Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1991. British and American Philologycal Studies (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 20)

József Hruby: Two "Last Men in Europe": A. Koestler's Darkness at Noon and G. Ornwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four

59 follows: in order to free man in the future, it was necessary to opress man in the present, to impose greater suffering than there was in the past. There appeared a tragic rift between existing humanity (the past) and its desired fulfilment (the future). His having embraced Communist ethics-moral fervour, selfless devotion, cynical hypocrisy - made it easy for him to accept evil means wilfully and readily. In Rubashov's psychologycal transformation his - childhood memories (Past Perfect) and his memories as a revolutionary (Simple Past tense) - play a crucial role. His having denounced Richard to the Gestapo for not conforming to the official Party line, Little Loewy's suicide in Belgium all contribute to the process. These are however, memories of abstract deaths, just like the case of his secretary and lover, Arlova, who was called back home, tried and executed because of deviationism. (This is one of the themes - how love becomes tainted with politics - which is later added to and elaborated on in Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.) However important these abstract deaths are, they can only cause him pangs of conscience, but cannot push him beyond the "point of no return". He needs something much more tangible. The moment of immediate involvement arrives when through the judas he sees Bogrov, one-time comrade and friend, being frogmarched to his death. This spectable is the decisive step on his way towards the discovery of the I. The basic conflict of the novel is between humanist values - the past - (Rubashov's Past Perfect) and the new values of the present (and the future?). In the context of the novel Rubashov is the last man to carry those "outdated" values, (symbolically, at least) he can be referred to as the last man of the Old Guard, a "last man" in Europe... In the neighbouring cell there is a Tsarist officer, obviously a one-time class enemy of Rubashov. In the process of Rubashov's spiritual transformation even he takes on a human shape, he becomes somebody to whom one can talk, a bit of the humane past in the dehumanized present. Rubashov Gletkin took over, Rubashov's interrogation had been conducted by Ivanov, linked to Rubashov by their common past experience: the Revolution. Ivanov, just like Rubashov, is an intellectual, member of the Old Guard, which, when they began the Revolution, started out of a value, the value of man. Gletkin, the "Neanderthaler" did not know this value. All he knew was the abstract goal. It is Ivanov, who immediately scents heresy when on one occassion Rubashov says You instead of the compulsory we.