In September 1905, in the capital of Hungary, Budapest, Kestler Arthur was born, a future writer, a favorite of Soviet dissidents, a man who survived extraordinary adventures and defeated fate.
A family
The father of the writer Henryk Köstler was a descendant of immigrants from Russia, a successful merchant, but a much less successful researcher. He invented and widely sold soap, which was considered healing, which was saturated with radioactive substances. After severe torment, he died of cancer in 1937. His son, Kestler Arthur, probably also used this soap, only very little, because he lived for a long time, despite the hardships and wars, but died from leukemia.
The writer's mother came from a family of Austrian bourgeois, impoverished but proud. She was very hard at living in Budapest, this imperial backwater. Probably, at her insistence, the family moved to Vienna in 1918, where her husband's commerce fell into decay. When the Nazis came to power and her husband died, she with great difficulty left this ill-fated continent and moved to England. It was from her that Koestler Arthur "infected" with love for this island nation.
Young poet
While still studying in a Hungarian school, the boy showed himself to be inquisitive and intelligent, having discovered great abilities for the natural sciences. Willingly wrote poetry from a very young age. Since the school was Hungarian, with the loss of his homeland, the muse also left him.
Family welfare by 1922 was clearly not shining, but seventeen-year-old Koestler Arthur managed to enter the Vienna Technical School, which gave higher education, since it had university status. In his studies, he combined two bipolar disciplines: mathematics and psychology. And, of course, he continued to write, though not in rhyme anymore. Four years later, the young man became known throughout Europe as a journalist.
Business trips
Since 1926, Arthur Koestler, a detailed biography of which is unlikely to compare in his geography with tours of avid travelers, as a correspondent of the publishing house Ulstein went to many countries of the Middle East, worked in Germany, Austria, Spain, France. All his reports were not just interesting for the reading public - they were expected, sought out, shared.
Very quickly, the fame of the young Köstler received a new "quality" - he became famous. He was able in essays, reports and even the smallest correspondence to convey to the reader the most important and most interesting. In a word, of course, he masterfully possessed it. In 1931, the only journalist was invited to the North Pole to fly. It was Arthur Koestler, whose books later retell much of what was experienced, flew on the famous German airship called "Count Zeppelin."
Test
Gathering material for his work in Spain, engulfed by the civil war, Koestler was captured in Malaga by the Franco and sentenced to death for espionage. For five long months he waited daily, sitting in solitary confinement, when they would come for him and lead him to death. For almost half a year, not everyone could stand it. Wait for your death, listen to the steps in the corridor - here or again by?
And at this time, the world community was protesting, foreign diplomats did everything to achieve the release of the famous journalist. Kestler Arthur turned out to be a very persistent person. Photos of those years clearly demonstrate this. In the end, the writer was exchanged for the wife of a Franco war pilot.
Beliefs
A lot of intelligent people from different countries in the thirties of the last century hoped for the success of the Soviet experiment, since it was an effective alternative to fascism triumphantly marching across Europe. Arthur Köstler joined the Communist Party in 1931, in the middle of the decade he traveled around the USSR for almost a year, and before that he visited many in Central Asia. His early books, as well as political novels, vividly reflect this period of his life.
In the late thirties of the last century, Köstler became disillusioned with the communist system and quit the party as soon as he learned about the trial of N. Bukharin, with whom he was closely acquainted and was in friendship. The novel, which Arthur Koestler dedicated to these events, “Blinding Darkness”, originally had a different name. The writer understood the purges of the 1937-1938s as the counter-revolutionary degeneration of the Soviet country. In 1940, Arthur Koestler published his new novel. "Blinding darkness" in London came out with the name "Afternoon Darkness" - in English from German, and the original itself was confiscated during the search and irretrievably lost. In the West, even many writers, such as Orwell, met an anti-Soviet romance quite sympathetically.
Adventures
During World War II, Koestler served in the ranks of the French Foreign Legion, then was evacuated with him to Africa, from where he successfully deserted. He flew through Lisbon to England, where he again spent a month and a half in prison. Not for desertion, but for illegal entry into the UK. Only consent to cooperation was released. So Köstler again became a volunteer. He was considered a sapper, but in fact he worked as a propagandist on the radio, composed leaflets for Wehrmacht soldiers, and lectured on totalitarianism. It was necessary and on duty during the bombing. Since he knew how to drive a car, he was entrusted with an ambulance.
In 1942, at the disposal of the Ministry of Information, he wrote scripts and pamphlets, and also spoke on the BBC radio. When the war ended, Koestler chose France for his main place of residence, where he devoted almost all his publicist skills to the struggle against the communist regime. His disappointment was so strong that the offense never went away. He organized anti-communist congresses, foundations in support of intellectual freedom, excited the inhabitants of Berlin on both sides of the wall. Not without good deeds: the fund under his care allocated money for the treatment of Ivan Bunin.
Writing
Since 1954, the writer lived in London, where he accepted British citizenship. Along with lecturing at universities and scientific work at Steenford, a new book is coming out, dystopia. Arthur Koestler, “The Age of Lust,” also wrote purposefully: readers had to imagine the horror of the Communist Party coming to power in France. A decade-long book came out on the same topic - articles and short stories, "Dinosaur Trail." In the fifties of the last century, Köstler was already thinking about the freedom of intelligence under the shadow of mushroom-shaped clouds. True, he was frightened by the Communist with a nuclear bomb at the ready, as if having been forgotten by whose weapons Nagasaki and Hiroshima were destroyed.
But there was a cold war, and therefore Koestler’s books were very much appreciated. In 1967, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize, and in 1968 he received the Sonning Prize. In the seventies of the last century, a twenty-volume collection of works by the writer was published. Britain also appreciated the work of Koestler - the Order of the British Empire was awarded to the writer in 1972, and two years later he became a holder of literature - this is an old honorary title from the Royal Literary Society.
Last years
The writer has always advocated the legalization of voluntary death (euthanasia), even became vice president of a society that fought for the right to die with dignity. And in the early 1980s, he had the opportunity to prove persuasion by his own example. As age made itself felt in Parkinson's disease and rapidly developing leukemia (daddy's soap!), The future predicted the most painful of the extinctions. On March 3, 1983, writer Arthur Köstler and his wife Cynthia took a dose of sleeping pills that exceeded compatibility with life.
Their entire condition was bequeathed to the study of paranormal phenomena, due to which a group of researchers of parapsychology Koestler Parapsychology Unit was organized at the University of Edinburgh. In Russia, the name of the writer Köstler became known only with perestroika, although in 1937 the Young Guard published his Unparalleled Victims, a book about the Francoists and their atrocities at the beginning of the fascist rebellion. In addition, his other anti-fascist book, published in London, is devoted to this subject - The Spanish Testament, which was reported to readers by the journal Foreign Literature (at that time International Literature). Since the release of the book on reprisals, no one in Russia has anymore reminded of Koestler.
Fantasy
In 1951, a science fiction novel was released - the theme was the same, alas. Arthur Koestler, “A Century of Lust”, also wrote about the Soviet threat to the world: the near future, France is about to be occupied by Russian troops, the lists are being prepared for the main character of the novel, but the world is trying to save an American who, by the will of the author, falls in love with this embassy monster.
Many novels, short stories and even Köstler’s plays are written in this genre. His essays in a philosophical manner are much less known. “Somnabula”, “The Act of Creation”, “The Case of the Midwife Toad” - all these works are somehow connected with the writer's worldview and his anti-communist views. Arthur Koestler "Spirit in the car" (or "Spirit from the car") also attributed to the genre of essays. He was one of the most famous supporters of the idea of ​​Ashkenazi Jews, who allegedly came not from Palestine, but from the Turkic Khazars from the Volga Delta. He was also interested in the process of scientific thinking. With these rather interesting thoughts, coupled with others, almost all the numerous essays of the writer are filled.
"Anatomy of Snobbery"
Arthur Koestler began this serious study after years of observing traditional, purely English weaknesses. The author wrote about everything that he saw and comprehended, with humor, although this did not soften, but on the contrary, more clearly revealed the symptoms of the ill health of civilization in general and English society in particular, the displacement of cultural and social values, ideological voids. “Anatomy of snobbery”, despite the pamphlet, turned out to be a very serious, highly literary work.
Khazars
"The Thirteenth Knee" Arthur Koestler writes again about the Khazars, from his point of view - Jewish. Despite the fact that the book is quite voluminous, a too broad topic is not fully covered. The first part describes the Khazars as such, and the second is dominated by evidence of this promise. In addition, according to the author, all European countries accepted Jews of only Khazar origin. This book is read very easily, despite the many historical references and the minimum knowledge among readers of any level about the Khazars as such.
It’s quite fascinating to draw new knowledge, expand the boundaries of information that were obtained earlier (the Khazar Khaganate and the battle of Ilya Muromets - this, perhaps, is all that was known on this topic before reading this book). However, I would like to see a more fundamental approach with coverage of the tax system, army, governance structure, and much, much more. But now it’s too late to make claims against the author. Popular science literature, to the genre of which the work can be attributed, has quite endured this.
Not indifferent story
In any case, Köstler’s response to anti-Semitism is not just obvious, it is also original. With the fall of the Khaganate, Khazar refugees flowed through Europe, as migrants from the Middle East are today. The main core of the Khazars who profess Judaism was the result of several waves of such migration. Ethnically, these are not Semites, which means that anti-Semitism is also insolvent as a current, Köstler believes.
The pages of The Thirteenth Knee contain the texts of many predecessors who studied or simply related to the issue: these are Byzantine sources, reviews of Arab travelers, The Tale of Bygone Years, the works of Toynbee, Artamonov, Vernadsky and dozens of other no less famous historians. However, the formation and decline of the Khazar state Arthur Koestler sees in a completely different way.
"Gladiators"
It was also unusual for Köstler to convey to the reader a vision of such a well-known historical event as the Spartacus Rebellion. I must say that for almost five years the writer studied the materials and analyzed, but still he did not understand how a gang of several dozen circus artists could so quickly recruit accomplices to an entire army and occupy half of Italy. The author sees the reason for the defeat of this revolution is the softness of Spartacus, who was supposed to be a tyrant if he wanted to win.