ruined utopia (between one book and another)

horsemouth had a plan to talk to you about two books (well three really) agota kristof’s novel the diary (and her autobiography the illiterate) and e.m. cioran’s history and utopia (in particular his musings on nationalism and democracy letter to a faraway friend.) he will have to do this largely from memory (and a few notes he made of more quotable passages - no he can’t even do this, he’s left his own diary at home) because the first and last books he has left at home and the third (the middle) book he has never read (only read about).

the diary ends with an afterward by slavoj zizek - he finds the twin boy protagonists of agota’s novel admirable - they are relentlessly honest and relentlessly ruthless and they ‘write’ (in their diary) a sparse stripped-down descriptive prose cataloging the(ir) horrors as they struggle to survive the second world war and perhaps bring a little justice along the way.

but the children are not meant to be wholly admirable - if they fail to participate in the xenophobic hypocrisy of their times, if they fail to acquiesce to the exploitation of the weak by the strong that society ( in times of peace and in times of war) requires hushed up, it is more because they are children of the book, of the idea, who have made the word strong within them and the flesh weak (by means of self-discipline).

it’s a theme probably better dealt with in j.g. ballard’s empire of the sun - here it is just a fantasy for an academic determined to inject some grit into the comfortable and self-satisfied world in which all passion has been spent and the fantasy of an exile in the west.

agota fled hungary in 1956 first to austria and then to switzerland, having survived the nazi occupation, the soviet liberation and the failure of the 1956 rising. in switzerland she found herself illiterate and struggled to learn french - eventually writing plays, novels and an autobiography (the illiterate) in it. just as her twins keep a diary recording their activities she emphasizes how much she was a reader, a child of the book.

e.m. cioran (from neighbouring rumania -a country under the domination of the hungarians at the time of his childhood) also learned to write in french - again it was a struggle,

 ‘how many hours, how many cigarettes, how many cups of coffee, just to write a half -decent sentence’ (here horsemouth reconstructs the quote from memory).

he too sees the savagery under democracy (he sees democracy as the result of the exhaustion of the political passions of youth rather than a positive achievement) - again we have an observer who can show us both sides of the division of europe and of political thought that structured the 20th century. on the one hand he sees an exhausted west (waiting for the next outbreak of passion to rise up from the depths - horsemouth is reminded of derrida writing on potocki - ok no, Patocka,  

Jan Patočka).

on the other the ruined utopia of communism. utopia is closed off and no longer available. 

the twins survive because of their cruel grandmother (the witch as the locals call her) because she can grow food, and hoard it, and is smart enough to know that the liberators will come looting and raping and murdering. the twins also survive because they become harder, more evil and more determined than the 20th century.

it is a strange victory to be celebrating in the pages of the guardian (where zizek’s review first appeared) but that is the nature of the toleration under which we live.

horsemouth was never brave. but then conditions never consistently demanded it. yesterday he read (and snoozed) - hence this.