Idola Mentis
17th April 2006, 15:27
From the first page of Jens Bjorneboe "The silence" (in my somewhat unrefined translation from Norwegian):
"It is not a question of wether we like them or want them. It is not at all a question of our opinion of revolutions. They will not ask us what we think of them, before they come. They will not care for common courtesy, but just arrive, one revolution after the other, those who together will be the Revolution, a great deluge of hate and fire and blood. The only thing we could have done, was making the revolution's work voluntarily, so it ourselves. The wave would have been less bloody then. But we could not endure doing the revolution's work voluntarily, so it will come in its own way. What worries me is the horrible resistance which the USA and the Sovjet Union will make in their common death throes. What I wanted to say, if it in any way had been possible to express it, would have been: When we have hanged the last russian in the guts of the last american and then parted the remaining superpowers into peaceful little counties, earth will again be habitable. But that is an illusion. All must go another way, the way things have gone this far."
"The Silence" arrived in 1974. In 1976, Bjørneboe killed himself. It was claimed he had given up hope for the world. He described our current horrific situation as a horrible disease; claiming that the way people live together now makes every single one of us mentally ill. He had fairly convincing proof too - citing the atrocities and crimes made in the way of government and ideology as others would describe the acts of wild animals or deranged killers who commit ritualized murder (executions) and torture.
What I wonder is, why did he attribute this degree of inevitability to the revolution? I'm not sure if I should take comfort in or be horrified at his total refusal of even the possibility of an Orwellian world.
"It is not a question of wether we like them or want them. It is not at all a question of our opinion of revolutions. They will not ask us what we think of them, before they come. They will not care for common courtesy, but just arrive, one revolution after the other, those who together will be the Revolution, a great deluge of hate and fire and blood. The only thing we could have done, was making the revolution's work voluntarily, so it ourselves. The wave would have been less bloody then. But we could not endure doing the revolution's work voluntarily, so it will come in its own way. What worries me is the horrible resistance which the USA and the Sovjet Union will make in their common death throes. What I wanted to say, if it in any way had been possible to express it, would have been: When we have hanged the last russian in the guts of the last american and then parted the remaining superpowers into peaceful little counties, earth will again be habitable. But that is an illusion. All must go another way, the way things have gone this far."
"The Silence" arrived in 1974. In 1976, Bjørneboe killed himself. It was claimed he had given up hope for the world. He described our current horrific situation as a horrible disease; claiming that the way people live together now makes every single one of us mentally ill. He had fairly convincing proof too - citing the atrocities and crimes made in the way of government and ideology as others would describe the acts of wild animals or deranged killers who commit ritualized murder (executions) and torture.
What I wonder is, why did he attribute this degree of inevitability to the revolution? I'm not sure if I should take comfort in or be horrified at his total refusal of even the possibility of an Orwellian world.