Koestler Arthur: Biography and Creativity

In September 1905, Koestler Arthur, future writer, favorite of Soviet dissidents, a man who survived extraordinary adventures and defeated fate, was born in Budapest, the capital of Hungary, in Budapest.

A family

Henrik Koestler's father was a descendant of Russians from Russia, a successful businessman, but a much less successful researcher. He invented and widely sold soap, considered to be healing, which was saturated with radioactive substances. After severe cruelties, he died in 1937 of cancer. His son Koestler Arthur probably also used this soap, only very little, because he lived for a long time, despite the hardships and wars, but died of leukemia.

The writer's mother came from a family of Austrian bourgeois, impoverished, but proud. It was very hard for her to live 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 the husband died, she with great difficulty left this ill-fated continent and moved to England. It was from her Koestler Arthur and "caught" by the love for this island state.

Young poet

While still studying in a Hungarian school, the boy showed himself to be inquisitive and intelligent, discovering great abilities for the natural sciences. Willingly wrote poems from a very young age. As the school was Hungarian, with the loss of his homeland left and the muse.

The family's well-being by 1922 clearly did not shine, but seventeen-year-old Koestler Arthur managed to enter the Vienna Technical School, which gave higher education because it had the status of a university. In his studies he combined two different polar disciplines: mathematics and psychology. And, of course, he continued to write, however, no longer in rhyme. Four years later, the young man became known throughout Europe as a journalist.

Business trips

Since 1926, Arthur Koestler, whose unfolded biography is unlikely to be compared to his travels with his tours, as a correspondent of the publishing house of Ulstein visited many countries of the Middle East, he worked in Germany, Austria, Spain and France. All his reports were not just interesting for the reading public - they were waiting, they were looking for, they shared them.

Very quickly the popularity of the young Köstler received a new "quality" - he became famous. He managed to convey to the reader the most important and most interesting facts in essays, reports and even the smallest correspondence. In a word, of course, he originally mastered virtuoso. On the North Pole in 1931, the only journalist was invited to fly. It was Arthur Koestler, whose books subsequently retell much of what he had experienced, flew on the famous German airship called Graf Zeppelin.

Testing

Collecting material for his work in Spain, engulfed in the civil war, Koestler was captured in Malaga by the francists and sentenced to be shot for espionage. For five long months he waited daily, sitting in solitary confinement, when they would come and take him to his death. Almost half a year of waiting, not everyone could survive. Wait for your death, listen to the steps in the corridor - here or again by?

And at that time the world community protested, foreign diplomats did everything to achieve the release of the famous journalist. Koestler Arthur turned out to be very persistent. The photos of those years clearly demonstrate this. In the end, the writer was exchanged for the wife of a francist military 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 the victorious fascist fascism in Europe. Arthur Koestler joined the ranks of the Communist Party in 1931, in the middle of the decade he traveled for nearly a year in the USSR, and before that he had been to Central Asia a lot. His early books, as well as political novels, vividly reflect this period of his life.

In the late thirties of the last century, Koestler was disappointed in the communist system and left the party as soon as he learned about the trial of N. Bukharin, who was closely acquainted and was in friendship. The novel that Arthur Koestler devoted to these events, "Blinding Darkness", originally had a different name. The writer understood the purges of 1937-1938 as the counterrevolutionary degeneration of the Soviet state. In 1940, Arthur Koestler published his new novel. "Blinding Darkness" in London came out with the title "Darkness at Noon" - in English translation from German, and the original was confiscated during the search and irretrievably lost. In the West, an anti-Soviet novel was met quite sympathetically by even many writers, for example, Orwell.

Adventure

During the Second World War, Koestler served in the ranks of the French Foreign Legion, then was evacuated with him to Africa, where he successfully deserted. Through Lisbon flew to England, where he again spent a month and a half in prison. Not for desertion, but for illegally entering the UK. It was only his consent to cooperate that freed him. So Koestler again became a volunteer. He was a sapper, but in fact he worked as a propagandist on the radio, wrote leaflets for Wehrmacht soldiers, lectured on totalitarianism. I had to be on duty during the bombing. As he was able to drive a car, he was entrusted with an ambulance.

In 1942, being at the disposal of the Ministry of Information, he wrote scripts and pamphlets, and also appeared on the BBC radio. When the war ended, Koestler chose France for his main residence, where he devoted almost all of his mastery of publicist struggle against the communist regime. His disappointment was so strong that the offense never went away. Organized anti-communist congresses, foundations in support of intellectual freedom, excited Berliners on both sides of the wall. It was 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 the citizenship of Great Britain. Along with lecturing at universities and scientific work in Steinford, a new book emerges, an anti-utopia. Arthur Koestler "The Age of Lust" also wrote purposefully: the readers should have imagined all the horror of the coming to power in France of the Communist Party. On the same topic came out the final for a decade book - articles and stories "The Path of the Dinosaur." In the fifties of the last century, Koestler was already thinking about the freedom of the intellect under the shadow of mushroom clouds. It is true that he was terrorizing the public with a communist with a nuclear bomb at the ready, as if forgotten, whose weapons were destroyed by Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

But there was a "cold war", and therefore the books of Koestler 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 there was a twenty-volume collection of works of the writer. Britain also appreciated the works of Koestler - the Order of the British Empire was awarded to the writer in 1972, and two years later he became a knight of literature - this is an old honorary title from the Royal Literary Society.

Last years

The writer always advocated the legalization of voluntary withdrawal from life (euthanasia), even became vice-president of the society, which fought for the right to die with dignity. And in the early 1980s he had the opportunity to prove by his own example the perseverance of his convictions. Since age made itself felt Parkinson's disease and rapidly developing leukemia (daddy soap!), The future predicted the most excruciating of extinction. On March 3, 1983, writer Arthur Koestler and his wife Cynthia took a dose of sleeping pills that exceeded compatibility with life.

All their condition was bequeathed to the study of paranormal phenomena, due to which the 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 mutiny. In addition, another of his anti-fascist books published in London, the Spanish Will, is also devoted to this subject. The journal Foreign Literature (at that time International Literature) informed readers about that. Since the publication of the book about repression, no one in Russia about Koestler anymore reminded.

Fantastic

In 1951, a science fiction novel was published - the subject is the same, alas. Arthur Koestler "The Age of Lust" also wrote about the Soviet threat to the world: the action of the near future, France is about to be occupied by Russian troops, the lists of the main hero of the novel are being prepared, but the world is trying to save an American who falls in love with this embassy monster.

Quite a lot of novels, stories and even Köstler's plays are written in this genre. Much less known is his essay in a philosophical key. "Somnabul", "The act of creation", "The case of the midwife" - all these works are somehow connected with the worldview of the writer and his anti-communist views. Arthur Koestler "The spirit in the car" (or "The spirit of the car") also attributed to the genre of the essay. He was one of the most famous supporters of the idea of the Ashkenazim 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. These interesting enough reflections, coupled with others, are filled with virtually all of the writer's numerous essays.

"Anatomy of snobbery"

Arthur Koestler, this serious study began after years of observation of traditional, purely English weaknesses. The author wrote about everything that he saw and comprehended, with humor, although it 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 void. "Anatomy of snobbery", despite the pamphlet, turned out to be a very serious, highly literary work.

Khazars

"Thirteenth tribe" Arthur Koestler writes again about the Khazars, from his point of view - Jewish. Despite the fact that the book is quite voluminous, the topic is too extensive to be fully covered. In the first part, it is told about the state of the Khazars as such, and in the second part the proofs of this message prevail. In addition, according to the author, all European countries accepted Jews of Khazar origin only. This book is very easy to read, despite many historical references and a minimum of knowledge among readers of any level about the Khazars as such.

It is quite fascinating to learn new knowledge, expand the boundaries of information that was obtained earlier (the Khazar Khaganate and Ilya Muromets fight - that's all that was known about this book before reading this book). However, I would like to see a more fundamental approach with coverage of the tax system, the army, the management structure and many others. But now it is too late to make claims to the author. Popular scientific literature, to the genre of which the work can be attributed, completely tolerated this.

Affectionate story

In any case, Koestler's answer to anti-Semitism is not just obvious, it is also original. With the fall of the Khaganate, the Khazar refugees flowed through Europe, as today migrants from the Middle East. The main core of the Judaism of the Khazars became the consequence of several waves of such migration. Ethnically, these are not Semites, hence, anti-Semitism is untenable as the current, says Koestler.

The pages of the Thirteenth Tribe contain the texts of many predecessors who studied or simply referred to the issue: Byzantine sources, reviews by Arab travelers, The Tale of Bygone Years, works by Toynbee, Artamonov, Vernadsky and dozens of other equally well-known historians. However, the formation and fall of the Khazar state Arthur Koestler is seen quite differently.

"Gladiators"

Also unusually, Koestler brought to the reader a vision of such a widely known historical event as the Spartacus revolt. 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 was able to so quickly recruit accomplices to a whole army and occupy half of Italy. The author sees as the cause of the defeat of this revolution the spinelessness of Spartacus, who was supposed to be a tyrant if he wanted to win.