The 25 Hour Day

[mabar]

An old book my mother lend me, she told me that was forbidden in her environment when she was younger. I am reading and is so so similar in several circunstances at this days.

This is a good review:
"The 25th Hour", a shocking book

Constantin Virgil Gheorghiu's novel takes place in dark times, when everything seemed to have the possibility of getting worse and people were immersed in revolution, war, technology or the State.

"[Man] can be arrested and sent to forced labor, exterminated, forced to perform who knows what work for a five-year plan, for the improvement of the race or other purposes necessary to the technical society, without any regard for his person."

...

A few years ago I read a shocking book, which immediately became one of my favorite works: La hora 25 (The 25 Hour Day) , by Constantin Virgil Gheorghiu (Madrid, El Buey Mudo, 2010). The rather unknown Romanian writer was born in 1916, in the middle of World War I, and died in 1992, when the world that had existed during the 20th century had already experienced a strange and unpredictable end.

The book is set in the terrible times of World War II, with communism and Nazism as a backdrop. It was published in 1949, when memories were still fresh, and at a time when Hitler's domination over much of Central and Eastern Europe had shifted to Stalin's empire and the establishment of communist regimes in the region. The people involved, who had celebrated the arrival of "liberation", soon realized that power had hardly changed hands, as Czeslaw Milosz expressed in a valuable book set in the transition of Poland after that war.

In the case of The 25th Hour, the novel takes place in territories progressively occupied by the Nazis in their expansion towards the East, which quickly transforms the daily life of its inhabitants. Among them, ordinary people like Ion Moritz, accused of being a Jew by a neighbor who in reality desired his wife, Suzanna. With this began a journey of pain, persecution and injustice, repeated by the millions in a world where oppression seemed to be the rule and freedom barely a memory or an increasingly distant hope.

"The novel takes place in territories progressively occupied by the Nazis in their expansion towards the East, which rapidly transforms the daily life of its inhabitants."

Other characters emerge as key figures in the story: Iorgu Iordan, a violent, even brutal man, who would become a servant of Nazism; Father Koruga, a remarkable, wise and generous human being; his son Traian, married to a Jewish woman, who suffered persecution during and after the war. And, among them, certainly Moritz, who opens and closes the narrative.

Those were dark times, when everything seemed likely to get worse and people were plunged into revolution, war, technology or the state. "[Man] can be arrested and sent to forced labor, exterminated, forced to do who knows what work for a five-year plan, for the improvement of the race or other purposes necessary to the technical society, without any regard for his person." Traian reflected, summing up that the only objective was "production".

Another manifestation of dehumanization was slavery, present in totalitarianisms: "A man whose honor and dignity are not respected is a slave", reflected the head of the Hungarian press, refusing to hand over 50,000 compatriots claimed by the Germans. The solution was to collect foreigners in prisons and concentration camps, saving Hungarian blood. The alternative of the historical moment was equivalent:

"The Russians would replace the Germans, and the Russians are the biggest slave traders in the whole world. In Soviet Russia, every man is the property of the state..."

The culture respectful of beauty, law and man had disappeared. Europe was living "the twenty-fifth hour". What was the reason for the title of the novel? It appears in the story itself: The 25th hour is "the moment when all attempts at salvation are rendered useless. Not even the coming of a Messiah would solve anything. It is not the last hour, but one hour later. The precise time of Western society. It is the present hour. The exact hour".

It was manifested, at that time, in the bullets and tanks, in the deaths and mutilations, in the slaves and subjugated, the proliferation of concentration camps and prisons. A life that repeated itself sadly, monotonously, painfully and uphill, day after day, year after year. Moritz himself was detained for thirteen years: he managed to get out and see his wife and children, the youngest was four years old, obviously not his. "We will not be separated again."

"The 25th hour is 'the moment when all attempts at salvation are rendered useless. Not even the coming of a Messiah would solve anything. It is not the last hour, but one hour later. The precise time of Western society. It is the present hour. The exact hour'".

Outside the camp "he was ordered to smile", the worst was over. Then "Moritz looked at Traian's glasses. He had the impression that he saw him again falling by the barbed wire. He thought of the miles and miles of wire surrounding the camps. He remembered Father Koruga's amputated legs and everything that had happened in those thirteen years. Then he looked at Suzanna and the little boy. His brow darkened and his eyes filled with tears. He commanded her to smile, but she could not. He could tell he was going to burst into sobs... He couldn't stand it any longer. No man could have resisted any longer.

A book from 1949, from a time that is gone and from a literature that seems distant and little known to us. A book that can still be read with profit, that has hints of genius, characteristics of a classic, and that is shocking as the story it tells with passion and pain. A book to read and read again.

Translated with deepl

Add: the Thought Police would say nowadays: "The book cannot be shared because it is against our community policies."

 

[dredger]

Hello,
I just "felt" on a french article that mainly base on this book (the 25th hour). So it's a further good description of the book + some extracts of it. I give the original link (which is french) and the auto translate google link (i would have like to find another site that does this, but deepl does not (yet) allow web page traduction)
Here's what the author wrote to justify why he based on this book (this is the 3th paragraph of the article) :

I will base my demonstration mainly on the particularly visionary and premonitory novel by the Romanian Virgil Gheorghiu, published in 1949, entitled The 25th Hour. Because, in my opinion, he is the one who best perceives the spiritual, metaphysical and eschatological implications of this unprecedented direction in which humanity has rushed as one man. We will complete our observations with a few quotes from Bernanos.

Le piège fatal de la civilisation de la machine

« On ne comprend absolument rien à la civilisation moderne si l’on n’admet pas d’abord qu’elle est une conspiration universelle contre toute espèce de vie intérie…

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