Resumo de Darkness At Noon - Arthur Koestler

Thissplendid novel is set in the tumultuous Soviet Union of the 1930s during thetreason trials. It is the sort of novel that transcends ordinary limitations ... The centralcharacter is Rubashov is a former partisan leader of the Revolution who hasascended to the ruling inner circle of an unnamed totalitarian state. Like theold guard Bolsheviks, he finds himself arrested, imprisoned, and accused ofplotting against the state. The book unfolds in a series of interrogations of Rubashov, interspersed withhis own reminisces while in solitary confinement. This is also clear in thesecond to last paragraph of the book, when at the end of his life, Rubashov isconfused about what regime is executing him: "...This creates a certaindistance that removes most of the emotional power of the story and reduces itto a bit of cautionary fable. Think of the context: thecafe society of the twin cities of Buda and Pest, the end of Austro-Hungary,the cockpit of Bolshevism and fascism, the most ghastly closing scenes of theFinal Solution and the first armed revolution against Stalin, all of thistransmitted by a diaspora of the brilliant?and much of it mediated though alanguage that is almost impossible for an outsider to master.But he also wrote animperishable series of memoirs relating his adventures and experiences in theSoviet Union, the Spanish Civil War, the partition of Palestine (where he livedbriefly) in 1947/8, and the intellectual combats that defined the Cold War fromits inception.He witnessed the rise ofNazism in Germany, went as a believer to the USSR in a time of purges andfamines, and was sent as a Comintern agent to Spain. There he endured the firstof many spells in prison?this one under sentence of death from Gen. Indeed, theteamwork of the two questioners, Ivanov and Gletkin, is so logically andartistically represented that it actually had the effect of converting somepeople to communism! Rubashov has one fatal weakness, which is that of theopen-minded intellectual: "the familiar and fatal constraint to puthimself in the position of his opponent, and to see the scene through theother's eyes." Throughout the novel, Koestler is at pains to stress thesimilarity of totalitarianism to religion and to make the related comparisonbetween dissent and heresy. For the rest of his life, Koestler swung betweenvarious forms of rationalism and pseudo-science. He retained his attachment tothe state of Israel, but he also wrote a book on the Khazars, in which hefavored the theory that many Jews originate from the conversion to Judaism ofthis now-lost population on the frontiers of Persia and Armenia.Koestler's personal lifewas disordered by drink and womanizing?in fact he has posthumously been accusedof at least one rape, so here the term "womanizing" might be evensillier and more euphemistic than it usually is?and toward the end he began toflirt with fringe ideas about the so-called "paranormal," publishingsome absurd texts. The end was bad: Shattered by Parkinson's disease, Koestlercommitted suicide along with his wife in 1983. But he left behind him a body ofwork that will always be absorbing and challenging to anyone who admires men ofprinciple or who enjoys the battle of ideas for its own sake.Koestler's personal lifewas disordered by drink and womanizing?in fact he has posthumously been accusedof at least one rape, so here the term "womanizing" might be evensillier and more euphemistic than it usually is?and toward the end he began toflirt with fringe ideas about the so-called "paranormal," publishingsome absurd texts. The end was bad: Shattered by Parkinson's disease, Koestlercommitted suicide along with his wife in 1983. But he left behind him a body ofwork that will always be absorbing and challenging to anyone who admires men ofprinciple or who enjoys the battle of ideas for its own sake.

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