My understanding is that this book was written in German. Apparently the Modern Library 100 list editors didn't realize this and accidentally included Darkness at Noon among their list of English-language novels. Is this true? Can anyone verify this and add this info to the article? -- Polynova 06:42, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)
The point is a little moot - Koestler moved to England and the novel became available in English in 1940 I recollect. (I have a very early Penguin copy somewhere and I'll check the flysheet.) Linuxlad 14:42, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)
My recollection (to confirm) was that a key point in making Rubashov confess is the interrogator's convincing him that he _could_ have performed the suggested crimes - ie thought-crime! Same argument as used on Winston Smith in 1984 IIRC. Linuxlad 19:45, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)
this book is dumb that this book was written in German. Apparently the Modern Library 100 list editors didn't realize this and accidentally included Darkness at Noon among their list of English-language novels. Is this true? Can anyone verify this and add this info to the article?— Preceding unsigned comment added by 140.209.234.167 ( talk) 20:28, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
The plot summary needs some better analysis, and closer reading. It is wrong. -- 66.75.137.125 21:31, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
I noticed that the plot summary I wrote was deleted (someone said that it wasn't a summary and wasn't encyclpedic). I'm okay with this but would love some clarification as to what exactly was wrong with the summary and if there is anything I can do to make it more serviceable. 65.78.16.117 16:53, 10 July 2007 (UTC) tasha
I added a comment on the title, (namely that 'Darkness at Noon' is what a prisoner would often see - ie the man has lost the light) which another user has deleted as erroneous (how?) and unhelpful . I agree it's trite, but it's no more wrong than the dialectical psycho-babble that precedes it (why these opposites? why does the title have immediate power in a way the french title does not?) I offer for reasonable debate! Linuxlad—Preceding undated comment added by Linuxlad ( talk • contribs) 08:02, 28 June 2005 (UTC)
there is a german article about the book called "sonnenfinsternis". i just wanted to say, myve someone can install a link— Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.63.113.25 ( talk) 18:17, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
Hey fellas to settle your debate over the meaning behind the title, the answer is pretty simple, a credo of the Russian Revolution was that of the Burning Sun at Noon. Meaning a new Russia would be reborn by the mid-day sun, however as is discovered in the novel there is no rebirth only a replaying of old Russia, hence the "darkness" at noon.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 146.243.4.157 ( talk) 17:54, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
A likely source of the title was one of Milton's poems on his blindness. It begins:
Total Eclipse! No Sun! No Moon!
All dark amidst the blaze of noon.
(Note that the German title could have come from the opening line). Milton had worked for Oliver Cromwell and was accused of treason when Charles II took over; Koestler may have considered this a parallel to Rubashev's situation. Also, metaphorically, Rubashev had been blind to the implications of what he was doing. CharlesTheBold ( talk) 03:57, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
In my Penguin edition, there is a character called Little Loewy, who is a German working in Belgium. Is there another edition in which he is a Dutchman called Little Loewie? The Lawless One ( talk) 12:49, 18 September 2009 (UTC)
I've always been rather taken by the 4-line quote (is it a quatrain?) from Ferdinand Lasalle which heads up the final section ('The Grammatical Fiction') of the book:- 'Show us not the aim without the way, For ends and means on earth are so entangled That changing one, you change the oher too; Each different path brings other ends in view.
It's from Lasalle's work on Franz von Sickingen, which got a lot of stick from Marx and Engels for barking up the wrong tree.
Eduard Bernstein in his book on Lassale also picks out this passage for special comment (in this version:-
Show not the end and aim, but show the way, For here so intermingle way and end That one still changes with the other’s change, And other ways lead still to other ends,
All this would have been meat and drink to a well-read left-leaning man like Koestler, and appears here to perhaps to be used as a sad summary on the failure of the (this bit of) socialist project... Linuxlad ( talk) 22:23, 3 October 2009 (UTC)
Deleted the reference to Rubashov participating in the 1917 revolution, as Koestler does not say this in the work. Also replaced Orwell's comment about the derivation of Rubashov's character with Koestler's, which appears in the preface to the novel. Carinae986 ( talk) 10:20, 24 November 2011 (UTC)
Deleted the section that says Orwell was influenced by Darkness At Noon. Orwell and Koestler did write on similar themes, but this is not necessarily because one had a direct influence on the other. Totalitarianism was the overwhelming political fact in Europe during the 1940s, so it is not exactly surprising that the two men, who were both writers interested in politics, chose to write on similar themes, or to level similar criticisms. The essay cited in support of the idea of influence is suggestive, but nowhere in it does Orwell say that he intended to expand on Koestler's thinking in a future novel. The evidence for this claim is, in other words, circumstantial. Quite possibly this issue was addressed by one of Orwell's biographers. Carinae986 ( talk) 09:49, 25 November 2011 (UTC)
Dahn - yes the quote from Orwell is sourced. But Koestler himself spoke on this subject, so it seems to me that Orwell's opinion is beside the point. Carinae986 ( talk) 21:20, 25 November 2011 (UTC)
I've got to repeat that Orwell doesn't say anywhere in the 1944 essay that he intended to use Koestler's ideas for a future novel. The link does not say what the original contributor thinks it says; it's original research and ought to be deleted. If they wrote on similar topics, it's just as likely that they did it because they were contemporaries with similar interests. Carinae986 ( talk) 23:03, 25 November 2011 (UTC)
Ok. Hopefully these latest edits will be a compromise that we can agree on. Orwell's comments have been retained, but they've been relocated to a discussion on Orwell's reaction to Darkness At Noon. The derivation of Rubashov's character has been sourced from Koestler and from Jenni Calder (a literary scholar who wrote on this topic) instead of from Orwell. Carinae986 ( talk) 06:52, 26 November 2011 (UTC)
Several of the edits are tagged: "References removed." Actually they've all been retained, but it took me a few edits to locate them correctly in the article. Carinae986 ( talk) 06:56, 26 November 2011 (UTC)
Ok, I reset the page because I wanted to talk about any extensive revisions before the article is actually changed. Right now I'm the only person who seems to have a commitment to building this page, although if you'd like to work together that would be great. I'm sure we could make a better article together than with just me working on my own.
The third and fourth sections aren't covered in the article because I haven't gotten to them yet. The page was basically just a stub when I first looked at it so I decided to undertake a major revision, one paragraph at a time, as I find the time to work on it. So yes it's incomplete. As far as the blue links, I think that blue linking Rip Van Winkle suggests to the readers that there is a connection between the Washington Irving character and the Koestler character, which is not the case. I added an edit to make the actual connection more clear, since it wasn't really explained in my original edit. Pieta was blue linked earlier in the article, so I don't think it should be blue linked again later on. I saw that dozens of edits had been made to the style of the article that you found. I think the style in the Characters and Plot section was fine, although I'm willing to discuss it. I don't have any investment in the style of the article outside of those sections, so I went back and reinserted your changes to those sections. Carinae986 ( talk) 17:40, 15 December 2011 (UTC)
Articles, including about books, are supposed to be based on RS - what others have said about the topic, not editors' interpretations and selections. Parkwells ( talk) 14:06, 26 June 2012 (UTC)
Generally in an article about a book or film, the characters are named and briefly identified. This article goes into great detail about each character, in the process getting deeply into the plot. Then the plot is repeated in the next sections. I am going to reduce the content related to the characters in the section by that name. Parkwells ( talk) 15:41, 26 June 2012 (UTC)
This section seems more like trivia, to recount isolated instances of people reading or referring to this novel. It was much more influential than that, as can likely be found in reviews of the times or literary/political histories following that period. Other RS should be used. Parkwells ( talk) 18:21, 26 June 2012 (UTC)
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There is no reason to consider Darkness At Noon a dystopian novel. It is a work of fiction that imagines a historic situation (nearly contemporaneous with its composition) closely analogous to reality. It is a dark view of an actual historical period, the Great Purge during the late 1930's in the Soviet Union. It is a work of realism. Are all fictional treatments of this period to be considered dystopian literature, because the society itself was so terrible for so many? Is Victor Serge's The Case of Comrade Tulayev, a more Tolstoyan view of the same events, a dystopian novel? Moving right along, how about Norman Mailer's first novel, The Naked and the Dead? That also is a fictional treatment of a pretty bad situation in the US Army.
I think it's pretty clear that none of these have a prime characteristic of dystopian fiction, that the society itself is imaginary. A fictional situation in a real society is not enough to put a story into the dystopian category. Let us not risk hyperbole. I have removed "dystopian" from the list of categories. Larry Koenigsberg ( talk) 03:11, 24 October 2018 (UTC)
Dystopian fiction is about fictional worlds subject to such factors as oppressive governments, mass starvation, other environmental distress or similar all-encompassing conditions. 174.56.173.38 ( talk) 03:48, 5 February 2024 (UTC)kolef 174.56.173.38 ( talk) 03:48, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
Several days ago I beefed up the summary by putting it into it's proper Cold War context and included info on the Information Research Department (IRD) and its role in distribution, republishing, and translating. The author was also extremely close to the IRD, to the point where he was actively influencing the IRD's decisions with his advice, which led to the creation of Background Books. However, another user called Micketymoc ( talk · contribs) is removing my editions without any explanation. I reversed his removal of my edits and invited him to the talk page, but he deleted all my edits again without any explanation.
Micketymoc, please discuss these changes by responding to this section. BulgeUwU ( talk) 17:06, 24 January 2021 (UTC)
My understanding is that this book was written in German. Apparently the Modern Library 100 list editors didn't realize this and accidentally included Darkness at Noon among their list of English-language novels. Is this true? Can anyone verify this and add this info to the article? -- Polynova 06:42, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)
The point is a little moot - Koestler moved to England and the novel became available in English in 1940 I recollect. (I have a very early Penguin copy somewhere and I'll check the flysheet.) Linuxlad 14:42, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)
My recollection (to confirm) was that a key point in making Rubashov confess is the interrogator's convincing him that he _could_ have performed the suggested crimes - ie thought-crime! Same argument as used on Winston Smith in 1984 IIRC. Linuxlad 19:45, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)
this book is dumb that this book was written in German. Apparently the Modern Library 100 list editors didn't realize this and accidentally included Darkness at Noon among their list of English-language novels. Is this true? Can anyone verify this and add this info to the article?— Preceding unsigned comment added by 140.209.234.167 ( talk) 20:28, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
The plot summary needs some better analysis, and closer reading. It is wrong. -- 66.75.137.125 21:31, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
I noticed that the plot summary I wrote was deleted (someone said that it wasn't a summary and wasn't encyclpedic). I'm okay with this but would love some clarification as to what exactly was wrong with the summary and if there is anything I can do to make it more serviceable. 65.78.16.117 16:53, 10 July 2007 (UTC) tasha
I added a comment on the title, (namely that 'Darkness at Noon' is what a prisoner would often see - ie the man has lost the light) which another user has deleted as erroneous (how?) and unhelpful . I agree it's trite, but it's no more wrong than the dialectical psycho-babble that precedes it (why these opposites? why does the title have immediate power in a way the french title does not?) I offer for reasonable debate! Linuxlad—Preceding undated comment added by Linuxlad ( talk • contribs) 08:02, 28 June 2005 (UTC)
there is a german article about the book called "sonnenfinsternis". i just wanted to say, myve someone can install a link— Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.63.113.25 ( talk) 18:17, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
Hey fellas to settle your debate over the meaning behind the title, the answer is pretty simple, a credo of the Russian Revolution was that of the Burning Sun at Noon. Meaning a new Russia would be reborn by the mid-day sun, however as is discovered in the novel there is no rebirth only a replaying of old Russia, hence the "darkness" at noon.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 146.243.4.157 ( talk) 17:54, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
A likely source of the title was one of Milton's poems on his blindness. It begins:
Total Eclipse! No Sun! No Moon!
All dark amidst the blaze of noon.
(Note that the German title could have come from the opening line). Milton had worked for Oliver Cromwell and was accused of treason when Charles II took over; Koestler may have considered this a parallel to Rubashev's situation. Also, metaphorically, Rubashev had been blind to the implications of what he was doing. CharlesTheBold ( talk) 03:57, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
In my Penguin edition, there is a character called Little Loewy, who is a German working in Belgium. Is there another edition in which he is a Dutchman called Little Loewie? The Lawless One ( talk) 12:49, 18 September 2009 (UTC)
I've always been rather taken by the 4-line quote (is it a quatrain?) from Ferdinand Lasalle which heads up the final section ('The Grammatical Fiction') of the book:- 'Show us not the aim without the way, For ends and means on earth are so entangled That changing one, you change the oher too; Each different path brings other ends in view.
It's from Lasalle's work on Franz von Sickingen, which got a lot of stick from Marx and Engels for barking up the wrong tree.
Eduard Bernstein in his book on Lassale also picks out this passage for special comment (in this version:-
Show not the end and aim, but show the way, For here so intermingle way and end That one still changes with the other’s change, And other ways lead still to other ends,
All this would have been meat and drink to a well-read left-leaning man like Koestler, and appears here to perhaps to be used as a sad summary on the failure of the (this bit of) socialist project... Linuxlad ( talk) 22:23, 3 October 2009 (UTC)
Deleted the reference to Rubashov participating in the 1917 revolution, as Koestler does not say this in the work. Also replaced Orwell's comment about the derivation of Rubashov's character with Koestler's, which appears in the preface to the novel. Carinae986 ( talk) 10:20, 24 November 2011 (UTC)
Deleted the section that says Orwell was influenced by Darkness At Noon. Orwell and Koestler did write on similar themes, but this is not necessarily because one had a direct influence on the other. Totalitarianism was the overwhelming political fact in Europe during the 1940s, so it is not exactly surprising that the two men, who were both writers interested in politics, chose to write on similar themes, or to level similar criticisms. The essay cited in support of the idea of influence is suggestive, but nowhere in it does Orwell say that he intended to expand on Koestler's thinking in a future novel. The evidence for this claim is, in other words, circumstantial. Quite possibly this issue was addressed by one of Orwell's biographers. Carinae986 ( talk) 09:49, 25 November 2011 (UTC)
Dahn - yes the quote from Orwell is sourced. But Koestler himself spoke on this subject, so it seems to me that Orwell's opinion is beside the point. Carinae986 ( talk) 21:20, 25 November 2011 (UTC)
I've got to repeat that Orwell doesn't say anywhere in the 1944 essay that he intended to use Koestler's ideas for a future novel. The link does not say what the original contributor thinks it says; it's original research and ought to be deleted. If they wrote on similar topics, it's just as likely that they did it because they were contemporaries with similar interests. Carinae986 ( talk) 23:03, 25 November 2011 (UTC)
Ok. Hopefully these latest edits will be a compromise that we can agree on. Orwell's comments have been retained, but they've been relocated to a discussion on Orwell's reaction to Darkness At Noon. The derivation of Rubashov's character has been sourced from Koestler and from Jenni Calder (a literary scholar who wrote on this topic) instead of from Orwell. Carinae986 ( talk) 06:52, 26 November 2011 (UTC)
Several of the edits are tagged: "References removed." Actually they've all been retained, but it took me a few edits to locate them correctly in the article. Carinae986 ( talk) 06:56, 26 November 2011 (UTC)
Ok, I reset the page because I wanted to talk about any extensive revisions before the article is actually changed. Right now I'm the only person who seems to have a commitment to building this page, although if you'd like to work together that would be great. I'm sure we could make a better article together than with just me working on my own.
The third and fourth sections aren't covered in the article because I haven't gotten to them yet. The page was basically just a stub when I first looked at it so I decided to undertake a major revision, one paragraph at a time, as I find the time to work on it. So yes it's incomplete. As far as the blue links, I think that blue linking Rip Van Winkle suggests to the readers that there is a connection between the Washington Irving character and the Koestler character, which is not the case. I added an edit to make the actual connection more clear, since it wasn't really explained in my original edit. Pieta was blue linked earlier in the article, so I don't think it should be blue linked again later on. I saw that dozens of edits had been made to the style of the article that you found. I think the style in the Characters and Plot section was fine, although I'm willing to discuss it. I don't have any investment in the style of the article outside of those sections, so I went back and reinserted your changes to those sections. Carinae986 ( talk) 17:40, 15 December 2011 (UTC)
Articles, including about books, are supposed to be based on RS - what others have said about the topic, not editors' interpretations and selections. Parkwells ( talk) 14:06, 26 June 2012 (UTC)
Generally in an article about a book or film, the characters are named and briefly identified. This article goes into great detail about each character, in the process getting deeply into the plot. Then the plot is repeated in the next sections. I am going to reduce the content related to the characters in the section by that name. Parkwells ( talk) 15:41, 26 June 2012 (UTC)
This section seems more like trivia, to recount isolated instances of people reading or referring to this novel. It was much more influential than that, as can likely be found in reviews of the times or literary/political histories following that period. Other RS should be used. Parkwells ( talk) 18:21, 26 June 2012 (UTC)
Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified one external link on Darkness at Noon. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
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This message was posted before February 2018.
After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than
regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors
have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the
RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{
source check}}
(last update: 5 June 2024).
Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot ( Report bug) 23:11, 4 September 2017 (UTC)
There is no reason to consider Darkness At Noon a dystopian novel. It is a work of fiction that imagines a historic situation (nearly contemporaneous with its composition) closely analogous to reality. It is a dark view of an actual historical period, the Great Purge during the late 1930's in the Soviet Union. It is a work of realism. Are all fictional treatments of this period to be considered dystopian literature, because the society itself was so terrible for so many? Is Victor Serge's The Case of Comrade Tulayev, a more Tolstoyan view of the same events, a dystopian novel? Moving right along, how about Norman Mailer's first novel, The Naked and the Dead? That also is a fictional treatment of a pretty bad situation in the US Army.
I think it's pretty clear that none of these have a prime characteristic of dystopian fiction, that the society itself is imaginary. A fictional situation in a real society is not enough to put a story into the dystopian category. Let us not risk hyperbole. I have removed "dystopian" from the list of categories. Larry Koenigsberg ( talk) 03:11, 24 October 2018 (UTC)
Dystopian fiction is about fictional worlds subject to such factors as oppressive governments, mass starvation, other environmental distress or similar all-encompassing conditions. 174.56.173.38 ( talk) 03:48, 5 February 2024 (UTC)kolef 174.56.173.38 ( talk) 03:48, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
Several days ago I beefed up the summary by putting it into it's proper Cold War context and included info on the Information Research Department (IRD) and its role in distribution, republishing, and translating. The author was also extremely close to the IRD, to the point where he was actively influencing the IRD's decisions with his advice, which led to the creation of Background Books. However, another user called Micketymoc ( talk · contribs) is removing my editions without any explanation. I reversed his removal of my edits and invited him to the talk page, but he deleted all my edits again without any explanation.
Micketymoc, please discuss these changes by responding to this section. BulgeUwU ( talk) 17:06, 24 January 2021 (UTC)