3 books to know Totalitarian Dystopias E-Book

George Orwell

• Herausgeber: Tacet Books
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Serie: 3 books to know
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Seitenzahl: 941

Beschreibung

In this issue, you will find three fundamental texts that have shaped dystopian political fiction: "We" by Yevgeny Zamyatin, "Nineteen Eighty-Four" by George Orwell and "Anthem" by Ayn Rand.

Each work offers a unique perspective on the dangers of totalitarianism and the struggle for freedom. Zamyatin presents a society where individuality is suppressed by the state, Orwell describes a regime of constant surveillance and manipulation of the truth, while Rand defends individualism in a future where extreme collectivity nullifies personal identity.

In times of disinformation and fake news, these narratives remind us of the risks of controlling information and manipulating the truth. This book is indispensable for students, lovers of literature and anyone interested in understanding the mechanisms of social control and the importance of protecting democratic values.

This is one of many books in the series 3 Books To Know. If you liked this book, look for the other titles in the series, we are sure you will like some of the topics.

Leseprobe

Introduction

Dystopia is a literary subgenre that explores imaginary societies where life is extremely difficult and oppressive, often due to totalitarian or authoritarian regimes. This genre emerged as a counterpoint to utopias, which describe ideal societies. Dystopias gained popularity in the early 20th century, reflecting social and political fears of the time, especially with the rise of totalitarian regimes in Europe and Asia.

Main Characteristics

Totalitarian Control

: A central characteristic of dystopias is the absolute control exercised by a governmental or corporate entity. This control extends to all aspects of life, restricting individual freedoms and imposing conformity.

Power is maintained through coercion and fear.

Continuous Surveillance

: Dystopian societies often feature ubiquitous surveillance systems where privacy is nonexistent. The population is constantly monitored to ensure obedience to the regime's established norms.

Reality Manipulation

: Rewriting history and controlling information are common tools used by dystopian regimes to maintain their dominance. Propaganda is used to manipulate public perception and suppress dissent.

Dehumanization and Conformity

: Individuality is suppressed in favor of total conformity. People are often treated as cogs in a machine, with little or no regard for their personal needs or desires.

Futuristic or Post-Apocalyptic Settings

: Many dystopias are set in bleak futures, portraying the extreme consequences of current political and social trends. These settings serve as warnings about what could happen if certain practices continue or intensify.

Function and Impact

Dystopias serve as warnings about the dangers of authoritarianism and the loss of civil liberties. They use the extrapolation of present trends to create worlds where injustices and oppressions are amplified. By doing so, they encourage readers to reflect on their own societies and the importance of protecting individual rights and democracy.

Common Themes

Totalitarianism

: The absolute dominance of the state, where the government has total control over public and private life.

Mind Control and Brainwashing

: Techniques used to control and manipulate citizens' minds, eradicating dissenting thoughts.

Control Technology

: Use of technology to monitor, control, and manipulate the population, eliminating any possibility of privacy.

Extreme Inequality

: Societies where the disparity between rich and poor is exacerbated, with a powerful elite ruling over an oppressed majority.

Contemporary Relevance

Despite being works of fiction, totalitarian dystopias offer a powerful and often prescient critique of real social and political trends. They warn against complacency and the gradual erosion of civil liberties, encouraging vigilance and resistance against oppressive practices. In times of increasing state and corporate surveillance, disinformation, and political polarization, these stories continue to resonate and provide valuable lessons on the importance of freedom and individual autonomy.

Books in this edition

"We" by Yevgeny Zamyatin

Written in 1920, "We" is one of the earliest modern dystopian works. Set in a future where the State controls every aspect of life, Zamyatin's novel explores the conflict between individuality and totalitarian conformity. The protagonist, D-503, is an engineer who initially supports the regime but begins to question his reality when he falls in love. The novel highlights how the human desire for freedom can challenge oppression.

"Nineteen Eighty-Four" by George Orwell

Published in 1949, "1984" is perhaps the most iconic dystopian work, offering a sharp critique of totalitarianism. The novel describes a society where ubiquitous surveillance, relentless propaganda, and historical revisionism are tools used to maintain absolute control. The protagonist, Winston Smith, works at the Ministry of Truth, falsifying historical records, but eventually seeks truth and freedom, only to face the harsh realities of an unyielding regime.

"Anthem" by Ayn Rand

Published in 1938, "Anthem" is a reflection on the importance of individualism in the face of collective oppression. Rand presents a future society where the concept of individuality has been eradicated and the word "I" is forbidden. The protagonist, Prometheus, defies norms by seeking knowledge and personal identity, symbolizing the struggle for the right to exist as an individual. Rand's work is a powerful defense of rational egoism and personal freedom against totalitarian collectivism.

Conclusion

The totalitarian dystopias of Zamyatin, Orwell, and Rand are powerful warnings about the dangers of absolute state control, the erosion of individual liberties, and the manipulation of truth. These works not only reflect the fears of their times but also offer valuable insights for contemporary readers. By exploring themes like surveillance, manipulation, and dehumanization, they remind us of the importance of protecting our rights and valuing individuality and freedom. "We," "1984," and "Anthem" remain essential readings to understand the challenges and threats that societies may face under authoritarian regimes.

We

Yevgeny Zamyatin

The Author

Yevgeny Zamyatin was a Russian author and engineer, born in 1884, who became a significant literary figure known for his critical stance against totalitarian regimes. Initially a supporter of the Bolshevik Revolution, he grew disillusioned with the increasing repression and censorship of the Soviet government. His experiences as a naval engineer in England and his political activities deeply influenced his writing.

Zamyatin is best known for his dystopian novel "We," written between 1920 and 1921. "We" is set in a future society where the State exerts total control over individuals, suppressing personal freedoms and enforcing conformity. The novel explores themes of surveillance, loss of individuality, and the conflict between personal desires and state mandates. Its critical view of totalitarianism led to it being the first work banned by Soviet censors.

Due to the controversy surrounding "We," Zamyatin faced severe backlash, including blacklisting and state-organized defamation. Despite the oppressive environment, he managed to have "We" smuggled out and published in the West, which only intensified the Soviet government's ire. In 1931, he wrote a letter to Joseph Stalin requesting permission to leave the Soviet Union, which was surprisingly granted.

Zamyatin spent his final years in exile in Paris, where he continued to write but lived in poverty until his death in 1937. His legacy endured, with his works circulating in underground samizdat publications and influencing future generations of dissidents and writers. "We" remains a seminal work in dystopian literature, reflecting Zamyatin's unwavering commitment to freedom of thought and expression.

We

Yevgeny Zamyatin

Foreword

In submitting this book to the American public the translator has this to say.

The artistic and psychological sides of the novel are hardly to be discussed in a preface. Great as the art of a writer may be and profound as his psychology may seem to one, the impression is largely a matter of individual variations, and this side must naturally be left to each individual’s judgment and sensibilities.

There is, however, one side of the matter which deserves particular mention and motivated emphasis.

It is perhaps for the first time in the history of the last few decades that a Russian book, inspired by Russian life, written in Russia and in the Russian language, should see its first light not in Russia but abroad, and not in the language it was originally written but translated into a foreign tongue. During the darkest years of Russian history, in the ’forties, ’sixties, ’eighties and ’nineties of the last century, many Russian writers were forced by oppression and reaction to live abroad and to write abroad, yet their writings would reach Russia, as they were intended primarily for the Russian reader and Russian life. Most of Turgeniev’s novels were written while he was in France, and with the exception of his last short story which he dictated on his deathbed, all his novels and stories were written in Russian. Hertzen, Kropotkin, and at one time Dostoyevski, were similarly obliged to write while away from their native land.

Here is a book written by an artist who lived and still lives in Russia, and whose intimate love for Russia and her suffering is so great that he finds it impossible to leave Russia even in these days of stress and sorrow. But his book may not appear in the country where it was written. It is a great tragedy—this spiritual loneliness of the artist who cannot speak to his own people. In bringing out this book in English, the author tries to address himself to the world without having the opportunity of being heard by his own people. This situation, however, is to a great extent symbolic of the spiritual mission of Zamiatin, for no matter what the language in which he originally writes, and no matter how typically national his artistic perception and intuition, he is essentially universal and his vision transcends the boundaries of a purely national art. Moreover, is it not true that the more genuinely national a man’s art, and the more sincerely national his personality, the more is he universal? Abraham Lincoln is more than an American national figure, and I doubt if the appeal Lincoln’s personality makes would be universal as it is if he were not so typically American. It is difficult to find personalities more national than Tolstoi or Dostoyevski, and this is perhaps the reason why they stand out as two of the most typically universal minds with a universal appeal that the nineteenth century gave us.

Zamiatin is not so great as the men referred to above, but despite his youth, he already proves to be the bearer of that quality of greatness which characterizes a personality with a universal appeal.

We is, as Zamiatin himself calls it, the most jocular and the most earnest thing he has thus far written. It is a novel that puts most poignantly and earnestly before every thoughtful reader the most difficult problem that exists today in the civilized world,—the problem of preservation of the independent original creative personality. Our civilization today depends upon the energetic movement of great masses of people. Wars, revolutions, general strikes—all these phenomena involve great masses, large groups, enormous mobs. Despite the fact that there is hardly a corner in the world today where the average man does not make the trite complaint, “What we need is leadership,” the world today seems for a time at least to have lost its capacity for producing real leaders. For our great successes in mechanical civilization, our exceptional efforts in efficiency, tend to bring into play large numbers rather than great individualities. What under these conditions is the lot of a creative individuality? What the tragedy of an independent spirit under present conditions is, is pointed out in an unique way in We. The problem of creative individuality versus mob is today not a mere Russian problem. It is as poignant under Bolshevist dictatorship as it is in Ford’s factory.

Of course the sincere, honest and frank treatment of this problem seems offensive to anyone who prefers to be a member of a mob or keep this or that part of humanity in the state of a mob. That is why We could not see light in Russia, and will probably be disliked by those whose spiritual activities are reduced to the mechanical standards of a mechanical civilization which is devoid of original creative effort.

A few words about the method by which Zamiatin tries to drive home to the reader his main ideas. It is the method of “Laughter through tears,” to use an old expression of Gogol. It is the form which is dictated by profound love for humanity, mixed with pity and hatred of those factors which are the cause of the disindividualization of man today. It is the old emotion of the ancient Catul: “Odi et amo.” Zamiatin laughs in order to hide his tears, hence amusing as We may seem and really is, it barely conceals a profound human tragedy which is universal today.

The reader may be interested in knowing something about Zamiatin himself. Zamiatin does not like to tell about himself and the translator does not think he has the right to tell more than to quote Zamiatin’s own answer to a request addressed to him a couple of years ago to write his autobiography:

“I see you want my autobiography by all means, but I assure you that you will have to limit yourself only to an outside inspection and get but a glimpse, perhaps, into the dark windows. I seldom ask anybody to enter.

“As to the outside, you will see a lonely child without playmates, lying on a Turkish divan, hind-side up, reading a book, or under the grand piano while his mother plays Chopin. Two steps away from Chopin, just outside the window with the geraniums, in the middle of the street, there is a small pig tied to a stake and hens fluttering in the dust.

“If you are interested in the geography, here it is—Lebedyan, in the most Russian Tambov province about which Tolstoi and Turgeniev wrote so much. Chronology?—The end of the ’eighties and early ’nineties, then Voronesh, the Gymnasium pension, boredom and rabid dogs on Main Street. One of these dogs got me by the leg. At that time I loved to make different experiments on myself, and I decided to wait and see whether I would or would not get the rabies and what is most important, I was very curious: What would I feel when the time would come for the rabies (about two weeks after the bite)? I felt a great many things, but two weeks later I did not get the rabies, therefore I announced to the inspector in the school that I got the rabies and must go at once to Moscow for vaccination.

“In the Gymnasium I would get A plus for composition and was not always on good terms with mathematics. Perhaps because of that (sheer stubbornness) I chose the most mathematical career—the ship-building department of the Petrograd Polytech.

“Thirteen years ago in the month of May—and that May was remarkable in that the snow covered the flowers—I simultaneously finished my work for my diploma and my first short story. The short story was published in the old Obrazovanye.

“Well, what else do you want? That meant that I was going to write short stories and was going to publish them. Therefore for the following three years I wrote about nothing but ice cutters, steam engines, refillers and ‘The Theoretical Exploration of the Works of Floating Steam Shovels.’ I couldn’t help myself. I was attached to the chair of Ship Architecture and busied myself with teaching in the ship-building faculty, where I teach until now.

“If I mean anything in Russian Literature, I owe this completely to the Petrograd Secret Service. In 1911 this service exiled me from Petrograd and I was forced to spend two years in a non-populated place in Lachta. There, in the midst of the white winter silence and the green summer silence, I wrote my Provincial. After that the late Ismaylov expressed in print his belief that I wore very high boots and was a long-haired provincial type, carrying a heavy stick, and he was later very much surprised that I ‘didn’t look a bit like that.’ Incidentally, ‘not a bit like that’ I became in England where, during the War, I spent about two years, building ships and visiting the ruins of ancient castles. I listened to the banging of the German Zeppelin bombs and wrote a short novel The Islanders.

“I regret immensely that I did not witness the Russian Revolution in February and know only the October Revolution, because it was in October, a life preserver around my body and all the lights out, passing German submarines, that I returned to Petrograd. Because of this I felt like one who never having been in love gets up one morning and finds himself married about ten years.

“Now I write little, perhaps because my requirements towards myself become greater. Three new volumes are in the hands of the publisher and begin to be published only now. The fourth will be my novel We, the funniest and most earnest thing I have written. However, the most serious and most interesting novels I never wrote. They happened to me in my life.”

Zamiatin continues to live in Russia and continues to live with Russia, but such is the sarcasm of Fate that the first Russian novel giving a real synthesis of the Russian revolution and its greater universal meaning, this novel written by Zamiatin, should remain unknown to the Russians in Russia.

Gregory Zilboorg.New York, 1924.

Record One

An AnnouncementThe Wisest of LinesA Poem

This is merely a copy, word by word, of what was published this morning in the State newspaper:

“In another hundred and twenty days the building of the Integral will be completed. The great historic hour is near, when the first Integral will rise into the limitless space of the universe. A thousand years ago your heroic ancestors subjected the whole earth to the power of the United State. A still more glorious task is before you,—the integration of the indefinite equation of the Cosmos by the use of the glass, electric, fire-breathing Integral. Your mission is to subjugate to the grateful yoke of reason the unknown beings who live on other planets, and who are perhaps still in the primitive state of freedom. If they will not understand that we are bringing them a mathematically faultless happiness, our duty will be to force them to be happy. But before we take up arms, we shall try the power of words.

“In the name of The Well-Doer, the following is announced herewith to all Numbers of the United State:

“Whoever feels capable must consider it his duty to write treatises, poems, manifestoes, odes and other compositions on the greatness and the beauty of the United State.

“This will be the first load which the Integral will carry.

“Long live the United State! Long live the Numbers!! Long live the Well-Doer!!!”

I feel my cheeks are burning as I write this. To integrate the colossal, universal equation! To unbend the wild curve, to straighten it out to a tangent—to a straight line! For the United State is a straight line, a great, divine, precise, wise line, the wisest of lines!

I, D-503, the builder of the Integral, I am only one of the many mathematicians of the United State. My pen, which is accustomed to figures, is unable to express the march and rhythm of consonance; therefore I shall try to record only the things I see, the things I think, or to be more exact, the things we think. Yes, we; that is exactly what I mean, and “We” shall, therefore, be the title of my records. But this will only be a derivative of our life,—of our mathematical, perfect life in the United State. If this be so, will not this derivative be a poem in itself, despite my limitations? It will. I believe, I know it.

I feel my cheeks are burning as I write this. I feel something similar to what a woman probably feels when for the first time she senses within herself the pulse of a tiny, blind, human being. It is I, and at the same time it is not I. And for many long months it will be necessary to feed it with my life, with my blood, and then with a pain at my heart, to tear it from myself and lay it at the feet of the United State.

Yet I am ready, as everyone, or nearly everyone of us, is. I am ready.

Record Two

BalletSquare HarmonyX

Spring. From behind the Green Wall from some unknown plains the wind brings to us the yellow honeyed pollen of flowers. One’s lips are dry from this sweet dust. Every moment one passes one’s tongue over them. Probably, all women whom I meet in the street (and men certainly also), have today sweet lips. This disturbs somewhat my logical thinking. But the sky! The sky is blue. Its limpidness is not marred by a single cloud. (How primitive was the taste of the ancients, since their poets were always inspired by these senseless, formless, stupidly rushing accumulations of steam!) I love, I am sure it will not be an error if I say we love, only such a sky—a sterile, faultless sky. On such days the whole universe seems to be moulded of the same eternal glass, like the Green Wall, and like all our buildings. On such days one sees into the very blue depth of things. One sees their wonderful equations, hitherto unknown. One sees them in everything, even in the most ordinary everyday things.

Here is an example: this morning I was on the dock where the Integral is being built, and I saw the lathes; blindly, with abandon, the balls of the regulators were rotating; the cranks were swinging from side to side with a glimmer; the working-beam proudly swung its shoulder; and the mechanical chisels were dancing to the melody of an unheard Tarantella. I suddenly perceived all the music, all the beauty, of this colossal, of this mechanical ballet, illumined by light blue rays of sunshine. Then the thought came: why beautiful? Why is a dance beautiful? Answer: because it is an unfree movement. Because the deep meaning of the dance is contained in its absolute, ecstatic submission, in the ideal non-freedom. If it is true that our ancestors would abandon themselves in dancing at the most inspired moments of their lives (religious mysteries, military parades) then it means only one thing: the instinct of non-freedom has been characteristic of human nature from ancient times, and we in our life of today, we are only consciously—

I was interrupted. The switchboard clicked. I raised my eyes,—O-90, of course! In half a minute she herself will be here to take me for the walk.

Dear O—! She always seems to me to look like her name, O—. She is approximately ten centimeters shorter than the required Maternal Norm. Therefore she appears all round; the rose-colored O of her lips is open to meet every word of mine. She has a round soft dimple on her wrist. Children have such dimples. As she came in, the logical fly-wheel was still buzzing in my head, and following its inertia, I began to tell her about my new formula which embraced the machines and the dancers and all of us.

“Wonderful, isn’t it!” I asked.

“Yes, wonderful ... Spring!” she replied, with a rosy smile.

You see? Spring! She talks about Spring! Females!... I became silent.

We were down in the street. The avenue was crowded. On days when the weather is so beautiful the afternoon personal hour is usually the hour of the supplementary walk. As always the big Musical Tower was playing with all its pipes, the March of the United State. The Numbers, hundreds, thousands of Numbers in light blue unifs (probably a derivative of the ancient uniform) with golden badges on the chest,—the State number of each one, male or female,—the Numbers were walking slowly, four abreast, exaltedly keeping the step. I, we four, were but one of the innumerable waves of a powerful torrent. To my left, O-90 (if one of my long-haired ancestors were writing this a thousand years ago, he would probably call her by that funny word, mine), to my right, two unknown Numbers, a she-Number and a he-Number.

Blue sky, tiny baby suns in each one of our badges; our faces are unclouded by the insanity of thoughts. Rays.... Do you picture it? Everything seems to be made of a kind of smiling, a ray-like matter. And the brass measures: Tra-ta-ta-tam.... Tra-ta-ta-tam ... stamping on the brassy steps which sparkle in the sun; with every step you rise higher and higher into the dizzy blue heights.... Then, as this morning on the dock, again I saw as if for the first time in my life, the impeccably straight streets, the glistening glass of the pavement, the divine parallelopipeds of the transparent dwellings, the square harmony of the grayish-blue rows of Numbers. And it seemed to me that not past generations, but I myself, had won a victory over the old god and the old life, that I myself had created all this. I felt like a tower: I was afraid to move my elbow, lest the walls, the cupola and the machines should fall to pieces.

Then without warning—a jump through centuries: I remembered (apparently through an association by contrast) a picture in the museum, a picture of an avenue of the twentieth century, a thundering many-colored confusion of men, wheels, animals, bill-boards, trees, colors, and birds.... They say all this once actually existed!

It seemed to me so incredible, so absurd, that I lost control of myself and laughed aloud. A laugh, as if an echo of mine, reached my ear from the right. I turned. I saw white, very white, sharp teeth, and an unfamiliar female face.

“I beg your pardon,” she said, “but you looked about you like an inspired mythological god on the seventh day of creation. You look as though you are sure that I, too, was created by you, by no one but you. It is very flattering.”

All this without a smile, even with a certain degree of respect—(she may know that I am the builder of the Integral). In her eyes nevertheless, in her brows, there was a strange irritating X, and I was unable to grasp it, to find an arithmetical expression for it. Somehow I was confused; with a somewhat hazy mind, I tried logically to motivate my laughter.

“It was absolutely clear that this contrast, this impassable abyss, between the things of today and of years ago—”

“But why impassable?” (What bright, sharp teeth!) “One might throw a bridge over that abyss. Please imagine: a drum battalion, rows,—all this existed before and consequently—”

“Oh, yes, it is clear,” I exclaimed.

It was a remarkable intersection of thoughts. She said almost in the same words the things I wrote down before the walk! Do you understand? Even the thoughts! It is because nobody is one, but one of. We are all so much alike—

“Are you sure?” I noticed her brows which rose to the temples in an acute angle,—like the sharp corners of an X. Again I was confused, casting a glance to the right, then to the left. To my right—she, slender, abrupt, resistantly flexible like a whip, I-330 (I saw her number now). To my left, O-, totally different, made all of circles with a child-like dimple on her wrist; and at the very end of our row, an unknown he-Number, double-curved like the letter S. We were all so different from one another....

The one to my right, I-330, apparently caught my confused eye, for she said with a sigh, “Yes, alas!”

I don’t deny that this exclamation was quite in place, but again there was something in her face or in her voice....

With an abruptness unusual for me, I said, “Why ‘alas’? Science is developing and if not now, then within fifty or one hundred years—”

“Even the noses will—”

“Yes, noses!” This time I almost shouted, “Since there is still a reason, no matter what, for envy.... Since my nose is button-like and someone else’s is—”

“Well your nose is rather classic, as they would say in the ancient days, although your hands—No, no, show me your hands!”

I hate to have anyone look at my hands; they are covered with long hair,—a stupid atavism. I stretched out my hand and said as indifferently as I could, “Ape-like.”

She glanced at my hand, then at my face.

“No, a very curious harmony.”

She weighed me with her eyes as though with scales. The little horns again appeared at the corners of her brows.

“He is registered in my name,” exclaimed O-90 with a rosy smile.

I made a grimace. Strictly speaking, she was out of order. This dear O-, how shall I say it? the speed of her tongue is not correctly calculated; the speed per second of her tongue should be slightly less than the speed per second of her thoughts,—at any rate not the reverse.

At the end of the avenue the big bell of the Accumulating Tower resounded seventeen. The personal hour was at an end. I-330 was leaving us with that S-like he-Number. He has such a respectable, and I noticed then, such a familiar face. I must have met him somewhere, but where I could not remember. Upon leaving me I-330 said with the same X-like smile:

“Drop in day after tomorrow at auditorium 112.”

I shrugged my shoulders: “If I am assigned to the auditorium you just named—”

She, with a peculiar, incomprehensible certainty: “You will.”

The woman had upon me a disagreeable effect, like an irrational component of an equation which you cannot eliminate. I was glad to remain alone with dear O-, at least for a short while. Hand in hand with her, I passed four lines of avenues; at the next corner she went to the right, I to the left. O- timidly raised her round blue crystalline eyes:

“I would like so much to come to you today and pull down the curtains, especially today, right now....”

How funny she is. But what could I say to her? She was with me only yesterday and she knows as well as I that our next sexual day is day-after-tomorrow. It is merely another case in which her thoughts are too far ahead. It sometimes happens that the spark comes too early to the motor.

At parting I kissed her twice—no, I shall be exact, three times, on her wonderful blue eyes, such clear, unclouded eyes.

Record Three

A CoatA WallThe Tables

I looked over all that I wrote down yesterday and I find that my descriptions are not sufficiently clear. That is, everything would undoubtedly be clear to one of us but who knows to whom my Integral will some day bring these records? Perhaps you, like our ancestors, have read the great book of civilization only up to the page of nine hundred years ago. Perhaps you don’t know even such elementary things as the Hour Tables, Personal Hours, Maternal Norm, Green Wall, Well-Doer. It seems droll to me and at the same time very difficult, to explain these things. It is as though, let us say, a writer of the twentieth century should start to explain in his novel such words as coat, apartment, wife. Yet if his novel had been translated for primitive races, how could he have avoided explaining what a coat meant? I am sure that the primitive man would look at a coat and think, “What is this for? It is only a burden, an unnecessary burden.” I am sure that you will feel the same, if I tell you that not one of us has ever stepped beyond the Green Wall since the Two Hundred Years’ War.

But, dear readers, you must think, at least a little. It helps.

It is clear that the history of mankind as far as our knowledge goes, is a history of the transition from nomadic forms to more sedentary ones. Does it not follow that the most sedentary form of life (ours) is at the same time, the most perfect one? There was a time when people were rushing from one end of the earth to another, but this was the prehistoric time when such things as nations, wars, commerce, different discoveries of different Americas still existed. Who has need of these things now?

I admit humanity acquired this habit of a sedentary form of life not without difficulty and not at once. When the Two Hundred Years’ War had destroyed all the roads which later were overgrown with grass, it was probably very difficult at first. It seemed uncomfortable to live in cities which were cut off from each other by green debris. But what of it? Man soon after he lost his tail probably did not learn at once how to chase away flies without its help. I am almost sure that at first he was even lonesome without his tail, but now, can you imagine yourself with a tail? Or can you imagine yourself walking in the street naked, without clothes? (It is possible you go without clothes still.) Here we have the same case. I cannot imagine a city which is not clad with a Green Wall; I cannot imagine a life which is not clad with the figures of our Tables.

Tables.... Now even, purple figures look at me austerely yet kindly from the golden background of the wall. Involuntarily I am reminded of the thing which was called by the ancients, “Sainted Image,” and I feel a desire to compose verses, or prayers which are the same. Oh, why am not I a poet, so as to be able properly to glorify the Tables, the heart and pulse of the United State!

All of us and perhaps all of you read in childhood while in school, that greatest of all monuments of ancient literature, the Official Railroad Guide. But if you compare this with the Tables, you will see side by side graphite and diamonds. Both are the same, carbon. But how eternal, transparent, how shining the diamond! Who does not lose his breath when he runs through the pages of the Guide? The Tables transformed each one of us, actually, into a six-wheeled steel hero of a great poem. Every morning with six-wheeled precision, at the same hour, at the same minute, we wake up, millions of us at once. At the very same hour millions like one we begin our work, and millions like one, we finish it. United into a single body with a million hands, at the very same second, designated by the Tables, we carry the spoons to our mouths; at the same second we all go out to walk, go to the auditorium, to the halls for the Taylor exercises and then to bed.

I shall be quite frank: even we have not attained the absolute, exact solution of the problem of happiness. Twice a day, from sixteen to seventeen o’clock and from twenty-one to twenty-two, our united powerful organism dissolves into separate cells; these are the personal hours designated by the Tables. During these hours you would see the curtains discreetly drawn in the rooms of some; others march slowly over the pavement of the main avenue or sit at their desks as I sit now. But I firmly believe, let them call me an idealist and a dreamer, I believe that sooner or later we shall somehow find even for these hours, a place in the general formula. Somehow, all of the 86,400 seconds will be incorporated in the Tables of Hours.

I have had opportunity to read and hear many improbable things about those times when human beings still lived in the state of freedom, that is, an unorganized primitive state. One thing has always seemed to me the most improbable: how could a government, even a primitive government, permit people to live without anything like our Tables,—without compulsory walks, without precise regulation of the time to eat, for instance? They would get up and go to bed whenever they liked. Some historians even say that in those days the streets were lighted all night; and all night people went about the streets.

That I cannot understand; true, their minds were rather limited in those days. Yet they should have understood, should they not, that such a life was actually wholesale murder, although slow murder, day after day? The State (humanitarianism) forbade in those days the murder of one person, but it did not forbid the killing of millions slowly and by half. To kill one, that is, to reduce the general sum of human life by fifty years, was considered criminal, but to reduce the general sum of human life by fifty million years was not considered criminal! Is it not droll? Today this simple mathematical moral problem could easily be solved in half a minute’s time by any ten-year-old Number, yet they couldn’t do it! All their Immanuel Kants together couldn’t do it! It didn’t enter the heads of all their Kants to build a system of scientific ethics, that is, ethics based on adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing.

Further, is it not absurd that their State (they called it State!) left sexual life absolutely without control? However, whenever and as much as they wanted.... Absolutely unscientific like beasts; and like beasts they blindly gave birth to children! Is it not strange to understand gardening, chicken-farming, fishery (we have definite knowledge that they were familiar with all these things), and not to be able to reach the last step in this logical scale, namely, production of children,—not to be able to discover such things as Maternal and Paternal Norms?

It is so droll, so improbable, that while I write this I am afraid lest you, my unknown future readers, should think I am merely a bad jester. I feel almost as though you may think I simply want to mock you and with a most serious appearance try to relate to you absolute nonsense. But first, I am incapable of jesting, for in every joke a lie has its hidden function. And second, the science of the United State contends that the life of the ancients was exactly what I am describing, and the science of the United State cannot make a mistake! Yet how could they have State logic, since they lived in a condition of freedom like beasts, like apes, like herds? What could one expect of them, since even in our day one hears from time to time, coming from the bottom, the primitive depths, the echo of the apes?

Fortunately it happens only from time to time, very seldom. Happily it is only a case of small parts breaking; these may easily be repaired without stopping the eternal great march of the whole machine. And in order to eliminate a broken peg we have the skillful heavy hand of the Well-Doer, we have the experienced eyes of the Guardians....

By the way, I just thought of that Number whom I met yesterday, the double-curved one like the letter S; I think I have seen him several times coming out of the Bureau of the Guardians. Now I understand why I felt such an instinctive respect for him and a kind of awkwardness when that strange I-330 at his side.... I must confess that, that I— ... they ring the bell, time to sleep, it is twenty-two-thirty. Till tomorrow, then.

Record Four

The Wild Man with a BarometerEpilepsyIf

Until today everything in life seemed to me clear (that is why, I think, I always had a sort of partiality toward the word “clear”), but today ... I don’t understand. First, I really was assigned to auditorium 112 as she said, although the probability was as 500:10,000,000 or 1:20,000. (500 is the number of auditoriums and there are 10,000,000 Numbers.) And second ... but let me relate things in successive order. The auditorium: an enormous half-globe of glass with the sun piercing through. The circular rows of noble, globe-like, closely-shaven heads. With joy in my heart I looked around. I believe I was looking in the hope of seeing the rose-colored scythe, the dear lips of O-, somewhere among the blue waves of the unifs. Then I saw extraordinarily white, sharp teeth like the.... But no! Tonight at twenty-one o’clock O- was to come to me; therefore my desire to see her was quite natural. The bell. We stood up, sang the Hymn of the United State, and our clever phono-lecturer appeared on the platform with a sparkling golden megaphone.

“Respected Numbers, not so long ago our archaeologists dug up a book written in the twentieth century. In this book the ironical author tells about a Wild Man and a barometer. The Wild Man noticed that every time the barometer’s hand stopped on the word ‘rain,’ it actually rained. And as the Wild Man craved rain, he let out as much mercury as was necessary to put it at the level of the word ‘rain’ (on the screen a Wild Man with feathers, letting out the mercury. Laughter).

“You are laughing at him, but don’t you think the ‘European’ of that age deserves more to be laughed at? He, like the Wild Man, wanted rain,—rain with a little r, an algebraic rain; but he remained standing before the barometer like a wet hen. The Wild Man at least had more courage and energy and logic, although primitive logic. The Wild Man showed the ability to establish a connection between cause and effect: by letting out the mercury he made the first step on the path which....”

Here (I repeat, I am not concealing anything, I am setting down everything) I suddenly became impermeable to the quickening currents coming from the megaphone. I suddenly felt I had come here in vain (why in vain and how could I not have come here, where I was assigned?). Everything seemed to me empty like a shell. I succeeded with difficulty in switching my attention in again when the phono-lecturer came to the main theme of the evening,—to our music as a mathematical composition (mathematics is the cause, music the effect). The phono-lecturer began the description of the recently invented musicometer.

“... By merely rotating this handle any one is enabled to produce about three sonatas per hour. What difficulties our predecessors had in making music! They were able to compose only by bringing themselves to strokes of inspiration,—an extinct form of epilepsy. Here you have an amusing illustration of their achievements: the music of Scriabin, twentieth century. This black box,” (a curtain parted on the platform, and we saw an ancient instrument) “this box they called the ‘Royal Grand.’ They attached to this the idea of regality, which also goes to prove how their music....”

And I don’t remember anything further. Very possibly because ... I’ll tell you frankly, because she, I-330, came to the “Royal” box. Probably I was simply startled by her unexpected appearance on the platform.

She was dressed in a fantastic dress of the ancient time, a black dress closely fitting the body, sharply delimiting the white of her shoulders and breast and that warm shadow waving with her breath between.... And the dazzling, almost angry teeth. A smile, a bite, directed downward. She took her seat; she began to play something wild, convulsive, loud like all their life then,—not a shadow of rational mechanism. Of course all those around me were right; they were laughing. Only a few ... but why is it that I too, I...?

Yes, epilepsy, a mental disease, a pain. A slow, sweet pain, bite, and it goes deeper and becomes sharper. And then, slowly, sunshine,—not our sunshine, not crystalline, bluish and soft, coming through the glass bricks. No, a wild sunshine, rushing and burning, tearing everything into small bits....

The Number at my left glanced at me and chuckled. I don’t know why but I remember exactly how a microscopic saliva bubble appeared on his lips and burst. That bubble brought me back to myself. I was again I.

Like all the other Numbers I heard now only the senseless, disorderly cracking of the chords. I laughed; I felt so light and simple. The gifted phono-lecturer represented to us only too well that wild epoch. And that was all.

With what a joy I listened afterward to our contemporary music. It was demonstrated to us at the end of the lecture for the sake of contrast. Crystalline, chromatic scales converging and diverging into endless series; and synthetic harmony of the formulae of Taylor and McLauren, wholesome, square and massive like the “trousers of Pythagoras.” Sad melodies dying away in waving movements. The beautiful texture of the spectrum of planets, dissected by Frauenhofer lines ... what magnificent, what perfect regularity! How pitiful the wilful music of the ancients, not limited except by the scope of their wild imaginations!

As usual in good order, four abreast, all of us left the auditorium. The familiar double-curved figure passed swiftly by. I respectfully bowed.

Dear O- was to come in an hour. I felt agitated,—agreeably and usefully. Home at last! I rushed to the house-office, handed over to the controller on duty my pink ticket and received a certificate permitting the use of the curtains. This right exists in our State only for the sexual days. Normally we live surrounded by transparent walls which seem to be knitted of sparkling air; we live beneath the eye of everyone, always bathed in light. We have nothing to conceal from one another; besides, this mode of living makes the difficult and exalted task of the Guardians much easier. Without it many bad things might happen. It is possible that the strange opaque dwellings of the ancients were responsible for their pitiful cellish psychology. “My (sic!) home is my fortress!” How did they manage to think of such things?

At twenty-two o’clock I lowered the curtain and at the same second O- came in smiling, slightly out of breath. She extended to me her rosy lips and her pink ticket. I tore off the stub but I could not tear myself away from the rosy lips up to the last moment,—twenty-two-fifteen.

Then I showed her my diary and I talked; I think I talked very well on the beauty of a square, a cube, a straight line. At first she listened so charmingly, she was so rosy, when suddenly a tear appeared in her blue eyes, then another, and a third fell straight on the open page (page 7). The ink blurred; well, I shall have to copy it again.

“My dear O-, if only you, if....”

“What if? If what?”

Again the old lament about a child or perhaps something new regarding, regarding ... the other one? Although it seems as though some ... but that would be too absurd!

Record Five

The SquareThe Rulers of the WorldAn Agreeable and Useful Function

Again with you, my unknown reader; I talk to you as though you were, let us say, my old comrade, R-13, the poet with the lips of a negro,—well, everyone knows him. Yet you are somewhere on the moon, or on Venus, or on Mars. Who knows you? Where and who are you?

Imagine a square, a living, beautiful square. Imagine that this square is obliged to tell you about itself, about its life. You realize that this square would hardly think it necessary to mention the fact that all its four angles are equal. It knows this too well. This is such an ordinary, obvious thing. I am in exactly the same square position. Take the pink checks for instance, and all that goes with them: for me they are as natural as the equality of the four angles of the square. But for you they are perhaps more mysterious and hard to understand than the binom of Newton. Let me explain: an ancient sage once said a clever thing (accidentally, beyond doubt). He said, “Love and Hunger rule the world.” Consequently, to dominate the world, man had to win a victory over hunger after paying a very high price. I refer to the great Two Hundred Years’ War, the war between the city and the land. Probably on account of religious prejudices, the primitive peasants stubbornly held on to their “bread.”1 In the 35th year before the foundation of the United State, our contemporary petroleum food was invented. True, only about two-tenths of the population of the globe did not die out. But how beautifully shining the face of the earth became when it was cleared of its impurities!

Accordingly the 0.2 which survived, have enjoyed the greatest happiness in the bosom of the United State. But is it not clear that supreme bliss and envy are only the numerator and the denominator respectively, of the same fraction, happiness? What sense would the innumerable sacrifices of the Two Hundred Years’ War have for us if a reason were left in our life for jealousy? Yet such a reason persisted because there remained button-like noses and classical noses (Cf: our conversation during the promenade). For there were some whose love was sought by everyone and others whose love was sought by no one.

Naturally, having conquered hunger (that is, algebraically speaking, having achieved the total of bodily welfare), the United State directed its attack against the second ruler of the world, against love. At last this element also was conquered, that is, organized and put into a mathematical formula. It is already three hundred years since our great historic Lex Sexualis was promulgated: “A Number may obtain a license to use any other Number as a sexual product.”

The rest is only a matter of technique. You are carefully examined in the laboratory of the Sexual Department where they find the content of the sexual hormones in your blood, and they make out for you accordingly a Table of sexual days. Then you file an application to enjoy the services of Number so and so, or Numbers so and so. You get for that purpose a check-book (pink). That is all.

It is clear that under such circumstances there is no more reason for envy or jealousy. The denominator of the fraction of happiness is reduced to zero and the whole fraction is thus converted into a magnificent infiniteness. The thing which was for the ancients the source of innumerable stupid tragedies has been converted in our time into an harmonious, agreeable and useful function of the organism, a function like sleep, like physical labor, the taking of food, digestion, etc., etc. Hence you see how the great power of logic purifies everything it happens to touch. Oh, if only you unknown readers can conceive this divine power! If you will only learn to follow it to the end!

It is very strange: while I was writing today of the loftiest summit of human history, all the while I breathed the purest mountain air of thought, but within me it was and remains cloudy, cobwebby, and there is a kind of cross-like, four-pawed X. Or perhaps it is my paws and I feel like that only because they are always before my eyes, my hairy paws. I don’t like to talk about them. I dislike them. They are a trace of a primitive epoch. Is it possible that there is in me...?

I wanted to strike out all this because it trespasses on the limits of my synopsis. But then I decided: no, I shall not! Let this diary give the curve of the most imperceptible vibrations of my brain, like a precise seismograph, for at times such vibrations serve as forewarnings.... Certainly this is absurd! This certainly should be stricken out; we have conquered all the elements; catastrophes are not possible any more.

Now everything is clear to me. The peculiar feeling inside is a result of that very same square situation of which I spoke in the beginning. There is no X in me. There can be none. I am simply afraid lest some X will be left in you, my unknown readers. I believe you will understand that it is harder for me to write than it ever was for any author throughout human history. Some of them wrote for contemporaries, some for the future generations but none of them ever wrote for their ancestors, or beings like their primitive, distant ancestors.

Record Six

An AccidentThe Cursed “It’s Clear”Twenty-four Hours

I must repeat, I made it my duty to write concealing nothing. Therefore I must point out now that sad as it may be, the process of hardening and crystallization of life has evidently not been completed even here in our State. A few steps remain to be made before we reach the ideal. The ideal (it’s clear), is to be found where nothing happens, but here.... I will give you an example: in the State paper I read that in two days the holiday of Justice will be celebrated on the Plaza of the Cube. This means that again some Number has impeded the smooth run of the great State machine. Again something that was not foreseen, or forecalculated happened.

Besides, something happened to me. True, it occurred during the personal hour, that is during the time specifically assigned to unforeseen circumstances, yet....

At about sixteen (to be exact, ten minutes to sixteen), I was at home. Suddenly the telephone: “D-503?”—a woman’s voice.

“Yes.”

“Are you free?”

“Yes.”

“It is I, I-330. I shall run over to you immediately. We shall go together to the Ancient House. Agreed?”

I-330!... This I- irritates me, repels me. She almost frightens me; but just because of that I answered, “Yes.”

In five minutes we were in an aero. Blue sky of May. The light sun in its golden aero buzzed behind us without catching up and without lagging behind. Ahead of us a white cataract of a cloud. Yes, a white cataract of a cloud nonsensically fluffy like the cheeks of an ancient cupid. That cloud was disturbing. The front window was open; it was windy; lips were dry. Against one’s will one passed the tongue constantly over them and thought about lips.

Already we saw in the distance the hazy green spots on the other side of the Wall. Then a slight involuntary sinking of the heart, down—down—down, as if from a steep mountain, and we were at the Ancient House.

That strange, delicate, blind establishment is covered all around with a glass shell, otherwise it would undoubtedly have fallen to pieces long ago. At the glass door we found an old woman all wrinkles, especially her mouth which was all made up of folds and pleats. Her lips had disappeared, having folded inward; her mouth seemed grown together. It seemed incredible that she should be able to talk and yet she did:

“Well, dear, come again to see my little house?”

Her wrinkles shone, that is, her wrinkles diverged like rays, which created the impression of shining.

“Yes, grandmother,” answered I-330.

The wrinkles continued to shine.

“And the sun, eh,—do you see it, you rogue, you! I know, I know. It’s all right. Go all by yourselves,—I shall remain here in the sunshine.”

Hmm.... Apparently my companion was a frequent guest here. Something disturbed me; probably that unpleasant optical impression,—the cloud on the smooth blue surface of the sky.

While we were ascending the wide, dark stairs, I-330 said, “I love her, that old woman.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps for her mouth,—or perhaps for nothing, just so.”

I shrugged my shoulders. She continued walking upstairs with a faint smile or perhaps without a smile at all.

I felt very guilty. It is clear that there must not be “love, just so,” but “love because of.” For all elements of nature should be....

“It’s clear ...” I began, but I stopped at that word and cast a furtive look at I-330. Did she notice it or not? She looked somewhere, down; her eyes were closed like curtains.

It struck me suddenly: evening about twenty-two; you walk on the avenue and among the brightly lighted, transparent, cubic cells, are dark spaces, lowered curtains, and there behind the curtains.... What has she behind her curtains? Why did she phone me today? Why did she bring me here? and all this....

She opened a heavy, squeaking, opaque door and we found ourselves in a sombre disorderly space (they called it an “apartment”). The same strange “royal” musical instrument and a wild, unorganized, crazy loudness of colors and forms like their ancient music. A white plane above, dark blue walls, red, green, orange bindings of ancient books, yellow bronze candelabras, a statue of Buddha, furniture with lines distorted by epilepsy, impossible to reduce to any clear equation.

I could hardly bear that chaos. But my companion apparently possessed a stronger constitution.

“This is my most beloved—” she suddenly caught herself (again a smile,—bite, and white sharp teeth), “to be more exact, the most nonsensical of all ‘apartments’.”

“Or to be most exact, of all the States. Thousands of microscopic States, fighting eternal wars, pitiless like—”

“Oh yes, it’s clear,” said I-330 with apparent sincerity.

We passed through a room where we found a few small children’s beds (children in those days were also private property). Then more rooms, glimmering mirrors, sombre closets, unbearably loud-colored divans, an enormous “fireplace,” a large mahogany bed. Our contemporary beautiful, transparent, eternal glass was represented here only by pitiful, delicate, tiny squares of windows.

“And to think; here there was love ‘just so’; they burned and tortured themselves” (again the curtain of the eyes was lowered), “What a stupid, uneconomical spending of human energy. Am I not right?”

She spoke as though reading my thoughts but in her smile there remained always that irritating X. There behind the curtains something was going on, I don’t know what, but something that made me lose my patience. I wanted to quarrel with her, to scream at her (exactly, to scream), but I had to agree. It was impossible not to agree.

We stopped in front of a mirror. At that moment I saw only her eyes. An idea came to me: human beings are built as nonsensically as these stupid “apartments,” human heads are opaque, and there are only two very small windows that lead inside,—the eyes. She seemed to have guessed my thoughts; she turned around: “Well, here they are, my eyes,—well” (this suddenly, then silence).

There were in front of me two gloomy dark windows and behind them inside, such strange hidden life. I saw there only fire, burning like a peculiar “fireplace” and unknown figures resembling....

All this was certainly very natural; I saw in her eyes the reflection of my own face. But my feelings were unnatural and not like me. Evidently the depressing influence of the surroundings was beginning to tell on me. I felt definitely fear. I felt as if I were trapped and caged in a strange cage. I felt that I was caught in the wild hurricane of ancient life.

“Do you know ...” said I-330, “step out for a moment into the next room.” Her voice came from there,—from inside, from behind the dark window-eyes,—where the fireplace was blazing.

I went out, sat down. From a shelf on the wall there looked straight into my face, somewhat smiling, a snub-nosed, asymmetrical physiognomy of one of the ancient poets; I think it was Pushkin.

“Why do I sit here enduring this smile with such resignation and what is this all about? Why am I here? And why all these strange sensations, this irritating, repellent female, this strange game?”

The door of the closet slammed; there was the rustle of silk. I felt it difficult to restrain myself from getting up and, and.... I don’t remember exactly; probably I wanted to tell her a number of disagreeable things. But she had already appeared.

She was dressed in a short bright-yellowish dress, black hat, black stockings. The dress was of light silk,—I saw clearly very long black stockings above the knees, an uncovered neck and the shadow between....

“It’s clear that you want to seem original. But is it possible that you—?”

“It is clear,” interrupted I-330, “that to be original means to stand out among others; consequently to be original means to violate the law of equality. What was called in the language of the ancients ‘to be common’ is with us only the fulfilling of one’s duty. For—”

“Yes, yes, exactly,” I interrupted impatiently, “and there is no use, no use....”

She came near the bust of the snub-nosed poet, lowered the curtains on the wild fire of her eyes and said, this time I think she was really in earnest, or perhaps she merely wanted to soften my impatience with her, but she said a very reasonable thing:

“Don’t you think it surprising that once people could stand types like this? Not only stand them but worship them. What a slavish spirit, don’t you think so?”

“It’s clear ... that is...!” I wanted ... (damn that cursed “it’s clear!”).

“Oh, yes, I understand. But in fact these were rulers stronger than the crowned ones. Why were they not isolated and exterminated? In our State—”

“Oh, yes, in our State—” I began.

Suddenly she laughed. I saw the laughter in her eyes. I saw the resounding sharp curve of that laughter, flexible, tense like a whip. I remember my whole body shivered. I thought of grasping her ... and I don’t know what.... I had to do something, mattered little what; automatically I looked at my golden badge, glanced at my watch,—ten minutes to seventeen!

“Don’t you think it is time to go?” I said in as polite a tone as possible.

“And if I should ask you to stay here with me?”

“What? Do you realize what you are saying? In ten minutes I must be in the auditorium.”

“And ‘all the Numbers must take the prescribed courses in art and science’,” said I-330 with my voice.

Then she lifted the curtain, opened her eyes,—through the dark windows the fire was blazing.

“I have a physician in the Medical Bureau; he is registered to me; if I ask him, he will give you a certificate declaring that you are ill. All right?”

Understood! At last I understood where this game was leading.

“Ah, so! But you know that every honest Number as a matter of course must immediately go to the office of the Guardians and—”

“And as a matter not of course?” (Sharp smile-bite) “I am very curious to know; will you or will you not go to the Guardians?”

“Are you going to remain here?”

I grasped the knob of the door. It was a brass knob, a cold, brass knob and I heard, cold like brass, her voice:

“Just a minute, may I?”

She went to the telephone, called a Number,—I was so upset it escaped me,—and spoke loudly: “I shall be waiting for you in the Ancient House. Yes, yes, alone.”

I turned the cold brass knob.

“May I take the aero?”

“Oh yes, certainly, please!”

In the sunshine at the gate the old woman was dozing like a plant. Again I was surprised to see her grown-together mouth open, and to hear her say:

“And your lady, did she remain alone?”

“Alone.”