I tried to start this post about two or three weeks ago. Maybe it was stress or the adjustment to working blogging into my routine – for whatever reason, I was unable to advance beyond a few lines of plot description.
One night, in a fit of insomnia, I read half of Roberto Bolaño’s
By Night in Chile. A few mornings later, in what seemed an act of extreme self-indulgence, I finished the book. (That my higher education has brought my reading to a virtual standstill is a topic for another post entirely)
There are so many other aspects of the book I could discuss, but one in particular struck me, as it has come up in many of the readings that I actually have done: the issue of complicity in – for lack of a better term – evil. I am extremely hesitant in using the term “evil” – it carries too many religious connotations, seems too absolute and yet at the same time impossible to define. I almost wrote “complicity in atrocities” or “totalitarianism,” because this is specifically what what struck me about the novel. Bolaño’s protagonist, Father Sebastián Urrutia, Catholic priest and literary critic/poet, observes and later becomes tangentially involved with the dictator Pinochet. One could argue that his role is a rather small and inconsequential one – he gives a few courses in Marxism to the members of the junta, so that they can better understand what they are fighting. (For me, one of the most memorable moments in the novel is a brief image of Pinochet falling asleep in class). At another point in the novel, some of Urrutia’s intelligentsia friends accidentally discover a victim of torture during a party. Embarrassed, they each make their way back to the party and act as if nothing has happened.
The other readings that the novel called to mind were non-fiction, and unrelated to Pinochet’s Chile. One was Jonathan Petropoulos’
The Faustian Bargain: The Art World in Nazi Germany. And the other was Hannah Arendt’s
Eichmann in Jeruselum. (The latter, of course, instantly calling that apt, if troubling phrase to mind: “the banality of evil”). Still another was a book that I unfortunately haven’t had time to finish, Mary Fulbrook’s
Anatomy of a Dictatorship: Inside the GDR 1949 – 1989. All of these deal in some capacity with individuals who didn’t set out with malicious intentions; some “merely” did their jobs, others worked for personal financial gain, others for the elusive “greater good.”
Father Sebastián Urrutia’s actions are certainly not intended to be malicious or harmful. He remains ever-focused on his priestly and literary work. He feels coerced into teaching this class (two mysterious men, Mr. Reaf and Mr. Etah, had earlier given him money to travel Europe, and he thus feels obliged to them). And what of this teaching? Is it “evil?” – Again, I hate that word. It seems so absolute. There are those who would say that there is no such thing as “evil,” that everything is relative, or contextual, etc. And there are those who would say that there are cases of undeniable evil – Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, and so on.
Near the end of the novel, Urrutia tells us, “An individual is no match for history. […] [A]nd I have always been on history’s side.” (128). I doubt that most individuals consider themselves a part of history, nor do they (unless they are politicians, etc) conceive of their actions on an historical scale. Many people simply lead their lives. And as for “evil,” the atrocities of a totalitarian regime? Why do those party-goers simply ignore the torture victim they find in the basement? Bolaño spells it out for us: “The answer was simple: Because, with time, vigilance tends to relax, because all horrors are dulled by routine.” And the atrocities of the past: “Why go stirring up things that have gradually settled down over the years?” (122)
These questions have come to fascinate me, and while my questions have multiplied, I have no answers. (Of course, I welcome any suggested reading or direction…)
