Zero
8th March 2006, 21:09
In Philosophy I have been assigned to write a theory paper concerning itself with this book. I have found this passage that has more to do with life, and Humanity as a whole then in any book I have read thus-far. These few paragraphs moved me, and will most likely stay with me for the rest of my days. I hope you can share in the power I have felt this conveys.
Originally posted by John Fowles' [email protected] The Magus
"He said, I have made an offer to these peasants. I looked at his face. It was absolutely without nervousness, excitation; a man in complete command of himself. He went on, I will permit them not to be executed. To go to a labor camp. On one condition. That is that you, as mayor of this village, carry out in front of them the execution of the two murderers.
"I said, I am not an executioner.
"The village men began to shout frantically at me.
"He looked at his watch, and said, You have thirty seconds to decide.
"Of course in such situations one cannot think. All coherence is crowded out of one's mind. You must remember this. From this point on I acted without reason. Beyond reason.
"I said, I have no choice.
"He went to the end of one of the ranks of men in front of me. He took a submachine gun from a man's shoulder, appeared to make sure that it was correctly loaded, then came back with it and presented it to me with both hands. As if it were a prize I had won. The hostages cheered, crossed themselves. And then were silent. The colonel watched me. I had a wild idea that I might turn the gun on him. But of course the massacre of the entire village would then have been inevitable.
"I walked twards the men wired to the iron gates. I knew why he had done this. It would be widley publicized by the German-controlled newspapers. The pressure on me would not be mentioned, and I would be presented as a Greek who cooperated in the German theory of order. A warning to other mayors. An example to other frightened Greeks everywhere. But those eighty men--how could I condemn them?
"I came within about fifteen feet of the two guerrillas. So close, because I had not fired a gun since those far-off days of 1915. For some reason I had not looked them in the face till then. I had looked at the high wall with its tiled top, at a par of vulgar ornamental urns on top of the pillars that flanked the gate, at the fronds of a pepper tree beyond. But then I had to look at them. The younger of the two might have been dead. His head had fallen forward. They had done something to his hands, I could not see what, but there was blood all over the fingers. He was not dead. I heard him groan. Mutter something. He was delirious.
"And the other. His mouth had been struck or kicked. The lips were severely contused, reddened. As I stood there and raised the gun he drew back what remained of those lips. All his teeth had been smashed in. The inside of his mouth was like a blackened vulva. But I was too desperate to finish to realise the real cause. He too had had had his fingers crushed, or his nails torn out, and I could see multiple burns on his body. But the Germans had made one terrible error. They had not gouged out his eyes.
"I raised the gun blindly and pressed the trigger. Nothing happened. A click. I pressed it again. And again, an empty click.
"I turned and looked round. Wimmel and my two guards were standing thirty feet or so away, watching. The hostages suddenly began to call. They thought I had lost the will to shoot. I turned back and tried one more. Again, nothing. I turned to the Colonel, and gestured with the gun, to show that it would not fire. I felt faint in the heat. Nausea. Yet unable to faint.
"He said, Is something wrong?
"I answered, the gun will not fire.
"It is a Schmeisser. An excellent weapon.
"I have tried three times.
"It will not fire because it is not loaded. It is strictly forbidden for the civilian population to possess loaded weapons.
"I stared at him, then at the gun. Still not understanding. The hostages were silent again.
"I said, very helplessly, How can I kill them?
"He smiled, a smile as thin as a sabre slash. Then he said, Your imagination has . . . two minutes in which to act.
"I understood then. I was to club them to death. I understood many things. His real self, his real position. And from that came the realization that he was mad, and that he was therefore innocent, as all mad people, even the most cruel, are innocent. He was what life could do if it wanted--an extreme possibility made hideously mind and flesh. Perhaps that was why he could impose himself so strongly, like a black divinity. For there was somehting superhuman in the spell he cast. And therefore the real evil, the real monstrosity in the situation lay in the other Germans, those less than mad lieutenants and corporals and privates who stood silently there watching this exchange.
"I walked twards him. The two guards thought I was going to attack him because they sharply raised their guns. But he said something to them and stood perfectly still. I stopped some six feet from him. We stared at each other.
"I beg you in the name of the European civilization to stop this barbarity.
"And I command you to continue this punishment.
"Without looking down he said, You now have thirty seconds. Refusal to carry out this order will result in your own immediate execution.
"I walked back over to the dry Earth to that gate. I stood in front of those two men. I was going to say to the one who seemed capable of understanding that I had no choice, I must do this terrible thing to him. But I left a fatal pause of a second to elapse. Perhaps because I realised, close to him, what had happened to his mouth. It had been burnt, not simply bludgeoned or kicked. I remembered that man with the iron stake, the electric fire. THey had broken in his teeth and branded his toungue, burnt his tongue right down to the roots with red-hot iron. That word he shouted must finally have driven them beyond endurance. And in those astounding five seconds, the most momentous of my life, I understood this guerrilla. I mean that I understood far better then he did himself what he was. Very simply. He helped me. Because he managed to stretch his head twards me and say the word he could not say. It was almost not a sound, but a contortion in his throat, a five-syllabled choking. But once again, one last time, it was unmistakably that word. And the word was in his eyes, in his being, totally in his being. What did Christ say on the cross? Why hast thou forsaken me? What this man said was something far less sympathetic, far less pitiful, even far less human, but far profounder. He spoke out of a world the very opposite of mine. In mine life had no price. It was so valuable that it was literally priceless. In his, the only one thing had that quality of pricelessness. It was elutheria: freedom. He was the immalleable, the essence, the beyond reason, beyond logic, beyond civilization, beyond history. He was not God, because there is no God. But he was proof that there is something we can never know. He was the final right to deny. To be free to choose. He, or what manifested itself through him, even included the insane Wimmel, the despicable German and Austrian troops. He was every freedom, from the very worst to the very best. The freedom to desert on the battlefield of Neuve Chapelle. The freedom to confront a primitive God at Seidevarre. The freedom to disembowel pesant girls and castrate with wire cutters. I mean he was something that passed beyond morality but sprang out of the very essence of things--that comprehended all, the freedom to do all, and stood against only one thing--the prohibition not to do all:
"All this takes many words to say to you. And I have said nothing about how I felt this immalleability, this refusal to cohere, was essentially Greek. That is, I finally assumed my Greekness. All I saw I saw in a matter of seconds, perhaps not in time at all. I saw that I was the only person left in that square who had the freedom left to choose, and that the annunciation and defense of that freedom was more important than common sense, self-preservation, yes, than my own life, than the lives of the eighty hostages. Again and again, since then, those eighty men have risen in the night and accused me. You must remember that I was certain I was going to die too. But all I have to set against their crucified faces are those few transcendent seconds of knowlege. But knowlege like a white heat. My reason has repeatedly told me I was wrong. Yet my total being still tells me I was right.
"I stood there perhaps fifteen seconds--I couldnot tell you, time means nothing in such situations--and then I dropped the gun and stepped beside the guerrilla leader. I saw the colonel watching me, and I said, for him and so also for the remnant of a man beside me to hear, the one word that remained to be said.
"Somewhere beyond Wimmel I saw Anton moving, walking quickly towards him. But it was too late. THe colonel spoke, the sumachine guns flashed and I closed my eyes at exactly the moment the first bullets hit me."
Originally posted by John Fowles' [email protected] The Magus
"He said, I have made an offer to these peasants. I looked at his face. It was absolutely without nervousness, excitation; a man in complete command of himself. He went on, I will permit them not to be executed. To go to a labor camp. On one condition. That is that you, as mayor of this village, carry out in front of them the execution of the two murderers.
"I said, I am not an executioner.
"The village men began to shout frantically at me.
"He looked at his watch, and said, You have thirty seconds to decide.
"Of course in such situations one cannot think. All coherence is crowded out of one's mind. You must remember this. From this point on I acted without reason. Beyond reason.
"I said, I have no choice.
"He went to the end of one of the ranks of men in front of me. He took a submachine gun from a man's shoulder, appeared to make sure that it was correctly loaded, then came back with it and presented it to me with both hands. As if it were a prize I had won. The hostages cheered, crossed themselves. And then were silent. The colonel watched me. I had a wild idea that I might turn the gun on him. But of course the massacre of the entire village would then have been inevitable.
"I walked twards the men wired to the iron gates. I knew why he had done this. It would be widley publicized by the German-controlled newspapers. The pressure on me would not be mentioned, and I would be presented as a Greek who cooperated in the German theory of order. A warning to other mayors. An example to other frightened Greeks everywhere. But those eighty men--how could I condemn them?
"I came within about fifteen feet of the two guerrillas. So close, because I had not fired a gun since those far-off days of 1915. For some reason I had not looked them in the face till then. I had looked at the high wall with its tiled top, at a par of vulgar ornamental urns on top of the pillars that flanked the gate, at the fronds of a pepper tree beyond. But then I had to look at them. The younger of the two might have been dead. His head had fallen forward. They had done something to his hands, I could not see what, but there was blood all over the fingers. He was not dead. I heard him groan. Mutter something. He was delirious.
"And the other. His mouth had been struck or kicked. The lips were severely contused, reddened. As I stood there and raised the gun he drew back what remained of those lips. All his teeth had been smashed in. The inside of his mouth was like a blackened vulva. But I was too desperate to finish to realise the real cause. He too had had had his fingers crushed, or his nails torn out, and I could see multiple burns on his body. But the Germans had made one terrible error. They had not gouged out his eyes.
"I raised the gun blindly and pressed the trigger. Nothing happened. A click. I pressed it again. And again, an empty click.
"I turned and looked round. Wimmel and my two guards were standing thirty feet or so away, watching. The hostages suddenly began to call. They thought I had lost the will to shoot. I turned back and tried one more. Again, nothing. I turned to the Colonel, and gestured with the gun, to show that it would not fire. I felt faint in the heat. Nausea. Yet unable to faint.
"He said, Is something wrong?
"I answered, the gun will not fire.
"It is a Schmeisser. An excellent weapon.
"I have tried three times.
"It will not fire because it is not loaded. It is strictly forbidden for the civilian population to possess loaded weapons.
"I stared at him, then at the gun. Still not understanding. The hostages were silent again.
"I said, very helplessly, How can I kill them?
"He smiled, a smile as thin as a sabre slash. Then he said, Your imagination has . . . two minutes in which to act.
"I understood then. I was to club them to death. I understood many things. His real self, his real position. And from that came the realization that he was mad, and that he was therefore innocent, as all mad people, even the most cruel, are innocent. He was what life could do if it wanted--an extreme possibility made hideously mind and flesh. Perhaps that was why he could impose himself so strongly, like a black divinity. For there was somehting superhuman in the spell he cast. And therefore the real evil, the real monstrosity in the situation lay in the other Germans, those less than mad lieutenants and corporals and privates who stood silently there watching this exchange.
"I walked twards him. The two guards thought I was going to attack him because they sharply raised their guns. But he said something to them and stood perfectly still. I stopped some six feet from him. We stared at each other.
"I beg you in the name of the European civilization to stop this barbarity.
"And I command you to continue this punishment.
"Without looking down he said, You now have thirty seconds. Refusal to carry out this order will result in your own immediate execution.
"I walked back over to the dry Earth to that gate. I stood in front of those two men. I was going to say to the one who seemed capable of understanding that I had no choice, I must do this terrible thing to him. But I left a fatal pause of a second to elapse. Perhaps because I realised, close to him, what had happened to his mouth. It had been burnt, not simply bludgeoned or kicked. I remembered that man with the iron stake, the electric fire. THey had broken in his teeth and branded his toungue, burnt his tongue right down to the roots with red-hot iron. That word he shouted must finally have driven them beyond endurance. And in those astounding five seconds, the most momentous of my life, I understood this guerrilla. I mean that I understood far better then he did himself what he was. Very simply. He helped me. Because he managed to stretch his head twards me and say the word he could not say. It was almost not a sound, but a contortion in his throat, a five-syllabled choking. But once again, one last time, it was unmistakably that word. And the word was in his eyes, in his being, totally in his being. What did Christ say on the cross? Why hast thou forsaken me? What this man said was something far less sympathetic, far less pitiful, even far less human, but far profounder. He spoke out of a world the very opposite of mine. In mine life had no price. It was so valuable that it was literally priceless. In his, the only one thing had that quality of pricelessness. It was elutheria: freedom. He was the immalleable, the essence, the beyond reason, beyond logic, beyond civilization, beyond history. He was not God, because there is no God. But he was proof that there is something we can never know. He was the final right to deny. To be free to choose. He, or what manifested itself through him, even included the insane Wimmel, the despicable German and Austrian troops. He was every freedom, from the very worst to the very best. The freedom to desert on the battlefield of Neuve Chapelle. The freedom to confront a primitive God at Seidevarre. The freedom to disembowel pesant girls and castrate with wire cutters. I mean he was something that passed beyond morality but sprang out of the very essence of things--that comprehended all, the freedom to do all, and stood against only one thing--the prohibition not to do all:
"All this takes many words to say to you. And I have said nothing about how I felt this immalleability, this refusal to cohere, was essentially Greek. That is, I finally assumed my Greekness. All I saw I saw in a matter of seconds, perhaps not in time at all. I saw that I was the only person left in that square who had the freedom left to choose, and that the annunciation and defense of that freedom was more important than common sense, self-preservation, yes, than my own life, than the lives of the eighty hostages. Again and again, since then, those eighty men have risen in the night and accused me. You must remember that I was certain I was going to die too. But all I have to set against their crucified faces are those few transcendent seconds of knowlege. But knowlege like a white heat. My reason has repeatedly told me I was wrong. Yet my total being still tells me I was right.
"I stood there perhaps fifteen seconds--I couldnot tell you, time means nothing in such situations--and then I dropped the gun and stepped beside the guerrilla leader. I saw the colonel watching me, and I said, for him and so also for the remnant of a man beside me to hear, the one word that remained to be said.
"Somewhere beyond Wimmel I saw Anton moving, walking quickly towards him. But it was too late. THe colonel spoke, the sumachine guns flashed and I closed my eyes at exactly the moment the first bullets hit me."