WE (A Dystopia). Yevgeny Zamyatin

Atlantic had not yet been spanned by an airplane. The survivors of World War I prayed and hoped for unity among nations and for the abolition of war. The Russian Revolution had taken the turn of “permanence,” but there was hope that man would be spared the anguish of being lost.

      World War II has come and gone. Millions were killed. Many hopes were drowned in blood, sweat, and tears. Today the Russian colossus stands stronger and firmer than it did thirty-five years ago, but man as an individual, not just as a statistical datum, seems to have lost his value. This, the truth must be told, is true not only of Russia but also in some degree of many other nations. If one stops to think of all the secret persuaders and the variety of effective and efficient modes of so-called communications —liminal and subliminal—one is bound to find in We the prophetic, heartrending picture and voice of the man who does not want to be stifled, but who wishes with all his heart and soul to stand erect and remain the master of his own fate in all the anguish and glory of his will to live as a person.

      A little more than thirty-five years ago Marc Slonim, who contributes here some of his reminiscences of Zamiatin, and the translator, who now writes these lines, stood together in the dark of the night in a much-bombarded street in Kiev. We had “put to bed” the last issue of a paper that made the Germans angry and the Communists more angry and the Ukrainian separatists most impatient with us. Our time had run out, so to speak. So we shook hands, and each went off into his own darkness and into the unknown.

      Here at the reissue of We we meet again (not for the first time, of course): Slonim an American college professor, myself an American psychiatrist, both still keenly aware of the horrors through which our generation has gone. We are both hopeful that the spiritual vibrancy and insight that Zamiatin offered us in the midst of the “red terror’ will serve now as an inspiration to those who are still “naive enough” to love the humanity of man, and who would stand up erect and fearless in the name of that humanity.

      GREGORY ZILBOORG

      New York, N.Y 1959

      Record One

       Table of Contents

      An Announcement

       The Wisest of Lines

       A Poem

      This is merely a copy, word for word, of what was published this morning in the State newspaper:

      “In another hundred and twenty days the building of the Integral will be completed. The great historic hour is near, when the first Integral will rise into the limitless space of the universe. One thousand years ago your heroic ancestors subjected the whole earth to the power of the United State. A still more glorious task is before you: the integration of the indefinite equation of the Cosmos by the use of the glass, electric, fire-breathing Integral. Your mission is to subjugate to the grateful yoke of reason the unknown beings who live on other planets, and who are perhaps still in the primitive state of freedom. If they will not understand that we are bringing them a mathematically faultless happiness, our duty will be to force them to be happy. But before we take up arms, we shall try the power of words.

      “In the name of the Well-Doer, the following'is announced herewith to all Numbers of the United State: “Whoever feels capable must consider it his duty to write treatises, poems, manifestoes, odes, and other compositions on the greatness and the beauty of the United State.

      “This will be the first cargo which the Integral will carry.

      “Long live the United State! Long live the Numbers!! Long live the Well-Doer!!!”

      I feel my cheeks bum as I write this. To integrate the colossal, universal equation! To unbend the wild curve, to straighten it out to a tangent—to a straight line! For the United State is a straight line, a great, divine, precise, wise line, the wisest of lines!

      I, D-503, the builder of the Integral, I am only one of the many mathematicians of the United State. My pen, which is accustomed to figures, is unable to express the march and rhythm of consonance; therefore I shall try to record only the things I see, the things I think, or, to be more exact, the things we think. Yes. “we”; that is exactly what I mean, and We, therefore, shall be the title of my records. But this will only be a derivative of our life, of our mathematical, perfect life in the United State. If this be so, will not this derivative be a poem in itself, despite my limitations? It will. I believe it, I know it.

      My cheeks still bum as I write this. I feel something similar to what a woman probably feels when for the first time she senses within herself the pulse of a tiny, blind, human being. It is I, and at the same time it is not I. And for many long months it will be necessary to feed it with my life, with my blood, and then with a pain at my heart, to tear it from myself and lay it at the feet of the United State.

      Yet I am ready, as everyone, or nearly everyone of us, is. I am ready.

Record Two

       Table of Contents

      Ballet

       Square Harmony

       X

      Spring. From behind the Green Wall, from some unknown plains the wind brings to us the yellow honeyed pollen of flowers. One’s lips are dry from this sweet dust. Every moment one passes one’s tongue over them. Probably all women whom I meet in the street (and certainly men also) have sweet lips today. This somewhat disturbs my logical thinking. But the sky! The sky is blue. Its limpidness is not marred by a single cloud. (How primitive was the taste of the ancients, since their poets were always inspired by these senseless, formless, stupidly rushing accumulations of vapor!) I love, I am sure it will not be an error if I say toe love, only such a sky—a sterile, faultless sky. On such days the whole universe seems to be moulded of the same eternal glass, like the Green Wall, and like all our buildings. On such days one sees their wonderful equations, hitherto unknown. One sees these equations in everything, even in the most ordinary, everyday things.

      Here is an example: this morning I was on the dock where the Integral is being built, and I saw the lathes; blindly, with abandon, the balls of the regulators were rotating; the cranks were swinging from side to side with a glimmer; the working beam proudly swung its shoulder; and the mechanical chisels were dancing to the melody of unheard tarantellas. I suddenly perceived all the music, all the beauty, of this colossal, this mechanical ballet, illumined by light blue rays of sunshine. Then the thought came: why beautiful? Why is the dance beautiful? Answer: because it is an unfree movement. Because the deep meaning of the dance is contained in its absolute, ecstatic submission, in the ideal non-freedom. If it is true that our ancestors would abandon themselves in dancing at the most inspired moments of their lives (religious mysteries, military parades), then it means only one thing: the instinct of non-freedom has been characteristic of human nature from ancient times, and we in our life of today, we are only consciously—

      I was interrupted. The switchboard clicked. I raised my eyes—O-90, of course! In half a minute she will be here to take me for the walk.

      Dear 0-! She always seems to me to look like her name, 0-. She is approximately ten centimeters shorter than the required Maternal Norm. Therefore she appears round all over; the rose-colored O of her lips is open to meet every word of mine. She has a round soft dimple on her wrist. Children have such dimples. As she came in, the logical flywheel was still buzzing in mv head, and following its inertia, I began to tell her about my new formula which embraced the machines and the dancers and all of us.

      “Wonderful, isn’t it?” I asked.

      “Yes, wonderful . . . Spring!” she replied, with a rosy smile.

      You see? Spring! She talks about Spring! Females! . . . I became silent.

      We were down in the street. The avenue was crowded. On days when the