Darkness at Noon

After writing the other day about weird webs and science fiction lines, I finished reading Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler (1941). In it, I came upon a word I had used in what I wrote: oceanic. I didn't go looking for it. It found me. In using the word oceanic, I was referring to a kind of loss of direction or location in time and space, a loss of boundaries that occurs when a person encounters weird, or becomes immersed or enmeshed in the uncanny, the supernatural, or any of the inexplicable things that may be found in our universe. Here is Koestler's explanation of oceanic:

And yet there were ways of approach to him. Sometimes he would respond unexpectedly to a tune, or even the memory of a tune, or of the folded hands of the Pietà, or of certain scenes of his childhood. As if a tuning-fork had been struck, there would be answering vibrations, and once this had started a state would be produced which the mystics called "ecstasy" and saints "contemplation"; the greatest and soberest of modern psychologists had recognized this state as a fact and called it the "oceanic sense". And, indeed, one's personality dissolved as a grain of salt in the sea; but at the same time the infinite sea seemed to be contained in the grain of salt. The grain could no longer be localized in time and space. It was a state in which thought lost its direction and started to circle, like the compass needle at the magnetic pole; until finally it cut loose from its axis and travelled freely in space, like a bunch of light in the night; and until it seemed that all thoughts and all sensations, even pain and joy itself, were only the spectrum lines of the same ray of light, disintegrating in the prisma of consciousness. (pp. 206-207)

Now I find that oceanic is a Freudian word and concept.

Darkness at Noon is about a man named Rubashov being held prisoner of a radical revolutionary regime--a Marxist and Stalinist regime--even though he is himself a radical revolutionary. I have written before about reason versus irrationality. One of the themes of Koestler's book is of that conflict. If reason is a primary quality of science fiction, and irrationality is a quality, if not a primary quality, of weird fiction, then this quote pertains:

When he had read that newspaper notice, then also alone in his cell, with joints still sore from the last bout of torturing, he had fallen into a queer state of exaltation--the "oceanic sense" had swept him away. Afterwards he had been ashamed of himself. The Party disapproved of such states. It called them petit-bourgeois mysticism, refuge in the ivory tower. It called them "escape from the task", "desertion of the class struggle". The "oceanic sense" was counter-revolutionary. [Emphasis added.] (p. 208)

I have written before, too, about how so much science fiction is progressive, that the basic philosophy behind it is in fact progressive. Progressivism, at least in science fiction, need not become political in nature, but it often does. So in political terms, progressivism, leftism, or Marxism is at odds with ecstatic, mystic, or oceanic states. (Another associated word in Darkness at Noon is romantic or romanticism.) Again: The "oceanic sense" was counter-revolutionary.

The paragraph following that quote reads:

     For in a struggle one must have both legs firmly planted on the earth. The Party taught one how to do it. The infinite was a politically suspect quantity, the "I" a suspect quality. The Party did not recognize its existence. The definition of the individual was: a multitude of one million divided by one million.

Here are echoes of We by Yevgeny Zamyatin (1924), also of Anthem by Ayn Rand (1938). But especially We: "The infinite was a politically suspect quantity" echoes the words of the female rebel against the United State, I-330, who says:

     "And why then do you think there is a last revolution? There is no last revolution, their number is infinite . . . . The 'last one' is a children's story. Children are afraid of the infinite, and it is necessary that children should not be frightened, so that they may sleep through the night." [Ellipses in the original.]

Contemplation of the infinite, then, evokes fear, fear is irrational, and as such must be tamped down, if not eliminated.

I-330's philosophical opponent, D-503, whom she is trying to seduce into rebellion, writes early on:

I feel my cheeks burn 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!

Here are more of his words:

From beyond the Wall, from the infinite ocean of green there rose toward me an immense wave of roots, branches, flowers, leaves. It rose higher and higher; it seemed as though it would splash over me and that from a man, from the finest and most precise mechanism which I am, I would be transformed into . . . . But fortunately there was the Green Wall between me and that wild green sea. Oh, how great and divinely limiting is the wisdom of walls and bars! This Green Wall is I think the greatest invention ever conceived. Man ceased to be a wild animal the day he built the first wall; man ceased to be a wild man only on the day when the Green Wall was completed, when by this wall we isolated our machine-like, perfect world from the irrational, ugly world of trees, birds and beasts . . . .

Notice these words in their negative connotations, negative, that is, to a man caught in the passionate embrace of reason: ocean, wave, wild, sea, irrational.

So in the literature of dystopia and totalitarianism, lines and limits, gray, manmade structures of iron and concrete--even if they are prisons--appear to be both desirable and in opposition to the curved, the infinite, the wild, the green, the oceanic. (Leaves and seas are green.) Reason and logic are also desirable and also in opposition to the irrational. (Remember that D-503 is building a rocketship that will be used to "subjugate to the grateful yoke of reason the unknown beings who live on other planets.") Could there be the same oppositions in other types of genre fiction, such as in science fiction versus weird fiction?

Another long quote from Darkness at Noon:

     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 [both are party men] 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.

     Rubashov stared through the bars of the window at the patch of blue above the machine-gun tower. Looking back over his past, it seemed to him now that for forty years he had been running amuck--the running-amuck of pure reason. Perhaps it did not suit man to be completely freed from old bonds, from the steadying brakes of "Thou shalt not" and "Thou mayst not", and to be allowed to tear along straight towards the goal. (p. 209)

Again, notice the language: "logical calculation" and "the acid of reason" versus "illogical morality"; "[p]remises" and "irrefutable deductions" that lead "straight into"--i.e., along lines--to absurdities and "the weird and ghostly game of trial." The breaking of bonds, the shattering of traditional limits, the being "allowed to tear along straight towards the goal." And the realization:

Perhaps it was not suitable for a man to think every thought to its logical conclusion.

Maybe it's better to remain within limits, for some things to remain unexplored and unknown, and for something other than logic and reason to be sometimes our guide.

* * *

In addition to We and Anthem, I see themes in common with George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). Koestler and Orwell knew each other. Orwell seems to have been the more decent of the two. In any case, I have a feeling he was influenced by Koestler and his novel. Both books are bleak and depressing. Both are about defeat at the hands of a powerful and ruthless State. In both, the assertion is put forth by the State and the Party that the ends justify the means. In both, the protagonist is imprisoned and tormented by a questioner, even if O'Brien is far worse than Gletkin in that role. And in both, the protagonist betrays his lover. By the way, this year is the seventy-fifth anniversary of the publication of Nineteen Eighty-Four. The year in which the novel takes place is now forty years past . . .

And now here we are again, engaged in a struggle. The political opposition is being jailed in America. Europe is still after what one of Koestler's characters referred to as "a certain wheat-growing province inhabited by a national minority." (p. 175) Throughout the West, there is censorship and enforced silence, also criminalized speech and criminalized thought. In our country, we have a party which seems to believe in its relentless quest for power that the ends always justify the means. That, too, is a theme in Darkness at Noon. Rubashov comments upon "the moral superiority of the victim." (p. 171) We have that in our country, too. It has gone so far that members of the religion of pieces, who are seen as the oppressed, are given intellectual license to murder those who are seen as their oppressors. The murdered were, after all, only Jews. And in America, too, a delusional young woman is counted among the victims of her own bloody massacre of helpless and innocent children in a school in Tennessee. The murdered were, after all, only children. They were, after all, only Christians. She was a victim, thus she was morally superior to them. If they were not oppressors, they were at least the children of oppressors at whom she might strike with her fully justifiable violence . . .

The parallels between Koestler's unnamed country--a country in the grip of Marxist revolutionaries--and our own could go on. A paradox, though: parallel lines may be lines but they may never meet, even when carried into infinitude . . .

To make an allusion to a different work and a different form of socialism, this summer our American Melakon machine-gunned our John Gill. He is now out of the way and she can seek after his power, prestige, and position. (Her name and Melakon's are almost anagrams of each other.) I have another pertinent quote from Darkness at Noon. I believe this is originally from the eighteenth-century French revolutionary Danton. It's fitting in its use of the feminine pronoun:

"Tyranny is afoot; she has torn her veil, she carries her head high, she strides over our dead bodies." (p. 204)

That's still a little excessive when it comes to our Melakon, but give her time, give her time.

We should remember that the impulse towards tyranny is in all of us. It becomes especially pronounced in some people, though, and too often they pursue political power so as to satisfy their impulses and to ameliorate their inner disquiet, for they cannot be happy until they stride over us and remake the world according to their own visions, even if that involves the murder of millions. If we want a better understanding of them, their impulses, and their visions, also their disquiets and inner torments, it's good to read books like Darkness at Noon and Nineteen Eighty-Four, We and Anthem, and on and on, into The True Believer and The Psychopathic God, book after book, account after account.

So begin.

Original text copyright 2024 Terence E. Hanley