[HN Gopher] Mystical Experiences of Arthur Koestler (1954)
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       Mystical Experiences of Arthur Koestler (1954)
        
       Author : blewboarwastake
       Score  : 27 points
       Date   : 2022-02-06 12:30 UTC (10 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.bodysoulandspirit.net)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.bodysoulandspirit.net)
        
       | flowtheorist wrote:
       | His book "The Act of Creation" is also very good. Somewhat
       | related to prison experiences, John Leray invented sheaves while
       | in a prison camp:
       | 
       | > Jean Leray (November 7, 1906-November 10, 1998) was confined to
       | an officers' prison camp ("Oflag") in Austria for the whole of
       | World War II. There he took up algebraic topology, and the result
       | was a spectacular flowering of highly original ideas, ideas which
       | have, through the usual metamorphism of history, shaped the
       | course of mathematics in the sixty years since then.
       | 
       | It seems that solitude is generally conducive to creative
       | activity for those that are somewhat positively oriented towards
       | such activity.
        
         | mistrial9 wrote:
         | by drastically restricting freedom, and with a serious fear of
         | your life in hand each day, certain kinds of inner climbing
         | become vivid and accessible. be kind with this knowledge
        
           | flowtheorist wrote:
           | It's not about fear. It's about having long stretches of time
           | to just think without distractions.
        
       | neonate wrote:
       | https://web.archive.org/web/20021027041844/http://bodysoulan...
        
       | fpoling wrote:
       | I think Darkness at Noon by Koestler is the best book about how
       | system breaks man and forces into submission. The ending of 1984
       | is rather pale in comparison.
       | 
       | There are also a few books by Russian authors on that topic, but
       | Koestler's work is just better at capturing the essence of the
       | system.
        
         | sbergjohansen wrote:
         | This is as good a place as any to mention that Koestler's long-
         | lost original German manuscript titled "Sonnenfinsternis" was
         | discovered in 2015 by a doctoral student digging through the
         | archives of Zurich library. "Darkness at Noon" as known until
         | then was a hastily completed translation into the English by
         | Koestler's lover Daphne Hardy, available German versions being,
         | in turn, back-translations from the English.
         | 
         | Both the German original and a new English translation have
         | since been published.
         | 
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18188912 (HN 2018)
         | 
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darkness_at_Noon
        
           | owenversteeg wrote:
           | Interesting! Perhaps it's the romantic in me, but a hasty
           | translation by a lover (subsequently smuggled through Europe)
           | does seem fascinating. Would you recommend the new
           | translation over the old one? The article you linked does
           | seem to imply that the new translation is at least more
           | accurate:
           | 
           | > Daphne Hardy, the translator of the Urtext, had never
           | before translated a book into English. She was just 21 years
           | old and was forced to work under tremendous time pressure.
           | She was familiar with neither the practices of the Soviet and
           | National Socialist secret police nor the mechanisms of
           | totalitarian states, thus she replaced Bolshevik terminology
           | with British legal concepts and terms, which lent the system
           | a milder and more civilized manifestation.
        
             | sbergjohansen wrote:
             | Unfortunately, I haven't read the new translation! (I was
             | thrilled to learn of the discovery only weeks after
             | finishing Hardy, but the whole thing receded from my
             | attention in the three years it took for the new volumes to
             | actually become available. I've taken this opportunity to
             | finally order the German text.)
             | 
             | A 2019 LA Review of Books article [0] gives Hardy quite
             | some credit and concludes about the new translation by
             | Boehm:
             | 
             | > Despite aspects that makes this a less-than-authoritative
             | edition, the translation itself shines. It is a smooth,
             | gripping read, and contains passages inserted after Hardy's
             | translation was made, which now appear in English for the
             | first time. New details, such as the exact song sung by
             | Rubashov's neighbor in prison, add freshness. Boehm
             | corrects the chapter titles from Hardy's "The First
             | Hearing," "The Second Hearing," and so forth to "The First
             | Interrogation," which makes more sense in context.
             | 
             | [0] https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/logic-alone-all-
             | love-lai... (previously on HN but with no comments)
        
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