Le Zéro et l'Infini
First French edition; a very fine uncut copy, printed on large paper in publisher's wrappers, as issued.
12mo of 294 pp., 1 p.
Publisher's brochure, uncut copy.
186 x 120 mm
Koestler, Arthur. Darkness at Noon. Translated from English.
Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 1945.
First French edition of this classic work on totalitarianism.
One of 200 copies on Marais white vellum, the only large paper printing.
“Today, Mr. Koestler gives us a masterpiece: Darkness at Noon. For him, the central question is whether the individual must, whatever the circumstances, sacrifice himself for the community. Mr. Koestler, who knows the issue well, tells us the story of a political trial. He has extensive experience of prisons; he knows what an interrogation, a trial, a sentencing, and even an execution mean… And he shares his experience with us. A book that leaves its mark” (Henri Jeanson).
This novel is inspired by the author's personal experience, having joined the Communist Party in 1931 and remained for eight years. It is a book of bitterness and disappointment. Darkness at Noon shows man grappling with the Party. A former leader, Rubashov, is accused of treason and deviationism, and his own words are turned against him. “The Party is never wrong, comrade. You and I can make mistakes. But not the Party. The Party is something greater than you and me and a thousand others like you and me. The Party is the embodiment of the revolutionary idea in History. History knows neither scruple nor hesitation. At every bend in its course, it leaves behind the mud it has carried along and the corpses of the drowned.” The Party executes Rubashov because it knows Rubashov no longer blindly follows the path of History, but judges its actions and condemns them.
The historical setting and bloody backdrop of Darkness at Noon is the Great Terror, which, in the second half of the 1930s, swept the Soviet Union into the dark tides of a colossal mass crime unprecedented in history. Four years of systematic purges where the Soviet revolution reached its crepuscular zenith and arrived at the ultimate stage of its criminal logic. A dreadful tragedy marking the culmination of a process where the 1917 revolution and the building of socialism led to the rise of a totalitarian bureaucracy and absolute power. For Koestler, it is the strangest regime of terror humanity has ever known.
A very beautiful copy, pristine, uncut, preserved in the publisher’s original wrappers, as issued.
