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| David Warren: The demons |
| 2004-12-04 |
| "I am a sick man. ... I am a wicked man." This is how Dostoevsky's nameless anti-hero begins his Notes from Underground, the prelude to a series of five extraordinary novels on the fate of modern man. Through the last decade, excellent new translations of the major works of Dostoevsky and Gogol have been coming from the (married) team of Richard Pevear and Larissa Volkhonsky. They have been making clear what other translators, from whatever motive, had been making opaque. Previous translators of, for example, the quote above, avoided the word "wicked", and usually put the word "spiteful" in its place. A moral assertion was thus replaced with a psychological one. But Dostoevsky is a moral, not a psychological writer, and the word he used in the original Russian, "zloy", does not mean "spiteful". It is the root of that word, and it means "bad, evil, wicked". The word for "spiteful" is instead "zlobnyi" -- and Dostoevsky, who had some idea what he was doing in the Russian language, did not use it. There you have our post-modernity in a nutshell: an unthinking elision of the moral into the psychological, creating a "nuance" where no nuance exists. And by so doing, the previous translators externalized the evil that Dostoevsky's character had discovered in himself. The old Christian thing was to do good, in the knowledge that we are capable of terrible evil. But the "new man" believes that he is good in theory, and thus does not recognize the evil in his deeds. We make a desolation and call it peace. Though to be fair, the anti-Bush demonstrators in Ottawa yesterday did not even make an impressive desolation. They did not have the numbers or the energy to do to Ottawa what their organizers promised. Of course, security was extraordinarily tight. Yet by their threats alone, they were able to summon that security, and turn the long-delayed state visit of the President of what was once Canada's closest ally into a furtive eat-and-run. Said the upbeat CBC reporter: "There are people here representing a wide range of opinions, from anti-globalization, 'no to Star Wars', support for Palestine, Marxism, not to mention exclamations like 'Queers hate Bush'." . These are not, in fact, a wide range of opinions, but rather, alternative ways of articulating the same void. It is hard to imagine what President Bush or anyone could say that would please the many people in this county (or any other, for that matter) who truly abhor him -- but can't explain why without using parrot-like slogans, and referring knowingly to non-existent "facts". Who, moreover, would not even dream of formulating a coherent alternative to what the Bush administration is doing in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, or Dubuque. Not that no coherent alternative could exist. There were intelligent, if finally rejected arguments made against each of Mr. Bush's decisions in turn; there is room for informed disagreement over every question of public policy, from persons of goodwill. But the world is constructed in a curious way: so that goodwill and coherence tend to leave simultaneously. The people on the streets in Ottawa yesterday, looking desperately for a way to harm the object of their hatred, were beyond mere argument, their conclusions having long preceded their premises. Nor would I suggest it is impossible to oppose Mr. Bush for good reasons. But these do not require hatred of the man. In the Congress of the United States, for instance, there are a couple of hundred reasonably intelligent Democrats, prepared to make the case against Mr. Bush temperately, most of the time. They only just lost the election. What we see on the streets of Ottawa, instead, is an almost pure fanaticism -- that radical spirit of alienation that ultimately motivates the Jihadis, too. This nihilism is the splinter in the heart of our modernity; it rejects everything; it proposes, finally, nothing in its place. It is the devil himself speaking out of his void, leading finally to the silence of Iago. To understand it, we must look into the very faces contorted with rage, and the mouths uttering the vilest obscenities. The evil is not coming from outside them: it is instead welling from the void within. And yet the tragedy of these people -- whose fanaticism puts them beyond the pale of give-and-take in party politics, and whose views, should they spread, would take the whole democratic order down with them -- is that they know even less about themselves than they know about the world they condemn. They are angry, but finally they don't know why. They don't believe in evil, as a category; yet it haunts them externally on every side: "Bush" being only the straw man of the moment. And unlike the actual Mr. Bush, they do not believe in grace, either. They see evil everywhere. They rail, and they rail. You could call them spiteful, but that would be psychologizing. |
| Posted by:tipper |
| #4 ITLP -- Idiots That Love Parades. These folks are anti-war but well defended, anti-energy but use electricity and oil 24/7, and anti-globalization but offer no viable alternative. Most of them got there in gasoline-powered cars traveling on federal interstate highways and wearing third-world-sewn clothes. Its all about signs and costumes and puppets. Everybody loves a parade, especially these idiots. What have they done for us lately? |
| Posted by: Tom 2004-12-04 2:34:07 PM |
| #3 The Russian word zloy covers quite a wide range, from "angry" to "wicked". I think that the translation "spiteful" would be reasonable in some contexts. |
| Posted by: Mike Sylwester 2004-12-04 2:17:29 PM |
| #2 Thank you Lord for letting me stir the lefties, it is sinful and like shooting fish in Your Barrel. Amen. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2004-12-04 1:43:26 PM |
| #1 Wow. Righteous rant from Mr. Warren. He lives in Ottawa. This probably hit home for him. |
| Posted by: Classical_Liberal 2004-12-04 11:48:14 AM |