The characters in this book are fictitious. The historical circumstances which determined their actions are real. The life of the man N. S. Rubashov is a synthesis of the lives of a number of men who were victims of the so-called Moscow Trials. Several of them were personally known to the author. This book is dedicated to their memory.
Through flashbacks the reader sees Stalin, Lenin, and the members of the First International Congress. Not only does he witness the breaking of Rubashov for his trial, but also the series of cold and merciless acts of expediency which have eroded the soul of the old Bolshevik and left him ready for his final service to the Party. Koestler describes the agonizing process by which the confession is extracted. Gletkin, his interrogator, supplies the rationale for the whole performance and for most of the repressive acts of the state as well. In some ways, Rubashov is reminiscent of Trotsky, with his pince-nez, his record as a commander in the Revolution, his extensive service outside Russia, and his onetime rank as a top Communist. (A closer resemblance to Trotsky is that of the Party’s fictitious scapegoat in 1984. Emmanuel Goldstein, with his fuzzy hair and small goatee, is the arch counter-revolutionary, the author of The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism.) Darkness at Noon is a stark and brilliant book. Artistically satisfying, it also presents a record of a characteristic phenomenon of Russian Communism.
Marie-Henri Beyle [Stendhal]: Napoleonic Panorama
Thirty-nine years after he followed Napoleon’s armies into Italy, Stendhal published a sweeping novel of that era. The Charterhouse of Parma follows the career of Fabrizio Valserra, Marchesino del Dongo, from birth to death. It shows the influence upon his life of his beautiful, devoted, and scheming aunt, the Contessa Gina Pietranera. We meet her lover, Conte Mosca della Rovere Sorezana, Minister to Prince Ernesto IV of Parma and politician extraordinary, and become privy to the intrigues of the court. This large novel is crammed with incident—duels, assignations, affairs, prison-breaks, and even the assassination of a monarch. Besides all this, Stendhal relates some of the major events in French and Italian history during nearly thirty years. In particular, we see Napoleon’s triumphal entries into Italy in 1796, 1801, and 1815. Fabrizio even participates on the fringes of the battle of Waterloo. With each arrival and departure, Napoleon’s adherents and those of the Austrian Emperor play musical chairs for the positions of power. Even after Napoleon has been banished to Elba a struggle goes on between Liberals (or Jacobins) and the proponents of absolute monarchy. The Liberal cause is perverted in Parma by the rascally General Fabio Conti, who ironically serves as Ernesto’s political jailer, but the temper of this movement in Europe is reflected in the thoughts and actions of many of the characters. Describing authoritarian government and the struggles against it, as well as the interrelation of a corrupt church and a corrupt state, Stendhal’s classic successfully fuses the lives of his people with the times in which they lived.
André Malraux: Comintern v. Kuomintang
Nearly a hundred years later André Malraux wrote of a time of political chaos in Man’s Fate. But the span of his novel was four months rather than thirty years. Malraux gives a detailed account of Chiang Kai-shek’s military victory of 1927 in Shanghai and his subsequent crushing of the Chinese Communist forces which fought him. Not only does he examine the roles of the immediate participants—the White Guards, the governmental army, the “Reds” and “Blues” of the Kuomintang—but also the intervention of outside forces as well—the Russian Communists, the Shanghai bankers, the French Chamber of Commerce, and the Franco-Asiatic Consortium. Malraux explores both the military and economic aspects of the struggle. Kyo Gisors feels that triumph here will mean “the U.S.S.R. increased to six hundred million men.” Ferral, head of the Chamber and the Consortium, realizes that it will also mean the end of his group’s commercial penetration of the Yangtze basin. Man’s Fate may be read for these insights into the uprising of 1927 and also for background on the formulation of the Communist decision which kept the armies of Mao Tse-tung, Chu Teh, and others within the Kuomintang until they gained enough strength to defeat it.
Jean-Paul Sartre: The Shadow of Munich
Jean-Paul Sartre’s technique in The Reprieve (1947) may remind one of a photographer whose camera mechanism has gone awry. What he is trying to do is clear, but it does not quite come off. Covering the week of September 23-30, 1938, the novel is kaleidoscopic. Using more than nine distinct couples or groups, Sartre jumps from the activities of one to another with no transition. The scene may change from sentence to sentence or even within a sentence. He obviously does this to portray events which are happening simultaneously. He also uses this technique, apparently, to give some sense of the chaos that reigned during the week when Europe was on the verge of war. To show the impact of these events upon France, he has selected his people from many strata of French society. Interspersed between all these semi-fragmented stories and incidents are dialogues between the politicians: Hitler and his aides, Daladier and Bonnet, Chamberlain and Halifax, Sir Nevile Henderson and Sir Horace Wilson. Through its characters the novel ranges over Europe from England to the Sudetenland, finally arriving at Munich. The book’s last two paragraphs serve as an example of this technique which has a cumulative effect but which can be extremely troublesome to a reader accustomed to conventional narration. Daladier’s plane lands at Le Bourget as Milan Hlinka, a loyal Sudeten Czech, hears of his country’s dismemberment:
A vast clamor greeted [Daladier], the crowd surged through the cordon of police and swept the barriers away; Milan drank and said with a laugh: “To France! To England! To our glorious allies!” Then he flung the glass against the wall; they shouted: “Hurrah for France! Hurrah for England! Hurrah for peace!” They were carrying flags and flowers. Daladier stood on the top step and looked at them dumbfounded. Then he turned to Leger and said between his teeth:
“The God-damned fools!”