To kick off the new year, here’s a story by a Russian writer with a very Polish name: Sigismund Krzhizhanovsky. I’m just starting to explore his works, only a few of which have appeared in English. I thought I’d add to that little pile by translating a short piece called “The Land of the Nots” (Страна нетов). Some of the language is little strange and stiff, to my ear; I’ve tried to preserve those qualities without making the translation unreadable. Any defects in the English version are, of course, mine.
The Land of the Nots
Those appearing for service to the great sovereign put down as Ises; the rest as Nots.—From a 17th century scribe’s book
I
I am an Is. And I am an Is precisely because I belong to the great Is nation. I cannot not be. I think this is clear and acceptable enough.
But how to explain to you, most honorable Ises, how existence puts up with these Nots, how somewhere out there, on its outermost fringes, say, on one of the most pathetically far-flung planets, it allows the strange little world of Nots to arise and grow—that is going to be very difficult. And yet the Land of the Nots is a fact. I have been there myself, and what follows will back up my declaration.
One overphilosophized Not said: “Being cannot not be without turning into nonbeing, but nonbeing cannot be without then becoming being,” and this is so accurate it’s hard to believe how a Not, a nonexistent entity, could, in a handful of words, come so close to the truth.
To get right to it: the bizarre Land of the Nots that I visited appears to the Nots to be a flat sphere; above the apparent flatness over the course of regular intervals of time, which, as the wisest Nots have proved, does not exist in and of itself, apparent risings and settings of a sun that is actually stationary relative to the Nots’ little world, which gives rise to shadows that are small, then big, appear, then disappear; so that it is impossible to say with any certainty whether the shadowy body exists or not. In fact, the Nots teach their little Nots that shadows are thrown off by some sort of bodies, but if you think about it properly, it’s impossible to know precisely whether shadows are thrown by things or things by shadows—so it might make sense to toss away as pure seeming not only their things and their shadows but the Nots themselves with their seeming surmises.
II
The Nots live packed together. It always seemed to them, and seems, that out of many “nos” you can make one “yes,” that a lot of specters can get themselves condensed into a solid body. This is obviously a hopeless notion, a bit stupid even, and experiments based on it are doomed to failure, but these drawn-out, stubborn attempts, overturned by existence and tried, tried again, constitute their so-called life.
From this comes their love, their society, their religion.
Love is when Not is attracted to Not, not knowing the Not is not. This passionate unknowing drags on, depending on the chain of circumstances, for moments, minutes, months, sometimes longer. Also, they love each other in darkness, usually, and perhaps only during these rare moments are the seeming beings of the Land of Nots sincere, acknowledging that they are no more visible in the light than in the dark.
In the spring, when the droopy grasses and not-flowers of their little world bloom, clouding the Nots’ senses, when for us, too, the great Is nation, reality turns into sleep, sleep wakes to reality, it seems to these seemers that love is within reach. And as the wind intermixes blades of grass, this vernal outburst, mixing up “I” with “I,” forces them to exchange what they do not have: bodies and souls; and only when the whirlwind whirls off, when spring rains its petals, do the Nots see what happened: nothing happened.
III
Scholarly Nots, alone in their cells, spend years deploying the letters of their alphabet in an attempt to prove, to themselves and others, that they exist; this is their favorite theme in their treatises and dissertations; the letters do their bidding, but the truth keeps saying to the Not: no.
You would think that, instead of proving themselves to themselves, twisting and braiding thoughts about life, it would much simpler to live; you’d think that, having completed Vol. 1 of Ethics, instead of taking up Vol. 2 it would be simpler and more compelling to perform at least one ethical act. But no: surrounding themselves in bookish rustling, sagging their wooden bookshelves with piles of alphabet, the Not proves himself to himself. Time, jerking its sharp arms around their clocks, turns and turns; and no matter how acute the occasional Not thoughts, they only manage to turn around themselves. Somehow or other, the chain of events in a Not’s head runs like so: first there is soul, then a piece of dead flesh, then a rotting corpse, then, if you look through the black viewed-out sockets of a skull, the most ordinary nothing: Not reduced to not.
One master Not began like so: “I think, therefore I exist.” But existence isn’t a consequence of thought; thought is a consequence of existence. And since even Not logic strictly prohibits reasoning from the existence of a consequence to the existence of the premise, in deducing their existence from their thought, the Nots themselves prohibit themselves to themselves according to all the paragraphs of their Logic. Besides, do many Nots even think? Some isolated thinkers, a handful of ponderificators … That’s it. I can’t recall any others. The rest not only do not exist—they do not even think. Scholarly Nots, fenced off from the world by the walls of their cells and the pages of their books, generally divide theirs into “Me” and “Not-me.” Thus, for Not A and Not B, sitting in different cells, A considers B “Not-me,” and B considers A “Not-me.” That is, the one and the other always remains “Not-me” in someone’s view. This constant “someone” (even their wise men don’t suspect this) was I, an Is, making my way around their country.
It must be conceded: a few of the philosophizing Nots managed through sheer guesswork to reach the level of a notting philosophy. In their dim (like the wintry murk of their dawns) fabrications I have sometimes managed to glimpse an eternal Truth embracing all countries and worlds. Some of them showed a great deal of courage, determination to do something exceptional: to disperse themselves by the force of their thinking. In fact, one wise Not, leaving the world of appearances to enter a quiet little cell, cogitated for many long years in solitude, not even opening the window’s shutter onto the so-called outside world; and he got unused to the world, having separated himself from it feelingwise and thinkingwise. One time he happened to walk up to the windowsill and remembered about the world beyond the window. He pulled on the cord of the blinds. Imagine the surprise of this Not when, out past the window, he saw no world at all, as if the whole world, sparkling with stars and suns, dressed in verdure and azure, had fallen away from the window, had unstuck itself from the panes like a cheap illustration that had attached itself from outside and got washed off by the rain. The scholar, pressing the cord in his hand, gazed into the yawning darkness for a long time. No doubt about it: this was nothing, the most ordinary nothing. The scholar let go of the cord—the blinds, rustling, dropped down. He sat at his desk and began work on the treatise that would make him famous, which said the outside world is just a nasty habit of the so-called nervous system.
True, spiteful tongues made the case that the fact underlying the treatise is easily explained: the window was covered on the outside by the shutter and the philosopher, raising the blinds, absentmindedly did not account for this circumstance: that he had taken a simple black-painted wooden shutter as the outside world and drew his conclusions in haste. It happens.
Another wise man, observing how the hands of his pocket chronometer went around, noted profoundly that although they are moving continuously, they never leave his pocket. The rest of his system proceeded by simple analogy.
But these are isolated instances. In general, as noted earlier, the Nots, having come into existence by some inexplicable oversight or mistake, must naturally fear, and fear the truth insofar as the truth is something that by its very nature negates them, the Nots. And although in their books they pay lip service to this word, in actual fact it is not useful for Nots to seek the truth, and they save themselves in secret. Their religion, for instance, is a rather complex labyrinth of secrets or mysteries, as they call them, in which they hide something from themselves, skillfully practicing a surprising ability to not know , at times achieving a remarkable mastery of it. The holy books of the Nots say the world is made from nothing. This is true: if you study it you find that their world is everywhere shot through with that strange material from which it is made—nothing. Examining their books I have found, there and there, little tunnels into the truth that the Nots have gradually dug with their words and sophisms. For instance, in their Book of Existence it is said that the ancestors of the Nots ate of the tree of knowledge, but of the tree of life they did not eat.
Here I must acquaint you, honorable Ises, with a specially Notish notion, foreign to us—death. Although Nots manage at times, with remarkable naturalness, to pretend to exist, sooner or later the deception is exposed, and this is what they call “death.” A Not, about whom just today it was said: “The Not is,” suddenly weakens, become immobile, gives up the game of life and stops being: truth makes good on its claims. True, Nots who have not figured it out yet, gathering around the so-called grave of the Not caught by death, sing something about “eternal memory,” talk over the hole in the ground about the immortality of the soul, etc., but neither the speakers nor the listeners believe this: “eternal memory” works with them usually for a few turns of the clocks hands; some of them, however—the ambitious ones—grasp at the “immortal name,” but there is no need to argue about the few letters that make up a “name” among them.
However the case may be, Nots do not like death: it bothers their conscience, gets in the way as they play at seemingness, and torments them with bad premonitions. The remarkable art of seeming—being nothing, to know how to be everything—amazed me particularly in the specifically Notish institution of the theater. We Ises invariably subsist in our selfness; while Nots dress themselves up in another life with stunning dexterity; there, in theaters on an unreal world knocked together from planks, lit by little lamps standing in for sunlight, surrounded by unreal, painted things, the Nots live out imagined lives, weeping over nonexistent griefs, giggling at concocted joys. Attending this, I could not help but agree with the best critics who have declared that for them, the Nots, the theater is the “school of life.”
IV
Here is a fragment from the Nots’ mythology.
In the beginning was Chaos. Out of itself Chaos splashed forth Ocean. Ocean took Fate as its wife. From Fate and Ocean came three sons: Εν1, Και2, Πα`ν3. The eldest, Πα`ν, was enormous; he was power-loving and strong, like his mother, Fate, in temperament. The middle son, Εν, loved solitude and was like his grandfather Chaos in his caprices and sullenness. The youngest, Και, was nonesuch: he reflected his brothers, the sociable Πα`ν, the reserved Εν. The brothers were jealous over him, and each loved him and instructed him in their own way.
Πα`ν would often, when Και was still quite small, catch a pearl in his huge hands, and also a water drop that was scared to death and trembling in his fingers, and show Και his own reflection inside the pearl and the drop. Και would laugh.
When Και had grown up a bit, his older brother taught him how to play hide-and-seek. The huge Πα`ν knew how to hide well: in a flowing wave, between the halves of a tiny shell, between the petals of flowers swaying on their stems, even among tiny, barely visible ripples on the water. Και would look for him, splashing the waves with his little hands, separating the petals from the sepals in the flowers, separating the halves of the shells. And how happy the little child was when suddenly, between the tiny petals or sparkling ripples, he was able to find his brother.
“Found you!” he would shout, and the huge Πα`ν, unfolding himself to the very sky, would rise out of the ripples to his full gigantic height, rumbling his thunderous laughter.
But Εν would silently watch the games of the giant and child. Taking advantage of the opportunity when Και was alone, he would escort him to his place, under the overhanging stones of a cave, and there would teach him solitude and pride: lifting his thin but strong fingers up to his own suddenly enlarged pupil, he would carefully extract from his eye a world, with all its stars and azures, seas and lands. Smiling slyly, he would show the amazed child this new colorful world. Hearing the heavy tread of Πα`ν or the splashing step of his father, Εν would quickly, holding his protruding pupil with the fingers of his left hand, place the world back into his eye, modestly lower his eyelids, and walk with silent footsteps into his solitary cave. The child became so infatuated with this game that, spotting his brother from afar, he would stretch his little arms out toward his eyes.
Once Πα`ν heard his little favorite crying. Rushing toward his voice, he saw the little one trying hard to pull something enormous from his right pupil, something colorful and multifarious, pouring out the shining of all suns: this “something” had stuck in the child’s eye, impervious to his weak little hands, moving neither back nor forward. Πα`ν rushed to his brother and, quickly shoving the huge and multifarious thing, burning with the rays of all suns, into Και’s eye, angrily slapped his trembling fingers, shouting: “Don’t you dare do this, you hear me? Never!” Και, who was scared to death, kept silent.
When Ocean grew decrepit and was covered with foamy gray streaks, he began to be oppressed by his boundlessness. Fate said to him: “Why don’t you get yourself some shores? For a good price.”
At first the old man did not want to, but Fate would repeat: “You need to, you need to,” until Ocean called his sons and said to them: “Εν, Και, Πα`ν, my boundlessness is getting to me. I gave you life, I’ll give you death as well if you do not religiously do my will: go into my boundlessness and get me—sparing neither life nor coin—some shores.” Then little K took his brothers’ hands and they went into the boundlessness after shores: Πα`ν, Και, and Εν. They walked and walked. Once, overtaken by the sleep of night, they lay down to rest. Πα`ν and Εν saw one and the same dream: a Nothing appeared to them, eyeless and faceless, and said in a muffled sepulchral voice: ” I am Nothing, I show up not in realities, but only in dreams. I have shores, but I am hungry, and I will give them only to whoever says: ‘Yes, I will not be.’ I will not accept less than a Dyad.”
Night left. Εν related the dream to Πα`ν, Πα`ν to Εν, and the brothers said to one another: “What our father Ocean poured into a thought, there’s no splashing free of. If the three of us return without shores, he’ll kill all three; it’s better if two die. It is a pity to part with sweet life, even more so with our dear little brother Και, but if Mother-Fate desires it, then yes, we will not be.” And so saying, they fell asleep again, but their sleep was deep. For a long time little Και poked and pushed with his weak hands the bodies of the sleeping brothers; he looked around, seeking help, and what does he see lying before him but new, unvisited shores: rather steep here, somewhat ledged there, and in some places gently sloping. Και began to call out: “Εν! Πα`ν!” Sitting down on the slopes and ledges of the shores, Echo mimicked him: “Εν … Πα`ν …” Και began to cry. Crying his fill, he slung the shores over his shoulders and, scraping his skin on the projections of the cliffs and fissures in the slopes, bending under the weight, he bore the costly purchase back to his father. Old Ocean was pleased with the shores; he poured himself into them, splashing tenderly; he became calm and fell asleep. But Και remained in the care of Mother-Fate.
After losing his brothers, Και began to languish.
— Dear Εν, Πα`ν, what am I without you? he would cry through his tears. — When you, who were big and strong, would lead me along, holding my hands, you, Εν, taking my right and you, Πα`ν, my left, I was strong with your strength, and I was big with your bigness. No longer will you play hide-and-seek with me, dear brother Πα`ν, hiding from me under the ripples and petals. No longer will you show me the world hidden in your eye, my dear brother Εν. Without you I am just “Και,” only little meaningless “Και”— “and,” with nothing to connect.
Και began to wither and droop: he diminished from Και to Και. Here the myth breaks off. It was only in the so-called logic textbooks that I found the dénouement, but rather too terse and dry: “All persons are mortal. Kai is a person. Therefore, Kai is mortal.” Obviously, if we are to believe the aforementioned textbooks, Και became mortal, and from him came the Nots, or “mortals,” as they are called in the myth; in other words, beings whose essence consists of the ability to die—that is, to not be. From their distant ancestor they inherited (as can be seen in all their books) his grief for Πα`ν and Εν. Scattered across the boundlessness of Ocean turned into shores, they still repeat the old legend of Kai, distorting it a bit from generation to generation: Kai’s grief for his deceased brothers was shortened to grief for themselves; the very name Kai they pronounce Cain; and the episode of Kai’s brothers disappearing was distorted into the story of Cain’s fratricide.
V
The most counterexistential thing about the Nots is their intellect, the creator of all sorts of stuff: “thus,” “therefore,” and so on. Even some pathetic cactus growing in the land of Nots, it grows from root to thorn; but the thought of a Not, hiding within eight bones cleverly formed into a so-called head, counter to all of Nature, which flows from causes to consequences, impelling growth from the roots to the leaves—their thought is drawn from thorn to the root, it flows from the effect to the cause. The Not’s “intellect,” having been irritated (injected, so to speak) from outside, turns all perceptions upside-down, reasons against the flow of time, only after “after” do they get to “before,” moving from consequence to causes. Their “intellect” rebels not only against the movement of the clock’s hands, which show 3 after 2, 2 after 1, but against all of Nature, which whirls the planets in their orbits, the blood in the veins, and the sap in the capillaries of plants, none of them tolerating anything that gets in its way. The Nots have composed a legend about the ship “Argo,”4 but their imaginary life makes it more a tale about the wreck of ergo.5 By the way, I’ll take this opportunity to note that the profound panlogistic system that enjoys wide recognition among the most educated Nots leads to the story of a certain very distraught ergo that had stuck its nose in every problem to the point that it lost one its letters. Whoever found the “r” and “ego”6 is asked to return them to their proper owner.
Not long before my departure from the land of the seemers I witnessed something that disturbed me greatly. I happened once upon a group of little notlings who had surrounded a grown-up Not. Curious, I approached the group. The Not was talking to the notlings about … can you imagine, my esteemed Ises – our life, life among the Is people. True, his story was mixed up and nonsensical, but still, agitated and amazed by what I’d heard, I walked up to him, forcibly parting the notlings with their mouths open in fright:
— Where did you manage to learn all this? — I exclaimed.
— Nowhere, — the Not drawled, smiling slightly, — it’s just … a fable, a story about what never happened.
— If you, — I snapped, — want fairy tales, you should talk about your own lives, honestly and without bringing existence into it.
And I spun around and walked off. Behind my back I heard the squealing laughter of the little notlings.
After this seemingly trivial event a strange, unshakable melancholy took root in me, my dear brother Ises. But I firmly decided to continue my travels.
I did not spend much time in this little world of Nots. Going further and further, deeper and deeper into the deserts of nonexistence, I left Not country, where shadows cast things, and things are cast by shadows; the sun there barely rises above the crooked horizon, fingering with its weak, quivering rays the shaky, vacillating outlines of things; finally, traveling still further, I entered the Dead land, where there is neither sun nor things—only the perpetual whirling and silent crawling of shadows. Here the melancholy that entered me back in the land of Nots, became unbearable: I pictured to myself my distant, sun-drenched homeland and you, my real and indubitable Ises, left in far-off places, beyonds the deserts of worlds—and I turned back. I passed through the worlds again: the world of shadows without things; the world of things thrown by shadows; the world of shadows shaking timidly at the feet of things (here is where I bade my final farewell to the Nots I had met), and finally reached the land of things without shadows: here everything was bathed by a light that never left the zenith.
“I’m close now,” I thought and continued my rapid return to the sun. The final days of the journey. Under the shortening and strengthening blows of the rays, shadowless things drooped, lost their outlines, oscillated until they, too, dispersed—like shadows; and I returned to my homeland, to you, my brother Ises.
__________
1One (Gr.).
2And (Gr.).
3All (Gr.).
4“Argo” means ship (see the Greek myth about the argonauts).
5Therefore (Lat.).
6I (Lat.).
