Arthur Koestler CBEThe Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...
(5 September 1905, Budapest – 3 March 1983, London) was a
Hungarian author and journalist. Koestler was born in Budapest and, apart from his early school years, was educated in Austria. In 1931 Koestler joined the
Communist Party of GermanyThe Communist Party of Germany was a major political party in Germany between 1918 and 1933, and a minor party in West Germany in the postwar period until it was banned in 1956...
but, disillusioned by Stalinist atrocities, he resigned in 1938 and in 1940 published a devastating anti-totalitarian novel,
Darkness at NoonDarkness at Noon is a novel by the Hungarian-born British novelist Arthur Koestler, first published in 1940...
, which propelled him to international fame.
Over the next 43 years, Koestler espoused many political causes and wrote novels, biographies, and numerous essays. In 1968, he was awarded the prestigious
Sonning PrizeThe Sonning Prize is awarded biennially for outstanding contributions to European culture. A committee headed by the rector of the University of Copenhagen decides among candidates proposed by European universities. The prize amounts to 1 mio DKK . The prize award ceremony is held on April 19 at...
"for outstanding contribution to European culture" and, in 1972, he was made a
Commander of the Order of the British EmpireThe Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...
(CBE). In 1976, Koestler was diagnosed with
Parkinson's diseaseParkinson's disease is a degenerative disorder of the central nervous system...
and, three years later, with chronic lymphocytic leukaemia in its terminal stages. He committed suicide along with his wife in 1983 in London.
Life
Origins and early life
Koestler's father, Henrik Koestler, was born on 18 August 1869 in the town of
MiskolcMiskolc is a city in northeastern Hungary, mainly with heavy industrial background. With a population close to 170,000 Miskolc is the fourth largest city of Hungary It is also the county capital of Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén and the regional centre of Northern Hungary.- Geography :Miskolc is located...
in northeastern Hungary. According to Koestler's authorised biography, Henrik's father, Leopold Koestler, was a soldier in the
Austro-Hungarian ArmyThe Austro-Hungarian Army was the ground force of the Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy from 1867 to 1918. It was composed of three parts: the joint army , the Austrian Landwehr , and the Hungarian Honvédség .In the wake of fighting between the...
and Magyarised his name to "Lipot". (According to another biography, Leopold Koestler was a
RussianThe Russian people are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Russia, speaking the Russian language and primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries....
Jew who had settled in northeastern Hungary in 1860, where he married a local woman.) Henrik left school at age 16 due to his parents' strained financial circumstances and took a job as an errand boy with a firm of drapers. Determined to improve his prospects, he taught himself English, German and French, and in the course of a few years obtained promotion to the sales department and eventually became a partner in the firm. A few years later, he set up his own business importing textiles into Hungary.
Arthur's mother, Adele Koestler (née Jeiteles, according to his authorised biography, Zeiteles by another biography
, pp. 8–9
In 1898 Henrik Koestler met Adele, married her in 1900, and set up household in Budapest, where on 5 September 1905, Arthur, their only child, was born. The Koestlers were relatively prosperous by local standards and lived in spacious, well-furnished, rented apartments in various predominantly Jewish districts of Budapest, large enough to accommodate a resident cook/housekeeper as well as a foreign governess during Arthur's early years.
, p. 20
Arthur's primary school education started in a local school at age six. The outbreak of
World War IWorld War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
in 1914 deprived Henrik Koestler of his foreign suppliers, and his business collapsed. Facing destitution, the Koestlers gave up their Budapest apartment and moved temporarily to a boarding house in Vienna. From that point, the family never again had a permanent home neither in Budapest nor in Vienna, moving frequently from one boarding house to another.
, p. 24, 26–27 In 1916 Arthur was entrusted to the care of a small boarding school in Baden, near Vienna.
, pp. 24–25
When the war ended, the Koestlers returned to Budapest, and in 1918 Arthur witnessed at first hand the political chaos that followed the end of the war: the short-lived Hungarian Bolshevik Revolution of 1919, the temporary occupation of Budapest by the Rumanian Army, and finally the
White TerrorThe White Terror in Hungary was a two-year period of repressive violence by counter-revolutionary soldiers, with the intent of crushing any vestige of Hungary’s brief Communist revolution. Many of its victims were Jewish.-Background:...
under the
right-wingIn politics, Right, right-wing and rightist generally refer to support for a hierarchical society justified on the basis of an appeal to natural law or tradition. To varying degrees, the Right rejects the egalitarian objectives of left-wing politics, claiming that the imposition of equality is...
regime of Admiral Horthy.
, p. 26
In 1920 the family moved to Vienna once again and in September 1922 Arthur enrolled at the Vienna Polytechnical University to study engineering.
, pp. 24–25 At the same time he also enrolled in a Zionist duelling student fraternity, one of the many different student societies there at the time.
In late 1925, a few months before his final exams Arthur, in an "unpremeditated and inexplicable act", burned his Matriculation Book, effectively putting an end to his prospect of graduating from the university. The Matriculation Book contained the records of examinations he had passed, the courses attended and other relevant details and it was irreplaceable; graduating without the book was impossible. In the middle of March 1926, Koestler wrote a long and dishonest letter to his parents, telling them that he was going to Palestine for a year as an assistant engineer in a factory and that on his return home the experience will put him in good stead for finding a well-paid job in Austria and laying the foundations for his future prosperity. On 1 April 1926 he left Vienna for Palestine.
1926–1931 Palestine, Paris, Berlin and Polar flight
Koestler arrived in Palestine in April 1926 and for a few weeks lived in an agricultural collective. However, his application to join the collective, (Kvutzat Heftziba), was rejected by its members. For the next twelve months he supported himself by whatever menial work or commercial enterprise he could find in the cities of
HaifaHaifa is the largest city in northern Israel, and the third-largest city in the country, with a population of over 268,000. Another 300,000 people live in towns directly adjacent to the city including the cities of the Krayot, as well as, Tirat Carmel, Daliyat al-Karmel and Nesher...
,
Tel AvivTel Aviv , officially Tel Aviv-Yafo , is the second most populous city in Israel, with a population of 404,400 on a land area of . The city is located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline in west-central Israel. It is the largest and most populous city in the metropolitan area of Gush Dan, with...
and
Jerusalem, but for most of the time he was penniless and starving, and frequently had to depend on the kindness of friends and acquaintances for survival. His occasional involvement with the writing or editing of broadsheets and other publications, mostly in German, were all short-lived. In the spring of 1927 he left Palestine briefly, to run the Secretariat of Jabotinsky's Revisionist Party in Berlin. Later that same year, through the intervention of a friend, Koestler obtained the position of Middle East correspondent for the prestigious Berlin-based
Ullstein-VerlagThe Ullstein Verlag was founded by Leopold Ullstein in 1877 at Berlin and is one of the largest publishing companies of Germany. It published newspapers like B.Z. and Berliner Morgenpost and books through its subsidiaries Ullstein Buchverlage and Propyläen.The newspaper publishing branch was taken...
group of newspapers. He returned to Jerusalem and for the next two years produced a succession of detailed political essays, as well as some lighter reportage, for his principal employer and for other newspapers. He travelled extensively, interviewed heads of state, kings, presidents and prime ministers and greatly enhanced his reputation as a journalist. But by 1929 Koestler was tired of living in Palestine and in June 1929, while on leave in Berlin, he successfully lobbied at Ullstein for a transfer away from Palestine. In September he was sent to Paris to fill a vacancy in the bureau of the
Ullstein News Service. A year later, in 1931, he was called to Berlin and appointed science editor of
Vossische ZeitungThe Vossische Zeitung was the well known liberal German newspaper that was published in Berlin . Its predecessor was founded in 1704...
and science adviser to the entire Ullstein newspaper empire. The same year he was Ullstein's natural choice to represent the paper on board the
Graf ZeppelinLZ 127 Graf Zeppelin was a German built and operated passenger-carrying hydrogen-filled rigid airship which operated commercially from 1928 to 1937. It was named after the German pioneer of airships, Ferdinand von Zeppelin, who was a Graf or Count in the German nobility. During its operating life,...
airship's Polar flight, which carried a team of scientists and the Polar aviator
Lincoln EllsworthLincoln Ellsworth was an arctic explorer from the United States.-Birth:He was born on May 12, 1880 to James Ellsworth and Eva Frances Butler in Chicago, Illinois...
to 82 degrees North (thus not to the North Pole) and back. During the flight the airship descended on the sea near Franz Jozef Land and met the Soviet icebreaker "Malygin", which had
Umberto NobileUmberto Nobile was an Italian aeronautical engineer and Arctic explorer. Nobile was a developer and promoter of semi-rigid airships during the Golden Age of Aviation between the two World Wars...
on board, who in 1926 (with Amundsen and Ellsworth) and in 1928 visited the North Pole with his own airships "Norge" and "Italia". Koestler was the only journalist on board and his live wireless broadcasts and subsequent articles and lecture tours throughout Europe brought him further kudos. Soon after that he was appointed foreign editor and assistant editor-in-chief of the mass-circulation
Berliner Zeitung am Mittag. Throughout 1931 Koestler had been moving closer to the Communist ideology and on 31 December 1931, he applied for membership of the
Communist Party of GermanyThe Communist Party of Germany was a major political party in Germany between 1918 and 1933, and a minor party in West Germany in the postwar period until it was banned in 1956...
.
The 1930s
Koestler wrote a book on the Soviet Five-Year Plan but it did not meet with the approval of the Soviet authorities and it was never published. In September 1933 he returned to Paris and for the next two years was active in anti-Fascist movements writing propaganda under the direction of Willy Muenzenberg, the Comintern's chief propaganda director in the West.
In 1935 he married Dorothy Ascher, a fellow Communist activist (they separated amicably in 1937). In 1936, during the
Spanish Civil WarThe Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
he undertook a visit to General Franco's headquarters in
SevilleSeville is the artistic, historic, cultural, and financial capital of southern Spain. It is the capital of the autonomous community of Andalusia and of the province of Seville. It is situated on the plain of the River Guadalquivir, with an average elevation of above sea level...
on behalf of the
CominternThe Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern, also known as the Third International, was an international communist organization initiated in Moscow during March 1919...
but using the London daily
News ChronicleThe News Chronicle was a British daily newspaper. It ceased publication on 17 October 1960, being absorbed into the Daily Mail. Its offices were in Bouverie Street, off Fleet Street, London, EC4Y 8DP, England.-Daily Chronicle:...
as cover. He had to escape when recognised and denounced as a Communist by a former German colleague. Back in France he wrote
L'Espagne Ensanglantée, which was later incorporated into his book
Spanish Testament. In 1937 he returned to
LoyalistIn general, a loyalist is someone who maintains loyalty to an established government, political party, or sovereign, especially during war or revolutionary change. In modern English usage, the most common application is to loyalty to the British Crown....
Spain as a war correspondent of
News Chronicle but was captured by the Nationalist rebels. From February until June he was imprisoned under sentence of death. He was eventually exchanged for a 'high value' Nationalist prisoner held by the Loyalists, the wife of one of Franco's ace fighter pilots. He is, to this day, one of the only authors to have been sentenced to death and witnessed death row. This experience is thoroughly revisited in
Dialogue with Death.
After his release he returned to France and in order to support himself accepted an offer to author a sex encyclopaedia, which was published to great success under the title
The Encyclopœdia of Sexual KnowledgeThe Encyclopœdia of Sexual Knowledge, published in 1934, is the first of a trilogy of sexual encyclopaedias by Arthur Koestler writing under the pen name of ‘Dr. A. Costler’...
by the joint authors of 'Drs. A. Costler, A. Willy, and Others'. In July 1938, he finished work on his novel
The GladiatorsThe Gladiators is the name of Arthur Koestler's novel about the Spartacus revolt in the Roman Republic. Although not as famous as Howard Fast's novel Spartacus , The Gladiators is interesting in its own right, because Koestler is not merely writing about the original slave revolt, but the 20th...
. Later that year he resigned from the Communist Party and started work on a new novel that in 1941 was to be published in London with the title
Darkness at NoonDarkness at Noon is a novel by the Hungarian-born British novelist Arthur Koestler, first published in 1940...
. That same year, 1938, he became editor of the German weekly paper in Paris
Die ZukunftDie Zukunft was a German social-democratic weekly founded and edited by Maximilian Harden. It published allegations of homosexuality of Philip, Prince of Eulenburg, leading to the Harden–Eulenburg Affair in Wilhelmine Germany.Die Zukunft was also the name of an exile German language paper, both...
(The Future) In 1939 he met and formed an attachment to the sculptor
Daphne HardyDaphne Hardy Henrion was a British sculptor, a member of the Royal Society of British Sculptors and an intimate of the writer Arthur Koestler.-Life:...
, who subsequently translated the manuscript of
Darkness at Noon from German into English and smuggled it out of France for publication in London.
The war years, 1940–45
After the outbreak of
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
the French authorities detained him for several months in
Le Vernet Internment CampLe Vernet Internment Camp, or Camp Vernet, was a concentration camp in Le Vernet, Ariège, near Pamiers, in the French Pyrenees. It was originally built in June 1918 to house French colonial troops serving in World War I but when hostilities ceased it was used to hold German and Austrian prisoners...
as an 'undesirable alien'. They released him in early 1940 due to strong British pressure. Koestler described the period 1939 to 1940 and his incarceration in Le Vernet in his book
Scum of the EarthScum of the Earth is the title of a book by Arthur Koestler in which he describes his life in France during 1939-1940, the chaos that prevailed in France just prior to the outbreak of the Second World War and France’s collapse, his tribulations, internment in a concentration camp, and eventual...
. Shortly before the German invasion of France, in order to get out of the country, he joined the
French Foreign LegionThe French Foreign Legion is a unique military service wing of the French Army established in 1831. The foreign legion was exclusively created for foreign nationals willing to serve in the French Armed Forces...
, deserted it in North Africa, and made his way to England.
Arriving in England without an entry permit he was imprisoned pending examination of his case. He was still in prison when his book
Darkness at Noon was published in early 1941. Immediately upon release he volunteered for army service and while awaiting his call-up papers and a posting he wrote
Scum of the Earth (January–March 1941), which was the first book he wrote in English. For the next twelve months he served in the
Pioneer CorpsThe Royal Pioneer Corps was a British Army combatant corps used for light engineering tasks.The Royal Pioneer Corps was raised on 17 October 1939 as the Auxiliary Military Pioneer Corps. It was renamed the Pioneer Corps on 22 November 1940...
In March 1942 he was assigned to the Ministry of Information where he worked as a scriptwriter for propaganda broadcasts and films. In his spare time he wrote a novel,
Arrival and DepartureArrival and Departure is the third novel of Arthur Koestler's trilogy concerning the conflict between morality and expediency . The first volume, The Gladiators, is about the subversion of the Spartacus revolt, and the second, Darkness at Noon, is the celebrated novel about the Soviet Show trials...
, and a number of essays, which were subsequently collected and published in
The Yogi and the Commissar. One of the essays, titled
On Disbelieving Atrocities, (originally published in the
New York Times) dealt with the Nazi atrocities being committed against the Jews, as did several of his other articles at the time. Daphne Hardy, who had been doing war work in Oxford, joined him in London in 1943 but they parted company a few months later, although they remained very good friends until Koestler's death. In December 1944 he travelled to Palestine with an accreditation from
The TimesThe Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
newspaper. There he had a clandestine meeting with the head of the
IrgunThe Irgun , or Irgun Zevai Leumi to give it its full title , was a Zionist paramilitary group that operated in Mandate Palestine between 1931 and 1948. It was an offshoot of the earlier and larger Jewish paramilitary organization haHaganah...
underground organisation,
Menachem Begin' was a politician, founder of Likud and the sixth Prime Minister of the State of Israel. Before independence, he was the leader of the Zionist militant group Irgun, the Revisionist breakaway from the larger Jewish paramilitary organization Haganah. He proclaimed a revolt, on 1 February 1944,...
, who was wanted by the British and had a £500 bounty on his head, but Koestler failed to persuade him to abandon militant attacks and accept the prospect of a two-state solution for Palestine after the war. Many years later, Koestler wrote in his memoirs: “When the meeting was over, I realised how naïve I had been to imagine that my arguments would have even the slightest influence.”
He stayed in Palestine until August 1945, collecting material for his next book
Thieves in the NightThieves in the Night : Chronicle of an Experiment is a novel by Arthur Koestler written in 1946. Originally intended to be the first of a trilogy, Koestler later concluded that the book stood well enough on its own for further novels to be redundant....
, then returned to England, where the new woman in his life,
Mamaine PagetMamaine Koestler was the second wife of the author Arthur Koestler. She married Koestler on 25 April 1950. They separated on amicable terms on 15 August 1952 but remained very close right up to her sudden and unexpected death...
, was waiting for him.
1945–55
For two years, 1945–47, Koestler worked on
Insight and Outlook.
In March 1948 he went on a literary and political lecture tour in the United States. When soon after his return from the U.S. war broke out between the newly declared State of Israel and the neighbouring Arab states, he travelled to Israel with accreditations from several newspapers, American, British and French. Mamaine Paget went with him. They arrived in Israel on 4 June and stayed there until October. Later that year they decided to leave England for a while and move to France. News that his long-pending application for British nationality had been granted reached him in France in late December. Early in the new year (1949) he returned to London to swear the
oath of allegianceAn oath of allegiance is an oath whereby a subject or citizen acknowledges a duty of allegiance and swears loyalty to monarch or country. In republics, modern oaths specify allegiance to the country's constitution. For example, officials in the United States, a republic, take an oath of office that...
to the British Crown.
In January 1949 he and Mamaine moved to a house he bought in France. That same year his book
Insight and Outlook was published. He commenced work on his autobiography
Arrow in the BlueArrow in the Blue is an autobiography covering the first 26 years of Arthur Koestler's life . It was published in 1952 by HarperCollins with Hamish Hamilton Ltd. and has been reprinted several times.-The book and its contents:...
, assisted by his new part-time secretary, Cynthia Jefferies.
In January 1949 he and Mamaine moved to a house he bought in France, where he wrote a contribution to
The God That FailedThe God That Failed is a 1949 book which collects together six essays with the testimonies of a number of famous ex-communists, who were writers and journalists. The common theme of the essays is the authors' disillusionment with and abandonment of communism...
and finished work on
Promise and Fulfilment. The book received poor reviews both in the U.S. and in England. His other book to come out in 1949 was
Insight and Outlook. This too received lukewarm reviews. In July he commenced work on the first volume of his autobiography,
Arrow in the BlueArrow in the Blue is an autobiography covering the first 26 years of Arthur Koestler's life . It was published in 1952 by HarperCollins with Hamish Hamilton Ltd. and has been reprinted several times.-The book and its contents:...
. In the same month a new part-time secretary started working for him, Cynthia Jefferies, who eventually would become his third wife. In the autumn he started work on
The Age of Longing on which he continued to work until mid-1950.
He had reached agreement with his first wife, Dorothy, for an amicable divorce and their marriage was annulled on 15 December 1949. This cleared the way for his marriage to Mamaine Paget, which took place on 15 April 1950 at the British Consulate in Paris.
In June he delivered a major speech at the CIA-front Congress for Cultural Freedom held in Berlin. In the autumn he went to the United States on a lecture tour and was at the same time actively lobbying for permanent resident status in the U.S. for himself.
At the end of October, entirely on impulse, he bought a small island with a house on it on the
Delaware RiverThe Delaware River is a major river on the Atlantic coast of the United States.A Dutch expedition led by Henry Hudson in 1609 first mapped the river. The river was christened the South River in the New Netherland colony that followed, in contrast to the North River, as the Hudson River was then...
in
PennsylvaniaThe Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...
with the intention of living there at least for part of each year.
In January 1951 the dramatised version of
Darkness at Noon, by Sidney Kingsley, opened in New York. Critics loved the play and it won the New York Drama Critics' Award. Koestler donated all royalties from the play to a fund he set up for helping struggling authors, “Fund for Intellectual Freedom" (FIF)
In 1951 the last of his political works,
The Age of Longing, was published in which he examined the political landscape of post-war Europe and the problems facing Europe.
In August 1952 his oft-troubled marriage to Mamaine collapsed. They separated but remained very close right up to her sudden and unexpected death in June 1954. The book
Living with Koestler: Mamaine Koestler's Letters 1945-51Living with Koestler: Mamaine Koestler's Letters 1945-51 is a book about the author Arthur Koestler and Mamaine Paget, Koestler’s second wife. More specifically, it is a selected compilation of Mamaine’s letters to her twin sister Celia about her life with Koestler...
, edited by Mamaine's twin sister Celia Goodman, gives useful insight into their lives together over those years. After their separation he abandoned earlier plans for living overseas and decided to make his permanent home in England. In May 1953 he bought a three-storey
GeorgianGeorgian architecture is the name given in most English-speaking countries to the set of architectural styles current between 1720 and 1840. It is eponymous for the first four British monarchs of the House of Hanover—George I of Great Britain, George II of Great Britain, George III of the United...
town house on Montpelier Square in London and sold his houses in France as well as the one in the United States.
The first two volumes of his autobiography,
Arrow in the Blue, which covers his life up to December 1931 when he joined the German Communist Party, and
The Invisible Writing, which covers the years 1932 to 1940, were published in 1952 and 1954 respectively. A collection of essays,
The Trail of the Dinosaur and Other Essays, largely on the perils facing civilisation, was published in 1955.
On 13 April 1955, Janine Graetz, with whom Koestler had an on-off relationship over a period of years in the 1950s, gave birth to a daughter fathered by him. Koestler had virtually no contact with his daughter throughout his life in spite of repeated attempts by Janine to persuade him to meet Cristina and take some interest in her.
Koestler's main polemic during 1955 was his campaign for the abolition of capital punishment and hanging. In July he started work on
Reflections on Hanging. Later that same month his former secretary, Cynthia Jefferies, arrived from New York, where she was living at the time, for a few weeks holiday and she was pleased to resume former relations with him, both professional and private. When her extended stay in London was over she returned to New York. In early November, Koestler cabled Jefferies asking her to come back to London for six months to resume secretarial work for him. Jefferies was delighted to oblige. She wound up her affairs in New York and by the end of the month was back in London working for him and with him at the house on Montpelier Square – and she stayed with him for the rest of her life, and his.
1956–75
Although Koestler resumed work on Kepler's biography in 1955 it was not published until 1959, and in the interim it acquired the title
The SleepwalkersThe Sleepwalkers: A History of Man's Changing Vision of the Universe is a 1959 book by Arthur Koestler, and one of the main accounts of the history of cosmology and astronomy in the Western World, beginning in ancient Mesopotamia and ending with Isaac Newton. The book challenges the habitual idea...
. The emphasis of the book changed to 'A history of Man's Changing Vision of the Universe', which became also the book's subtitle. Copernicus and Galileo were added to Kepler as the major subjects of the book. There was plenty to distract Koestler from work. Early in the year it was Jefferies'
unintended pregnancyUnintended pregnancies are those in which conception was not intended by the female sexual partner. Worldwide, 38% of pregnancies were unintended in 1999 . Unintended pregnancies are the primary cause of induced abortion, resulting in about 42 million induced abortions per year...
and arrangements for an illegal abortion. In October it was the
Hungarian uprisingHungarian Uprising can refer to:*Hungarian Revolution of 1848 *Hungarian Revolution of 1956...
and for the next two months he was busy organising anti-Soviet meetings and protests.
In June 1957 Koestler gave a lecture at a symposium in
AlpbachAlpbach is a village in Western Austria in the state of Tyrol. Its geographical location is , at 975 m above sea level. Alpbach had a population of 2,549 in 2003....
, Austria, and fell in love with the village; bought land there, had a house built and for the next twelve years used it as a place for summer vacations and for organising symposia.
In May 1958 he had a hernia operation. In December he left for the East – India and Japan – and was away until the spring of 1959. The resulting book was
The Lotus and the RobotThe Lotus and the Robot is a 1960 book by Arthur Koestler exploring eastern mysticism. Although now dated by Westerners' greater exposure to Oriental practices, it concentrates mainly on Indian and Japanese traditions, which form the two parts - the "lotus" and the "robot" respectively.Some of...
.
In early 1960, on his way back from a conference in San Francisco, he interrupted his journey at the
University of MichiganThe University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...
, Ann Arbor, where some experimental research was going on with hallucinogens. He tried
psilocybinPsilocybin is a naturally occurring psychedelic prodrug, with mind-altering effects similar to those of LSD and mescaline, after it is converted to psilocin. The effects can include altered thinking processes, perceptual distortions, an altered sense of time, and spiritual experiences, as well as...
and had a 'bad trip'. Later, when he arrived at Harvard to see
Timothy LearyTimothy Francis Leary was an American psychologist and writer, known for his advocacy of psychedelic drugs. During a time when drugs like LSD and psilocybin were legal, Leary conducted experiments at Harvard University under the Harvard Psilocybin Project, resulting in the Concord Prison...
he partook in further experiments with drugs but wasn't enthusiastic about that experience either.
In November 1960 he was elected to a Fellowship of The Royal Society of Literature.
1962 was notable for the debate about whether Britain should join the European Common Market. Koestler was strongly in favour of joining and he was greatly disappointed when, in January 1963, Britain's application to join was rejected.
1963 was made notable by
Willy BrandtWilly Brandt, born Herbert Ernst Karl Frahm , was a German politician, Mayor of West Berlin 1957–1966, Chancellor of West Germany 1969–1974, and leader of the Social Democratic Party of Germany 1964–1987....
's courtesy call on Koestler in Alpbach. Brandt was Mayor of Berlin at the time. Koestler's book
The Act of CreationThe Act of Creation is a 1964 book by Arthur Koestler. It is a study of the processes of discovery, invention, imagination and creativity in humor, science, and the arts...
came out in May 1964. In November he undertook a lecture tour of various universities in California.
The main event of 1965 was his marriage in New York, on 8 January, to Cynthia Jefferies. They then proceeded to California, where, at the
Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral SciencesThe Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences is an American interdisciplinary research body in Stanford, California focusing on the social sciences and humanities . Fellows are elected in a closed process, to spend a period of residence at the Center, released from other duties...
at Stanford, he participated in a series of seminars.
Koestler spent most of 1966 and the early months of 1967 working on
The Ghost in the MachineThe Ghost in the Machine is Arthur Koestler's, 1967, non-fiction polemic against any such ghost. The phrase of the title was coined by Gilbert Ryle, with whom he shares the concept that the mind of a person is not an independent entity, temporarily inhabiting and governing the body...
. In his article
Return Trip to Nirvana, published in 1967 in the
Sunday Telegraph, Koestler wrote about the drug culture and his own experiences with hallucinogens. The article also challenged the defence of drugs in
Aldous HuxleyAldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. Best known for his novels including Brave New World and a wide-ranging output of essays, Huxley also edited the magazine Oxford Poetry, and published short stories, poetry, travel...
's
The Doors of PerceptionThe Doors of Perception is a 1954 book by Aldous Huxley detailing his experiences when taking mescaline. The book takes the form of Huxley’s recollection of a mescaline trip which took place over the course of an afternoon, and takes its title from William Blake's poem The Marriage of Heaven and Hell...
.
In April 1968, Koestler was awarded the prestigious and valuable Sonning Prize “For outstanding contribution to European culture”.
The Ghost in the Machine was published in August of same year and in the autumn he received an honorary doctorate from
Queen's UniversityQueen's University, , is a public research university located in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. Founded on 16 October 1841, the university pre-dates the founding of Canada by 26 years. Queen's holds more more than of land throughout Ontario as well as Herstmonceux Castle in East Sussex, England...
, Kingston, Ontario. In the later part of November the Koestlers flew to Australia for a number of television appearances and press interviews, but the experience was not a happy one for him.
At the end of the decade, Koestler was elated to learn that the
House of LordsThe House of Lords is the upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Like the House of Commons, it meets in the Palace of Westminster....
had finally consented to the abolition of hanging, for which he had been campaigning for many years.
The first half of the 1970s saw the publication of four more of his books:
The Case of the Midwife Toad (1971),
The Roots of CoincidenceThe Roots of Coincidence, written by Arthur Koestler, is an accessible introduction to theories of parapsychology, including extra-sensory perception and psychokinesis. It postulates links between elements of quantum mechanics, such as the behaviour of neutrinos and their interaction with time, and...
and
The Call GirlsThe Call-Girls: A Tragi-Comedy with Prologue and Epilogue is a novel by Arthur Koestler. The plot tells the story of a group of academic scientists struggling to understand the human tendency towards self-destruction, while the group members gradually become more suspicious and aggressive towards...
(both in 1972), and
The Heel of Achilles: Essays 1968-1973The Heel of Achilles: Essays 1968-1973 is the title of a book by Arthur Koestler. It is a collection of writings, lectures, addresses, book reviews, newspaper articles, etc....
(1974).
In the New Year Honours List for 1972, he was made a Commander of the
Order of the British EmpireThe Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...
(CBE).
Final years, 1976–83
Early in 1976 Koestler was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. The trembling of his hand made writing progressively more difficult. He cut back on overseas trips and spent the summer months at the farmhouse in Denston,
SuffolkSuffolk is a non-metropolitan county of historic origin in East Anglia, England. It has borders with Norfolk to the north, Cambridgeshire to the west and Essex to the south. The North Sea lies to the east...
, which he had bought in 1971. That same year saw the publication of
The Thirteenth TribeThe Thirteenth Tribe is a book by Arthur Koestler, which advances the thesis that Ashkenazi Jews are not descended from the historical Israelites of antiquity, but from Khazars, a Turkic people...
, about the hypothetical Khazar origins of European Jewry.
In 1978 he published
Janus: A Summing UpJanus: A Summing Up is a book by Arthur Koestler, in which he develops his philosophical idea of the holarchy introduced in his 1967 book, The Ghost in the Machine. The holarchy provides a coherent way of organizing knowledge and nature all together...
. Two years later, in 1980, he was diagnosed also with chronic lymphocytic leukaemia. Walking and writing became an effort and Koestler's physical condition visibly deteriorated but he kept on working. His book
Bricks to Babel was published that year. His final book,
KaleidoscopeA kaleidoscope is a circle of mirrors containing loose, colored objects such as beads or pebbles and bits of glass. As the viewer looks into one end, light entering the other end creates a colorful pattern, due to the reflection off the mirrors...
: Essays from
Drinkers of Infinity and
The Heel of Achilles: Essays 1968-1973The Heel of Achilles: Essays 1968-1973 is the title of a book by Arthur Koestler. It is a collection of writings, lectures, addresses, book reviews, newspaper articles, etc....
and some later pieces and stories was published the following year, 1981.
During the final years of his life he established the KIB Society (with
Brian InglisBrian Inglis was an Irish journalist, historian and television presenter. He was born in Dublin, Ireland, and retained an interest in Irish history and politics....
and Tony Bloomfield), to sponsor research 'outside the scientific orthodoxies' (which, after his death, was renamed The Koestler Foundation), and in his capacity as Vice President of the Voluntary Euthanasia Society, later renamed Exit, he wrote a powerful pamphlet on suicide, outlining the case both for and against, with a section dealing specifically with how best to do it.
Koestler and Cynthia ended their own lives on the evening of 1 March 1983.
Death and its controversies
Koestler had stated more than once that he was not afraid of being dead but was afraid of the process of dying. He did not wish to suffer the indignity of losing control over his body or mind. His suicide was not unexpected among close friends. Shortly before his suicide his doctor had discovered a swelling in the groin which indicated a
metastasisMetastasis, or metastatic disease , is the spread of a disease from one organ or part to another non-adjacent organ or part. It was previously thought that only malignant tumor cells and infections have the capacity to metastasize; however, this is being reconsidered due to new research...
of the cancer. He and his wife killed themselves on 1 March 1983 with an overdose of barbiturates (
TuinalTuinal is the brand name of a combination drug composed of two barbiturate salts in equal proportions....
), taken with alcohol. Their bodies were discovered on the morning of 3 March, by which time they had been dead for thirty-six hours.
Koestler's suicide note:
To whom it may concern.
The purpose of this note is to make it unmistakably clear that I intend to commit suicide by taking an overdose of drugs without the knowledge or aid of any other person. The drugs have been legally obtained and hoarded over a considerable period.
Trying to commit suicide is a gamble the outcome of which will be known to the gambler only if the attempt fails, but not if it succeeds. Should this attempt fail and I survive it in a physically or mentally impaired state, in which I can no longer control what is done to me, or communicate my wishes, I hereby request that I be allowed to die in my own home and not be resuscitated or kept alive by artificial means. I further request that my wife, or a physician, or any friend present, should invoke habeas corpus against any attempt to remove me forcibly from my house to hospital.
My reasons for deciding to put an end to my life are simple and compelling: Parkinson's Disease and the slow-killing variety of leukaemia (CCI). I kept the latter a secret even from intimate friends to save them distress. After a more or less steady physical decline over the last years, the process has now reached an acute state with added complications which make it advisable to seek self-deliverance now, before I become incapable of making the necessary arrangements.
I wish my friends to know that I am leaving their company in a peaceful frame of mind, with some timid hopes for a de-personalised after-life beyond due confines of space, time and matter and beyond the limits of our comprehension. This 'oceanic feeling' has often sustained me at difficult moments, and does so now, while I am writing this.
What makes it nevertheless hard to take this final step is the reflection of the pain it is bound to inflict on my surviving friends, above all my wife Cynthia. It is to her that I owe the relative peace and happiness that I enjoyed in the last period of my life – and never before.
The above note was dated June 1982. Below it appeared the following:
Since the above was written in June 1982, my wife decided that after thirty-four years of working together she could not face life after my death.
Further down the page appeared Cynthia's own farewell note:
I fear both death and the act of dying that lies ahead of us. I should have liked to finish my account of working for Arthur – a story which began when our paths happened to cross in 1949. However, I cannot live without Arthur, despite certain inner resources.
Double suicide has never appealed to me, but now Arthur's incurable diseases have reached a stage where there is nothing else to do.
The funeral was held at the
Mortlake CrematoriumMortlake Crematorium is a crematorium in Mortlake, a district of the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, United Kingdom. It is situated on the banks of the River Thames by Chiswick Bridge and serves the west and south-west of London, that is the Boroughs of Ealing, Hammersmith & Fulham,...
in South London on 11 March.
The first controversy arose about why he allowed or consented to his wife's simultaneous suicide. She was only fifty-five years old and believed to be in good health. In a typewritten addition to her husband's suicide note Cynthia Koestler wrote that she could not live without her husband. Reportedly, few of their friends were surprised by this admission, apparently perceiving that Cynthia lived her life through her husband's and that she had no 'life of her own'. Her total and absolute devotion to Koestler can be seen clearly in her partially completed memoirs.
This said, according to a profile of Koestler by Peter Kurth:
All their friends were troubled by what Julian BarnesJulian Patrick Barnes is a contemporary English writer, and winner of the 2011 Man Booker Prize, for his book The Sense of an Ending...
calls "the unmentionable, half-spoken question" of Koestler's responsibility for Cynthia's actions.
"Did he bully her into it?" asks Barnes. And "if he didn't bully her into it, why didn't he bully her out of it?" Because, with hindsight, the evidence that Cynthia's life had been ebbing with her husband's was all too apparent.
The second controversy was occasioned by the terms of his Will. With the exception of some minor bequests Koestler left the residue of his estate, about £1 million, to promote research into the paranormal through the founding of a Chair in Parapsychology at a university in Britain. The Trustees of the Estate had great difficulty finding a university willing to establish such a Chair. Oxford, Cambridge,
King's College LondonKing's College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and a constituent college of the federal University of London. King's has a claim to being the third oldest university in England, having been founded by King George IV and the Duke of Wellington in 1829, and...
and
University College LondonUniversity College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and the oldest and largest constituent college of the federal University of London...
, were approached and all refused. Eventually, the Trustees reached agreement with Edinburgh University to set up a chair in accordance with Koestler's request.
Controversial personal life
Koestler's relations with women have been a source of controversy. In 1998, a biography of Koestler by
David CesaraniDavid Cesarani OBE is an English historian who specialises in Jewish history, especially the Holocaust. He has also written several biographies, notably Arthur Koestler: The Homeless Mind.-Early life:...
alleged that Koestler had been a serial
rapistRape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse, which is initiated by one or more persons against another person without that person's consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority or with a person who is incapable of valid consent. The...
and that the British writer
Jill CraigieJill Craigie was an English documentary film director, screenwriter and feminist. She was the wife of the Labour Party politician Michael Foot , whom she met during the making of her film The Way We Live....
had been one of his victims in 1951. Craigie confirmed the allegations.
In his biography
Koestler: The Indispensable Intellectual,
Michael ScammellMichael Scammell is an English author, biographer and translator of Slavic literature.-Life:He was educated at the University of Nottingham, and obtained a doctorate at Columbia University where he is currently a professor of writing....
countered that Craigie was the only woman to go on record that she had been raped by Koestler, and had only revealed this in public 50 years after the alleged incident.
Scammell admits that Koestler could certainly be rough and sexually aggressive, and others (including Cesarani) claim that Koestler had misogynistic tendencies, reportedly engaging in endless seductions and generally treating the women in his life badly. As argued by
Geoffrey WheatcroftGeoffrey Albert Wheatcroft is a British journalist and writer.- Education :He was educated at University College School, London, and at New College Oxford, where he read Modern History.- Publishing and journalism :...
in a review of Cesarani's biography, philandering on this scale is neurotic: a man driven to copulate with as many women as possible not only has difficulty establishing happy relations with women, or regarding them as equals, but does not actually like women.
Influence and legacy
Darkness at Noon was one of the most influential anti-Soviet books ever written. Its influence in Europe on Communists and sympathisers and, indirectly, on the outcomes of elected governments, was substantial. Ultimately, a writer's legacy is the body of his writing. Koestler wrote several major novels, two volumes of autobiographical works, two volumes of reportage, a major work on the history of science, several volumes of essays and a considerable body of other writing and articles on subjects as varied as genetics, euthanasia, Eastern mysticism, neurology, chess, evolution, psychology, the paranormal and more.
Politics and causes
Koestler embraced a multitude of political as well as non-political issues.
ZionismZionism is a Jewish political movement that, in its broadest sense, has supported the self-determination of the Jewish people in a sovereign Jewish national homeland. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Zionist movement continues primarily to advocate on behalf of the Jewish state...
, Communism,
anti-CommunismAnti-communism is opposition to communism. Organized anti-communism developed in reaction to the rise of communism, especially after the 1917 October Revolution in Russia and the beginning of the Cold War in 1947.-Objections to communist theory:...
, voluntary
euthanasiaEuthanasia refers to the practice of intentionally ending a life in order to relieve pain and suffering....
, abolition of capital punishment, particularly
hangingHanging is the lethal suspension of a person by a ligature. The Oxford English Dictionary states that hanging in this sense is "specifically to put to death by suspension by the neck", though it formerly also referred to crucifixion and death by impalement in which the body would remain...
, and the abolition of quarantining of dogs being re-imported into the United Kingdom are examples.
Paranormal and scientific interests
During the last 30 years of his life, Koestler wrote extensively on science and scientific practice. A case in point is his 1971 book
The Case of the Midwife Toad about the biologist
Paul KammererPaul Kammerer was an Austrian biologist who studied and advocated the now abandoned Lamarckian theory of inheritance – the notion that organisms may pass to their offspring characteristics they have acquired in their lifetime...
, who claimed to find experimental support for
Lamarckian inheritanceLamarckism is the idea that an organism can pass on characteristics that it acquired during its lifetime to its offspring . It is named after the French biologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck , who incorporated the action of soft inheritance into his evolutionary theories...
.
MysticismMysticism is the knowledge of, and especially the personal experience of, states of consciousness, i.e. levels of being, beyond normal human perception, including experience and even communion with a supreme being.-Classical origins:...
and a fascination with the
paranormalThe term parapsychology was coined in or around 1889 by philosopher Max Dessoir, and originates from para meaning "alongside", and psychology. The term was adopted by J.B. Rhine in the 1930s as a replacement for the term psychical research...
also imbued much of his later work.
In
The Roots of CoincidenceThe Roots of Coincidence, written by Arthur Koestler, is an accessible introduction to theories of parapsychology, including extra-sensory perception and psychokinesis. It postulates links between elements of quantum mechanics, such as the behaviour of neutrinos and their interaction with time, and...
he took an overview of the scientific research around
telepathyTelepathy , is the induction of mental states from one mind to another. The term was coined in 1882 by the classical scholar Fredric W. H. Myers, a founder of the Society for Psychical Research, and has remained more popular than the more-correct expression thought-transference...
and
psychokinesisThe term psychokinesis , also referred to as telekinesis with respect to strictly describing movement of matter, sometimes abbreviated PK and TK respectively, is a term...
and compared it with the advances in quantum physics at that time. It mentions yet another line of unconventional research by Paul Kammerer, the theory of coincidence or
synchronicitySynchronicity is the experience of two or more events that are apparently causally unrelated or unlikely to occur together by chance and that are observed to occur together in a meaningful manner...
. He also presents critically the related writings of
Carl JungCarl Gustav Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist and the founder of Analytical Psychology. Jung is considered the first modern psychiatrist to view the human psyche as "by nature religious" and make it the focus of exploration. Jung is one of the best known researchers in the field of dream analysis and...
. More controversial were Koestler's levitation and
telepathyTelepathy , is the induction of mental states from one mind to another. The term was coined in 1882 by the classical scholar Fredric W. H. Myers, a founder of the Society for Psychical Research, and has remained more popular than the more-correct expression thought-transference...
studies and experiments.
Hallucinogens
In
Return Trip to Nirvana, published in the
Sunday Telegraph in 1967, Koestler wrote about the drug culture and his own experiences with hallucinogens. The article also challenged the defence of drugs in
Aldous HuxleyAldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. Best known for his novels including Brave New World and a wide-ranging output of essays, Huxley also edited the magazine Oxford Poetry, and published short stories, poetry, travel...
's
The Doors of PerceptionThe Doors of Perception is a 1954 book by Aldous Huxley detailing his experiences when taking mescaline. The book takes the form of Huxley’s recollection of a mescaline trip which took place over the course of an afternoon, and takes its title from William Blake's poem The Marriage of Heaven and Hell...
.
Judaism
Koestler was a secular Jew. In an interview published in the London
Jewish Chronicle in 1950 he argued that Jews should either migrate to Israel or
assimilateCultural assimilation is a socio-political response to demographic multi-ethnicity that supports or promotes the assimilation of ethnic minorities into the dominant culture. The term assimilation is often used with regard to immigrants and various ethnic groups who have settled in a new land. New...
completely into their local cultures.
In
The Thirteenth TribeThe Thirteenth Tribe is a book by Arthur Koestler, which advances the thesis that Ashkenazi Jews are not descended from the historical Israelites of antiquity, but from Khazars, a Turkic people...
(1976), he advanced the controversial thesis that
Ashkenazi JewsAshkenazi Jews, also known as Ashkenazic Jews or Ashkenazim , are the Jews descended from the medieval Jewish communities along the Rhine in Germany from Alsace in the south to the Rhineland in the north. Ashkenaz is the medieval Hebrew name for this region and thus for Germany...
are not descended from the Israelites of antiquity, but from the
KhazarsThe Khazars were semi-nomadic Turkic people who established one of the largest polities of medieval Eurasia, with the capital of Atil and territory comprising much of modern-day European Russia, western Kazakhstan, eastern Ukraine, Azerbaijan, large portions of the northern Caucasus , parts of...
, a
Turkic peopleThe Turkic peoples are peoples residing in northern, central and western Asia, southern Siberia and northwestern China and parts of eastern Europe. They speak languages belonging to the Turkic language family. They share, to varying degrees, certain cultural traits and historical backgrounds...
in the
CaucasusThe Caucasus, also Caucas or Caucasia , is a geopolitical region at the border of Europe and Asia, and situated between the Black and the Caspian sea...
who converted to Judaism in the 8th century and were later forced westward into present-day Russia,
UkraineUkraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
and
PolandPoland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
. Koestler argued that by proving Ashkenazi Jews to have no connection with the biblical Jews, European
anti-SemitismAntisemitism is suspicion of, hatred toward, or discrimination against Jews for reasons connected to their Jewish heritage. According to a 2005 U.S...
would lose all basis.
Languages
Koestler's mother tongue was Hungarian. At home the family spoke mostly German. Thus from early life he was fluent in both languages. It is likely that he picked up some Yiddish too, through contact with his grandfather. By the time of his teens he was fluent in Hungarian, German, French and English.
During his years in Palestine he became sufficiently fluent in Hebrew to write stories in that language and during his years in the Soviet Union, (1932–33), although he arrived there with a vocabulary of only 1000 words of Russian, and no grammar, he picked up enough colloquial Russian to be able to speak the language.
The GladiatorsThe Gladiators is the name of Arthur Koestler's novel about the Spartacus revolt in the Roman Republic. Although not as famous as Howard Fast's novel Spartacus , The Gladiators is interesting in its own right, because Koestler is not merely writing about the original slave revolt, but the 20th...
was the first novel that Koestler wrote and the only one written in Hungarian. All his other works up to 1940 were written in German. After 1940 he wrote only in English. (
L'Espagne ensanglantée was translated into French from German.)
Fiction
- 1939. The Gladiators. A novel on the revolt of Spartacus
Spartacus was a famous leader of the slaves in the Third Servile War, a major slave uprising against the Roman Republic. Little is known about Spartacus beyond the events of the war, and surviving historical accounts are sometimes contradictory and may not always be reliable...
.
- 1940. Darkness at Noon
Darkness at Noon is a novel by the Hungarian-born British novelist Arthur Koestler, first published in 1940...
.
- 1943. Arrival and Departure
Arrival and Departure is the third novel of Arthur Koestler's trilogy concerning the conflict between morality and expediency . The first volume, The Gladiators, is about the subversion of the Spartacus revolt, and the second, Darkness at Noon, is the celebrated novel about the Soviet Show trials...
, novel.
- 1946. Thieves in the Night.
- 1951. The Age of Longing.
- 1972. The Call-Girls: A Tragicomedy with a Prologue and Epilogue. A novel about scholars making a living on the international seminar-conference circuit. ISBN 9780091125509
Autobiography
- 1937. Spanish Testament
Spanish Testament is a 1937 book by Arthur Koestler, describing his experiences during the Spanish Civil War. Part II of the book was subsequently published on its own, with minor modifications, under the title Dialogue with Death...
.
- 1941. Scum of the Earth
Scum of the Earth is the title of a book by Arthur Koestler in which he describes his life in France during 1939-1940, the chaos that prevailed in France just prior to the outbreak of the Second World War and France’s collapse, his tribulations, internment in a concentration camp, and eventual...
.
- 1942. Dialogue with Death
Dialogue with Death, a book by Arthur Koestler, was originally published in 1937 as a section of his book Spanish Testament, in which he describes his experiences during the Spanish Civil War...
.
- 1952. Arrow In The Blue: The First Volume Of An Autobiography, 1905–31
Arrow in the Blue is an autobiography covering the first 26 years of Arthur Koestler's life . It was published in 1952 by HarperCollins with Hamish Hamilton Ltd. and has been reprinted several times.-The book and its contents:...
, 2005 reprint, ISBN 0-09-949067-6
- 1954. The Invisible Writing: The Second Volume Of An Autobiography, 1932–40
The Invisible Writing: The Second Volume Of An Autobiography, 1932-40 is a book by Arthur Koestler.It follows on from Arrow in the Blue, published a mere two years earlier, and which described his life from his birth in 1905, to 1931, and deals with a much shorter period, a mere eight years...
, 1984 reprint, ISBN 0-8128-6218-X
- 1984. Stranger on the Square
Stranger on the Square is the third volume of Arthur Koestler's autobiography, published posthumously in 1984. It was co-authored with his wife Cynthia Koestler, née Jefferies, and includes autobiographical notes of her as well. The book was published by Hutchinson, London 1984, 242 pages including...
co-written with Cynthia Koestler, published posthumously, edited and with an Introduction and Epilogue by Harold Harris, Hutchinson, London 1984, ISBN 0-09-154330-4.
NB The books
The Lotus and the Robot,
The God that Failed, and
, as well as his numerous essays, all may contain further autobiographical information.
Other non-fiction
- 1934. . About Koestler's travels in the USSR. In his The Invisible Writing, Koestler calls the book Red Days and White Nights, or, more usually, Red Days. Of the five foreign language editions − Russian, German, Ukrainian
Ukrainian is a language of the East Slavic subgroup of the Slavic languages. It is the official state language of Ukraine. Written Ukrainian uses a variant of the Cyrillic alphabet....
, GeorgianGeorgian is the native language of the Georgians and the official language of Georgia, a country in the Caucasus.Georgian is the primary language of about 4 million people in Georgia itself, and of another 500,000 abroad...
, ArmenianThe Armenian language is an Indo-European language spoken by the Armenian people. It is the official language of the Republic of Armenia as well as in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh. The language is also widely spoken by Armenian communities in the Armenian diaspora...
− which were intended, only the German version was eventually published, "thoroughly expurgated", in KharkovKharkiv or Kharkov is the second-largest city in Ukraine.The city was founded in 1654 and was a major centre of Ukrainian culture in the Russian Empire. Kharkiv became the first city in Ukraine where the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic was proclaimed in December 1917 and Soviet government was...
, Ukrainian S.S.R.Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
, and the work is therefore very rare.
- 1937. L'Espagne ensanglantée.
- 1941 Scum of the Earth. Account of his life in France before and after the outbreak of World War II, with a detailed account of his internment at Le Vernet, the French concentration camp for undesirable aliens.
- 1942 (summer) Le yogi et le commissaire.
- 1945. The Yogi and the Commissar and other essays.
- 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
The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man's Changing Vision of the Universe is a 1959 book by Arthur Koestler, and one of the main accounts of the history of cosmology and astronomy in the Western World, beginning in ancient Mesopotamia and ending with Isaac Newton. The book challenges the habitual idea...
: A History of Man's Changing Vision of the Universe. ISBN 0-14-019246-8 An account of changing scientific paradigms.
- 1960. The Watershed: A Biography of Johannes Kepler. (excerpted from The Sleepwalkers.) ISBN 0-385-09576-7
- 1960. The Lotus and the Robot
The Lotus and the Robot is a 1960 book by Arthur Koestler exploring eastern mysticism. Although now dated by Westerners' greater exposure to Oriental practices, it concentrates mainly on Indian and Japanese traditions, which form the two parts - the "lotus" and the "robot" respectively.Some of...
, ISBN 0-09-059891-1. Koestler's journey to India and Japan, and his assessment of East and West.
- 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
The Act of Creation is a 1964 book by Arthur Koestler. It is a study of the processes of discovery, invention, imagination and creativity in humor, science, and the arts...
.
- 1967. The Ghost in the Machine
The Ghost in the Machine is Arthur Koestler's, 1967, non-fiction polemic against any such ghost. The phrase of the title was coined by Gilbert Ryle, with whom he shares the concept that the mind of a person is not an independent entity, temporarily inhabiting and governing the body...
. Penguin reprint 1990: ISBN 0-14-019192-5.
- 1968. Drinkers of Infinity: Essays 1955–1967.
- 1970. The Age of Longing, ISBN 0-09-104520-7.
- 1971. The Case of the Midwife Toad, ISBN 0-394-71823-2. An account of Paul Kammerer
Paul Kammerer was an Austrian biologist who studied and advocated the now abandoned Lamarckian theory of inheritance – the notion that organisms may pass to their offspring characteristics they have acquired in their lifetime...
's research on Lamarckian evolutionLamarckism is the idea that an organism can pass on characteristics that it acquired during its lifetime to its offspring . It is named after the French biologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck , who incorporated the action of soft inheritance into his evolutionary theories...
and what he called "serial coincidences".
- 1972. The Roots of Coincidence
The Roots of Coincidence, written by Arthur Koestler, is an accessible introduction to theories of parapsychology, including extra-sensory perception and psychokinesis. It postulates links between elements of quantum mechanics, such as the behaviour of neutrinos and their interaction with time, and...
, ISBN 0-394-71934-4. Sequel to The Case of the Midwife Toad.
- 1973. The Lion and the Ostrich.
- 1974. The Heel of Achilles: Essays 1968-1973
The Heel of Achilles: Essays 1968-1973 is the title of a book by Arthur Koestler. It is a collection of writings, lectures, addresses, book reviews, newspaper articles, etc....
, ISBN 0-09-119400-8.
- 1976. The Thirteenth Tribe
The Thirteenth Tribe is a book by Arthur Koestler, which advances the thesis that Ashkenazi Jews are not descended from the historical Israelites of antiquity, but from Khazars, a Turkic people...
: The Khazar Empire and Its Heritage, ISBN 0-394-40284-7.
- 1976. Astride the Two Cultures: Arthur Koestler at 70, ISBN 0-394-40063-1.
- 1977. Twentieth Century Views: A Collection of Critical Essays, ISBN 0-13-049213-2.
- 1978. Janus: A Summing Up
Janus: A Summing Up is a book by Arthur Koestler, in which he develops his philosophical idea of the holarchy introduced in his 1967 book, The Ghost in the Machine. The holarchy provides a coherent way of organizing knowledge and nature all together...
, ISBN 0-394-50052-0. Sequel to The Ghost in the Machine
- 1980. Bricks to Babel. Random House, ISBN 0-394-51897-7. This 1980 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", is a comprehensive introduction to Koestler's writing and thought.
- 1981. Kaleidoscope. Essays from Drinkers of Infinity and The Heel of Achilles, plus later pieces and stories.
Writings as a contributor
- The Encyclopœdia of Sexual Knowledge
The Encyclopœdia of Sexual Knowledge, published in 1934, is the first of a trilogy of sexual encyclopaedias by Arthur Koestler writing under the pen name of ‘Dr. A. Costler’...
(1934) (In his autobiography The Invisible WritingThe Invisible Writing: The Second Volume Of An Autobiography, 1932-40 is a book by Arthur Koestler.It follows on from Arrow in the Blue, published a mere two years earlier, and which described his life from his birth in 1905, to 1931, and deals with a much shorter period, a mere eight years...
, Koestler uses the ligature œ in the spelling of the word "Encyclopaedia".)
- Foreign Correspondent
Foreign Correspondent is a 1940 American spy thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock which tells the story of an American reporter who tries to expose enemy spies in Britain, a series of events involving a continent-wide conspiracy that eventually leads to the events of a fictionalized World War...
(1940) uncredited contributor to Alfred HitchcockSir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...
film produced by Walter WangerWalter Wanger was an American film producer. An intellectual and a socially conscious movie executive who produced provocative message movies and glittering romantic melodramas, Wanger's career began at Paramount Pictures in the 1920s and led him to work at virtually every major studio as either a...
- The God That Failed
The God That Failed is a 1949 book which collects together six essays with the testimonies of a number of famous ex-communists, who were writers and journalists. The common theme of the essays is the authors' disillusionment with and abandonment of communism...
(1950) (collection of testimonies by ex-Communists)
- Attila, the Poet (1954) (Encounter ; ; 1954.2 (5)). On loan at the UCL library of the School of Slavonic & Eastern European Studies.
- UCL library online
- Beyond Reductionism: The Alpbach Symposium. New Perspectives in the Life Sciences (co-editor with J.R. Smythies, 1969), ISBN 0-8070-1535-0
- The Challenge of Chance: A Mass Experiment in Telepathy and Its Unexpected Outcome (1973)
- The Concept of Creativity in Science and Art (1976)
- Life After Death, (co-editor, 1976)
- Humour and Wit. I: Encyclopædia Britannica
The Encyclopædia Britannica , published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., is a general knowledge English-language encyclopaedia that is available in print, as a DVD, and on the Internet. It is written and continuously updated by about 100 full-time editors and more than 4,000 expert...
. 15th ed. vol. 9.(1983)
- humour – Encyclopædia Britannica (by Arthur Koestler)
Biographies of Koestler
- Atkins, J., 1956. Arthur Koestler.
- Buckard, Christian G., 2004. Arthur Koestler: Ein extremes Leben 1905–1983. ISBN 3-406-52177-0.
- Cesarani, David
David Cesarani OBE is an English historian who specialises in Jewish history, especially the Holocaust. He has also written several biographies, notably Arthur Koestler: The Homeless Mind.-Early life:...
, 1998. Arthur Koestler: The Homeless Mind. ISBN 0-684-86720-6.
- Hamilton, Iain, 1982. Koestler: A Biography. ISBN 0-02-547660-2.
- Koestler, Mamaine, 1985. Living with Koestler: Mamaine Koestler's Letters 1945-51
Living with Koestler: Mamaine Koestler's Letters 1945-51 is a book about the author Arthur Koestler and Mamaine Paget, Koestler’s second wife. More specifically, it is a selected compilation of Mamaine’s letters to her twin sister Celia about her life with Koestler...
. ISBN 0-297-78531-1 or ISBN 0-312-49029-1.
- Levene, M., 1984. Arthur Koestler. ISBN 0-8044-6412-X
- Mikes, George, 1983. Arthur Koestler: The Story of a Friendship
Arthur Koestler: The Story of a Friendship is the title of a book by George Mikes published in 1983, soon after Arthur Koestler’s suicide. As the author states in the Introduction, the book is not a biography of the subject but a series of recollections and anecdotes of a friendship spanning more...
. ISBN 0-233-97612-4.
- Pearson, S. A., 1978. Arthur Koestler. ISBN 0-8057-6699-5.
NB Langston HughesJames Mercer Langston Hughes was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist. He was one of the earliest innovators of the then-new literary art form jazz poetry. Hughes is best known for his work during the Harlem Renaissance...
's autobiography also documents their meeting in
TurkestanTurkestan, spelled also as Turkistan, literally means "Land of the Turks".The term Turkestan is of Persian origin and has never been in use to denote a single nation. It was first used by Persian geographers to describe the place of Turkish peoples...
during the Soviet era.
See also
- Herbert Simon
Herbert Alexander Simon was an American political scientist, economist, sociologist, and psychologist, and professor—most notably at Carnegie Mellon University—whose research ranged across the fields of cognitive psychology, cognitive science, computer science, public administration, economics,...
- Holism
Holism is the idea that all the properties of a given system cannot be determined or explained by its component parts alone...
- Holon (philosophy)
A holon is something that is simultaneously a whole and a part. The word was coined by Arthur Koestler in his book The Ghost in the Machine . Koestler was compelled by two observations in proposing the notion of the holon...
- Janus
-General:*Janus , the two-faced Roman god of gates, doors, doorways, beginnings, and endings*Janus , a moon of Saturn*Janus Patera, a shallow volcanic crater on Io, a moon of Jupiter...
- Politics in fiction
This is a list of fictional stories in which politics features as an important plot element. Passing mentions are omitted from this list.-Written works:*The Republic by Plato*Panchatantra This is a list of fictional stories in which politics features as an important plot element. Passing...
- German Writers in French Exile, 1933–1940, by Martin Mauthner (London: 2007), ISBN : 978-0-85303-540-4.
External links