We

by Yevgeny Zamyatin

In his 1921 essay “I Am Afraid,” Zamyatin said: “True literature can exist only when it is created, not by diligent and reliable officials, but by madmen, hermits, heretics, dreamers, rebels and skeptics.”

How could Zamyatin have seen the future so clearly? He didn’t, of course. He saw the present, and what was already lurking in its shadows. “Men’s courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead,” says Ebenezer Scrooge in Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. “But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change.” WE was a warning to its own place and time—one that was not heeded because it was not heard: the “diligent and reliable officials” took care of that. The courses were not departed from. Millions and millions died. Is it also a warning to us, in our time? If it is, what sort of warning? Are we listening?

Then I asked myself: why is this beautiful? Why is this dance beautiful? Answer: because the movements are unfree. The deeper teaching of this dance lies in its absolute aesthetic bondage, its ideal unfreedom.

faces unclouded by the insanity of thoughts

The delay on the tongue should always be a few seconds over the speed of thought and never the other way around.

since the end of the Two Hundred Years’ War, none of us have ever been on the other side of the Green Wall. But, my dear friends, you must take the time to consider things—it’s very helpful. Isn’t it clear: for all of human history, insofar as we know it, humanity has moved away from nomadic existence, evolving toward ever greater degrees of settlement. Doesn’t it follow that the most settled way of life (ours) is also the most perfect (as ours is)? Yes, people once roamed the Earth, roving from pole to pole, but that was in prehistoric times, when there were still nations, wars, trade, discoveries of various Americas. Why would we ever need any of that?

greatest surviving classic of ancient literature as schoolchildren: The Train Schedule. But even this, when compared to the Table, seems like a hunk of graphite next to a diamond: they’re made of the same thing, C, carbon, but the diamond is immortal, sparkling and clear.

Today, any ten-year-old number can solve this ethical math problem in thirty seconds, while they couldn’t manage to solve it at all with all of their Kants put together (because not one of their Kants thought to create a truly scientific system of ethics, i.e., based on addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division).

But, first of all: I am incapable of joking. For the implicit function of every joke is a lie. Second of all, this really is how the Ancients lived according to One State Science, and One State Science cannot make mistakes. Besides, how could the state have been logical while people still lived in a state of freedom, i.e., wild animals, monkeys, and herds?

“By simply turning the handle, any one of you can produce up to three sonatas an hour. Now imagine how difficult this was for our ancestors. They could only create after working themselves up into fits of so-called inspiration, an obscure form of epilepsy. And

She sat and started to play. The music was as wild, fevered, and colorful as everything else about that old life—not a shadow of the mechanical rational. So of course the people around me were right: they were all laughing. But a few . . . and why me, as well—me? Yes, epilepsy—madness—torment . . . slow, sweet pain—a bite—harder, make it hurt more. And then, slowly, the sun. Not our sun, no blue crystal light evenly shining through glass blocks—no: the wild, rushing, scorching sun—tear everything off—tear it all up into little pieces.

“Liberation?” It was beyond belief: humanity’s criminal instincts were clearly alive and kicking. I intentionally use the word “criminal.” Freedom and crime are as inextricably linked as . . . well, the motion of an aero and its velocity: when an aero’s velocity = 0, it doesn’t move; when a person’s freedom = 0, he doesn’t commit any crimes. That much is clear. The only way to eradicate crime is to eradicate freedom.

The horns of the Music Factory boomed the March in unison—that same everyday March. It was all so ineffably wonderful—that everydayness, repetitiveness, mirroring!

I knew: the letter, which she had already read, now had to go through the Bureau of Guardians (it seems unnecessary to explain this totally natural process), and then I would have it no later than 12.

My head was spinning, the engine wailed. Buddha—yellow—lilies of the valley—the pink crescent moon . . . Yes, all that plus this—this: O had wanted to stop by today. Should I show her this notice re: I-330? I didn’t know: she wouldn’t believe me (would anyone?), but it wasn’t my fault, I was completely . . . I knew: there’d be a difficult, maddening, entirely logicless conversation . . . Please, no, anything but that! I decided to resolve it mechanically: I would simply send O a copy of the notice.

The Ancients thought they knew what was up there: their all-mighty, languishing skeptic—God. We know that really, it’s just a naked, obscene, crystal blue nothing. Now I don’t know anymore: I’ve learned too much. Knowledge that is completely certain of its own infallibility is faith. I used to have a firm faith in myself, I believed that I knew all there was to know about me. But now—

I’m standing in front of the mirror. For the first time in my life—yes, the very first time—I see myself clearly, distinctly, consciously, astonished to be aware of myself as some “he.” Here he is: straight black eyebrows; between them, like a scar, a vertical furrow (was that there before?). Steely gray eyes, overcast by the shadow of a sleepless night: and behind that steel . . . it turns out that I’d never really known what was in there. That out of that “there” (which is, simultaneously, right here and in the infinite distance)—out of that “there,” I’m looking at me—and at him, and I firmly know: he—with the straightly drawn brows—is a stranger. I don’t know him, I am just meeting him for the first time in my life. And the real me, the me who’s not him . . .

The man and woman in paradise were given a choice: they could either have happiness without freedom or freedom without happiness—there was no third option. Those blockheads chose freedom—and can you blame them?—but ended up spending the consequent centuries dreaming of shackles.

With our help, God has finally beaten the devil—the one who’d originally tempted them into biting into that forbidden, fatal freedom—him!

Now, we’re as simple and innocent as Adam and Eve. No more confusion about good and evil: it’s all so simple that even a child can understand—just as it should be in paradise.

If only I could know: who am I really? Which I is me?

It’s just so reassuring to feel someone’s sharp gaze lovingly protecting you from making even the smallest mistake, the tiniest step in the wrong direction.

All genuine poets are truly Columbuses. America may have existed for centuries before him, but only Columbus was finally able to discover it.

ancient God made ancient man who made mistakes—thus, He Himself was mistaken.

Today, poetry is no longer the insolent song of the nightingale: poetry is civil service, poetry is utility itself.

That ancient, long-forgotten “you,” “you,” as a master would say to a slave—came into me sharply and slowly: yes, I’m a slave, that’s good and right, too.

I personally don’t see anything beautiful about flowers or anything else from the savage world that was chased out beyond the Green Wall long ago. Only things that are useful and rational are beautiful: machines, boots, formulas, food, etc.