Arthur Koestler: Encyclopedia - Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler (Hungarian: Kösztler Artur; September 5, 1905 – March 3, 1983) was a journalist, novelist, political activist, social philosopher, and science writer. Born Hungarian and a naturalized British subject, he wrote a number of popular books, including Arrow in the Blue (the first volume of his autobiography); The Yogi and the Commissar (a collection of essays, many dealing with Communism); The Sleepwalkers (A History of Man's Changing Vision of the Universe); The Act of Creation; and The Thirteenth Tribe. His most famous work, the novel Darkness at Noon about the Soviet purges of the 1930s, ranks with Orwell's 1984 as a fictional depiction of Stalinism. He also contributed a large number of articles to Encyclopedia Britannica.

Arthur Koestler - Life

Koestler was born as Artur Kösztler (or more accurately, Kösztler Artur, since Hungarians often put the surname first) in Budapest, Hungary to a German-speaking Hungarian family of Ashkenazi Jewish descent. His father, Henrik, was an industrialist and inventor whose investments and business ideas often revealed a flawed judgement; for example, he invested in a kind of radioactive soap. At the age of fourteen, his family moved from Budapest to Vienna in Austria.

Koestler studied science and psychology at the University of Vienna, where he became involved in Zionism. After completing his studies, he worked as a news correspondent. From 1926 to 1929 he lived in the British Mandate of Palestine, partly in a kibbutz. He joined the German Communist Party in 1931, but left it after the Stalinist purges of 1938. During this period he traveled much within the Soviet Union, reaching Mount Ararat in the Caucasus and also Turkmenistan, where he met the black American writer Langston Hughes. In 1931, he travelled to the north pole in a zeppelin.

In his memoirs Koestler recalls that during the summer of 1935 he "wrote about half of a satirical novel called The Good Soldier Schweik Goes to War Again..... It had been commissioned by Willy Münzenberg [the Comintern's chief propagandist in the West] ... but was vetoed by the Party on the grounds of the book's 'pacifist errors'..." (The Invisible Writing: 283).

After spending time in a French detention camp at Le Vernet, Ariège, shortly before WWII, he joined the French Foreign Legion. He then escaped to England, joined the British Army as a member of the British Pioneer Corps between 1941-42 and was employed by the BBC. He became a British subject in 1945. He returned to France after the war, and rubbed shoulders with the set gravitating around Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. One of the characters in her novel The Mandarins is believed to have been based on Koestler.

He returned to London, where he made his living by writing and lecturing. He was made a CBE in the 1970s. In 1983, Koestler, suffering from Parkinson's disease and leukemia, and his third wife Cynthia committed joint suicide. He had long been an advocate of voluntary euthanasia, and in 1981, had become vice-president of "EXIT", a British group campaigning for it. His will left a large sum of money which was used to found the chair of parapsychology at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.

Arthur Koestler - Multilingualism

Koestler's multilingualism was principally due to his constant resettling, whether by choice or circumstance. At various times, he lived in Hungary, Austria, Germany, Palestine (pre-independence Israel), England, Wales, France and the United States. He also spent substantial time in the Soviet Union. In addition to his mother tongue German, he became fluent in Hungarian,, English, and French, and knew some Hebrew and Russian. His biographer David Cesarani claims there is some evidence that he was exposed to Yiddish via his grandfather.

Though the bulk of his later work was in English, Koestler wrote his best-known novels in three different languages. The Gladiators was originally written in Hungarian; Darkness at Noon in German (though the original is now lost); and Arrival and Departure in English. As a journalist he was to work in German, Hebrew, French and English. He claimed to have produced the first crosswords in Hebrew.

Arthur Koestler - Women

Koestler was married to Dorothy Asher (1935-50), Mamaine Paget (1950-52), and Cynthia Jefferies (1965-83). He also had a very short fling with the French writer Simone de Beauvoir, one that may explain the mutual animosity between him and Jean-Paul Sartre. David Cesarini's biography claimed that Koestler beat and raped several women, including film director Jill Craigie. The resulting protests led to the removal of a bust of Koestler from public display at the University of Edinburgh.

Questions have also been raised by his suicide pact with his last spouse. Although he was terminally ill at the time, she was apparently healthy, leading some to claim he wrongly persuaded her to take her own life.

Arthur Koestler - Mixed legacy

Just as Darkness at Noon was selling well during the Cold War in the 1950s, Koestler announced his retirement from politics. Much of what he wrote thereafter revealed a multidisciplinary thinker whose work anticipated a number of trends by many years. He was among the first to experiment with LSD (in a laboratory). He also wrote about Japanese and Indian mysticism in The Lotus and the Robot (1960). He did not merely arrive at different answers to accepted questions, but rather tended to ask questions that no one else thought to ask.

The result of this originality is an uneven set of ideas and conclusions. Some of them, such as his work on creativity (Insight and Outlook, Act of Creation) and the history of science (The Sleepwalkers), can be appreciated as brilliant, and challenge us to readjust our thinking in order to grasp their importance. Some of his other ideas, such as his enthusiasm for extra-sensory perception and euthanasia, his theory of the historical origin of Ashkenazi Jews like himself, and his disagreement with Darwinism, are more controversial. But taken as a whole, his writings are well worth serious consideration.

Arthur Koestler - Politics

Koestler was involved in a number of political causes during his life, from Zionism and communism to anti-communism, voluntary euthanasia and campaigns against capital punishment, particularly hanging. He was also an early advocate of nuclear disarmament.

Arthur Koestler - Journalism

Koestler worked for a variety of newspapers, including Vossische Zeitung (science editor) and B.Z. am Mittag (foreign editor) in the 1920s, as a French language freelancer in the early thirties. He also edited Die Zukunft with Willi Münzenberg, an anti-Nazi, anti-Stalinist German language paper based in Paris, founded in 1938.

In 1930, he moved to Berlin, where he worked for the Ullstein publishing group.

After completing his studies, he worked as a news correspondent. From 1926 to 1929 he lived in the British Mandate of Palestine, partly in a kibbutz.

While covering the Spanish Civil War, in 1937, he was captured and held for several months by the Falangists in Málaga, until the British Foreign Office managed to arrange for his release. He recorded his experiences in Spanish Testament and used them as a part basis for his prison novel Darkness at Noon.

After his release from captivity in Spain, Koestler worked for the News Chronicle. He later wrote for a number of English and American papers, including The Sunday Telegraph, on various subjects.

Arthur Koestler - Science

During the last 30 years of his life, Koestler wrote much on science and scientific practice. In the words of one cynic, "Koestler loved science, but science didn't love him back". His critiques of science could have a post-modernist ring, and as such often alienated much of the scientific community. A case in point is his 1971 book The Case of the Midwife Toad about the biologist Paul Kammerer, who claimed to find experimental support for Lamarckian inheritance.

Mysticism was implicit in much of his later work, and carried great weight in his personal life. He left a substantial part of his estate to establish the Koestler Institute in the University of Edinburgh dedicated to the study of paranormal phenomena. His The Roots of Coincidence again centers on Paul Kammerer, this time on his claim of a quantum theory of coincidence or synchronicity, along with the theories of Carl Jung. More controversial were Koestler's studies of levitation and telepathy.

Arthur Koestler - Judaism

Although a lifelong atheist, Koestler's ancestry was Jewish. His biographer David Cesarani has picked up on this, claiming that Koestler deliberately disowned his Jewish ancestry.

Koestler's book The Thirteenth Tribe advanced the controversial thesis that Ashkenazi Jews are not descended from the Israelites of antiquity, but from the Khazars, a Turkic people in the Caucasus who converted to Judaism in the 8th century and were later forced to move westwards into current Russia, Ukraine and Poland. Koestler stated that part of his intent in writing The Thirteenth Tribe was to defuse anti-Semitism by undermining the identification of European Jews with Biblical Jews, rendering anti-Semitic epithets such as "Christ killer" inapplicable. Ironically, Koestler's thesis that Ashkenazi Jews are not Semitic has become an important claim of many anti-Semitic groups. Some Palestinians have eagerly seized upon this thesis, believing that to identify most Jews as non-Semites seriously undermines their historical claim to the land of Israel. The thesis of The Thirteenth Tribe has since been criticized, but genetic testing has been inconclusive to date. Some researchers claim to find a Middle Eastern genetic element in virtually all Ashkenazim. Others note both Turkic words and Turkic genetic markers in these populations. But the veracity of genetic markers in determining ancestry is problematic; for instance, Ashkenazim also display a high level of similarity to the genetic markers of Khoisan Bushmen in Southern Africa. A thorough review of the scientific literature can be found at Khazaria.com.

When Koestler resided in Palestine during the 1920s, he lived on a kibbutz, an experience forming the basis of his unfinished Thieves in the Night. His view of Israel was that it would never be destroyed, short of a second Shoah. He supported the statehood of Israel, but opposed a diaspora Jewish culture. In an interview published in the London Jewish Chronicle around the time of Israel's founding, Koestler asserted that all Jews should either migrate to Israel, or assimilate completely into their local cultures. Koestler was also no dogmatic Zionist; for instance, he proposed that Israel ditch the Hebrew alphabet for the Roman.

Arthur Koestler - Cultural influence

In his younger days, the singer Sting was an avid reader of Koestler. His band of the time, The Police were to name one of their albums Ghost in the Machine after one of Koestler's books. The title Synchronicity was also inspired by Koestler's The Roots of Coincidence, which mentions Carl Jung's theory of the same name. Koestler knew little about the burgeoning New Wave music scene, and is alleged to have said:

Look at this. Did you ever see a magazine called the New Musical Express? It turns out there is a pop group called The Police - I don't know why they are called that, presumably to distinguish them from the punks - and they've made an album of my essay The Ghost in the Machine. I didn't know anything about it until my clipping agency sent me a review of the record.

The cyberpunk manga and anime series Ghost in the Shell was inspired by Koestler's essay The Ghost in the Machine.

Arthur Koestler - Bibliography

An excellent introduction to Koestler's writing and thought is the following anthology of passages from many of his books, described as "A selection from 50 years of his writings, chosen and with new commentary by the author":

• 1980. Bricks to Babel. Random House.

Arthur Koestler - Autobiography

• 1952. Arrow In The Blue: The First Volume Of An Autobiography, 1905-31.
• 1954. The Invisible Writing: The Second Volume Of An Autobiography, 1932-40.
• 1937. Spanish Testament.
• 1941. Scum of the Earth.
• 1984. Stranger on the Square.

The books The Lotus and the Robot, The God that Failed, and Von Weissen Nächten und Roten Tagen, as well as his numerous essays, all contain autobiographical information.

Arthur Koestler - Biographies

• J. Atkins, Arthur Koestler (1956)
• S.A. Pearson, Arthur Koestler (1978), ISBN 0805766995
• Iain Hamilton, Koestler – A Biography (1982), ISBN 0025476602
• George Mikes, Arthur Koestler – The Story of a Friendship (1983), ISBN 0233976124
• M. Levene, Arthur Koestler (1984), ISBN 080446412X
• Mamaine Koestler, Living with Koestler (1985), ISBN 0297785311 or ISBN 0312490291
• David Cesarani, Arthur Koestler: The Homeless Mind (1998), ISBN 0684867206
• Christian G. Buckard, Arthur Koestler – Ein extremes Leben 1905–1983 (German, 2004), ISBN 3406521770

Langston Hughes' autobiography also documents their meeting in Turkestan during the Soviet era.

Arthur Koestler - Books by Koestler excluding autobiography

• 1933. Von Weissen Nächten und Roten Tagen. Very difficult to find.
• 1935. The Good Soldier Schweik Goes to War Again.... Unfinished and unpublished.
• 1937. L’Espagne ensanglantée.
• 1939. The Gladiators.
• 1940. Darkness at Noon.
• 1942. Dialogue with Death. Abridgement of Spanish Testament.
• 1943. Arrival and Departure.
• 1945. The Yogi and the Commissar and other essays.
• 1945. Twilight Bar. Drama.
• 1946. Thieves in the Night (novel).
• 1949. The Challenge of our Time.
• 1949. Promise and Fulfilment: Palestine 1917-1949.
• 1949. Insight and Outlook.
• 1955. The Trail of the Dinosaur and other essays.
• 1956. Reflections on Hanging.
• 1959. The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man’s Changing Vision of the Universe.
• 1960. The Watershed. Abridgement of The Sleepwalkers.
• 1960. Lotus and the Robot.
• 1961. Control of the Mind.
• 1961. Hanged by the Neck. Reuses some material from Reflections on Hanging.
• 1963. Suicide of a Nation.
• 1964. The Act of Creation.
• 1967. The Ghost in the Machine. Penquin reprint 1990: ISBN 0140191925
• 1968. Drinkers of Infinity: Essays 1955-1967.
• 1971. The Case of the Midwife Toad.
• 1972. The Roots of Coincidence.
• 1972. The Call Girls: A Tragicomedy with a Prologue and Epilogue (play).
• 1973. The Lion and the Ostrich.
• 1974. The Heel of Achilles: Essays 1968-1973.
• 1976. The Thirteenth Tribe.
• 1978. Janus: A Summing Up. Collected extracts.
• 1981. Kaleidoscope. Essays from ’Drinkers of Infinity’, and ’The Heel of Achilles’ and later pieces and stories.

Arthur Koestler - Writings as a contributor

• Encyclopaedia of Sexual Knowledge (1935)
• Foreign Correspondent (1939),
• The Practice of Sex (1940)
• The God That Failed (1950) (collection of testimonies by ex-Communists)
• Beyond Reductionism: The Alpbach Symposium. New Perspectives in the Life Sciences (co-editor, 1969)
• The Challenge of Chance: A Mass Experiment in Telepathy and Its Unexpected Outcome (1973)
• Life After Death, (co-editor, 1976)
• Humour and Wit. I: Encyclopedia Britannica. 15th ed. vol. 9.(1983)
  • humour - Encyclopædia Britannica(by Arthur Koestler)

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Arthur Koestler", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki