashov's previous judgement when its axioms are called into question. This is a corrupted morality based on the perpetuation of the system, rather than on any real concept of right and wrong.
At the core of Rubashov's story is the struggle of youth against age. Those who become old earn the wisdom to see the folly of their own youthful ideals, but they must now be judged by the young, whose values have been shaped by the systems that those very ideals put into place. There is a twisted irony to this perpetual struggle, and an inevitability which favors the side with energy, boldness and conviction, against that with patience, wisdom and reflection.
Stalin may be gone, but human nature remains unchanged.
March 20, 2024
This just might be the first time I've come across a novel in which it has been translated into many other languages not from the original text but from the English translated version - making it a translation of a translation. I've no idea how this supposedly superior new translated version compares to the original because I didn't read it, and can only go on what was in front of me -
which, I believe, is a masterpiece not in terms of plot, but of the human condition. While it isn't specified that the country here is the Soviet Union and that 'No. 1' is Joseph Stalin, it doesn't take much to figure that out. Rubashov - who spends a lot of the novel stuck in his cell re-evaluating his life as a party activist, and the crimes he really did commit in his ideology’s name - is not only an aging Bolshevik but also a former prisoner of Nazi Germany, who had previously been arrested while on a mission in the murky world of the Communist underground. Now he finds himself arrested again, and through his old friend Ivanov - now an interrogator -is persuaded to confess to a series of questionable crimes against his own. While Ivanov is seen as a cold and distrustful person, he stills makes a genuine attempt to save his friend from the death penalty. It's only when the harder, more brutal interrogator Gletkin enters the scene, that the closer examination of Rubashov highlights that his agreed last service to the party confession was more to do with the eye-stinging bright lights and exhausted sleep deprived state of mind that anything else. Told with horrifying realism, this compelling work drills home what life was really like for millions stuck under repressive rule, and how the Party began to consume its own. While there is nothing wrong with the dialogue - which feels genuine in terms of time and place - it was the tension driven internal monologues that truly stuck in my mind. Apparently one of Orwell's faves - now I can see why.
November 27, 2022
"We do not find it so hard to lie. We do not find it that hard to kill. To admit that we have killed for a lie can be much harder."
This observation of human psychology applies to the protagonist of this story, comrade Rubashov. He is an Old Bolshevik, a genuine believer in the ideas of Communism and the final victory of the revolution.
The book takes us to The Soviet Union under Stalin, to the times when the notorious Moscow trials against prominent communists were in full swing. Those trials were open to the public and even foreign journalists were allowed. Many could not understand why those respected old Bolsheviks were making harrowing confessions. Were they tortured, blackmailed, or threatened another way? They might be afraid for their family members. Were they drugged? Perhaps disguised actors played the role of the defendants.
Among those who were perplexed and wanted to know the explanations for their conduct was the author. By writing this story and inventing a fictional character, he attempted to offer his interpretation of the reasons why some of the accused Bolsheviks agreed to expose themselves to humiliation and disgrace.
We are invited to examine the conscience of the Old Bolshevik during the darkest times of his life. After being arrested, he is placed in solitary confinement. He knows too well what is to come. In his single cell, he glances back on his eventful life.
Rubashov spent many years serving the revolutionary ideals. On this path, he betrayed those who trusted him. He even sacrificed the woman with whom he had a relationship only to save himself and continue to be useful to the Party.
Ultimately, he used his talents to drown the country in a state of terror and fear. Now he himself is arrested and accused of high treason. Like many other old Bolsheviks, he is accused of intending to murder 'Number One.' This is an obvious reference to Stalin although his name is never mentioned.
Rubashov thinks in terms of totalitarian ideas - the end justifies the means.
These words belong to one of his jailors. Rubashov has very few arguments to fend them off.
He faces a moral dilemma. He has been brought to the situation when he must decide between two options. He may comply, say what the Party wants him to be saying, or he may refuse to 'cooperate.' The second choice would mean admitting that almost all his life was a fraud. That might be too much to swallow.
The reason he casts aside the principles of human ethics has always been the infallibility of the Party. It had to have been true and has to remain true. He could not be wrong, could he?
Now there is no way back for him. Ironically, if Rubashov wants to stay in the game, he needs to admit that the absurd criminal charges against him are true.
To sum up, Koestler probes into the nature of totalitarianism and human behavior under extreme conditions. The writing is dense but engaging.
This observation of human psychology applies to the protagonist of this story, comrade Rubashov. He is an Old Bolshevik, a genuine believer in the ideas of Communism and the final victory of the revolution.
The book takes us to The Soviet Union under Stalin, to the times when the notorious Moscow trials against prominent communists were in full swing. Those trials were open to the public and even foreign journalists were allowed. Many could not understand why those respected old Bolsheviks were making harrowing confessions. Were they tortured, blackmailed, or threatened another way? They might be afraid for their family members. Were they drugged? Perhaps disguised actors played the role of the defendants.
Among those who were perplexed and wanted to know the explanations for their conduct was the author. By writing this story and inventing a fictional character, he attempted to offer his interpretation of the reasons why some of the accused Bolsheviks agreed to expose themselves to humiliation and disgrace.
We are invited to examine the conscience of the Old Bolshevik during the darkest times of his life. After being arrested, he is placed in solitary confinement. He knows too well what is to come. In his single cell, he glances back on his eventful life.
Rubashov spent many years serving the revolutionary ideals. On this path, he betrayed those who trusted him. He even sacrificed the woman with whom he had a relationship only to save himself and continue to be useful to the Party.
Ultimately, he used his talents to drown the country in a state of terror and fear. Now he himself is arrested and accused of high treason. Like many other old Bolsheviks, he is accused of intending to murder 'Number One.' This is an obvious reference to Stalin although his name is never mentioned.
Rubashov thinks in terms of totalitarian ideas - the end justifies the means.
The principle that the end justifies the means is and remains the only rule of political ethics; anything else is just vague chatter and melts away between one’s fingers.
These words belong to one of his jailors. Rubashov has very few arguments to fend them off.
He faces a moral dilemma. He has been brought to the situation when he must decide between two options. He may comply, say what the Party wants him to be saying, or he may refuse to 'cooperate.' The second choice would mean admitting that almost all his life was a fraud. That might be too much to swallow.
The reason he casts aside the principles of human ethics has always been the infallibility of the Party. It had to have been true and has to remain true. He could not be wrong, could he?
Now there is no way back for him. Ironically, if Rubashov wants to stay in the game, he needs to admit that the absurd criminal charges against him are true.
They were too deeply entangled in their own past, caught in the web they had spun themselves, according to the laws of their own twisted ethics and twisted logic; they were all guilty, although not of those deeds of which they accused themselves.
To sum up, Koestler probes into the nature of totalitarianism and human behavior under extreme conditions. The writing is dense but engaging.
January 12, 2019
“El principio según el cual el fin justifica los medios sigue siendo la única regla de ética política; todo lo demás no son más que charlatanerías que se deshacen entre los dedos.”No se puede negar a Vargas Llosa cuando afirma que Koestler retrató en su novela “los mecanismos de la destrucción de la personalidad y el envilecimiento de las víctimas que pusieron en evidencia los procesos de Moscú de los años treinta”, como también es innegable la poderosa descripción que el relato contiene de la cruel degradación de un sistema que llegó a establecer como verdad solo aquello que lo fortalecía y convertir en mentira todo lo que lo ponía en peligro, pero sí me gustaría deciros que no es esto lo más importante de la novela.
Lo terrible de El cero y el infinito (1940), y lo que la separa y la distingue de sus primas hermanas Rebelión en la Granja (1945) o 1984 (1949), es la representación que nos ofrece de la lógica fanática, de su poder sobre sobre hombres y mujeres una vez que estos aceptan ciertas premisas básicas como incuestionables. Koestler nos muestra los mecanismos por los cuales una idea, su defensa y su propagación, es capaz de invadir la mente y pasar por encima de la propia dignidad y de la propia vida. Una idea que, en este caso, iba complementada y potenciada por el culto al líder. Era tal el imperio de la personalidad de Stalin que la gente moría fusilada dando vivas al dictador. La novela, pues, nos enfrenta a un mecanismo universal de comportamiento humano, estando muy lejos de ser, como también afirma Llosa, un libro excesivamente dependiente de unos hechos concretos y, por tanto, perecedero.
“… no era un fenómeno accidental, sino la personificación de una cierta característica humana, a saber, de una absoluta creencia en la infalibilidad de las propias convicciones, de la cual sacaba la fuerza para su completa ausencia de escrúpulos.”Para todo ello, el autor escoge, efectivamente, los procesos de Moscú en los que altos dirigentes de la revolución, bregados en mil batallas e interrogatorios, accedieron a autoinculparse de los más extravagantes e inconcebibles delitos a sabiendas de que ello no les salvaría de la muerte. Aunque en ningún momento se afirma que sea la única explicación, el autor se centra en el aparato ideológico que sustenta la decisión de Rubachof, protagonista de la novela, de autoinculparse y mantener la lealtad a unas ideas, a unos principios y a unos dirigentes, los mismos que lo detienen, lo torturan y lo condenan a muerte. No es esta una idea gratuita, Koestler, miembro del partido comunista durante siete años, era sabedor del extraordinario poder que infiere el saberse poseedor de la verdad y el estar en disposición de llevar a cabo el sueño que dicha verdad profetiza.
"Tenía 26 años cuando ingresé en el Partido Comunista y 33 cuando salí de él... Nunca antes ni después fue la vida tan plena de significado como en aquellos siete años. Tuvieron la grandeza de un hermoso error por encima de la podrida verdad."Rubachof está plenamente convencido, tanto o más que sus propios acusadores, de las tesis revolucionarias que él mismo tuvo que defender ejerciendo de verdugo contra otros camaradas por el bien de la causa y a sabiendas de la injusticia que con ellos se cometía. El futuro de la humanidad precisa de tales sacrificios. Si había que…
“… transformarse en carnicero para terminar con las matanzas, a sacrificar ovejas para que ya nunca más vuelvan a sacrificar ovejas, a tratar al pueblo a latigazos a fin de que éste aprenda a no dejarse fustigar, a deshacerse de todo escrúpulo humano en nombre de los escrúpulos superiores, a atraerse el odio de la humanidad por amor a ella…”… se hacía, porque era deber de todo camarada arrancar a la humanidad su vieja piel y darle una nueva. No estaban en disposición de comprender la verdadera naturaleza humana ni que los medios afectan irremediablemente a los fines. Rubachof se inmoló por la causa como ahora lo hacen los yihadistas y como tantos otros fanáticos lo han hecho a lo largo de la historia, aunque en su caso además arruinó su honor y su dignidad ante sus propios camaradas.
“Simpatía, conciencia, desgana, desesperación, arrepentimiento y expiación, todo esto no es para nosotros más que un libertinaje repugnante.”En lo que sí acierta el escritor peruano es en afirmar que la obra de Koestler es un ensayo novelado, y aunque el propio autor se lamenta de su manía de arruinar su obra al defender en ellas una causa, sortea tan inteligentemente el maniqueísmo, es tan potente su carga filosófica, son tan fascinantes sus discusiones políticas, los discursos, supuestamente lógicos y racionales, tienen tal carga emocional, y los sucesos narrados, interrogatorios, flashbacks, tal carga dramática, que uno comprende perfectamente que la novela siga siendo un clásico del siglo XX casi 80 años después de su publicación.
December 22, 2008
Oh, how I do love those Russians! Plus I'm hoping reading this will make me feel better about my own life, which lately feels like a grim, freezing Stalinist dystopia of gray hopeless days. It could be worse, right?
-----
I've got a lot of work to do tonight, and somehow I thought this would be an excellent time to go back and review Darkness at Noon. MUCH bigger priority than getting work done, wouldn't you say....?
Well, so, okay, this book was a little bit bleak. Yeah, not the feel-good date novel of the year, not this one! Darkness at Noon conveys the brutality and claustrophobia of the prison cell and interrogation room, and you kind of do feel like you're there, toothache and hunger and all, and okay let's be honest: it isn't much fun.
This story, such as it is, covers the madcap adventures of one Mr. Rubashov, a revolutionary who is in the process of being purged by the vaguely Stalinesque "Number One," leader of the Party that Rubashov helped to create. Now, if you think this sounds reminiscent of the delightful 1960s television show The Prisoner, think again! Actually, I bet whoever dreamed up The Prisoner had read this book a few times....But don't get excited. There are no bicycles, womb chairs, or hot mod girls in striped shirts here. There is only the cell, and the Party, and Rubashov's thoughts -- oh, and his pince-nez, and the tapping guy next door, and a few tortured memories.... but really there's pretty much only Rubashov, and the Party.
This was a helpful book for a girl who grew up in Berkeley, California, where they put red diapers on their babies and give the children Che Guevara dolls to play with (Barbie's considered counter-revolutionary). As a good homegrown lefty, I've always been a bit baffled by the Red Scare, and why exactly people get soooooo hysterical about communism. I mean, obviously I understand why people get so freaked out about Stalin, but I mean like communism and all that sort of thing more generally.... and this book did give me a better sense of what that's about. I think I do get a bit more what it is that freaky people like Ayn Rand or whoever are reacting against: it's this idea of subordinating one's self -- in this book, the first-person singular pronoun is called a "grammatical fiction" -- in service of a presumed "greater good," and it's about the deeply unpleasant places one arrives at in following that line of thought to its logical conclusion.
I didn't love this book, but I thought it was successful at conveying this idea well through the form of the novel. The reader is in Rubashov's head -- truly stuck just with him and his thoughts while he sits in solitary confinement awaiting his torture and death -- and what works well here is that disorienting experience of occupying the person of an individual who's in denial of his and everyone else's own individual personhood. Koestler's really emphasized the individuality and humanity of all the book's characters -- even minor ones -- in a way that makes them each distinctive and memorable, and this heightens the sense that there is something seriously wrong with Rubashov's world view. You get (or I got) the eerie feeling of this empty character who's hollowed himself out into a sort of vessel for the Party, but who still retains some sense of individual humanity he suddenly experiences while confronting death. Then I think that there's some trick there on the reader when this soulless, unsympathetic character begins experiencing cognitive dissonance in confronting his own sense of individual humanity, and the reader sort of gets sucked along after him, even if we started out ahead.... at least, that's kind of what happened to me.
On the one hand, this book is agitprop, and on the other, it's a pretty decent novel.... but really there aren't two hands, or if there are, they're cuffed together, or intertwined or something. I mean, there really isn't a novel here without the political stuff, and I sort of feel like I took two main things away from this. First, Darkness at Noon is not just about Stalin but is a specific critique of the left which says that at its extreme, this political philosophy crushes the individual in service of Humanity. Okay, so this is obvious, overly rehearsed stuff, as is its counterpart that the right's extreme crushes Humanity in service of the individual. Blah blah blah blah, who cares, right? I mean, I do. But it's not news.
Though I did benefit from and appreciate the anti-communist perspective, what I ultimately took away from this was beyond the narcissism of left/right differences. When you turn out the lights, those colors and distinctions go away, and then there you are, in a dark cell. Torture and murder by the state certainly didn't start with Stalin or end with -- ahem -- any recent administrations, and personally if I were arrested and tortured, I wouldn't be too overly concerned with the political nuances of the state doing it. I take Darkness at Noon to be saying, on some level, that the state is just scary. Politics is dangerous, because it leads to this construction of "ends" and "means," and that just doesn't usually go anywhere good. I mean, therein lies the road to extraordinary rendition via unmarked planes to Syria or whatever.... and a lotta other real icky stuff.
This book got me thinking about a troubling phenomenon I've always been stuck on, which is how so many activists and such with lovely leftist politics (I don't really know any right-wing activists, so I can't speak on that) very often treat the individuals in their lives like total shit. I mean, clearly not all, but enough to be noticeable, and I've always really wondered about that. My difficulty dealing with really political people on a personal level is one major reason why I'm not more politically active myself, and this book fed into my bias about that. Can most people only really focus on either the individual in the foreground or humanity in the background? Do we lack the lens to see both clearly at the same time? I think Koestler's saying people can't, or at least, people can't in a totalitarian communist state, which is perhaps not a point that needs much belaboring.
Anyway, this was a pretty good book, and I'm glad that I read it. While reading Kiss of the Spider Woman afterwards, I couldn't stop drawing parallels between Valentin and Rubashov, and thinking about how much happier Rubashov could have been if only they'd given him a gay cinophile for a cellmate.... Alas, it was not to be.
By the way, apparently Bill Clinton commented during the whole Lewinsky shitshow that he felt like Rubashov in Darkness at Noon, which to me seems like a very shocking and self-indicting statement, considering the details of the novel (here's a little article about that)
-----
I've got a lot of work to do tonight, and somehow I thought this would be an excellent time to go back and review Darkness at Noon. MUCH bigger priority than getting work done, wouldn't you say....?
Well, so, okay, this book was a little bit bleak. Yeah, not the feel-good date novel of the year, not this one! Darkness at Noon conveys the brutality and claustrophobia of the prison cell and interrogation room, and you kind of do feel like you're there, toothache and hunger and all, and okay let's be honest: it isn't much fun.
This story, such as it is, covers the madcap adventures of one Mr. Rubashov, a revolutionary who is in the process of being purged by the vaguely Stalinesque "Number One," leader of the Party that Rubashov helped to create. Now, if you think this sounds reminiscent of the delightful 1960s television show The Prisoner, think again! Actually, I bet whoever dreamed up The Prisoner had read this book a few times....But don't get excited. There are no bicycles, womb chairs, or hot mod girls in striped shirts here. There is only the cell, and the Party, and Rubashov's thoughts -- oh, and his pince-nez, and the tapping guy next door, and a few tortured memories.... but really there's pretty much only Rubashov, and the Party.
This was a helpful book for a girl who grew up in Berkeley, California, where they put red diapers on their babies and give the children Che Guevara dolls to play with (Barbie's considered counter-revolutionary). As a good homegrown lefty, I've always been a bit baffled by the Red Scare, and why exactly people get soooooo hysterical about communism. I mean, obviously I understand why people get so freaked out about Stalin, but I mean like communism and all that sort of thing more generally.... and this book did give me a better sense of what that's about. I think I do get a bit more what it is that freaky people like Ayn Rand or whoever are reacting against: it's this idea of subordinating one's self -- in this book, the first-person singular pronoun is called a "grammatical fiction" -- in service of a presumed "greater good," and it's about the deeply unpleasant places one arrives at in following that line of thought to its logical conclusion.
I didn't love this book, but I thought it was successful at conveying this idea well through the form of the novel. The reader is in Rubashov's head -- truly stuck just with him and his thoughts while he sits in solitary confinement awaiting his torture and death -- and what works well here is that disorienting experience of occupying the person of an individual who's in denial of his and everyone else's own individual personhood. Koestler's really emphasized the individuality and humanity of all the book's characters -- even minor ones -- in a way that makes them each distinctive and memorable, and this heightens the sense that there is something seriously wrong with Rubashov's world view. You get (or I got) the eerie feeling of this empty character who's hollowed himself out into a sort of vessel for the Party, but who still retains some sense of individual humanity he suddenly experiences while confronting death. Then I think that there's some trick there on the reader when this soulless, unsympathetic character begins experiencing cognitive dissonance in confronting his own sense of individual humanity, and the reader sort of gets sucked along after him, even if we started out ahead.... at least, that's kind of what happened to me.
On the one hand, this book is agitprop, and on the other, it's a pretty decent novel.... but really there aren't two hands, or if there are, they're cuffed together, or intertwined or something. I mean, there really isn't a novel here without the political stuff, and I sort of feel like I took two main things away from this. First, Darkness at Noon is not just about Stalin but is a specific critique of the left which says that at its extreme, this political philosophy crushes the individual in service of Humanity. Okay, so this is obvious, overly rehearsed stuff, as is its counterpart that the right's extreme crushes Humanity in service of the individual. Blah blah blah blah, who cares, right? I mean, I do. But it's not news.
Though I did benefit from and appreciate the anti-communist perspective, what I ultimately took away from this was beyond the narcissism of left/right differences. When you turn out the lights, those colors and distinctions go away, and then there you are, in a dark cell. Torture and murder by the state certainly didn't start with Stalin or end with -- ahem -- any recent administrations, and personally if I were arrested and tortured, I wouldn't be too overly concerned with the political nuances of the state doing it. I take Darkness at Noon to be saying, on some level, that the state is just scary. Politics is dangerous, because it leads to this construction of "ends" and "means," and that just doesn't usually go anywhere good. I mean, therein lies the road to extraordinary rendition via unmarked planes to Syria or whatever.... and a lotta other real icky stuff.
This book got me thinking about a troubling phenomenon I've always been stuck on, which is how so many activists and such with lovely leftist politics (I don't really know any right-wing activists, so I can't speak on that) very often treat the individuals in their lives like total shit. I mean, clearly not all, but enough to be noticeable, and I've always really wondered about that. My difficulty dealing with really political people on a personal level is one major reason why I'm not more politically active myself, and this book fed into my bias about that. Can most people only really focus on either the individual in the foreground or humanity in the background? Do we lack the lens to see both clearly at the same time? I think Koestler's saying people can't, or at least, people can't in a totalitarian communist state, which is perhaps not a point that needs much belaboring.
Anyway, this was a pretty good book, and I'm glad that I read it. While reading Kiss of the Spider Woman afterwards, I couldn't stop drawing parallels between Valentin and Rubashov, and thinking about how much happier Rubashov could have been if only they'd given him a gay cinophile for a cellmate.... Alas, it was not to be.
By the way, apparently Bill Clinton commented during the whole Lewinsky shitshow that he felt like Rubashov in Darkness at Noon, which to me seems like a very shocking and self-indicting statement, considering the details of the novel (here's a little article about that)
May 9, 2018
Darkness at Noon is a haunting picture of life in the darkest era of Stalinist Russia inside a political prison. The protagonist is Rubashov, an Old Bolshevik who is arrested and tried for treason by the government that he helped create. Vividly realistic, Koestler paints the life of Rubashov in his prison cell, his wall-tapping conversations with other inmates, his memories of life outside and some of the crimes he committed and the rationalizations for them, as well as his confrontation with his jailers - the ill-fated former friend Ivanov, and the brutish and violent neanderthal Gletkin of the starched sleeves and "harsh" methods. The story moves rather quickly and the reader is drawn into the story almost immediately with the difficulty in positioning with respect to Rubashov - he is a victim of an injustice and we want to feel sorry for him and yet he himself has innocent blood on his hands, lots of blood from people he threw overboard in the system (knowing it meant the victims' certain death so he is also repulsive. This ambiguity makes the book an engaging read cover to cover.
As many countries shift towards authoritarian regimes, this is a timely book to read about the harsh realities for those who are not elites and even those elites who fall out of favor politically and are flattened by the machine of the state. A must.
As many countries shift towards authoritarian regimes, this is a timely book to read about the harsh realities for those who are not elites and even those elites who fall out of favor politically and are flattened by the machine of the state. A must.
August 17, 2023
وقتی حرف از رمانِ سیاسی به میان می آید ناخودآگاه ذهنیت همگی به سمت اوروِل کشیده می شود، حال می توان نام آرتور کوستلر را هم در کنار او به یاد آورد.
هدف وسیله را توجیه می کند، این جمله به کرات در جای جای کتاب تکرار شده، یعنی رسیدن به مقصود به هر قیمتی، ارجعیت داشتن صلاح جمع بر فرد، بی ارزش بودن فردیت در هر منصبی به جز شماره ی یک، شماره یکی که حتی نامی از او برده نمی شود ولی همه می دانیم که او کیست، استالین.
احتمالا با دوران تصویه و پاکسازی استالین آشنایی دارید، برههای که نظر هر شخصی درون حکومت یا خارج از حکومت با هر نظر و عقیده ای از شماره یک در تناقض بود، آن فرد محکوم به حذف بود، حذف به چه شکل؟ اعدام.
روباشوف را شاید بتوان شماره دو نامید یعنی بعد از استالین، او در تمامی عکسهای قاب شده ی روی دیوار در کنار استالین قرار دارد، اوست که اجرا کننده فرامین و سیاست های شماره ی یک است. از یک جایی به بعد ترس از بزرگی روباشوف بر تن شماره یک می افتد، او را خطری جدی برای خود می داند و حال اوست که باید حذف شود.
کتاب سه روایت دارد، یکی بازجویی های در زندان، یکی خاطرات گذشته ای که بر وجدان روباشوف سنگینی می کند و دیگری نوشته های روزانه ی او در زندان.
بازپرس کسی است از مکتب استالین، از زیر دستانِ همین روباشوف. و باز نویسنده ای با یک شوک نشان می دهد امنیتی برای هیچ کس وجود ندارد، چه شماره دو، چه بازپرس، چه مهندس کشاورزی یا چه طراح زیر دریایی و چه حزب توده. عقیده قالب این است که تداوم و ثبات حزب بر هر چیزی اولاست، به همین دلیل او در برابر توطئه ها ایستادگی نمی کند و همه آن ها را می پذیرد حتی اعمالی را هم که انجام نداده گردن می گیرد تا شک و شبهه ای در دل دیگر اعضای حزب به وجود نیاید که در نتیجه باعث ضعف و گسستگی در حزب و افراد شود.
شاید نهایتا برای حُسن ختام این جمله از کتاب بیانگر کلیتی باشد از آنچه در کتاب رخ می دهد:
"همه چیز را با این اصل که باید سنگر حفظ شود توجیه می کرد. اما درون این سنگر چه شکلی داشت؟ بهشت را ننی توان با بتن ساخت. سنگر می بایستی حفظ می شد اما دیگر نه پیامی برای دنیا داشت و نه الگویی برای جهان به حساب می آمد.
هدف وسیله را توجیه می کند، این جمله به کرات در جای جای کتاب تکرار شده، یعنی رسیدن به مقصود به هر قیمتی، ارجعیت داشتن صلاح جمع بر فرد، بی ارزش بودن فردیت در هر منصبی به جز شماره ی یک، شماره یکی که حتی نامی از او برده نمی شود ولی همه می دانیم که او کیست، استالین.
احتمالا با دوران تصویه و پاکسازی استالین آشنایی دارید، برههای که نظر هر شخصی درون حکومت یا خارج از حکومت با هر نظر و عقیده ای از شماره یک در تناقض بود، آن فرد محکوم به حذف بود، حذف به چه شکل؟ اعدام.
روباشوف را شاید بتوان شماره دو نامید یعنی بعد از استالین، او در تمامی عکسهای قاب شده ی روی دیوار در کنار استالین قرار دارد، اوست که اجرا کننده فرامین و سیاست های شماره ی یک است. از یک جایی به بعد ترس از بزرگی روباشوف بر تن شماره یک می افتد، او را خطری جدی برای خود می داند و حال اوست که باید حذف شود.
کتاب سه روایت دارد، یکی بازجویی های در زندان، یکی خاطرات گذشته ای که بر وجدان روباشوف سنگینی می کند و دیگری نوشته های روزانه ی او در زندان.
بازپرس کسی است از مکتب استالین، از زیر دستانِ همین روباشوف. و باز نویسنده ای با یک شوک نشان می دهد امنیتی برای هیچ کس وجود ندارد، چه شماره دو، چه بازپرس، چه مهندس کشاورزی یا چه طراح زیر دریایی و چه حزب توده. عقیده قالب این است که تداوم و ثبات حزب بر هر چیزی اولاست، به همین دلیل او در برابر توطئه ها ایستادگی نمی کند و همه آن ها را می پذیرد حتی اعمالی را هم که انجام نداده گردن می گیرد تا شک و شبهه ای در دل دیگر اعضای حزب به وجود نیاید که در نتیجه باعث ضعف و گسستگی در حزب و افراد شود.
شاید نهایتا برای حُسن ختام این جمله از کتاب بیانگر کلیتی باشد از آنچه در کتاب رخ می دهد:
"همه چیز را با این اصل که باید سنگر حفظ شود توجیه می کرد. اما درون این سنگر چه شکلی داشت؟ بهشت را ننی توان با بتن ساخت. سنگر می بایستی حفظ می شد اما دیگر نه پیامی برای دنیا داشت و نه الگویی برای جهان به حساب می آمد.
November 20, 2021
I inherited a copy of this book from my dad, but it had sat on my shelves for many years, mainly because I felt I had read enough about the Stalinist show trials and the Great Terror. I was prompted to read the book by a review from my GR Friend Lea, the quality of which I can’t come close to. I’ll post a link to Lea’s review at the foot of this one.
Darkness at Noon completely deserves its reputation as a 20th century classic. The main character, Rubashov, is a famous old Bolshevik, one of the leaders of the Revolution, and a hero of the Civil War. The novel is the story of his arrest and interrogation, and his reflections on the society he helped to create.
When Rubashov is first arrested, his neighbour in the adjacent cell, whom we only know as “402”, taps a message to him using prisoners’ code. He is an actual counter-revolutionary and, on learning Rubashov’s identity, sends him the message “Serves you right”. He follows it up with “The Wolves Devour Each Other” and in fact Rubashov has spent his life as a wolf. Throughout it he has believed that everything is subordinate to the creation of the utopia that has been his dream, and he “becomes a slaughterer to abolish slaughtering.” Any individual who gets in the way must be crushed. There can be no room for sentiment in the fight to protect the sacred revolution, and Rubashov has never shown any - he has betrayed friends and colleagues many times. The end justifies the means - any means.
Now, in the novel, it is Rubashov himself who finds himself in the role of the individual who must be sacrificed for the good of the cause. In his interrogations his own writings are quoted back to him, and he recognises the force of the arguments they use. One of his principal interrogators is a younger man, brought up within the new morality that Rubashov and his comrades have created. He is utterly without sentiment.
Koestler creates memorable characters out of Rubashov’s cell neighbours. “402” is an ever present but in the other cell – 406 – several different prisoners come and go. The situation of one man – a foreign communist - was both touching and believable. Although this novel was written in 1940, there’s another prisoner who has been jailed over an issue that’s very topical! I’ll avoid saying more for fear of spoilers.
Much of the novel involves philosophical debate between Rubashov and his captors. Other parts are very dramatic. I thought the ending was superb, absolutely superb.
Link to Lea’s review:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Darkness at Noon completely deserves its reputation as a 20th century classic. The main character, Rubashov, is a famous old Bolshevik, one of the leaders of the Revolution, and a hero of the Civil War. The novel is the story of his arrest and interrogation, and his reflections on the society he helped to create.
When Rubashov is first arrested, his neighbour in the adjacent cell, whom we only know as “402”, taps a message to him using prisoners’ code. He is an actual counter-revolutionary and, on learning Rubashov’s identity, sends him the message “Serves you right”. He follows it up with “The Wolves Devour Each Other” and in fact Rubashov has spent his life as a wolf. Throughout it he has believed that everything is subordinate to the creation of the utopia that has been his dream, and he “becomes a slaughterer to abolish slaughtering.” Any individual who gets in the way must be crushed. There can be no room for sentiment in the fight to protect the sacred revolution, and Rubashov has never shown any - he has betrayed friends and colleagues many times. The end justifies the means - any means.
Now, in the novel, it is Rubashov himself who finds himself in the role of the individual who must be sacrificed for the good of the cause. In his interrogations his own writings are quoted back to him, and he recognises the force of the arguments they use. One of his principal interrogators is a younger man, brought up within the new morality that Rubashov and his comrades have created. He is utterly without sentiment.
Koestler creates memorable characters out of Rubashov’s cell neighbours. “402” is an ever present but in the other cell – 406 – several different prisoners come and go. The situation of one man – a foreign communist - was both touching and believable. Although this novel was written in 1940, there’s another prisoner who has been jailed over an issue that’s very topical! I’ll avoid saying more for fear of spoilers.
Much of the novel involves philosophical debate between Rubashov and his captors. Other parts are very dramatic. I thought the ending was superb, absolutely superb.
Link to Lea’s review:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
January 29, 2012
Definitely one of the greatest novels of the 20th century. I am embarrassed, frankly, that I'm 37 and reading this only now. This is a work I should have read in high school, then in college, then again almost every year since. Standing guard silently behind greats like Orwell and Hitchens is Arthur Koestler. Rubashov is one of the best-realized characters and Darkness at Noon is a near-perfect novel. Dostoevsky would have killed Koestler with an axe, and Tolstoy would have pushed his ass in front of a train just to have stolen this one piece.
August 21, 2013
An Announcement Concerning the Class Traitor Not
After a scrupulously fair trial in the Amazon People's Court, Comrade Not has been found guilty of posting an ideologically unsound review. To protect other comrades from the possibility of being seduced into thought-crime, the review has now been removed from the community area. Amazon has also offered Not a course of reeducation. Their representatives arrived promptly at 4 am yesterday morning, and courteously but firmly helped Not to understand her dialectical misconceptions.
Since her reeducation course, Comrade Not's behavior has been much improved. She has not written any more ideologically dubious posts, but sits in front of the TV, watching Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and weeping quietly.
It is truly a privilege to count myself a member of the Glorious Amazon Online Republic of Goodreads.
After a scrupulously fair trial in the Amazon People's Court, Comrade Not has been found guilty of posting an ideologically unsound review. To protect other comrades from the possibility of being seduced into thought-crime, the review has now been removed from the community area. Amazon has also offered Not a course of reeducation. Their representatives arrived promptly at 4 am yesterday morning, and courteously but firmly helped Not to understand her dialectical misconceptions.
Since her reeducation course, Comrade Not's behavior has been much improved. She has not written any more ideologically dubious posts, but sits in front of the TV, watching Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and weeping quietly.
It is truly a privilege to count myself a member of the Glorious Amazon Online Republic of Goodreads.
January 2, 2018
حزب را رها میکند، بله ولی کمونیسم را نه. نامهی سرگشادهی کنارهگیری از حزب را هم که مینویسد باز هم خود را کمونیست میداند. بعدها هم این را با خرسندی اعلام میکند، تا اخر ��مر. دورهی عضویت در حزب نه بیهوده بوده و نه بیثمر، متضمن شناخت و آشنایی با دیگر مسائل، ثمره تعلق خاطر پیدا کردن به انسانها، به محرومین زمین، مطرودین و روی دست ماندهها. بعدها در پایان عمر بر سر نویسندهای که مطلبی خلاف این نوشته، دستخوش خشمی دیرسال میشود و بر سرش فریاد میزند "من کمونیستم، میفهمی؟ کمونیست". دربارهی مارگریت دوراس، برداشت آزاد از حقیقت و افسانه - آلن ویرکندله
حاوی اسپویلر
ظلمت در نیمروز، تجسم این سخن معروف فانون است که انقلاب فرزندان خود را میبلعد. آثار داستانی بسیاری در مورد آنچه در پس پردهی آهنین شوروی، بخصوص در دههی سی طی تصفیهی کبیر حزب و بعدها در دادگاههای مسکو رخ داده به نگارش در آمده است، اما این اثر کستلر از دو جهت نسبت به دیگر آثار حائز اهمیت است: نخست آنکه کستلر خود از اعضای وفادار حزب کمونیست بود که مدتی را هم در سلول انفرادی فالانژهای اسپانیا گذراند و دوم آنکه ظلمت در نیمروز، از لحاظ ادبی در نوع خود شاهکاری بزرگ و برانگیزاننده محسوب میشود
روباشوف، شخصیت اصلی داستان، کمیسر عالی خلق و از اعضای کمیته مرکزی حزب کمونیست شوروی است که طی تصفیه سیاسی سال 37 شوروی دستگیر و در نهایت طی اعترافهایی ساختگی در دادگاه علنی به اعدام محکوم میشود. داستان از لحاظ زمانی، از زمان دستگیری روباشوف آغاز شده و در لحظهی اعدام او، با آخرین بازدم به پایان میرسد. آنچه به این سیر خطی داستان جذابیت زیادی بخشیده، گذشتهنماییهای پی در پی ذهنی روباشوف است که طی آن خودداوری و عذاب وجدان ناشی از اقدامات پیشین او را تا مرز جنون میکشاند. اقداماتی که منجر به قربانی شدن دوستان و آشنایانش شده و او اکنون در سلول انفرادی فرصت این را یافته تا انگیزههای خود را در آن امور واکاوی کند. وفاداری به حزب و آرمانهای راستینش؟ یا ساختن سپر بلا از دیگران؟
سلول انفرادی و تنها ماندن با قاضی سختگیر وجدان، روباشوف را در موقعیتی شبیه راسکلنیکف جنایت و مکافات قرار میدهد. مقایسهی روباشوف و راسکلینکف آنچنان دور از انتظار و بیربط نیست، چنانکه در دیالوگی میان روباشوف و بازجو گلکتین به این موضوع صریحا اشاره میشود
روباشوف گفت آیا راسکولنی��وف حق کشتن پیرزن را داشت یا نه؟ جوان است و با استعداد، گرویی آزاد نشده در جیب دارد. آن زن هم کاملا پیر و از کار افتاده است. اما معادله درست نیست، زیرا اولا محیط او را مجبور به قتل شخص دومی میکند که نتیجه غیرمنطقی اقدامی ظاهرا منطقی به حساب میآید و ثانیا وقتی واحد محاسبه "آدم" باشد، دو دو تا چهارتا نمیشود
ایوانوف پاسخ داد راسکولنیکوفِ تو ابله و جنایتکار است، نه بخاطر اینکه پیرزنی را کشته است، بلکه چون از سر نفع شخصی این کار را کرده است. اصلِ "هدف وسیله را توجیه میکند" تنها قانونِ معتبر اخلاق سیاسی است، باقی همه حرف مفت است. اگر راسکولنیکوف طبق مصوبات حزب برای جمعآوری پول اعتصاب یا چاپخانهای زیرزمینی پیرزن را میکشت، معادله برقرار میشد
در قسمتی از داستان که در سلمانی زندان میگذرد، روباشوف نامهای از شخصی ناشناس در لباسش پیدا میکند با این مضمون که "بمیر و حرف نزن". این نامه از طرف کیست؟ یک فرد ثالث؟ تصور من این است که این ندای وجدان روباشوف است که نمود بیرونی پیدا کرده است، همسو با همان صدایی که بارها با خودش تکرار میکند: باید تقاص پس داد. در نهایت روباشوف، فرماندهی پارتیزانهای خلق و قهرمان سابق زندانهای دولتهای مرتجع اروپایی، میدان را رها میکند و حیات را به مرگ وا میدهد. او به متهم به جرمی میشود که حداقل آشکارا قصد انجامش را نداشت: ترور شخص اول حزب (استالین).
در ورای تمام اینها، مضمون اصلی ظلمت در نیمروز را میتوان در این پرسش معروف و چالش برانگیز که "آیا هدف وسیله را توجیه میکند؟" خلاصه کرد. آیا میتوان برای نجات و رستگاری ابدی خلق، دست به قربانی زدن عدهای هرچند قلیل زد؟ آیا باید همواره تقدس و حرمت حیات را در هر شرایطی حفظ کرد؟ اما اگر چنین است بر اساس کدام منطقی قربانی کردن آگاهانهی یک گروهان، برای نجات جان یک هنگ کار غیراخلاقیای محسوب میشود؟
کستلر آرمانخواه که روزی رویای برابری و عدالت را در سر داشت، حالا حزب را در راهی دیگر میبیند، راهی که با هدف او فرسنگها تفاوت ماهوی دارد.
هرچند تمام وقایع داستان در سلول انفرادی و اتاق بازجویی میگذرد و گاه و بیگاه نویسنده در قامت یک ایدئولوگ با نطقهای نه چندان کوتاه ظاهر میشود، اما ریتم کوبنده و نمایشی داستان مخاطب را کاملا با خود همراه میکند و در بسیاری از نقاط نفس مخاطب را بند میآورد . مثلا حین خواندن کتاب بارها پیش آمد که با مشتهای گره کرده ملتسمانه زمزمه میکردم : امضا نکن لامذهب! از این لحاظ، سه قسمت داستان برای من بسیار نفسگیر بود. نخست آنجا که رفیق و همرزم قدیمی روباشوف، میخائیل بوگروف، فرمانده ناوگان شرق و دارنده مدال انقلاب به پای چوبهی دار برده میشود و زندانین سلول انفرادی، با با ضربه بر دیوار سلول کناری به یکدیگر پیامرسانی میکنند
زندانی 402 به روباشوف: آنها میآیند، برای شماره 380. خبر را رد کن
روباشوف به زندانی 406: شماره 380 را میبرند اعدام کنند، خبر را رد کن
زندانی 402 به روباشوف: حکم را برایش میخوانند، خبر را رد کن
زندانی 402 به روباشوف: او با فریاد کمک میخواهد
زندانی 402 به روباشوف: او را میآورند، فریاد میکشد و کتک میخورد، خبر را رد کن
صدای خفه و بم ضربههای یکنواخت توی راهرو پیچید. این صدای کوبیدن به در و دیوار نبود، بلکه مردان سلولهای 380 تا 402 با زنجیر صوتیای که ایجاد کرده بودند پشت در سلولهایشان استاده و گارد احترام تشکیل دادند. نوایی سنگین، خفنه و فریبنده همانند رپرپهی طبل، گویی در باد بلند شده از راه دور به گوش میرسید. روباشوف طبل کوبید. به تدریج احساس زمان و مکان را از دست داد، فقط صدای توخالی تامتام جنگل را میشنید، گوریلهایی پشت میلههای قفس خود ایستاده بودند و ضرب میگرفتند
دوم در بازجویی آخر که که روباشوف اتهامها را بند به بند میپذیرد و امضا میکند و سوم، بخش پایانی داستان که روباشوف را برای اعدام میبرند و دو تیر یکی بر پشت گردن و دیگری در شقیقهاش شلیک میکنند. در لحظهی پیش از مرگ، او بهشدت بدنبال توجیهی برای معنا کردن مرگش است، یافتن پاسخی درخور برای فداکاریهایی که در راه حزب انجام داده که آخرینش، پذیرفتن اتهامات ساختگی و گناهکار دانستن خود بود
میخواست قبل از آنکه خیلی دیر شود پاسخی بیاید. موسی هم اجازه ورود به سرزمین موعود را نیافت، اما او دست کم از بالای کوه که به زیر پایش نگاه میکرد، آن را میدید. آدم وقتی هدف را ببیند مردن را سادهتر میپذیرد. روباشوف را به بالای کوه نبردند و موقعی هم که چشمانش را باز کرد جز بیایان و ظلمت شب چیزی نیافت. آنگاه ضربهای سنگین به پشت سرش خورد. زانوانش خم شد و بدنش تاب خورد و به زمین افتاد. دومین ضربه خردکننده بیخ گوش او نشست. همه چیز تمام شد. باز دریا بود و صداهایش. موجی به آرامی او را بلند کرد. ابدیت بیاعتنا از دور آمد و متین و موقر سفر خود را ادامه داد
پینوشت 1: نویسنده در قسمتهایی به انجیل گریز میزند. نخست در عنوان که اشاره واقعه تصلیب دارد: {پس از به صلیب کشیدن عیسی} از ساعت ششم تا ساعت نهم، تاريكي تمام زمين را فرو گرفت {ظلمت در نیمروز} و نزديك به ساعت نهم، عیسی به آواز بلند صدا زده گفت: "ايلي ايلي لَما سَبَقْتِني؟" يعني الهي الهي چرا مرا واگذاردهای؟ (متی 24 : 45 و 46) دوم آنجا که بازجو ایوانوف به سلول انفرادی آمده و روباشوف را به مجادله و چالش میکشد و با طعنه از زبان روباشوف میگوید " دور شو از من ای شیطان" از این بخش عهد جدید گرفته شده است: پطرس او را گرفته، شروع كرد به منع نمودن و گفت: حاشا از تو اي خداوند كه اين بر تو هرگز واقع نخواهد شد {به صلیب کشیده شدن}! اما عیسی برگشته، پطرس را گفت: دور شو از من اي شيطان زيرا كه باعث لغزش من مي باشي. (متی16: 22 و 23)
پینوشت 2: بنظرم ضروری است مخاطب ترتیب زمانی نگارش آثار کستلر را رعایت کند و پیش از مطالعه ظلمت در نیمروز، گفتگو با مرگ را بخواند. کتابی که نویسنده بر اساس تجربیات واقعی خود از سلول انفرادی نگاشته و حالات روباشوف در سلول انفرادی را از آن وام گرفته است
September 20, 2016
"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him" - Cardinal Richelieu. Nicholas Rubashov is about to find out that sometimes it doesn't even take six lines...
April 13, 2021
This is most appropriately classified as an autobiographical novel. The author, Arthur Koestler, became a member of the German Communist Party in 1931. In 1938, disillusioned by Stalin’s Moscow show trials and indiscriminate purges of the so-called counter-revolutionaries, he left the Party. In 1940 came his critique--Darkness at Noon--a novel sharply critical of Communism.
Both the author and the central protagonist of the novel, Rubashov, begin with a strong belief in Communism. Both become disillusioned. Thus, both the positive and the negative are illuminated, allowing one to see Communism’s potential as well as its weaknesses.
Rubashov, brimming with the merits and ideals of Communism, has dedicated his life to the Party. Now, he is imprisoned and psychologically tortured by the very same Party he had so fervently worked to establish. I appreciate that the book is not filled with excruciating depiction of physical abuse. The psychological torture, as depicted in the book, is adequate. Sleep deprivation, blazing lights, extended interrogations, threats and mock killings. Rubashov is confined to an isolation cell, but prisoners have a means of communicating by tapping. Tension inexorably mounts in the book.
The beginning is confusing. The events spoken of are true, but in that they are described in generic terms, confusion arises. The setting is 1938 Russia during the Great Purge, and yet Russia is never once mentioned! Stalin is spoken of as “Number One”. The Soviet government is spoken of as “the Party”. Nazi Germany is spoken of as “the Dictatorship”. As you come to understand how the story is told, the confusion clears.
How does the story end? It ends as it must end, as it should end.
The audiobook I listened to is narrated by Frank Muller. At the beginning I disliked it immensely. As I continued, I grew accustomed to his manner of speaking. By the end it felt OK, but I never grew to like it. I have thus given the audio performance two stars. What I dislike, but which may not disturb others, is Muller’s tendency to progressively speak faster and faster, to increase suspense and tension. First, the speed increases more and more and more. Then he concludes the sentence by drawing out the end interminably, with a long drawn out whisper. This drove me nuts. It is more prominent at the beginning than at the end of the audiobook. I do not like narrators to artificially exaggerate suspense.
Both the author and the central protagonist of the novel, Rubashov, begin with a strong belief in Communism. Both become disillusioned. Thus, both the positive and the negative are illuminated, allowing one to see Communism’s potential as well as its weaknesses.
Rubashov, brimming with the merits and ideals of Communism, has dedicated his life to the Party. Now, he is imprisoned and psychologically tortured by the very same Party he had so fervently worked to establish. I appreciate that the book is not filled with excruciating depiction of physical abuse. The psychological torture, as depicted in the book, is adequate. Sleep deprivation, blazing lights, extended interrogations, threats and mock killings. Rubashov is confined to an isolation cell, but prisoners have a means of communicating by tapping. Tension inexorably mounts in the book.
The beginning is confusing. The events spoken of are true, but in that they are described in generic terms, confusion arises. The setting is 1938 Russia during the Great Purge, and yet Russia is never once mentioned! Stalin is spoken of as “Number One”. The Soviet government is spoken of as “the Party”. Nazi Germany is spoken of as “the Dictatorship”. As you come to understand how the story is told, the confusion clears.
How does the story end? It ends as it must end, as it should end.
The audiobook I listened to is narrated by Frank Muller. At the beginning I disliked it immensely. As I continued, I grew accustomed to his manner of speaking. By the end it felt OK, but I never grew to like it. I have thus given the audio performance two stars. What I dislike, but which may not disturb others, is Muller’s tendency to progressively speak faster and faster, to increase suspense and tension. First, the speed increases more and more and more. Then he concludes the sentence by drawing out the end interminably, with a long drawn out whisper. This drove me nuts. It is more prominent at the beginning than at the end of the audiobook. I do not like narrators to artificially exaggerate suspense.
August 4, 2018
I need reminders from time to time, like those in this novel, of psychological and moral atrocities, of the hyper-viciousness of a pack lead by unstable maniacs and sociopaths.
Darkness at Noon is a chilling novel about Nicholas Salmanovitch Rubashov, an old Bolshevik, formerly Commissar of the People, and a leader in the 1917 Russian REVolution, who is imprisoned during Stalin's purges after he speaks out against the tyranny of his former comrades. These former comrades torture Rubashov and break him psychologically until he confesses to "crimes" he did not commit.
A powerful political classic.
Darkness at Noon is a chilling novel about Nicholas Salmanovitch Rubashov, an old Bolshevik, formerly Commissar of the People, and a leader in the 1917 Russian REVolution, who is imprisoned during Stalin's purges after he speaks out against the tyranny of his former comrades. These former comrades torture Rubashov and break him psychologically until he confesses to "crimes" he did not commit.
A powerful political classic.
June 1, 2020
یک داستان سیاسی عالی درباره ی روباشف یکی از فرماندهان حزب کمونیسم شوروی. کسی که عکسش همیشه در کنار شخص شماره یک بوده ولی یک روز صبح مثل تمام کابوسهایی که میدیده به جرم خیانت به حزب دستگیر میشود و به زندان می افتد. داستان شرح ماجرای زندان و بازجویی ها و هم چنین شرح خاطراتی از گذشته ی روباشف است که در زندان به خاطر می آورد.
خود شخص کوستلر، نویسنده ی کتاب، نیز قبلا در حزب کمونیست بوده و بعد از حزب خارج میشود.
قسمت هایی از متن کتاب:
"کسی که با حکومت دیکتاتوری مخالف است، باید جنگ داخلی را به عنوان راه حل بپذیرد. کسی که از جنگ داخلی گریزان است، باید مخالفت را کنار بگذارد و حکومت دیکتاتوری را بپذیرد."
حزب منکر ارادهی فرد بود و در عین حال از او توقع داشت که داوطلبانه خود را قربانی کند؛ منکر توانایی انتخاب او بین دو راه متفاوت بود و در عین حال از او میخواست که همواره راه درست را انتخاب کند؛ منکر توانایی او در تشخیص خوب از بد بود و در عین حال به طرز رقت انگیزی از گن��ه و خیانت سخن میگفت. فرد در معرض مصائب اقتصادی بود؛ چرخی بود در میان چرخ و دنده های کوکی که یکسره تا ابدیت کوک شده بود و حرکتش را نمیشد متوقف کرد یا بر آن تاثیر گذاشت و حزب میخواست که این چرخ بر آن کوک شورش کند و مسیر حرکتش را تغییر دهد. یک جای این محاسبه اشتباه بود؛ این معادله درست از کار درنمی آمد.
خود شخص کوستلر، نویسنده ی کتاب، نیز قبلا در حزب کمونیست بوده و بعد از حزب خارج میشود.
قسمت هایی از متن کتاب:
"کسی که با حکومت دیکتاتوری مخالف است، باید جنگ داخلی را به عنوان راه حل بپذیرد. کسی که از جنگ داخلی گریزان است، باید مخالفت را کنار بگذارد و حکومت دیکتاتوری را بپذیرد."
حزب منکر ارادهی فرد بود و در عین حال از او توقع داشت که داوطلبانه خود را قربانی کند؛ منکر توانایی انتخاب او بین دو راه متفاوت بود و در عین حال از او میخواست که همواره راه درست را انتخاب کند؛ منکر توانایی او در تشخیص خوب از بد بود و در عین حال به طرز رقت انگیزی از گن��ه و خیانت سخن میگفت. فرد در معرض مصائب اقتصادی بود؛ چرخی بود در میان چرخ و دنده های کوکی که یکسره تا ابدیت کوک شده بود و حرکتش را نمیشد متوقف کرد یا بر آن تاثیر گذاشت و حزب میخواست که این چرخ بر آن کوک شورش کند و مسیر حرکتش را تغییر دهد. یک جای این محاسبه اشتباه بود؛ این معادله درست از کار درنمی آمد.
August 26, 2022
This book is oddly relevant to the current political climate of our world. As I have been trying my best to escape that over the past few years, maybe this book was not the best one to read right now!
However, it is a very interesting and thought-provoking book with the theater of politics at its core. Friends become enemies and enemies become friends all depending on which leader is saying what is right and what is wrong at the time. We watch one of the fathers of a political philosophy become one of its victims as a new rank of ideas comes to power. In the process, he becomes jailed with the very people he was responsible for putting there. Also, people he knows become guilty by association even though they really haven’t done anything at all.
Really it is all just one big chess match where nothing has really changed except for perceptions and which people decide which ideas are going to be executed. It would almost be funny if it is not so scary in its consequences.
4 stars for this interesting exploration into political folly. But not something to read if you don’t want to be frustrated and possibly angered by the futility of people killing each other over who has the “right” political idea at the time.
However, it is a very interesting and thought-provoking book with the theater of politics at its core. Friends become enemies and enemies become friends all depending on which leader is saying what is right and what is wrong at the time. We watch one of the fathers of a political philosophy become one of its victims as a new rank of ideas comes to power. In the process, he becomes jailed with the very people he was responsible for putting there. Also, people he knows become guilty by association even though they really haven’t done anything at all.
Really it is all just one big chess match where nothing has really changed except for perceptions and which people decide which ideas are going to be executed. It would almost be funny if it is not so scary in its consequences.
4 stars for this interesting exploration into political folly. But not something to read if you don’t want to be frustrated and possibly angered by the futility of people killing each other over who has the “right” political idea at the time.
August 9, 2018
Nothing is worse in prison than the consciousness of one's innocence; it prevents acclimatization and undermines one's morale...
Comrade Rubashov has been arrested. But this is nothing. He's been around this block before. He knows, for instance, this truth about the consciousness of innocence - as the unseen man in the neighboring cell clearly does not. The unseen man who taps at the pipe...who is in many ways not unlike the conscience Comrade Rubashov put into storage some forty years before; the internal saboteur he's energetically barred from congress with the rest of his psyche; the empathetic weakness that tap-tap-taps so foolishly against the hardened steel of his intellect's door. It's a tap-tap-tap one indulges, but fails to politically profit by.
Koestler's classic, Darkness at Noon, follows the aging Rubashov through the days and nights of this imprisonment. His time on the political stage is coming to a close. His peers within the regime, once lions of Communist might, have been picked off by the younger cubs of the Revolutionary State. Philosophical Neanderthals, he calls them, and yet they are the future. And in the weeks that follow we will watch him come to terms with this reality in the same manner, it has long been suspected, Arthur Koestler was forced to come to terms with his own socialist past. It is a stark and unforgiving light he shines on Communist Party politics. When coupled with the blinding pain of a man whose incarceration shifts, splits and mutates through the physical, the intellectual, the emotional...well, let's just say I thought the comparisons to Kafka and Dostoevsky were both accurate and deserved.
Comrade Rubashov has been arrested. But this is nothing. He's been around this block before. He knows, for instance, this truth about the consciousness of innocence - as the unseen man in the neighboring cell clearly does not. The unseen man who taps at the pipe...who is in many ways not unlike the conscience Comrade Rubashov put into storage some forty years before; the internal saboteur he's energetically barred from congress with the rest of his psyche; the empathetic weakness that tap-tap-taps so foolishly against the hardened steel of his intellect's door. It's a tap-tap-tap one indulges, but fails to politically profit by.
Koestler's classic, Darkness at Noon, follows the aging Rubashov through the days and nights of this imprisonment. His time on the political stage is coming to a close. His peers within the regime, once lions of Communist might, have been picked off by the younger cubs of the Revolutionary State. Philosophical Neanderthals, he calls them, and yet they are the future. And in the weeks that follow we will watch him come to terms with this reality in the same manner, it has long been suspected, Arthur Koestler was forced to come to terms with his own socialist past. It is a stark and unforgiving light he shines on Communist Party politics. When coupled with the blinding pain of a man whose incarceration shifts, splits and mutates through the physical, the intellectual, the emotional...well, let's just say I thought the comparisons to Kafka and Dostoevsky were both accurate and deserved.
April 23, 2023
به هنگام نیمروز، ظلمت همه جا را فرا گرفت و تا ساعت ۳ بعدازظهر ادامه یافت. در این وقت عیسی با صدای بلند فریاد زد: ایلوئی، ایلوئی لماسبقتنی؟
این فرازی است از انجیل. ظلمت در نیمروز اصطلاحی است سیاسی که از کتاب عهدین گرفته شده و به موقعیتی اطلاق میشود که در آن کسی به گناه ناکرده دم تیغ برود.
کتاب اسمی از زمان و مکان نمیبره اما مشخصا در مورد شوروی و پاکسازی بزرگ استالین هست که در اون بسیاری از مخالفین و بلشویکهای اولیه رو به دادگاههای نمایشی کشوندن و با اعترافهای اجباری و اعدام از دم تیغ گذروندن. داستان از جایی شروع میشه که یکی از اعضای اصلی که همیشه عکسش کنار شخص اول بوده دستگیر میشه و اونجا مورد بازجویی و شکنجه قرار میگیره و ضمن این به کارهایی که کرده در این مدت فکر میکنه و افرادی که باهاشون در ارتباط بوده و به چیزی که مدتها بهش اعتقاد داشته، اصول حزب.
یک رمان سیاسی خیلی خوب و در نقد کمونیسم و دروغهایی که به خورد جامعه داد و اینکه هدف وسیله و مسیر رو توجیه نخواهد کرد.ه
این فرازی است از انجیل. ظلمت در نیمروز اصطلاحی است سیاسی که از کتاب عهدین گرفته شده و به موقعیتی اطلاق میشود که در آن کسی به گناه ناکرده دم تیغ برود.
کتاب اسمی از زمان و مکان نمیبره اما مشخصا در مورد شوروی و پاکسازی بزرگ استالین هست که در اون بسیاری از مخالفین و بلشویکهای اولیه رو به دادگاههای نمایشی کشوندن و با اعترافهای اجباری و اعدام از دم تیغ گذروندن. داستان از جایی شروع میشه که یکی از اعضای اصلی که همیشه عکسش کنار شخص اول بوده دستگیر میشه و اونجا مورد بازجویی و شکنجه قرار میگیره و ضمن این به کارهایی که کرده در این مدت فکر میکنه و افرادی که باهاشون در ارتباط بوده و به چیزی که مدتها بهش اعتقاد داشته، اصول حزب.
یک رمان سیاسی خیلی خوب و در نقد کمونیسم و دروغهایی که به خورد جامعه داد و اینکه هدف وسیله و مسیر رو توجیه نخواهد کرد.ه
June 27, 2015
Darkness at Noon is one of the classics of anti-totalitarian literature, often mentioned alongside novels such as Brave New World and 1984. While both these novels are fictions based on an idea of a totalitarian state, Darkness at Noon is a clear allegory of Soviet Russia during the 1930's - the time of the Moscow show trials and the Great Purge.
Although the author openly acknowledges this in the preface, the country in which the book is set is never named - though he includes specific details regarding it, so there never is any doubt. Character are less people than ideas and themes they represent - the main protagonist, Rubashov, is an amalgamation of all of the Old Bolsheviks who were persecuted by Stalin in the 30's. The plot focuses on Rubashov's imprisonment in an unnamed facility, his interaction with fellow inmates and ongoing interrogation. Koestler does a great job with presenting a convincing portrait of a man trying to endure oppression and isolation - he apparently drew inspiration from his own experiences from Spain, where he was imprisoned by Franco's forces during the civil war.
It is interesting to note that contrary to many protagonists of anti-totalitarian novels, Rubashov is not an ordinary and innocent citizen persecuted by the overwhelming regime - he is one of the people who have actively participated in bringing this very regime into being, causing suffering and misery for fellow citizens along the way. This question begins to haunt Rubashov - what, exactly, is he fighting for? What is the weight of individual human life when measured against a possibility of prosperity and contentment for generations to come? Can we sacrifice tens, thousands and even millions of such lives if we will ultimately eliminate suffering for all in the future? Does the nobility of the goal excuse the means used to obtain it, and sacrifices required by it? While we might sympathize with Rubashov because of how he is treated and the conditions that he is in, we must also remember that he is reaping exactly what he has sown with his own hands - something that he begins to understand and ultimately accept throughout the novel.
It is also important to see the book in its historical context. At the time of publication (1940), it was not uncommon to find many foreigners who were sympathetic to Stalin and his rule of the Soviet Union, praising his achievements of industrializing the country and bettering life for his people - and either ignoring what reports there were of his tyranny, or excusing them as historically inevitable. One of the more famous examples is the American journalist and correspondent for the New York Times Walter Duranty, who in the 1930's not only tried to justify Stalin's government but openly denounced in his reporting that any famine was taking place in the Ukraine - a result of Stalin's policy of collectivizing agriculture, which took several million lives in an area with some of the world's richest farmland. Many other foreigners - both intellectuals who never worked physically in their life, and laborers who never rested - romanticized the Soviet Union, in which they saw hope for a real and viable alternative to the unfair capitalist order - their memories of the Great Depression were still fresh and strong - but, unlike Duranty, they believed in the ideas of fairness, equality and prosperity for all, which the Soviet government claimed to stand for; as they learned of how a real revolution was hijacked and twisted into a totalitarian nightmare, they denounced it. Walter Duranty was fully aware of the fact that hunger victims could have extended well into millions, but nonetheless continued to report that there was no famine - did he believe in the Soviet vision? Did he believe that Stalin's actions were justified by what he claimed to be his intent - an utopia? Inexplicably, one can find people with views very similar to his decades after Stalin's policy was proven to be a deadly failure, ready to defend him and excuse his actions. What are they defending? A paradise which never arrived?
Koehler's book has the distinction of being probably the first book of fiction to address Stalin's brand of totalitarianism almost by name - but in historical context it puts it slightly below novels 1984 and Brave New World, as it is inseparably tied to one particular regime and period in history which has since been analyzed by countless scholars - while both Orwell and Huxley had visions of future for the entire world. Still, it is certainly worth reading if you are at all interested in the topic of an individual living in a totalitarian system - and I also have to absolutely recommend Czesław Miłosz's The Captive Mind, which is a terrific analysis of the very topic and has the bonus of being non-fiction.
Although the author openly acknowledges this in the preface, the country in which the book is set is never named - though he includes specific details regarding it, so there never is any doubt. Character are less people than ideas and themes they represent - the main protagonist, Rubashov, is an amalgamation of all of the Old Bolsheviks who were persecuted by Stalin in the 30's. The plot focuses on Rubashov's imprisonment in an unnamed facility, his interaction with fellow inmates and ongoing interrogation. Koestler does a great job with presenting a convincing portrait of a man trying to endure oppression and isolation - he apparently drew inspiration from his own experiences from Spain, where he was imprisoned by Franco's forces during the civil war.
It is interesting to note that contrary to many protagonists of anti-totalitarian novels, Rubashov is not an ordinary and innocent citizen persecuted by the overwhelming regime - he is one of the people who have actively participated in bringing this very regime into being, causing suffering and misery for fellow citizens along the way. This question begins to haunt Rubashov - what, exactly, is he fighting for? What is the weight of individual human life when measured against a possibility of prosperity and contentment for generations to come? Can we sacrifice tens, thousands and even millions of such lives if we will ultimately eliminate suffering for all in the future? Does the nobility of the goal excuse the means used to obtain it, and sacrifices required by it? While we might sympathize with Rubashov because of how he is treated and the conditions that he is in, we must also remember that he is reaping exactly what he has sown with his own hands - something that he begins to understand and ultimately accept throughout the novel.
It is also important to see the book in its historical context. At the time of publication (1940), it was not uncommon to find many foreigners who were sympathetic to Stalin and his rule of the Soviet Union, praising his achievements of industrializing the country and bettering life for his people - and either ignoring what reports there were of his tyranny, or excusing them as historically inevitable. One of the more famous examples is the American journalist and correspondent for the New York Times Walter Duranty, who in the 1930's not only tried to justify Stalin's government but openly denounced in his reporting that any famine was taking place in the Ukraine - a result of Stalin's policy of collectivizing agriculture, which took several million lives in an area with some of the world's richest farmland. Many other foreigners - both intellectuals who never worked physically in their life, and laborers who never rested - romanticized the Soviet Union, in which they saw hope for a real and viable alternative to the unfair capitalist order - their memories of the Great Depression were still fresh and strong - but, unlike Duranty, they believed in the ideas of fairness, equality and prosperity for all, which the Soviet government claimed to stand for; as they learned of how a real revolution was hijacked and twisted into a totalitarian nightmare, they denounced it. Walter Duranty was fully aware of the fact that hunger victims could have extended well into millions, but nonetheless continued to report that there was no famine - did he believe in the Soviet vision? Did he believe that Stalin's actions were justified by what he claimed to be his intent - an utopia? Inexplicably, one can find people with views very similar to his decades after Stalin's policy was proven to be a deadly failure, ready to defend him and excuse his actions. What are they defending? A paradise which never arrived?
Koehler's book has the distinction of being probably the first book of fiction to address Stalin's brand of totalitarianism almost by name - but in historical context it puts it slightly below novels 1984 and Brave New World, as it is inseparably tied to one particular regime and period in history which has since been analyzed by countless scholars - while both Orwell and Huxley had visions of future for the entire world. Still, it is certainly worth reading if you are at all interested in the topic of an individual living in a totalitarian system - and I also have to absolutely recommend Czesław Miłosz's The Captive Mind, which is a terrific analysis of the very topic and has the bonus of being non-fiction.
July 10, 2019
Written in the 1930's as Stalin purged the previous politburo members, Darkness at Noon offers a taste of the dark dreary Soviet world where the truth changes depending on who is now in power. In a visionary passage, there is talk about how the books were purged from the library and how the job would only be complete if they had taken the old newspapers and changed the news of the day. Other passages are eerie as well as the individual will is subordinated to the will of the party, whatever that will presently is. For those who think that socialism is paradise, this story is an abrupt awakening. Ultimately it may start out as well-meaning but it becomes all about power.
The protagonist has been a party member his whole life, once important, now that tastes has changed, he is accused of being a traitor. And he is Imprisoned along with thousands of other political prisoners, each one by one walked down the hall to confess their sins before execution.
Not a normal structured novel. It traces the descent from party boss to prisoner to turncoat to conviction. Dark, haunting, a society been turned upside down. Republished with a new translation based on the original newly discovered manuscript. A classic that is being rediscovered.
The protagonist has been a party member his whole life, once important, now that tastes has changed, he is accused of being a traitor. And he is Imprisoned along with thousands of other political prisoners, each one by one walked down the hall to confess their sins before execution.
Not a normal structured novel. It traces the descent from party boss to prisoner to turncoat to conviction. Dark, haunting, a society been turned upside down. Republished with a new translation based on the original newly discovered manuscript. A classic that is being rediscovered.
April 11, 2009
At the end of 1984 Winston Smith asks O'Brien why the party acts the way it does. His answer always pissed me off: "Power for power's sake." That's not an explanation. That's a tautological cop out. It's like Orwell was content to warn us about what a totalitarian state would look like without exploring more deeply why it got there. Thanks George.
Darkness at Noon explores this question more fully and in a more honest way. According to Koestler the Soviets were basically a bunch of Raskolnikovs. They believed it right to commit atrocious acts in the name of an idea, namely scientific socialism. They believed the people of their own time would not accept this idea (because they have been shaped by socioeconomic conditions to consider morality which leads inevitably to the status quo, which is slavery) but future generations would see the rightness of their acts. Rubashov, the protagonist, can't see a middle way between considerations of decency and morality and the logic and reason of the Revolution, so he must choose either to betray his principles or go along with his own physical destruction. This is a much more interesting situation than what we're given in 1984, with its shallow Manichean setup.
Darkness at Noon explores this question more fully and in a more honest way. According to Koestler the Soviets were basically a bunch of Raskolnikovs. They believed it right to commit atrocious acts in the name of an idea, namely scientific socialism. They believed the people of their own time would not accept this idea (because they have been shaped by socioeconomic conditions to consider morality which leads inevitably to the status quo, which is slavery) but future generations would see the rightness of their acts. Rubashov, the protagonist, can't see a middle way between considerations of decency and morality and the logic and reason of the Revolution, so he must choose either to betray his principles or go along with his own physical destruction. This is a much more interesting situation than what we're given in 1984, with its shallow Manichean setup.
December 16, 2023
A masterpiece of world literature, this novel takes a necessary look at Soviet, particularly Stalinist totalitarianism. The little father of the people has killed or had killed more men than Hitler, a sad record that does not forgive the previous one. Based on facts extracted from reality, this novel explains the lack of value of man in totalitarian systems that annihilate him in the name of a so-called cause, which is often none other than the priority of their interests.
March 4, 2024
Was reading this earlier and chatting with Ted about it. He asked me how it was, and I said that I was struggling through it. Not because it’s bad at all. It’s a great novel. My rationale then was that I just wasn’t in the mood. Then days went by, and I would constantly not be “in the mood”. Can it be just the mood? A bit of digging and I think I got it. I don’t know if the mood is a state-like, temporary feeling. I think the mood is similar to the slow, moving-through-molasses quality I was experiencing with The Grapes of Wrath. The things contained in the book are not really a removed fictional adventure for me. I am familiar with the sentiments and I know people in real life that it applies to. With the Steinbeck novel, it was my own experience. With this one, it is the experience of parents, family, and native country folk.
2022 and into 2023 (and even into 2024). Iran. Not a communist story, like Koestler’s book. But the rest holds up. Propaganda. Kangaroo courts. Sham hearings. Executions at will and forced confessions under duress, after months of psychological and physical torture. Not fun to experience in real life and not “fun” to read about either. But important. And necessary.
2022 and into 2023 (and even into 2024). Iran. Not a communist story, like Koestler’s book. But the rest holds up. Propaganda. Kangaroo courts. Sham hearings. Executions at will and forced confessions under duress, after months of psychological and physical torture. Not fun to experience in real life and not “fun” to read about either. But important. And necessary.
November 28, 2018
من نسخهٔ کوتاه شدهٔ کتاب رو که برای رادیو تنظیم شده بود گوش دادم. اما اون قدر خوب بود که می خوام کاملش رو هم بخونم.
May 24, 2020
Arthur Koestler, through this tale, does a fine job explaining the sacrifices, accompanied with labyrinthine lies, necessary to sustain and propel a totalitarian regime. This might all feel ethereally remote, until, one day, you or I are sacrificed, at which point all becomes both immediate and very much lost. Living, as I do, in a nation with the highest incarceration rate per capita, it appears necessary sacrifice may be required even in a cherished democracy, a thought I believe Michel Foucault promoted in Discipline and Punish.
While much has been written regarding perverse totalitarian environments, Mr. Koestler published his work at the outbreak of the Second World War, which, I think, makes him a groundbreaking author.
While much has been written regarding perverse totalitarian environments, Mr. Koestler published his work at the outbreak of the Second World War, which, I think, makes him a groundbreaking author.
March 7, 2014
A best friend with different literary tastes than myself recommended a book. An historian buff he reported this psychological, political rendered piece of fiction as his all time favorite. A friendship of many years deserves its many sacrifices. A bit of time seemed small. Maybe many of us here at GR have been in this situation. A small amount of time sacrificed does not only mean plowing instead of the grace of reading but also not getting the time for the next book we have been waiting to read. Books are not like people. They cannot be predicted to react with the same molecular DNA strands of emotional combustion or lack of. When finally gotten to they are tired of waiting, have moved on to another partner. Wasted in waiting they curl drooping in boredom, recalcitrant, slouched, flat-faced. There is always the chance it may be the opposite and the passing of time may heighten the books appeal and rendering. It may be at its best and show itself as it always imagined. But this is not predictable as it sits in wait, as we in our steady plow continue.
I don't like books of fact, history, political anthems. I bought a used copy with a GPS decoy to find its own way back to an Amazon warehouse when finished. This was helpful. But, what was I going to say to my kind friend? Repeat the book's flat facts and smile? It's called a conundrum, isn't it? Book Lover's Problem. BPL.
Okay, I could say that this political, historical book was a searing, scorching, dive into time's passage, its traumatic effect on the equilibrium of human beings inhabiting this burning planet. But I didn't think it would help my book-in-waiting at all. Though it would help build myself up for what a good person I was to do all this.
What then though to say about the words vanishing? Some kind of practical joke? Who the hell gives a friend a book with no words. I'm supposed to, what, make them up or imagine them? That's what I did, not given any choice, I imagined. The next thing I knew I was confused, waking to two officers by my bed reporting they were arresting me. One older and reverent, the young kid full of his vigor and authority. People still called me Sir. My story will be written in other places before it is spoken here.They will give the usual reasons eventually. How quickly they forget my being tortured in other countries and not giving up a word. When released I returned home to cheering crowds. On crutches still, on a stage my words to them resounded loudly about the importance of the Revolution. There was no more "I". Everything we do is for the Revolutionary Party. Everything we receive is to help the Party. We devote our entire lives to the Party's program which has been thought out by the smartest men with their powers of reason to the furthest possible moment of calculation. There is no, "I". It's appeal for devotion, to forever change the future is possessive. Answers all questions.
The guy who is reading this seems like a nice enough a guy but clearly isn't ready to give up his guy-ship. He is recalling. He has no idea what power as a character in this story I have over him in this cell, he over me. With each person reading me I am somewhat invented according to their needs. Theirs to mine. It is my lot. This one is filled with jitters. He is older. Even though he speaks it, dresses himself up for it, he isn't quite clear he wants to reevaluate the history of his life and pass a new judgement on it. Perhaps he was wrong? Freeing the African Americans, Women, from the tight straps preventing them their civil rights in a democracy. He saw a war stopped, cities set afire, government buildings taken over. Seeing the possibilities of creating a democracy formed within a democracy in name only. The Revolution became lost under the blurred shadows of capitalism's fear, the revolutionaries aging into the cowardice of security, the message subsumed within the culture. The Causes though continued. The strength of African Americans and Women have not wavered. The difference between then and now is remarkable. More so is the new generations coming of age could care less what happened then. Rightfully they want more of what is just and fair. They show an historic endurance. Their movements shall continue without the need for a revolutionary party. Within them is strength.
If you initially reader radically succeeded what would you have invented? Possibly the future cut and fragmented? How important might it be to consolidate power so your message, obviously right, could continue. At some point without self awareness or confession justify the means to the perfect end? Believe your knowledge superseded the people who no longer understood? Evolve into a tyranny before the word was ever mentioned?
Close this book my friend. You would be simply retreading history, believing what you were doing was the first time it was ever done. Your passion steamed through you unequaled by anything before. The present was your God, the future unexamined. The impatience of seeing the way towards light is a slow burn, unheeded in your fervor.
So, I returned to my country in every way the revolutionary hero. I joined the party in early adolescence. Forty faithful years committed to the dream. I was made head of a department. Met with number one whose poster hung on every wall. The photo of the great revolutionaries also hung included myself though there was no self. Reason only existed, made my decisions. Some had to die if their thoughts, actions, tastes, preferences, in any way showed any threat to the party's stability, the eventuality of the dreamed for world. Importance was meted out on the balance of a scale, my friend, that considered the parties mission. If reason were to be consulted-and it was-then it was the best overall for the people even though they could not see it. The uncountable number that must die-even my lover according to my own command-starve, be imprisoned, suffer the unspeakable agonies of torture were necessary sacrifices, obvious according to logic. They were not people, not individuals. Decisions were made according to the irrefutable plan based on irrefutable logic and reason. This is where all other revolutions failed. Ours was the only one set to last.
What happened my friend was our not calculating into the equation that future generations were to proceed us. They had not the intimate experience of what our revolution, what I, needed to fight against. Soon we original revolutionaries were considered old guard, decadent, of little use. But more so, and think about this now that you are reading this old miserable used copy of this book and I feel the crackle of the binding splitting all around me, that I and my colleagues, the way we thought, were now counter revolutionary thinkers. There was no room for us in the Party. We needed to be removed like the others so the party could go on. Our photo decked in proud uniforms was removed.
You should have bought a new copy. Have this message read and reread. It does not lighten with time. Time passed slowly as I paced my cell, six feet in one direction nine the other. The taste of fear darkened my tongue. Thoughts, thinking, distributed an "I" through my weary weakened mind, body. You cannot know. A new copy would have been better. It became apparent even before my arrest that I doubted. How could I not. If there was any clarity, what we fought for vanished. The Party reeked of its need to consolidate and maintain its own power. The lies, rewriting of history, were built upon and reinforced in a dizzying circular motion, justifying every move. Now, and how was it to be done, I was to disavow everything I had lived my life for, everything I had so irrefutably believed. The progress which sat before us. Attached to that, to each of my steps of pacing the cell, were the people I sent for torture, the people I sent to death. My irrefutable wrongness with no way now for redemption. Even the woman I made love to so many times whose scent hung about me in this small cell.
A code of knocking against the common wall to the adjacent cell was known to all. But who to trust? The banal conversations did break the solitude at times. In the multitude of days passing there was even a semblance of a friendship. But it could all be a setup, a further testing.
I want to thank you now for reading more openly reader allowing me as a character to open further. Maybe we both are learning things we didn't know we knew.
When someone from our small corridor of cells was to be next to be tortured or executed word passed furiously through the walls. Messages of fear. Membership in an unspoken community. I participated. It felt as a necessity. When finally they were dragged down the hall, past the small eye hole where guards observed us, where we could see the small riveted space of the hall, all of us prisoners beat on our doors creating a dirge of protest, helpless incurable writhe. Every minute I waited for the guards to appear at my door, for it to be me. I began to write to make sense of it all. A few days further and I learned the next to be executed was a friend of mine. Not unlike you reader and your friend of years who you thought you would read this book for and now finding it a much different experience. I feel for you since it is so difficult, maybe painful for me to feel for myself. He was dragged by the arms head first his feet skimming behind. Blood oozed from open wounds. Salt-spit drooled from his mouth to the floor. As he passed my door he looked up, called out my name. Called out my name. His last words. They were never people I ordered to be exterminated. They were obstacles against reason and the future, statistics and numbers ordered into straight columns. They had not bodies, hair, eyes, a mouth filled with saliva and screams, something called a soul. My lover whose extermination I rightfully ordered thus too was dragged down a hallway bloodied and spewing? Whose skin I caressed and scent still hovered about me?
What have I done? But I did it for the party? You…you may not choose to read any more my friend. The book will last with some care. Maybe it is not for the best for you to read to the end. I am not sure it was good for either of us to come this far. Is it of use to understand that it is within each of our grasp?
I don't like books of fact, history, political anthems. I bought a used copy with a GPS decoy to find its own way back to an Amazon warehouse when finished. This was helpful. But, what was I going to say to my kind friend? Repeat the book's flat facts and smile? It's called a conundrum, isn't it? Book Lover's Problem. BPL.
Okay, I could say that this political, historical book was a searing, scorching, dive into time's passage, its traumatic effect on the equilibrium of human beings inhabiting this burning planet. But I didn't think it would help my book-in-waiting at all. Though it would help build myself up for what a good person I was to do all this.
What then though to say about the words vanishing? Some kind of practical joke? Who the hell gives a friend a book with no words. I'm supposed to, what, make them up or imagine them? That's what I did, not given any choice, I imagined. The next thing I knew I was confused, waking to two officers by my bed reporting they were arresting me. One older and reverent, the young kid full of his vigor and authority. People still called me Sir. My story will be written in other places before it is spoken here.They will give the usual reasons eventually. How quickly they forget my being tortured in other countries and not giving up a word. When released I returned home to cheering crowds. On crutches still, on a stage my words to them resounded loudly about the importance of the Revolution. There was no more "I". Everything we do is for the Revolutionary Party. Everything we receive is to help the Party. We devote our entire lives to the Party's program which has been thought out by the smartest men with their powers of reason to the furthest possible moment of calculation. There is no, "I". It's appeal for devotion, to forever change the future is possessive. Answers all questions.
The guy who is reading this seems like a nice enough a guy but clearly isn't ready to give up his guy-ship. He is recalling. He has no idea what power as a character in this story I have over him in this cell, he over me. With each person reading me I am somewhat invented according to their needs. Theirs to mine. It is my lot. This one is filled with jitters. He is older. Even though he speaks it, dresses himself up for it, he isn't quite clear he wants to reevaluate the history of his life and pass a new judgement on it. Perhaps he was wrong? Freeing the African Americans, Women, from the tight straps preventing them their civil rights in a democracy. He saw a war stopped, cities set afire, government buildings taken over. Seeing the possibilities of creating a democracy formed within a democracy in name only. The Revolution became lost under the blurred shadows of capitalism's fear, the revolutionaries aging into the cowardice of security, the message subsumed within the culture. The Causes though continued. The strength of African Americans and Women have not wavered. The difference between then and now is remarkable. More so is the new generations coming of age could care less what happened then. Rightfully they want more of what is just and fair. They show an historic endurance. Their movements shall continue without the need for a revolutionary party. Within them is strength.
If you initially reader radically succeeded what would you have invented? Possibly the future cut and fragmented? How important might it be to consolidate power so your message, obviously right, could continue. At some point without self awareness or confession justify the means to the perfect end? Believe your knowledge superseded the people who no longer understood? Evolve into a tyranny before the word was ever mentioned?
Close this book my friend. You would be simply retreading history, believing what you were doing was the first time it was ever done. Your passion steamed through you unequaled by anything before. The present was your God, the future unexamined. The impatience of seeing the way towards light is a slow burn, unheeded in your fervor.
So, I returned to my country in every way the revolutionary hero. I joined the party in early adolescence. Forty faithful years committed to the dream. I was made head of a department. Met with number one whose poster hung on every wall. The photo of the great revolutionaries also hung included myself though there was no self. Reason only existed, made my decisions. Some had to die if their thoughts, actions, tastes, preferences, in any way showed any threat to the party's stability, the eventuality of the dreamed for world. Importance was meted out on the balance of a scale, my friend, that considered the parties mission. If reason were to be consulted-and it was-then it was the best overall for the people even though they could not see it. The uncountable number that must die-even my lover according to my own command-starve, be imprisoned, suffer the unspeakable agonies of torture were necessary sacrifices, obvious according to logic. They were not people, not individuals. Decisions were made according to the irrefutable plan based on irrefutable logic and reason. This is where all other revolutions failed. Ours was the only one set to last.
What happened my friend was our not calculating into the equation that future generations were to proceed us. They had not the intimate experience of what our revolution, what I, needed to fight against. Soon we original revolutionaries were considered old guard, decadent, of little use. But more so, and think about this now that you are reading this old miserable used copy of this book and I feel the crackle of the binding splitting all around me, that I and my colleagues, the way we thought, were now counter revolutionary thinkers. There was no room for us in the Party. We needed to be removed like the others so the party could go on. Our photo decked in proud uniforms was removed.
You should have bought a new copy. Have this message read and reread. It does not lighten with time. Time passed slowly as I paced my cell, six feet in one direction nine the other. The taste of fear darkened my tongue. Thoughts, thinking, distributed an "I" through my weary weakened mind, body. You cannot know. A new copy would have been better. It became apparent even before my arrest that I doubted. How could I not. If there was any clarity, what we fought for vanished. The Party reeked of its need to consolidate and maintain its own power. The lies, rewriting of history, were built upon and reinforced in a dizzying circular motion, justifying every move. Now, and how was it to be done, I was to disavow everything I had lived my life for, everything I had so irrefutably believed. The progress which sat before us. Attached to that, to each of my steps of pacing the cell, were the people I sent for torture, the people I sent to death. My irrefutable wrongness with no way now for redemption. Even the woman I made love to so many times whose scent hung about me in this small cell.
A code of knocking against the common wall to the adjacent cell was known to all. But who to trust? The banal conversations did break the solitude at times. In the multitude of days passing there was even a semblance of a friendship. But it could all be a setup, a further testing.
I want to thank you now for reading more openly reader allowing me as a character to open further. Maybe we both are learning things we didn't know we knew.
When someone from our small corridor of cells was to be next to be tortured or executed word passed furiously through the walls. Messages of fear. Membership in an unspoken community. I participated. It felt as a necessity. When finally they were dragged down the hall, past the small eye hole where guards observed us, where we could see the small riveted space of the hall, all of us prisoners beat on our doors creating a dirge of protest, helpless incurable writhe. Every minute I waited for the guards to appear at my door, for it to be me. I began to write to make sense of it all. A few days further and I learned the next to be executed was a friend of mine. Not unlike you reader and your friend of years who you thought you would read this book for and now finding it a much different experience. I feel for you since it is so difficult, maybe painful for me to feel for myself. He was dragged by the arms head first his feet skimming behind. Blood oozed from open wounds. Salt-spit drooled from his mouth to the floor. As he passed my door he looked up, called out my name. Called out my name. His last words. They were never people I ordered to be exterminated. They were obstacles against reason and the future, statistics and numbers ordered into straight columns. They had not bodies, hair, eyes, a mouth filled with saliva and screams, something called a soul. My lover whose extermination I rightfully ordered thus too was dragged down a hallway bloodied and spewing? Whose skin I caressed and scent still hovered about me?
What have I done? But I did it for the party? You…you may not choose to read any more my friend. The book will last with some care. Maybe it is not for the best for you to read to the end. I am not sure it was good for either of us to come this far. Is it of use to understand that it is within each of our grasp?
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