Nobody can write guiltlessly ...
I.
There are some books which I have read once and then never felt the need to return to: Darkness at Noon would be one such novel, for example ...
Although originally written in German, the first published edition of Koestler's dystopian masterpiece - and, to be honest, pretty much the only novel he is now remembered for - was the poetically titled English translation of 1940 [1].
In brief - as I imagine most readers will be familiar with the work - Darkness at Noon is the story of an old revolutionary (Rubashov) who is arrested and imprisoned by the Party he served so loyally and tried for treason by the State he helped to build.
Although the novel doesn't say so, it's clearly set in the Soviet Union and Number One is obviously Uncle Joe. For by the end of the 1930s, Koestler, like his good friend George Orwell, was bitterly disillusioned with the communist ideology he had once passionately embraced [2].
Critically acclaimed at the time - and overranked ever since on lists of great English-language novels of the 20th-century - Darkness at Noon provides a grimly fascinating insight into the revolutionary politics of the period and the authoritarian mindset. But, I still think that - like the more allegorical Animal Farm (1945) - having read it once, there's no real reason to go back and read it again.
I mean, we all get the central idea: it's not much fun living under totalitarian regimes; be they political or theocratic in character. Even D. H. Lawrence - who was certainly a long way from being a liberal - came to this conclusion having arrived at his own dead end in The Plumed Serpent (1926): click here.
II.
I have, however, other reasons for not wanting to re-read this novel; reasons that are more to do with my dislike of Koestler the man, rather than disinterest in his fiction ...
For one thing, it was alleged in David Cesarani's 1998 biography [3] that he was a serial rapist [4]. And, for another, Koestler was also something of a crackpot or, if you prefer, a parapsychologist; i.e., the sort of person who believes (without evidence) that there is real evidence for phenomena such as extrasensory perception, psychokinesis, and telepathy; the sort of person who also insists that every coincidence is meaningful (or synchronistic).
Koestler's fascination with the paranormal permeated much of his later writings; see, for example, The Roots of Coincidence (1972), in which he argues that certain (occult) phenomena will never be explained by orthodox science which, in his view, is essentially - and dangerously - reductionist [5].
After his suicide in 1983 [6], Koestler left the bulk of
his estate to the
promotion of research into all things spooky (and pseudo-scientific) through the founding of a
chair in parapsychology at a British university.
Unfortunately, the trustees of the
estate had difficulty finding a university willing to establish
such a chair: to their credit, Oxford, Cambridge, King's College London and UCL were all approached and all refused. However, to their shame, the University of Edinburgh decided to grab the money on offer and agreed to set up a chair in
accordance with Koestler's request [7].
Notes
[1] Interestingly, the German manuscript was lost for 75 years after having been translated into English. Thus, all versions of the work prior to 2015 - including the 1944 German edition produced by Koestler himself - were based on the English translation published by Macmillan.
As for the title, Darkness at Noon, this was chosen by the British sculptor Daphne Hardy - Koestler's girlfriend (and translator) at the time - after the publishers rejected his original title, 'The Vicious Circle'. The phrase is adapted from the Book of Job: "They meet with darkness in the day time, and grope in the noonday as in the night." (KJV 5:14)
[2] Just to be clear on the extent of Koestler's committment to Marxist-Leninist ideology, in the early 1930s he left Germany and moved to the USSR, living for a time in Ukraine, which was then enduring what is known as the Holodomor (1932-33); a man-made famine - most likely engineered at Stalin's behest for political reasons - that killed millions of people.
Despite witnessing terrible scenes, Koestler endorsed the official Soviet version of events and claimed that the starving were workshy enemies of the people. He only resigned his membership of the Communist Party in 1938.
[3] David Cesarani, Arthur Koestler: The Homeless Mind (William Heinemann Ltd., 1998).
[4] To be fair, this has been challenged by later authors, including Michael Scammell in his 2009 biography,
although even he concedes that Koestler could be sexually aggressive
towards women and held firmly to the troubling view that 'without an element of
initial rape there is no delight' in sexual relations (a remark made by Koestler in a letter to the woman who was to become his second wife).
See Michael Scammell, Koestler: The Indispensable Intellectual (Faber and Faber, 2010); first published in the US under the title Koestler: The Literary and Political Odyssey of a Twentieth-Century Skeptic (Random House, 2009).
But see also David Cesarani's review of Scammell's biography in Prospect Magazine (24 Feb 2010), in which he continues to insist that Koestler was a voracious sexual predator with a penchant for using physical force to get his way: click here.
[5] That said, Koestler also argues that there are direct links between ancient forms of mysticism and modern physics - if
only the physicists would open their eyes and look (and if
only they would listen to what Jung has to say).
[6] I've no issue with Koestler having the courage to top himself aged 77 in 1983; he had been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 1976 and then, three years later, with terminal leukaemia. However, some worry that he may have unduly coerced his healthy and considerably younger wife, Cynthia, into killing herself so that he'd not have to face the end alone (and she'd not have to live without him). As the writer Julian Barnes says, even if Koestler didn't talk her into it, neither did he try to talk her out of it. This is another controversial topic amongst scholars who choose to study Koestler.
[7] The Koestler Parapsychology Unit was established in 1985 at the University of Edinburgh. It aims to teach and conduct research concerning various aspects of parapsychology. The Chair is currently held by Professor Caroline Watt.
