Darkness at Noon
I first read Arthur Koestler's masterpiece, Darkness at Noon, when I was too young fully to understand it. I was perhaps fourteen, and how can a fourteen-year-old grasp what such a book really means?
I picked up a copy of of the book at a flea market long ago; it had been on my shelf, unread, for ages. Yesterday, rushing out to embark on a long boat ride, I grabbed it off the shelf. I began reading in the taxi, and quickly became so absorbed that I barely noticed the boat ride, barely looked up at the sea and the glowing Bosphorus skyline.
I see now what I didn't see as a teenager: This is an unrivaled masterpiece; as a novel it is more accomplished than 1984. Rubashov is immensely more complicated and interesting a character than Winston Smith. It's the work of a complete master of the novelistic form, someone who uses to great effect every device and technique the novel permits. It's flawless. It is also deeply troubling.
It would be good for it to be translated into Turkish: It might succeed, when reason fails, in suggesting that the Ergenekon prosecutions have a distinct historic precedent.
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Jul '10
Re: Darkness at Noon
I read it when I was in my early 'teens and again in my 30's. One truly feels the extinguishment of a soul under the weight of tyranny - the hopeless, hollow blackness of evil and oppression.
Nov '10
Re: Darkness at Noon
I felt the same way when I first watched Bill Cosby: Himself as a grown-up.
Jan '11
Re: Darkness at Noon
Kafka gives me quite enough vicarious misery, thank you, and cleverly written they are, too.
Apr '11
Re: Darkness at Noon
A left-leaning history instructor made us read this when I was in Bible college. Best reading assignment ever. I still remember the protagonist describing his wonderment at how he, and other fellow travelers, had gone from men who wanted to stick up for the oppressed to being the oppressors (my loose recollection). He realized that the idealists had become that which they had once opposed. An amazing novel.
Jun '10
Re: Darkness at Noon
I just read this a few months ago and was profoundly moved by it. I was especially intrigued by the communication between Rubashov and his neighbor in prison. It was the perfect description of a person trapped in a world he wanted to believe in despite all evidence against it. The face off between Rubashov and Gletkin was a masterpiece and it ended in just the way a blind, totalitarian system always will. It does remind me that I should still read 1984 and Animal Farm again since I was rather young when I read them. Age and wisdom always help.
Sep '10
Re: Darkness at Noon
Readers may also want to look at Shusaku Endo's Silence.
Jun '10
Re: Darkness at Noon
You can never impose your own brand of utopia without imposing hellish despair on somebody. The range of what human beings want is just too great. Utopia is for farm animals. Humans need freedom.
Sep '10
Re: Darkness at Noon
Four Island Utopias
Re: Darkness at Noon
That first scene of prison-tapping is one of the great passages of 20th century literature.
Jun '10
Re: Darkness at Noon
Claire Berlinski, Ed.
That first scene of prison-tapping is one of the great passages of 20th century literature. · May 22 at 9:19pm
Exactly. It's great when someone else gets the same things, you know?
Jul '10
Re: Darkness at Noon
It's a pity that the film Stalin, starring Robert Duvall, is no longer available on tape or DVD.
There is a chilling scene in which Grigory Zinoviev, having been promised by Stalin that he and his family would be spared if he signed a confession, is yanked from his cell by Lavrenti Beria and two NKVD guards. As Zinoviev is dragged down a long corridor, Beria makes sure he looks up at a catwalk above, where his wife and son, half-naked and battered, are being marched to their cells.
Zinoviev and his warders come to a dark chamber, where the guards force him to his knees as Beria unholsters his revolver.
"Wait!," Zinoviev pleads, "Call Comrade Stalin! Call Comrade Stalin! Comrade Stalin promised!"
Putting his pistol to the nape of Zinoviev's neck, Beria smiles and says, "Comrade Stalin has withdrawn his promise...."
Edited on May 23, 2011 at 8:58amJul '10
Re: Darkness at Noon
Wow, I haven't thought about this book in years. I had to read this in college as part of a Poli Sci course. Looks like I need to read it again!
Mar '11
Re: Darkness at Noon
Kenneth:
"Wait!," Zinoviev pleads, "Call Comrade Stalin! Call Comrade Stalin! Comrade Stalin promised!"
I think the Boeing management is going through something similar.
Or is it AARP?
Mar '11
Re: Darkness at Noon
That's too bad.
Jul '10
Re: Darkness at Noon
David Williamson
Kenneth:
"Wait!," Zinoviev pleads, "Call Comrade Stalin! Call Comrade Stalin! Comrade Stalin promised!"
I think the Boeing management is going through something similar.
Or is it AARP? · May 22 at 9:52pm
Maybe it's Obama's youth vote...
Jul '10
Re: Darkness at Noon
By the way, if you want to read the non-fiction equivalent of Darkness at Noon, get your hands on Against all Hope, Armando Valladares' memoir of 22 years in Castro's prisons.
The French don't often get much right, but eventually Francois Mitterand prevailed upon Castro to release Valladares from his torment, which included, for two years' time, being submerged up to his neck in a pit full of sewage.
Aug '10
Re: Darkness at Noon
I read it years ago, but just today read of its historical impact in "The Anti-Communist Manifestos" by John Fleming which provides a fascinating insight into the doctrinaire Communist mind, as well as the mindset of French intellectuals in the 1940s. "Darkness at Noon" roiled the Party post WWII when it finally attracted attention. Koestler had had the bad luck of first publishing on the very eve of war. For Turkish residents, "Manifestos" is available on Kindle. It also covers the reactions to "Out of the Night," "I Chose Freedom" and "Witness."
Re: Darkness at Noon
Dave Molinari
Claire Berlinski, Ed.
That first scene of prison-tapping is one of the great passages of 20th century literature. · May 22 at 9:19pm
Exactly. It's great when someone else gets the same things, you know? · May 22 at 9:31pm
Yes, it's dreary when you have to teach someone the code from scratch.
Feb '11
Re: Darkness at Noon
"Darkness at Noon" is a great book; I agree that it's deeper and better-written than "1984."
Another Koestler novel that is well worth reading is "The Age of Longing." Published in 1950, it is very relevant to our present issues, especially the West's loss of civilizational self-confidence and the societal impact of declining religious faith. I reviewed it at length here: sleeping with the enemy.
Jun '10
Re: Darkness at Noon
I only read the book about ten years ago, long after the end of the old Soviet Union, and long after I had concluded that everything about that regime was evil.
Darkness at Noon reconfirmed all those feelings and made them even stronger. In fact, it made me understand my feelings with greater clarity. That's what great literature is supposed to do.
One sidenote. Yes, I believe Koestler's book is better than 1984, but let's not forget just how influential 1984 was. Despite his allegiance to "socialism," Orwell was a great man. In fact, his best book is the one about his experiences in the Spanish Civil War, Homage to Catalonia, when he learned that the communists had no benign intentions.