Arthur
Koestler, the son of an industrialist, was
born in Budapest, Hungary,
in 1905. After being educated at the University of Vienna (1922-26)
he went to live in Palestine.
In 1929 he returned to
Europe and worked as foreign editor of BZ
am Mittag in Germany. In 1932
he joined the Communist Party and later spent
time in the Soviet Union before settling
in France where he edited the weekly journal,
Zukunft.
On the outbreak of the
Spanish Civil War he was sent by the party
to spy on the Nationalist forces. Koestler posed as a right-wing Hungarian
journalist but he came under suspicion and was arrested in Seville
in February 1937. He was released the following year in an exchange
of prisoners and afterwards wrote accounts of his experiences in the
books Spanish Testament (1938)
and Dialogue With Death (1942).
Koestler moved to France
but was interned as a suspect alien. He escaped to England but was
once again arrested and again interned but was eventually released
and became a correspondent for the News
Chronicle. He also published The
Gladiators (1939), a novel about the Spartacus slave revolt.
Koestler had became disillusioned
by the activities of the Communist Party
in the Soviet Union and Spain
in the 1930s. His views on Joseph Stalin
and totalitarian rule appeared in his second novel, Darkness
at Noon (1940). This was followed by The
Scum of the Earth (1941), an account of his experiences
of internment.
Other books by Koestler
include Arrival and Departure
(1943), The Yogi and the Commissar
(1945), Thieves in the Night (1946),
The God That Failed (1949), Promise
and Fulfilment (1949), The Age
of Loving (1951), Arrow in the
Blue (1952), The Invisible Writing
(1954), Reflections on Hanging
(1956), Hanged By the Neck (1961),
The Ghost in the Machine (1967),
The Roots of Coincidence (1972)
and Life After Death (1976). Arthur
Koestler committed
suicide with his wife in 1983.
(1)
Arthur
Koestler, Dialogue
With Death (1942)
I left Paris
on January 15th (1937), took train to Toulouse and from there flew
to Barcelona. I stayed in Barcelona for only
one day. The city presented a depressing picture. There was no bread,
no milk, no meat to be had, and there were long
queues outside the shops. The Anarchists blamed the Catalan Government
for the food shortage and organised an intensive campaign of political
agitation; the windows of the trams were plastered with their leaflets.
The tension in the city was near danger-point. It looked as though
Spain were not only to be the stage for the dress-rehearsal of the
second world war, but also for the fratricidal struggle within the
European Left.
I was glad not to have
to write an article on Barcelona. On the 16th I left by the 4 p.m.
train for Valencia with Willy Forrest, also of the News Chronicle.
His destination was Madrid, mine Malaga.
The train to Valencia
was crowded out. Every compartment contained four times as many Militiamen,
sitting, lying down
or standing, as it was meant to hold. A kindly railway official installed
us in a first class carriage and locked the door from the outside
so that we should not be disturbed. 'Scarcely had the train started
when four Anarchist Militiamen in the corridor began to hammer at
the glass door of our compartment. We tried to open it, but could
not; we were trapped in our cage. The guard who had the key had completely
vanished. We were unable to make ourselves understood through the
locked door owing to the noise of the train, and the Militiamen thought
that it was out of sheer ill-will that we were not
opening it. Forrest and I could not help grinning, which further enraged
the Militiamen, and the situation became more dramatic from minute
to minute. Half the coach collected outside the glass door to gaze
at the two obviously Fascist agents. At length the guard came and
unlocked the door and explained the situation, and then ensued a perfect
orgy of fraternising and eating, and a dreadful hullabaloo of pushing
and shouting and singing.
By dawn the train was
six hours behind time. It was going so slowly that the Militiamen
jumped from the footboards,
picked handfuls of oranges from the trees that grew on the edge of
the embankment and clambered back again into the
carriage amidst general applause. This form of amusement continued
until about midday.
Valencia too disported
itself in the brilliant January sunshine with one weeping and one
smiling eye. There was a shortage of paper; some of the newspapers
were cut down to four pages, three full of the Civil War, the fourth
of football
championships, bullfights, theatre and film notices. Two days before
our arrival a decree had been issued ordering the famous Valencia
cabarets to close at nine o'clock in the evening "in view of
the gravity of the situation". Of course they all continued
to keep open until one o'clock in the morning, with one
exception, and that one adhered strictly to the letter of the
law. The owner was later unmasked as a rebel supporter and
his cabaret was closed down.
(2)
Arthur Koestler, Spanish Testament (1938)
My stay in Seville
was very instructive and very brief.
My private hobby was tracking
down the German airmen; that is to say, the secret imports of 'planes
and pilots, which at that time was in full swing, but was not so generally
known as it is today. It was the time when European diplomacy was
just celebrating its honeymoon with the Non-Intervention Pact. Hitler
was denying having despatched aircraft to Spain, and Franco was denying
having received them, while there before my very eyes fat, blond German
pilots, living proof to the contrary, were consuming vast quantities
of Spanish fish, and, monocles clamped into their eyes, reading the
"Volkischer Beobachter."
There were four of these
gentlemen in the Hotel Cristina in Seville at about lunch time on
28 August 1936. The Cristina is the hotel of which the porter had
told me that it was full of German officers and that it was not advisable
to go there, because every foreigner was liable to be taken for a
spy.
I went there, nevertheless.
It was, as I have said, about two o'clock in the afternoon. As I entered
the lounge, the four pilots were sitting at a table, drinking sherry.
The fish came later.
Their uniforms consisted
of the white overall worn by Spanish airmen; on their breasts were
two embroidered wings with a small swastika in a circle (a swastika
in a circle with wings is the so-called "Emblem of Distinction"
of the German National-Socialist Party).
In addition to the four
men in uniform one other gentleman was sitting at the table. He was
sitting with his back to me; I could not see his face.
I took my place some tables
further on. A new face in the lounge of a hotel occupied by officers
always creates a stir in times of civil war.
I could tell that the five men were discussing me. After some time
the fifth man, the one with his back to me, got up and strolled
past my table with an air of affected indifference. He had obviously
been sent out to reconnoitre.
As he passed my table,
I looked up quickly from my paper and hid
my face even more quickly behind it again. But it was of no use;
the man had recognized me, just as I had recognized him. It was
Herr Strindberg, the undistinguished son of the great August Strindberg;
he was a Nazi journalist, and war correspondent in Spain
for the Ullstein group.
This was the most disagreeable
surprise imaginable. I had known
the man years previously in Germany at a time when Hitler had
been still knocking at the door, and he himself had been a passionate
democrat. At that time I had been on the editorial staff of
the Ullstein group, and his room had been only three doors from
mine. Then Hitler came to power and Strindberg became a Nazi.
We had no further truck
with one another but he was perfectly aware
of my views and political convictions. He knew me to be an incorrigible
Left-wing liberal, and this was quite enough to incriminate
me. My appearance in this haunt of Nazi airmen must have appeared
all the more suspect inasmuch as he could not have known
that I was in Seville for a newspaper.
He behaved as though he
had not recognized me, and I did the same. He returned to his table.
He began to report to
his friends in an excited whisper. The five gentlemen put their heads
together.
Then followed a strategic
manoeuvre: two of the airmen strolled towards the door - obviously
to cut off my retreat; the third went to the porter's lodge and telephoned
- obviously to the police; the fourth pilot and Strindberg paced up
and down the room.
I felt more and more uncomfortable
and every moment expected the Guardia Civil to turn up and arrest
me. I thought the most sensible thing would be to put an innocent
face on the whole thing, and getting up, I shouted across the two
intervening tables with (badly) simulated astonishment:
"Hallo, aren't you
Strindberg?"
He turned pale and became
very embarrassed, for he had not expected such a piece of impudence.
"I beg your pardon,
I am talking to these gentlemen," he said.
Had I still had any doubts,
this behaviour on his part would in itself have made it patent to
me that the fellow had denounced me Well I thought, the only thing
that's going to get me out ot this is a little more impudence. I asked
him in a very loud voice, and as arrogantly as possible, what reason
he had for not shaking hands with me.
He was completely bowled
over at this, and literally gasped. At this point his friend, airman
number four, joined in the fray. With a stiff little bow he told me
his name, von Bernhardt, and demanded
to see my papers.
The little scene was carried
on entirely in German.
I asked by what right
Herr von Bernhardt, as a foreigner, demanded
to see my papers.
Herr von Bernhardt said
that as an officer in the Spanish Army he
had a right to ask "every suspicious character" for his
papers.
Had I not been so agitated,
I should have pounced upon this statement
as a toothsome morsel. That a man with a swastika on his
breast should acknowledge himself in German to be an officer in
Franco's army, would have been a positive tit-bit for the Non-Intervention
Committee.
I merely said, however,
that I was not a "suspicious character, but
an accredited correspondent of the London "News Chronicle,"
that Captain Bolin* would confirm this, and that I refused to show
my papers.
When Strindberg heard
me mention the "News Chronicle he did
something that was quite out of place: he began to scratch his head
Herr von Bernhardt too grew uncomfortable at the turn ot events
and sounded a retreat. We went on arguing for a while, until
Captain Bolin entered the hotel. I hastened up to him and demanded
that the others should apologise to me, thinking to myself
that attack was the best defence and that I must manage at all
costs to prevent Strindberg from having his say. Bolin was astonished
at the scene and indignantly declared that he refused to
have anything to do with the whole stupid business, and that in time
of civil war he didn't give a damn whether two people shook hands
or not.
(3)
Arthur Koestler, Spanish Testament (1938)
So it is all over. Malaga has surrendered.
And I remember Colonel
Villalba's last statement before he stepped into his car: "The
situation is a critical one, but Malaga will put up a good fight."
Malaga did not put up
a good fight.
The city was betrayed
by its leaders - deserted, delivered up to the slaughter. The rebel
cruisers bombarded us and the ships of the Republic did not come.
The rebel 'planes sowed panic and destruction, and the 'planes of
the Republic did not come. The rebels had artillery, armoured cars
and tanks, and the arms and war material of the Republic did not come.
The rebels advanced from all directions and the bridge on the only
road connecting Malaga with the Republic had been broken for four
months. The rebels maintained an iron discipline and machine-gunned
their troops into
battle, while the defenders of Malaga had no discipline,
no leaders, and no certainty that the Republic was backing them
up. Italians, Moors and Foreign Legionaries fought with the professional
bravery of mercenaries against the people in a cause that
was not theirs; and the soldiers of the people, who were fighting
for a cause that was their own, turned tail and ran away.
It would be far too glib
to explain away the catastrophes of Badajoz, Toledo and Malaga simply
by pointing to the enemy's superiority in war material. Nor does the
fact of the treachery and desertion of the local leaders of Malaga
alone suffice as an explanation. The city was in the charge of men
who proved incompetent - yet no less great is the responsibility of
the Central Government of Valencia, which sent neither ships nor 'planes
nor war material to Malaga,
and did not have the sense to replace incompetent leaders
by good ones. With Malaga Largo Caballero's Government completed
the chapter of their mistakes and errors of judgment; they
had to go. But a whole string of those who bear the responsibility
for the unfortunate course of the Civil War up till now (I am writing
these lines in September, 1937) still remain. This is one of those
things that fills the friends of Spanish democracy with the gravest
concern.
(4)
Arthur
Koestler, Dialogue
With Death (1942)
The sudden opening of his cell door at a time other than
the regular feeding time is always a shock to a prisoner. For
the first few moments I was thrown into such confusion by the sight
of the three uniformed figures that I murmured some idiotic kind of
apology at being unable to offer the young lady anything better to
sit on than my iron bedstead. But she only smiled - a rather charming
smile it seemed to me - and asked if my name was Koestler, and whether
I spoke
English. To both questions I replied in the affirmative.
Then she asked me whether
I was a Communist. To this I had to reply in the negative.
"But you are a Red,
aren't you?"
I said that I was in sympathy
with the Valencia Government, but did not belong to any party.
The young lady asked me
whether I was aware what would be the consequence of my activities.
I said that I was not.
"Well," she
said, "it means death."
She spoke with an American
twang, drawling out the vowel sound in 'death' so that it sounded
like 'dea-ea-h-th', and
watched the effect.
I asked why.
Because, she said, I was
supposed to be a spy.
I said that I was not,
and that I had never heard of a spy who signed articles and a book
attacking one side in a war
and then afterwards went into the territory of that side with his
passport in his pocket.
She said that the authorities
would investigate that point, but that in the meantime General Franco
had been asked by
the News Chronicle and by Mr. Hearst of New York to spare my
life; that she happened to be the correspondent of the
Hearst Press in Spain, and that General Franco had said that I would
be condemned to death, but that he might possibly
grant a commutation of my sentence.
I asked her what exactly
she meant by a commutation.
"Well, life-long
imprisonment. But there is always hope of an amnesty, you know,"
she said, with her charming smile.
A perfect cyclone of thoughts
rushed through my head. First of all I had had a set of dirty postcards
to thank for my life, and now here was Randolph Hearst himself as
my second saviour - my guardian angels seemed to be a somewhat poor
lot. And then, what was the significance of that fateful phrase, "might
possibly grant a commutation"?
But I had not much time
for reflection. The young lady on my bed asked me in charming conversational
tones if I would
like to make a statement to her paper with regard to my feelings towards
General Franco.
I was pretty bewildered
by all tills, but not so bewildered as not to perceive the fateful
connection between this question
and that "might possibly" of General Franco's. This was
something like a Biblical temptation, although Satan was presenting
himself in the smiling mask of a young woman journalist; and at that
moment - after all those days of waiting for torture and death - I
had not the moral strength to resist.
So I said that although
I did not know Franco personally I had a feeling that he must be a
man of humanitarian outlook whom I could trust implicitly. The young
lady wrote this down, seemingly very pleased, and asked me to sign
it.
I took the pen, and then
I realised that I was about to sign my own moral death sentence, and
that this sentence no one
could commute. So I crossed out what she had written and dictated
another statement, which ran:
"I do not know General
Franco personally, nor he me; and so, if he grants me a commutation
of my sentence I can only suppose that it is mainly from political
considerations. Nevertheless,
I could not but be personally grateful to him, just
as any man is grateful to another who saves his life. But I believe
in the Socialist conception of the future of humanity, and shall never
cease to believe in it."
This statement I signed.
The temptation of Satan
had been resisted, and I patted myself inwardly on the back and rejoiced
at having a clear
head once more. I had good need of it too, for Miss Helena's next
question was what did I actually mean by a "Socialist
conception of the future of humanity"?
This question called for
an academic dissertation, and I was about to launch forth on one.
But the three Phalangists were
hardly a sympathetic audience for my passionate rhetorical efforts.
The young lady cut me short and suggested the
lapidary formula :
"Believes in Socialism
to give workers chance."
She said Americans understood
things the better the more briefly they were put.
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