Imre Kertész - Fiasco

Let us, then, take courage in both hands.

It is perhaps unnecessary for me to indicate the exact date; at all events, it is autumn, the sky is very likely covered by grey clouds, as shown by the tiny square of the horizon I can see from the pocket handkerchief of the window of my diminutive room, or, more properly and more accurately: my cell, my punishment chamber, and this leaden glimmer superbly matches my meditative frame of mind. I am in the favourable situation that I do not have to, indeed, it is expressly forbidden for me to step out onto the street, for that is precisely why I am locked in here, under a strict confinement which takes from my shoulders — albeit with punitive intent — responsibility for the further course of my fate. At least for my part, that is how I view my present form of life, and I would deeply deplore it if that were to be laid at the door of my depravity with the unbending prejudice and regrettable lack of comprehension which are so sadly typical of the world.

So, due to the fact that I have been isolated from the world with benevolent strictness (I could never stand rainy weather, and especially not the wind, the biting, dank wind, one of the curses, among others, of our draughty city, which always made me depressed and irascible) in my pleasantly temperate cell, without the disturbing irritation of outside influences, I can freely give myself up to my pastime of putting down on paper a thing or two, whatever I happen to see fit and necessary, as a refreshing counterbalance to interrogations, with their worn statements and proceedings in court, where I can only respond to what I am asked, and I can only show myself in the light that is forced upon me. Vanity, you will say, and of course you will be both right and wrong, as usual. Because in my opinion, and I speak as a man of some intellect and culture incidentally, or maybe not even incidentally since following the closing of my career in this world, you see, I am returning to intellectual pursuits — in my opinion, then, anyone is worthy of attention who wishes to show himself in a more complete light, thus supplementing the picture the world has built up — always one-sidedly — about him, and such an aspiration cannot simply be dismissed with a reproving word and blindly taken for nothing. At all events, it is fortunate that I still have the time and opportunity to devote to this belated and, no doubt, surprising need of mine, and this points to the advantages of civilized prisons, as opposed to our prisons, which have disadvantages practically to the exclusion of all else.

I must apologize in advance if, during what follows, I am a little whimsical in the approach I adopt to my own portrait, mixing it, from time to time, with thoughts that are seen as necessary and, after all, belong to the portrait, because, although a man of intellect and culture, I am not a literary man, at least not in the everyday sense. There is nothing to do but to throw myself on my natural talent, my strict sense of form, and my special sensitivity toward the phenomena of life; in a word, on my cultivation, innate and acquired. That is no small thing either, because even if, as I say, I am not a literary man, in the field of confessions and autobiographies the beginner is confronted with wonderful examples, more enlightened, indeed entrancing examples from the Enlightenment era, or even those of great penitents and confessors — examples that I feel called upon if not to outstrip, at any rate to take courage from their finely-nuanced accuracy, their heroic honesty, their gratifying endeavour to strive constantly to draw a lesson.

You have every right to shake your heads disapprovingly at the mention of these lofty models, to upbraid me for my rash tactlessness, and to regard as sadly typical the brazen unabashedness with which I dare to construct a link with the aforementioned blessed geniuses, I, a gaolbird, as it has become clear from what I have said; even if you know who I actually am, although I have already alluded to that in the book’s title. And even if on top of all that you were to recognize my name, the rightly infamous name that I shall disclose to the Reader in one of the ensuing paragraphs! No matter what I might have to say for myself against such reproaches, I would again only be able bitterly to attribute to the fact that the world places greater weight on the immutability of its notions of morality than on admitting the truth; that it manifests more feeling for condemnation than for judgement, and instead of looking to the bottom of things it thinks it better to dispose of them with a few time-honoured commonplaces. I, who will stand before the court accused of causing the deaths of 30,000 people, am able to transcend my fate, and to my pleasant surprise — obviously to the world’s surprise as well — I still feel that much responsible interest toward life as not to be ashamed of spending my last days and hours with moralising — rather appropriately and not unskilfully, you have to admit. Even if I cannot expect you, against your convictions, to respect the moralist in me first and foremost, at least pause before the phenomenon with the astonishment that it deserves. Because, see here, even in my peculiar career I have been able to preserve my original conviction, based on my upbringing, my spiritual and mental culture, as if nothing had happened, or rather as if everything which happened happened by accident, as if I were not giving it my full attention and commitment, or in point of fact, my consent, solely from the necessity of the recognition that I could not refuse the duty that had been assigned to me, the order and the mission marked out for me by a higher place, however regrettably it might have run counter to my own way of thinking and inclinations.

Would you believe that this fact, publication of which will probably serve merely to unleash a further outburst of general horror and indignation upon my head, instead of being able to sway you to a little more sympathy toward me (which is not my aim, by the way; I have no aim with you): would you believe that this fact is welcome least of all in my eyes and bestows on me far more bitterness, punishes me with burdensome reflection, instead of my being able to take a quiet satisfaction at this steadfastness of my nature? You can believe that I have done everything, grasped every opportunity in my peculiar career, to coarsen myself, to make myself bestially insensitive, primitively dull-witted, but, sadly, I didn’t succeed. My spiritual refinement was too high, my mind too civilized, and the havoc that was accomplished in others, and to which, out of the necessity to accommodate (and maybe also out of a certain curiosity, a desire to find out about myself), I also contributed with my own efforts; in the end, it was unable to destroy the fundamental determinacy of my character, and that character, in the event, coming to a sensible compromise with the circumstances, gave in merely to appearances, even though those appearances probably became hideously intermingled with reality. Now, here I stand (or rather sit) with the burdensome consequences of all this, and I am overcome by an ever more urgent need, by fleshing out the false reality — my acts, in other words — to furnish a more complete picture of myself; this, in my view, extraordinarily noteworthy need that you called vanity earlier on, but which, you will nevertheless have to acknowledge, is the most salutary form of vanity, socially speaking.

And here I come to your disapproving shaking of the head and small-minded reservations. I take the liberty of asking whether we should ascribe a lower value to the self-revelation of one man, who has gone through certain depths of life and is prepared, without any showing-off, to put its lessons at the disposal of the world, than another, who has moved within more innocuous extremes, assuming the former sees and interprets his life on the basis of the same morality and possesses as much human grit and happy creative power, even if in respect to form and artistry, he may leave more to be desired for want of the necessary practice and adequate time. All the same, it is precisely in the name of morality that you protest against my being allowed to speak out, as I have become someone who has forfeited the right to do that; someone who should not be allowed to speak out, only interrogated; someone who is unworthy of your sympathy and cannot supply any useful innovation or self-awakening lesson. Because I am, perhaps, not mistaken if I assert that your interest in grand confessions is attracted not so much by the excessively strange or wildly individual as by what is common, general, manifested in even the most extreme excesses, which pertains to yourselves, too, and which you happily discern, for instance, in the words of an aristocrat of sensitive soul who was blessed with a gift for expression and a vivid imagination, but was otherwise unexceptionable, who was made great by his talent and innocuousness and who in your mutual recognition of each other deliciously satisfies the dreams you weave about yourselves. Under no circumstances, by contrast, do you have any wish to have anything in common with me; you would most happily see me as some kind of savage, a strange wild animal; in any case as a person who is utterly foreign to your nature, with whom you can have nothing at all to do at the level of living contacts, and you derive satisfaction from the fact that the false reality created by my acts serves such assumptions perfectly, because you are not in the least curious about the fuller reality — I understand that endeavour, yet I still make so bold as to furnish the information that it is nothing more than self-delusion, which is not worthy of you. And now that I am modestly but categorically declaring my right to my human condition, my relevance to the general, you wish to have nothing to do with me; you avert your gazes from me in the name of morality lest I impel you to even the slightest bit of understanding or sympathy for me — that is to say, lest in me you should recognize yourselves to even the slightest degree.