JERZY STEMPOWSKI
For the shadows of L. R.
I
In the writings of ancient Greek authors, Cassandra is a symbolic figure, representing inner drama and the powerlessness of prophets.
In the Iliad, the character of Cassandra is roughly sketched out. In Homer’s world, where gods lead heroes by the hand towards fame and perdition, there is no room for a prophet’s dialogue with his people. Such a dialogue is part of the republican world for it is only there that a difference exists between he who sees and his unseeing environment.
The character of Cassandra the tragic is a product of Athenian imagination, which grew and found its completion in democracy. Of the remaining monuments of literature, it is Aeschylus in Agamemnon and Euripides in The Trojan Women who wrote most about Cassandra. Cassandra, the daughter of Priam, was taught to prophesise by an enamoured Apollo. “He fought for my love”, she says of him. The golden-haired god was not lucky in love though and Cassandra teased him with promises. In spite of his heartbreak, the young god respected her vocation of virginity and did not take away her gift of prophecy. According to Euripides, Cassandra remained Apollo’s priestess until the destruction of Troy. As she did not keep the promise she made to the young god, nobody believed her word ever again.
From the moment when beautiful Helena–who abandoned the king of Sparta for Paris and triggered the resulting conflict between Troy and Greece–arrived in Priam’s town, Cassandra issued warnings of the incumbent annihilation of Troy and Priam’s family in vain. We know little about this part of her prophecy because Homer–the chief narrator of the Trojan war–did not provide us with these details.
Having conquered and demolished Troy, the victorious Greeks killed all the men in Priam’s family and divided the women among themselves. Cassandra hid in the temple of Pallas-Athena, who sided with the Greeks during the war. Ajax dragged her from the altar by force and put her in the group of Trojan women waiting to be allotted. This scene is beautifully presented on one of the beautiful Greek vases in the Louvre.
The desecration of Athena’s temple and the leaving of the bodies of the fallen Trojans unburied became the turning points in the fate of the Greek army, which faced nothing but disaster thereafter. The Greek authors quoted here have provided us with a notion of the customs and fortune in war in those times. In Agamemnon, on finding out about the fall of Troy Clytaemnestra says this about the conquerors: “If they respect the gods of the land they conquered and their temples, they do not have to fear that they will turn from victors into the defeated.” Euripides puts a similar thought in the mouth of Poseidon: “It is only a madman who kills off and loots cities with their temples and graves, which are worshipped as houses of the dead, because he creates a desert around him and he himself perishes in it.”
Offended, Athena turns against the Greeks and sinks part of the navy returning from Troy. In the allotment of women, Cassandra ends up with those sent to Agamemnon, the king of Argos and commander of the Greek army. His ship reaches the homeland safely but the victorious king returns to die at the hand of his own wife, Clytaemnestra, in revenge for the death of her daughter, Ifigenia, whom her father had sacrificed to the gods to ensure good fortune in the Greek weapons. Cassandra, who is also supposed to die by the hand of Clytaemnestra, arrives in Argos along with Agamemnon.
Thus ends the legendary, Trojan part of Cassandra’s story, and the Greek part begins. From the moment Troy was destroyed and Athena was angered, Cassandra never ceases to foretell the death of the Greek commander and the disasters to befall his house. This part of Cassandra’s story, recorded by Aeschylus, is a realistic picture suited to the concepts and conditions of the Athenian democracy. The prophesies of Priam’s daughter and the reflections of those hearing them are treated with equal importance.
The most dramatic part of Agamemnon is a long dialogue between Cassandra and a chorus made up of citizens of Argos. The chorus represents the viewpoint of the majority, common sense, and the opinions of rightful citizens. A dialogue commences when on returning from Troy, Agamemnon enters the palace where he will be murdered in his bath. Cassandra, who is supposed to die with him, notices the monument of Apollo of the Streets and erupts in a lament: “Apollo, Apollo! God of the Streets, and my destroyer! Ah, where on earth, what kind of house, have you brought me to?”
The chorus notes in response that mourning laments do not belong to the cult of Apollo. The citizens find Cassandra’s behaviour inappropriate. They are aware of her fame as a prophet, but they believe prophets are not needed in their city.
Cassandra tells them about the crime about to happen inside the palace. Her words are not a vision detached from immediate reality but they refer to prior circumstances known to the citizens. The chorus does not oppose her reasoning but responds to it with reluctance: “Have prophecies ever brought any fortunate news to common mortals?”
As the dialogue unfolds, the citizens even show some compassion and interest in Cassandra. They ask who taught her to make prophesies and when. That Apollo, they say, although a god, must have been very much in love. They ask her if she has been with him as with a husband. Priam’s daughter responds that previously she would have been afraid to talk about this. In prosperity, everyone takes on airs–notes the coryphaeus.
At times the dialogue departs from the main issue, as though the citizens wanted to postpone facing reality. As they bemoan the ambiguity of the prophecies, Cassandra tells them directly that they are about to see Agamemnon’s death.
“Miserable girl, hush!” responds the coryphaeus, “let the gods protect us from that”. Cassandra responds: “You speak wishes, they are preparing murder.” Even those words seem unclear to the citizens. They want to know how the killers intend to act on their plans.
Feeling the time of her death coming near, Cassandra stands up and approaches the palace gate. “Nothing can save me”, she says, “what good is one more hour for me?”. “The last hour is the most precious”, the chorus responds with a platitude. Surrounded by citizens, Cassandra expects no help from them. She is alone among them in the face of her fate. The number does not matter. This thought seems to pervade the final scenes of the play.
In any case, the chorus remains sceptical. Cassandra withdraws from the palace gate. She senses the smell of crime and freshly shed blood. The chorus members think that it must be the scent of sacrifices made to the gods in the palace’s vestibule. Cassandra bids them farewell, requesting that they give testimony of her agony and death, and then enters the palace.
After Cassandra’s departure the chorus bemoans the fate of man and then, from inside the palace, Agamemnon’s cry can be heard as he calls out that he is dying, murdered. At this moment the citizens also shy away from acknowledging the fact. The chorus, so far consistent in its sceptical and waiting attitude, falls apart into a dozen or so voices”:
“The deed is done, it seems—to judge by the groans of the king. But come, let us take counsel together… I tell you my advice: summon the townsfolk to bring rescue here to the palace!... To my thinking, we must burst in and charge them with the deed while the sword is still dripping in their hands!... I, too, am for taking part in some such plan, and vote for action of some sort. It is no time to keep on delaying… It is plain. Their opening act marks a plan to set up a tyranny in the State… Yes, because we are wasting time, while they, trampling underfoot that famous name, Delay, allow their hands no slumber… I know not what plan I could hit on to propose. It is the doer's part likewise to do the planning… I too am of this mind, for I know no way to bring the dead back to life by mere words… What! To prolong our lives shall we thus submit to the rule of those defilers of the house?... No, it is not to be endured. No, death would be better, for that would be a milder lot than tyranny… And shall we, upon the evidence of mere groans, divine that our lord is dead?... We should be sure of the facts before we indulge our wrath. For surmise differs from assurance… I am supported on all sides to approve this course—that we get clear assurance how it stands with the king...” [English translation by Herbert Weir Smyth]
Torn by divergent advice, the chorus does not move. In the meantime, Clytaemnestra appears with a sword in her hand and announces the deaths of Agamemnon and Cassandra. The chorus protests and calls upon her to leave the city. Clytaemnestra defends herself with different arguments and the chorus even agrees with some of them. The discussion goes on for some time until finally Aigistos, the queen’s lover, enters the stage with a handful of armed men, proclaiming that shackles and prison diet would soon cure the citizens of Argos of unrestrained speech. The play ends with this threat.
The Athenian version of Cassandra’s story is rationalistic, devoid of legendary and supernatural elements. Cassandra’s divinations are not Cazotte’s visions but rather feats of acute recognition of the known components of a situation and their most probable consequences. For Aeschylus, the citizens’ distrustful and suspicious approach to them is not the result of Apollo’s revenge but a characteristic of any grouping of Greeks. The author is consistent in this line of thought as he has the chorus apply equal incredulity to Cassandra’s prophecies as to the most obvious facts.
In this approach, Cassandra’s plight is one of the still timely, recurrent components of our civilisation, dependent on the mechanistic conditions of democracy. This is why so many acquaintances are dressed as Greeks in Aeschylus’s play. In the questioning scene, the chorus represents the Greek “ochlos” and is indistinguishable from the mindless and cruel crowds filling our capital cities. This scene could serve as a model for Dostoyevsky.
The council of the chorus after Agamemnon’s murder is even closer to our times. If we dress Aeschylus’s chorus in masks of the present ochlogogues, with their noses, moustaches, spectacles and hairstyles, the “different voices” of the citizens of Argos would seem strangely familiar to us. The present choirs of democrats even used the same vocabulary when responding to accounts from concentration camps and to news of the ominous preparations of dictators. Only chorus members advising them to rush to the palace were missing.
II
The world of antiquity has endowed us with two concepts of divinations and prophecies: one based on a belief in supernatural powers of different kinds and degrees, and having access to future matters and willing to provide useful guidelines to those interested; the other as rationalistic, based on the computability of natural processes and our assumed ability to predict the outcomes that could emerge from deeds and situations.
In antiquity, the first type of divination was broadly exploited to different degrees by initiates who operated in temples and other places that were conducive to maintaining relations with supernatural forces. This kind of divination is not extinct and to this day provides a living for many fortune tellers, cabalists, clairvoyants, and astrologers. Even fortune-telling machines exist: I saw one years ago at the Eiffel Tower. My female companion dropped in a copper coin and a pink slip of paper fell out of the machine saying Tu seras toujours follement aimée.
Both in the past and nowadays, such divinations were sought mostly on private matters and less often in matters of a public or general nature. The thing is that in private matters, our predictive abilities seem to be most fallible. The predictability of future events decreases as the observer’s ability of interfering with them increases. A lunar eclipse can be predicted with the utmost precision–the onlooker’s interference, in this case, is nil. The overall number of car accidents–given the consumption of gasoline and alcohol–can also be calculated fairly exactly for the future, although less precisely than for a lunar eclipse. However, the calculating person is unable to predict when he or she will be hit by a car. Even if they had managed to find this out, they would lie in bed all day and their calculation would prove to be false. With some diseases, the time of the patient’s death can be predicted with a certain level of probability, but this is only possible in the case of an incurable disease that cannot be treated by doctors. Apart from loan repayment dates, private life has so few computable components that those who want to know the future in this area have always turned, with good reason, to fortune tellers and cabalists.
Political matters are a middle ground for prediction, as they are prone to approximate calculation. In republics, the predominant constant and predictable factor is the inertia and lack of initiative of collective bodies. One can predict that, in any given situation and with a large degree of probability, elections and parliaments will not undertake any unexpected decisions so no extraordinary events will take place and things will remain as they were. Such permanence and continuity are a source of prosperity and culture for republics. When one considers, however, the main reason for the continuity, one can predict that republics will have little immunity to extrinsic events.
The moves of dictators appear to be less predictable, as they are, to a larger extent, subject to the personal initiative of a single person. Most of the time, however, this is an illusion. A dictator is a prisoner of the mechanism of absolute power, acting with great precision. The personal tastes and ideas of a dictator have the least importance in this system.
The position of a prophet in a republic is full of internal contradictions. His ability to make accurate predictions is all the greater the more of a role in the circumstances is played by mechanistic components that are independent of the stakeholders’ initiative, and are thus more computable. In other words, the less the citizens themselves are capable of recognising the effects of their deeds and their situations, the easier it is to predict the oncoming future and the less they interfere with the course of events. In a way, the accuracy of a prophet’s predictions, therefore, is inversely proportional to how much he is heeded by his fellow citizens. Entangled in this contradiction a prophet stands helpless–often desperate–in front of his people. The better his knowledge of future matters, the greater his loneliness.
Under the rule of dictators, awareness of future disasters is very widespread and the prophet usually has nothing new to tell his listeners. It is also irrelevant if he can convince them, because the opinion of the majority does not matter. Even the most accurate predictions of the effects of a given situation are useless because it is already too late for the future course of events to be reversed.
III
The ability to predict future political events does not have to be a rare thing, as in the inter-war period I heard many predictions that were fulfilled precisely. Those predictions were never made by people occupying high office, who had all the material data for a correct assessment of the situation and were, in a way, appointed to look into the future. A belief that the statements of experts, exhaustive documentation, and secret reports can obfuscate even the clearest of matters is therefore not unwarranted.
As I now look at those times with hindsight, I have the impression that in the inter-war period, having a predictive ability was a hindrance for any kind of political career. This phenomenon even seems understandable to me now. The future of Europe was grim, and whoever assessed it correctly was a pessimist whom nobody is ever willing to heed. Cultured people avoided any excursions into these subjects. What was tragic in this situation was that for many years, even a small effort by people of good faith could have averted the catastrophe that threatened our continent.
In recalling the prophets of doom of the time, in first place I should mention Szymon Askenazy. Like Julian Klaczko he was born into a rabbinic family in Vilnius and married an affluent woman from Warsaw. For many years, Askenazy was a modern history professor at the University of Lviv. His audience there reached the hundreds; up to 80 students worked in his seminar, browsing through archives from all over Europe under the master’s guidance. A new and outstanding book by Askenazy was published almost every year: Książę Józef, Łukasiński, many tomes of historical dissertations and sketches. It was already the European dusk of historicism, which had been a feature of the previous century. The West’s most distinguished historians–the likes of Aulard, Chuquet, and Ferrero–failed to find a broad audience and had to satisfy themselves with small groups of students. In comparison, Askenazy was like a great headmaster, the helmsman of a boat carrying enthusiastic and learned youth. It was not until later that it became clear that Polish late historicism was, to a large extent, a circumstantial, random phenomenon. Young people in an independent country would dream of careers as diplomats, generals, or bankers: in Poland they studied history or wrote sonnets.
In 1914, Askenazy moved abroad. Upon returning to Poland, he justifiably applied to head the history department at the reborn University of Warsaw. The revived Poland was, however, young, profligate, and capricious. In 1920 the academic senate rejected Askenazy. He was appointed as the delegate to the League of Nations soon afterwards and left Poland for two years. After resigning from office he returned to Warsaw in 1922 and remained there until his death in 1935.
I became acquainted with him between 1928–1932. He lived a lonely and idle life in his apartment on Czackiego street at the time. He had abandoned all scientific work. Numerous manuscripts, some almost ready for publication, lay shelved. When the University of Warsaw offered him a post in the law department, Askenazy refused. “I had 12 years to think about what to tell them,” he said of the visit from the delegates of the academic senate. “I only told them to kiss my a… three times.” His decision seemed right. For years, the standards of the university had dropped to suit the requirements of ever more numerous youth who expected their studies to provide them with tangible benefits, above all diplomas. Audiences like those Askenazy had gathered before in Lviv could no longer be found in Poland or anywhere else.
Askenazy was, as it were, a living testament of the profound changes that took place in those times–changes that no one wanted to see. He was tall, horribly skinny, with a large head, a very long nose, and a pair of dark, brilliant, and unkind eyes. His language and judgment cut like a knife. As time passed, he was visited less and less. In the final years of his life he was totally alone.
Perhaps because my thoughts were not far from his own, Askenazy tolerated me better than others. I would usually visit him in the early afternoon. For an hour or two he would recant anecdotes from the life of Adam Czartoryski, sometimes he read a fragment of an abandoned manuscript. Then, at around 5pm, he would put on a bowler hat–a brown one in the winter and a pearl-coloured one in the summer–and we went into town together. Our path usually took us through Krakowskie Przedmieście, Miodowa Street, and Bankowy Square. Askenazy stopped in front of every old house and talked about the things that had happened there on November Night, what people were gathered there, and what was discussed.
The spoken version of the story often deviated significantly from the one he left us in Łukasiński. The fragments he told slowly conjured up a picture of chaos, divergent and shameless interests, clumsiness. Heroism happened next to mindless egoism and provocation. The shadow of the final defeat seemed to burden the uprising from day one. He said “I wrote history largely ad usum delphini for the youth, whom I was trying to raise, to prepare them morally for a new struggle for independence. Of course this could be told anew, differently nowadays, but for whom? Who could have any use for such knowledge?”
On a bright summer day in 1932, having paced the older part of town along the well-trodden path, we turned into 3 Maja Avenue and sat on a bench. The foundations for a large building were being built in front of us. “What are they planning to build here?”, asked Askenazy. “I have heard that it’s the National Museum.” “Amazing how people have the power and will to erect such expensive buildings in a city doomed for destruction.” “Why destruction?” I asked. “As I sit on this bench with you, I can almost see the Germans coming in airplanes and dropping bombs on the city.” To my sceptical remark about prophecies, he rebutted vigorously, “How come you don’t see this? How can you not see this? Just think for a moment! Is there any other way?” I was pretty well versed with German matters at the time, and it seemed likely that he would continue his deliberations.
Askenazy, however, carried on expanding on his vision of the future:
“Only the most naïve can imagine Poland waging war in any way other than on two fronts. The Germans cannot cross the border at Zbąszyń without the Russians having crossed from their side at Baranowicze. One has to consider the simplest mechanism of such events. Before attacking Poland, Germany will gather superior forces and assure the neutrality or inaction of the Western powers. It is therefore very probable that, sooner or later, they will seize the country and reach all the way to Baranowicze. Can the Russians wait for the Germans to reach their border? No. Basic caution will require them to cross the border beforehand and seize what they can so as to have something in hand for the negotiations with the Germans and to keep them as far as possible from their borders in case of possible conflict. Whether the Soviet Union will be allied with the Germans or with England and France, or even with us on that day, will depend on the interplay of alliances on that day but will not change matters. At the time, crossing the border and taking hold of the eastern part of Poland will be, beyond compare, more urgent for Russia than the game of alliances.”
Then, after pondering a while:
“The same mechanism also works in the case of a peaceful turn of events. If, for some reason, Poland has to give up Vilnius and Lviv to Russia, the next day it will have to surrender Silesia and Pomerania to Germany. After surrendering Lviv and Vilnius, Poland’s continued existence would only be possible with Germany’s support, and the price for such support would be Silesia and Pomerania. Also, inversely: should it be necessary to cede Silesia and Pomerania to Germany, Poland’s survival would only be possible under the care of Russia, which would demand Lviv and Vilnius in return. Anyways, after such truncation no independent existence would be conceivable. For the Western powers, Poland is just a chess piece to play against either Germany or Russia, and it would present no value after being trimmed.”
Szymon Askenazy died three years after this conversation, reportedly from kidney failure. In fact, it was his own thoughts that killed him–the awareness of future events that no one could see apart from him. His wife died in a Warsaw hospital in 1940 and his only daughter was murdered by the Germans.
*
It’s likely that no one will think of seeking accurate predictions among journalists, the fabricators of ephemeral news that is only valid for the current day and turns into wastepaper as soon as the next issue of the newspaper arrives. The press has long forsaken any ambitions to inform and is content with providing the reader with entertainment to sweeten the mash of the official news that is unavoidable in a daily newspaper. Nonetheless, I have also seen journalists making accurate predictions for their private use. The possibility of becoming personally acquainted with the political and parliamentary communities in countries where future events were readying themselves often gave them the grounds to rightly assess the near future.
From the inter-war period I still remember a few conversations with Robert Dell, one of the last independent journalists.
I met him in Düsseldorf in November 1922. The French forces had just seized the Ruhr region and a state of what we now call “cold war” between France and England had existed for several weeks. The English were making efforts to ruin the Franc and put France into financial trouble. Nobody knew how the German population in the Ruhr would behave. The commander of a small occupying force, General Mangin, began talks with Karol Radek, then the head of German policy of the Comintern, who had just arrived in the Ruhr. Paul-Prudent Painleve, whom I had visited in Paris the previous day, had just taken a break from reading Einstein to say that he found the situation dangerous and that the occupation of the Ruhr seemed exceedingly risky, both in military and political terms. France’s allies were also consumed by anxiety. Thinking that now they could garner support from England and aiming to also weaken France on the Czech side, the Sudeten Germans began seeking contacts in London.
In the hall of a hotel built by Hugo Stinnes, we made a short review of those events. Dell was grave and pale, as though he felt joint responsibility for the follies of the powers that be.
“The political system establishment by the winners in 1919”, he said, “is in ruin now. America has withdrawn its endorsement, England and France are so conflicted that their influences cancel each other out. Russia is not yet ready to take over their legacy. There is no one to protect the peace of 1919. For now, Germany is in chaos, but the road lies open for them. England doesn’t want to and France alone is unable to defend the existing order. It is the Germans who will decide what Europe will be. The future of Europe depends on the internal evolution of Germany.”
What I saw in Germany over the next days confirmed my belief in the accuracy of this forecast and filled me with foreboding. Looking ahead, I only saw the ruin of everything that was intended to be the foundation for the peaceful coexistence of Europeans since the Peace of Westphalia. At the end of December I bought a handful of gold dollars in Paris, which I kept until 1939 and which enabled me to escape occupied Poland.
I met Dell again in Geneva in the late autumn of 1936. The Spanish war was already in full flow, and England had managed to impose a policy of non-intervention on France, which was troubled by internal crisis. So the roles were already assigned–Italian armoured divisions and the German air force attacked the Spanish Republic and the non-intervention system was tying the hands of those who were capable of coming to the rescue. Moscow had not made its decision and its press was trashing the Spanish Republic on a daily basis.
Dell was very despondent. His independent journalism had given him nothing but disappointment: he was expunged from Germany and France. Living in Geneva, he wrote correspondences from the League of Nations about which there was not much to be said. When we were left alone, he started talking:
“Nothing remains of the Europe in which I grew up and to which I was deeply attached. The only logical way out of this situation for me would be suicide. If I am still alive in spite of this, it is for two reasons: as an Englishman, I abhor extreme moves and, secondly, I am 67 years old, and at this age, suicide would be pushing at an open door.”
I tried to comfort him as best I could, but in vain. As I wanted to turn his thoughts to another track I started talking about the political situation. Dell interrupted:
“All in all, all is said and done. The situation is clear. Over the last decade or so, the chief goal of English politics was to bring France down to the level of Portugal, and that goal has now been achieved. Having rid itself of the only possible ally in Europe, from now on England will no longer have a say on continental matters. In this way, Poland’s fate has also been sealed. Poland cannot rely on the French Portugal, and England has relinquished its vote.”
Seeing him become gloomier and gloomier, I began unfolding a fantasy theory of the opposition of generations. Youth brought up in the discipline of totalitarian states will have to long for some new liberalism, secretly at first and then openly. I quoted examples of such about-face changes from different times and ended with a vision of the future along the following lines:
“In 10 or 15 years we will be both invited to Berlin for the unveiling of the Dickens monument on the Nolendorfplatz. On that occasion, the Prussian minister of education will recommend reading the works of Godwin for the school curriculum. In the evening, in Kaiserhof, a banquet will be held in honour of Garrison-Villard. Lilacs will bloom on all the squares of Charlottenburg. We will drink lager with raspberry juice in a joyous and sublime mood because there will only be kind and liberal Germans around us.”
Squinting his eyes, Dell listened to me with a smile, like a man grasping at any reason to get away from his thoughts. Then he became gloomy again:
“Like all the English of my generation, I was a bit of a Germanophile all my life. Recent years have cured me of that weakness. There will be no peace in Europe until fire falls from the sky and burns down the place called Germany.”
Dell must have been “inspired”–as prophets are described–that day because even the “fire falling from the sky”, which seemed like a mere biblical metaphor, was later to become reality.
*
Even amongst the chaos of war, where everything seems possible and no foothold can be found for any credible calculations, I have heard strikingly accurate predictions. In the autumn of 1940 there was a lot of talk about the unavoidable, looming conflict between the German army and the dictator. In the event of victory, it was reasoned, the generals would be killed by Hitler as they would no longer be necessary, and in the case of defeat–considering the German way of conducting war–they would be executed by the victors. While they were still at the helm of the victorious army they should take the opportunity of a situation that will not present itself again.
In the same period I met a senior Swiss officer of extraordinary intelligence who owed his in-depth familiarity with German generals to his family connections and training. He answered my question:
“Do not let yourself be distracted with such drivel. The leaders of the German army are currently the best engineers of the art of war, and thanks to this they may even win the war. Overthrowing the dictatorship calls for completely different competencies and, above all, character, which none of them possesses. Therefore there will be none of that. It does seem very likely to me, however, that they will die by the gallows.”
When I think of this conversation nowadays, the word “gallows” strikes me the most. In 1940 nobody used this word in relation to army men, who were shot, following the old customs. Even Tuchaczewski died in front of a firing squad. The word “hung” carries with it a specificity of vision extending beyond the confines of theoretical calculation.
*
There was also no shortage of written prophecies in the inter-war period. Examples can be found in surrealist literature, for instance. Its proper sense, obfuscated by critics, eluded the readers. In 1939–1940, looking at the masses of refugees crowding onto the shores of foreign countries, I recognised in them the atmosphere of Ribemont-Dessaignes’ novel Frontieres humaines. The sight of long convoys of cars, covered with mattresses as was the fashion of the time, reminded me of the words of the so-called second manifesto of the Surrealists–Partez sur les routes. Semez les enfants au coin du bois–which I had read years before.
*
Predictions of such accuracy and specificity often strike us with their simplicity, dryness, and almost scant premises of reason, isolated from the chaos of reality. In this context, a prophecy that has only been half fulfilled, which I heard from Mahmud Tarzy in 1923, comes to mind.
His person needs a brief explanation. Afghanistan is a country bordering India on one side and Russian Turkistan on the other. Abdurrachman, the last emir of the first period of independence, said this about the situation: “I am like a swan floating in a stream. A Bengali tiger walks on one bank of the stream, a Siberian bear on the other. I swim in the middle and the water is not very deep at all.” When the Petersburg government proposed the rectification of the border on the Pamir to him in 1882, the emir was so frightened that he gave up independence and accepted the status of a British protectorate. In 1917, two Afghans–Weli Chan and Mahmud Tarzy–went to Moscow and, for 18 months, followed the course of the revolution at close quarters. Having reached the conviction that nothing would threaten Afghanistan from the north over the next few years they returned home, overthrew the emir, and put the famous Ammanullah on the throne, who immediately proclaimed Afghanistan independent, declared war on the United Kingdom and consequently regained recognition of the country’s independence. Soon afterwards, the emir married Mahmud Tarza’s daughter. From then on, he held command of the army and presidency of the civilian government interchangeably with Weli Chan. In 1923 Mahmud Tarzy left for Europe and having thoroughly visited Italy, France, and England, he settled in Paris as an emissary of his country. I visited him there several times in the company of my Muslim friends.
Weli Chan was rather short, with a face as round as the moon, expressing deep satisfaction. Mahmud Tarzy was taller, slimmer, his skin was as dark as tanned leather, he had a black beard, was usually looking at the ground, and seemed to predict nothing good. One day, he clarified to me the difference between his own appearance and that of his distinguished colleague.
“Have you ever talked to Weli Chan face to face, or have you seen him in the presence of other Afghans?”
I answered that I had never seen him in private.
“Face to face he would seem less delighted to you. For us, smiling and satisfaction is a courtesy that a governor owes his subjects. For one of them to be on top, they all have to contribute their money, humiliation, and discomfort. So they would be unpleasantly surprised to see that the emir is unhappy and that their sacrifices were in vain.”
At this point, he pulled from a drawer a photograph of Weli Chan surrounded by a dozen or so Afghans and continued:
“When you look at this group you can immediately recognise each person’s rank. The faces of the lower ranks express focused attention and readiness to serve. The higher ups express readiness to serve and a conviction that their services will be appropriately appreciated. The man on top looks over the heads of the others and has an expression as if he had already seen Mohammad’s paradise up close.”
So Mahmud Tarzy was not only an experienced man, but also one used to seeing the many different aspects of people’s matters. Taking advantage of his good mood I asked him about his impressions from his tour of Europe and what he thought of its future.
“Nothing good”, he answered. “If the Europeans’ occupation was, like ours, herding goats and if they had no other worries, they could look cheerfully into the future. However, the administration of such great riches and complex enterprises requires a certain intelligence, which I cannot see anywhere. So I think that Europe is at the brink of an unprecedented disaster and that you will all die pitifully, infamously like animals obediently going to slaughter.”
After a while he added:
“Of them all I like the English the most. They are not the wisest, but for now they have the most money.”
Many years have passed from that day. I recalled Mahmud Tarzy’s words whenever I looked at the astounding discipline of the present human ant nests. Under the command of mad dictators or no less mindless democratic governments, entire nations marched in obedient lines towards inevitable disasters that were discernible from afar. Nobody tried to think independently, nobody even escaped: It was as if they were caught up in the herd instinct. The changes that took place in Europe, once the central laboratory of critical thinking, are so deep that we ourselves almost fail to notice the grotesqueness of our behaviour, which so puzzled the Afghani mountain man.
IV
Starting with Jacob Burckhard, all those who have seen future matters clearly over the last decades were sad. They were burdened with the loneliness and uselessness of their knowledge. In my younger years, some modest personal benefits could be obtained from accurate predictions. Nowadays, even those opportunities are no more. Caution tells us to escape from a place that is about to be struck by lightning. But where to? War and chaos can begin anywhere. The last war began in the periphery of Spain. Dictators also considered starting it in South America. So there is nowhere to run to. The few relatively peaceful countries guard their privileges for the benefit of their own inhabitants and close their borders to outsiders. The modern state, by the way, with its meticulous apportioning of life, offers no worthwhile asylum for strangers. So there is nowhere to run and no point in running away. An ability to make predictions is not needed for fellow citizens, who attach no importance to it. Neither is it needed for the predictor himself, who can draw no benefits from it under the present social organisation. So it is a cumbersome burden, more difficult to bear now than ever.
What is the use in making predictions, then? A friend of mine who works in politics recently told me:
“After 40 years of experience I have come to a certainty that reason and consideration are the greatest handicaps in our lives.”
Will the ability to see future things, in the view of its utter uselessness, still inspire the chosen few?
This question reminds me of a conversation I had long ago in a laboratory to which I brought a book by Blaringham, which was still new at the time, about the sudden mutations of plants and animals. My professor and the head of the laboratory, a learned physiologist and member of many academic societies, became interested in the book and spent the whole evening reading it. The next morning, he asked:
“You studied history before; do you think that historical civilisations were not an effect of mutations similar to those described by Blaringham?” “Everything we know about them seems to indicate that. Every new civilisation was the work of several generations which–under helpful circumstances–uncovered abilities previously unknown.” “The same comes to mind when I consider the development of natural science. The abilities needed to do the things we now do in our laboratories have only developed over the last several generations and there is no evidence of them existing before.”
He sighed and added:
“The conclusions I draw from this are very unfortunate for all of us. The variants based on mutations are impermanent and are subject to equally fast regression. One day we might wake up among cretins who are completely incapable of understanding the things into which we have put so much work and wit.”
In a narrower sense his words came true because, ten years later, on the occasion of the political purges in Germany, he was removed from the university and prevented from pursuing scientific work.
Almost none of the authors of the predictions mentioned above are still alive. Abilities like that are certainly not conducive to longevity. They brought no good even to me, who only listened to them in silence. Still, it is clear that discipline and patience are not enough nowadays. If Europe, brought to ruin by so many follies, is to avoid destruction, its denizens must learn to predict the effects of their actions better and must no longer neglect those who can do this. For older people it hardly matters anymore. I am thinking about the young, who have their whole lives ahead of them. Who among them will be willing to wear the coat about which Cassandra told Apollo: “In this coat of a prophet, you have made me the laughingstock of your enemies.”
Kultura 1950, no. 6/32
English translation by Piotr Sut
