We: New Edition Read online

  Richards, D. J., Zamiatin: A Soviet Heretic. London, 1962.

  Shane, A. M., The Life and Works of Evgenij Zamjatin. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968.

  Zamyatin, Yevgeny. A Soviet Heretic. Edited and translated by Mirra Ginsburg. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970.

  Zamiatine, Eugène. Nous autres. Traduit par B. Cauvet-Duhamel. Preface de Jorge Semprun. Paris: Gallimard, 1971.

  Zamiatin, Eugene. We. Translated by Gregory Zilboorg. Introduction by Peter Rudy. Preface by Marc Slonim. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1959.

  Zamyatin, Yevgeny. Sochineniya [Works]. Moscow: Kniga Publishers, 1988.

  Zamyatin, Yevgeny. Izbrannye proizvedeniya [Selected Works]. Moscow: Sovetsky pisatel’, 1989.

  Zamyatin, Yevgeny. My [We]. New York: Chekhov Publishing House, 1952.

  Russian Literature Triquarterly. 2(1972). Ann Arbor: Ardis.

  We

  RECORD 1

  Announcement The Wisest of Lines An Epic Poem

  I am merely copying out here, word for word, what was printed today in the State Gazette: In 120 days from now the building of the INTEGRAL will be finished. Near at hand is the great, historic hour when the first INTEGRAL will lift off into space. A thousand years ago your heroic forebears subjugated the whole of planet Earth to the power of OneState. It is for you to accomplish an even more glorious feat: by means of the glass, the electric, the fire-breathing INTEGRAL to integrate the indefinite equation of the universe. It is for you to place the beneficial yoke of reason round the necks of the unknown beings who inhabit other planets—still living, it may be, in the primitive state known as freedom. If they will not understand that we are bringing them a mathematically infallible happiness, we shall be obliged to force them to be happy. But before taking up arms, we shall try what words can do.

  In the name of the Benefactor, all Numbers of OneState are hereby informed of the following:

  Everyone who feels himself capable of doing so is required to compose treatises, epic poems, manifestos, odes, or other compositions dealing with the beauty and grandeur of OneState.

  This will be the first cargo transported by the INTEGRAL.

  Long live OneState! Long live the Numbers! Long live the Benefactor!

  As I write this I feel my cheeks burning. Yes: to integrate completely the colossal equation of the universe. Yes: to unbend the wild curve, to straighten it tangentially, asymptotically, to flatten it to an undeviating line. Because the line of OneState is a straight line. The great, divine, precise, wise straight line—the wisest of all lines ...

  I, D-503, builder of the INTEGRAL, I am only one of the mathematicians of OneState. My pen, accustomed to figures, is powerless to create the music of assonance and rhyme. I shall attempt nothing more than to note down what I see, what I think—or, to be more exact, what we think (that’s right: we; and let this WE be the title of these records). But this, surely, will be a derivative of our life, of the mathematically perfect life of OneState, and if that is so, then won’t this be, of its own accord, whatever I may wish, an epic? It will; I believe and I know that it will.

  I feel my cheeks burning as I write this. This is probably like what a woman feels when she first senses in her the pulse of a new little person, still tiny and blind. It’s me, and at the same time it’s not me. And for long months to come she will have to nourish it with her own juice, her own blood, and then—tear it painfully out of herself and lay it at the feet of OneState.

  But I am ready. Like all of us, or nearly all of us. I am ready.

  RECORD 2

  Ballet Harmony Squared X

  It’s spring. From beyond the Green Wall, from the wild plains out of sight in the distance, the wind is carrying the honeyed yellow pollen of some flower. This sweet pollen dries the lips—you keep running your tongue over them—and every woman you meet (and every man, too, of course) must have these sweet lips. This somewhat interferes with logical thought.

  And then what a sky! Blue, unsullied by a single cloud (what primitive tastes the ancients must have had if their poets were inspired by those absurd, untidy clumps of mist, idiotically jostling one another about). I love—and I am sure that I am right in saying we love—only such a sky as this one today: sterile and immaculate. On days like this the whole world seems to have been cast of the same immovable and everlasting glass as the Green Wall, as all of our structures. On days like this you can see into the deep blue depth of things, you see their hitherto unsuspected, astonishing equations—you see this in the most ordinary, the most everyday things.

  Here, take this for instance. Just this morning I was at the hangar where the INTEGRAL is being built—and suddenly I caught sight of the equipment: the regulator globes, their eyes closed, oblivious, were twirling round; the cranks were glistening and bending to the left and right; the balance beam was proudly heaving its shoulders; the bit of the router was squatting athletically to the beat of some unheard music. I suddenly saw the whole beauty of this grandiose mechanical ballet, flooded with the light of the lovely blue-eyed sun.

  But why—my thoughts continued—why beautiful? Why is the dance beautiful? Answer: because it is nonfree movement, because all the fundamental significance of the dance lies precisely in its aesthetic subjection, its ideal nonfreedom. And if it is true that our ancestors gave themselves over to dancing at the most inspired moments of their lives (religious mysteries, military parades), that can mean only one thing: that from time immemorial the instinct of nonfreedom has been an organic part of man, and that we, in our present-day life, are only deliberately ...

  I’ll have to finish this later: The intercom screen just clicked. I lift my eyes: O-90, of course. In half a minute she’ll be here herself, coming to get me for our walk.

  Dear O! It always struck me that she looks like her name: about ten centimeters shorter than the Maternal Norm, and therefore sort of rounded all over, and the pink O of her mouth, open to greet every word I say. And also, she has a sort of circular, puffy crease at her wrist, the way children have.

  When she came in, my logical flywheel was still humming away inside me and the inertia carried me on to start talking about the formula I’d just come up with—the one containing us and the machines and the dance.

  “Wonderful, isn’t it?” I asked.

  “Yes, wonderful. It’s spring.” O-90 smiled at me rosily.

  There. How’s that for you? Spring. She’s right away on spring. Women. I didn’t say a word.

  We went down. The avenue was jammed. When the weather’s like this, we usually take an extra walk during the Personal Hour after lunch. As usual, all the pipes of the music factory were singing the OneState March. The Numbers were marching along in step in neat ranks of four—hundreds and thousands of them in their sky-blue yuniesa with the golden badge on each chest bearing each one’s state number. And I, or rather we, our four, were one of the innumerable waves in that mighty flood. To my left was O-90 (if one of my hirsute ancestors from a thousand years back were writing this, he’d probably modify her with that funny word my); on my right were two Numbers I didn’t know, a female and a male.

  Blessedly blue sky, little baby suns on each badge, faces undimmed by anything so crazy as thought. Rays, you see. Everything made out of some kind of uniform, radiant, smiling matter. And the beat of the brass: Tra-ta-ta. Tra-ta-ta. Brass paces gleaming in the sun. And every pace carries you up higher and higher into the dizzying blue....

  And then, just the way it was this morning in the hangar, I saw again, as though right then for the first time in my life, I saw everything: the unalterably straight streets, the sparkling glass of the sidewalks, the divine parallelepipeds of the transparent dwellings, the squared harmony of our gray-blue ranks. And so I felt that I—not generations of people, but I myself—I had conquered the old God and the old life, I myself had created all this, and I’m like a tower, I’m afraid to move my elbow for fear of shattering the walls, the cupolas, the machines....

 
And then there came a moment, a leap across the centuries, from + to - . I recalled (association by contrast, apparently), I suddenly recalled a picture in the museum: one of the avenues they had back then, after twenty centuries—a stunningly garish, mixed-up crush of people, wheels, animals, posters, trees, colors, birds ... And they say it really was like that. It could have been like that. It all struck me as so unlikely, so idiotic, that I couldn’t help it, I burst out laughing.

  And suddenly there was an echo, laughter, from the right. I turned. Before my eyes were teeth—white, uncommonly white, sharp teeth—and a woman’s face that I didn’t know.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, “but the way you were looking at everything, it was inspired—like you were some god out of myth on the seventh day of creation. I think you believe you created me, too—you and nobody else. I’m very flattered.”

  All this with a straight face. I’d even say, with a kind of respect (maybe she knows I’m the builder of the INTEGRAL). But I don’t know—something about her eyes or brows, some kind of odd irritating X that I couldn’t get at all, a thing I couldn’t express in numbers.

  For some reason this embarrassed and slightly confused me, and I started trying to make up some logical explanation for why I was laughing. It was perfectly clear that this contrast, this unbridgeable gulf between today and back then ...

  “Unbridgeable? But why?” (What white teeth!) “You could build a little bridge across the gulf. Just imagine: a drum, battalions, ranks—they used to have all that, too. So it follows that ...”

  “Well, yes, that’s right!” I shouted. (This was an amazing example of mental crossover—she said almost in my very words exactly what I’d been writing before going to walk.) “You see? Even thoughts. That’s because no one is one but only one of. We’re so identical....”

  She said, “Are you sure?”

  I saw the sharp angle her brows made when she lifted them toward her temples—like the sharp horns of an X, and for some reason I got confused again. I looked to the right, to the left ... and ...

  She was to my right—slender, sharp, tough, and springy as a whip: 1-330 (now I saw her number). To my left was O, completely different, everything about her round, with the babyish crease on her arm. And at the end of our group of four was a male Number that I didn’t know. He bent in two places, like the letter S. We were all different....

  That one on the right, 1-330, must have noticed my confused look.

  “Yes ... too bad!” she said with a sigh.

  That “too bad” was absolutely called-for, no doubt about it. But again there was something in her face or her voice....

  So I said, very abruptly, which wasn’t like me at all: “Nothing’s too bad. Science is going forward, and it’s clear that, maybe not right away, but in fifty or a hundred years ...”

  “Even the noses on everybody ...”

  “Yes, the noses!” I was practically shouting. “Once there’s some ... never mind what reason for envy. Once I have a button nose and someone else has ...”

  “Well, now, if it comes to that, your nose is even rather classical, as they used to say in the old days. But as for your hands ... No, come on now, show me, show me your hands!”

  I can’t stand people looking at my hands. They’re hairy, shaggy, some kind of stupid throwback. I stuck out my hands and said with as steady a voice as I could manage: “A monkey’s hands.”

  She looked at my hands and then at my face.

  “Yes, there’s an extraordinarily curious harmony.” She weighed me with her eyes as if I were on a scales, and her brows once more looked like horns.

  “He’s assigned to me,” said O-90, her mouth smiling rosily.

  It would have been better if she’d not said anything, of course—that was completely beside the point. Besides, that dear O—how should I put this?—her tongue isn’t set at the right speed. The mps (motions per second) of the tongue must always be a little less than the mps of thought, and never the other way round.

  At the end of the avenue the clock on the accumulator tower was booming out 17:00. The Personal Hour was over. 1-330 was walking away with that S-shaped male Number. His face was the kind that inspires a sort of respect, and I now saw that it was even a rather familiar face. I’d met him somewhere—can’t recall just now.

  In parting, 1-330 smiled at me in the same X-like way and said, “Drop by to see me day after tomorrow in auditorium 112.”

  I shrugged and said, “If I get the order. For the auditorium you mention ... ”

  Why she was so sure of herself, I couldn’t see, but she said, “You’ll get it.”

  This woman was just as irritating to me as an irrational term that accidentally creeps into your equation and can’t be factored out. And I was glad to be alone with my dear O, even if not for long.

  We went hand in hand across four lines of avenues. At the corner she was to go right, I left.

  “I’d like so much to come to your place today and let the blinds down. Today—right this minute,” said O, and shyly looked up at me with her round crystal-blue eyes.

  She’s a funny one. But what could I say? She was with me only yesterday, and she knows as well as I do that our next Sex Day is the day after tomorrow. It’s just more of her thought getting ahead of itself, like a spark that fires too early in the ignition, which can do some harm at times.

  Saying good-bye, I kissed her twice—no, I’ll tell the truth—three times on those wonderful blue eyes of hers that not the least little cloud ever troubled.

  RECORD 3

  Jacket Wall The Table

  I’ve looked over what I wrote yesterday and I see it wasn’t as clear as it should be. It’s perfectly clear for any of us, I mean. But who knows? Maybe you unknown people who’ll get my notes when the INTEGRAL brings them—maybe you’ve read the great book of civilization only up to the page our ancestors reached about 900 years ago. Maybe you don’t even know the basics—like the Table of Hours, Personal Hours, Maternal Norm, Green Wall, Benefactor. It feels funny to me, and at the same time it’s very hard to talk about all this. It’s just as if a writer of the twentieth century, for instance, had to explain in his novel what he meant by “jacket” or “apartment” or “wife.” Still, if his novel was translated for savages, there’s no way he could write “jacket” without putting in a note.

  I’m sure a savage would look at “jacket” and think, “What’s that for? Just something else to carry.” I think you’ll probably look at me the same way when I tell you that not one of us, ever since the 200-Years War, has ever been on the other side of the Green Wall.

  But, my dear readers, you’ll have to do just a little thinking. It helps a lot. Because, you know, all human history, as far back as we know it, is the history of moving from nomadic life to a more settled way of life. So, doesn’t it follow that the most settled form of life (ours) is by the same token the most perfect form of life (ours)? If people used to wander over the earth from one end to the other, that only happened in prehistoric times, when there were nations and wars and trade and discoveries of this and that America. But why do it now? Who needs it?

  I’ll admit that people did not take to this settled way of life right away and without any trouble. When the 200-Years War destroyed all the roads and the grass covered them over—during that first time it probably seemed very uncomfortable living in cities that were cut off from one another by all the tangled green stuff. But what of that? After man’s tail fell off, it was probably some little while before he learned to shoo away the flies without a tail. I don’t doubt that during that first time he probably missed his tail. But now—can you even imagine yourself with a tail? Or: Can you imagine yourself walking down the street naked—without your “jacket”? (Maybe you still run around in “jackets.”) Well, it’s the same here: I can’t imagine a city that isn’t girdled about with a Green Wall. I can’t imagine a life that isn’t clad in the numerical robes of the Table.

  The Table—at this very minute, f
rom the wall of my room, its purple figures on their golden ground are looking down at me sternly and tenderly, straight in the eyes. I can’t help thinking of what the ancients called an “icon,” and I feel like composing a poem or a prayer (which is the same thing). Oh, why am I not a poet, so that I might celebrate you properly, O Table, O heart and pulse of OneState!

  All of us as schoolchildren (and you too, perhaps) used to read that greatest of all monuments of ancient literature that has come down to us, the Railroad Timetable. But set even this next to the Table, and what you’ll see is graphite and diamond: They’re both one and the same element—C, carbon—but how eternal, transparent, and brilliant is the diamond! Who doesn’t catch his breath when he ruffles through the pages of the Railroad Timetable? But the Table of Hours —it turns each one of us right there in broad daylight into a steel six-wheeled epic hero. Every morning, with six-wheeled precision, at the very same hour and the very same minute, we get up, millions of us, as though we were one. At the very same hour, millions of us as one, we start work. Later, millions as one, we stop. And then, like one body with a million hands, at one and the same second according to the Table, we lift the spoon to our lips. And at one and the same second we leave for a stroll and go to the auditorium, to the hall for the Taylor exercises, and then to bed.

  I’ll be completely honest with you: Even we haven’t yet solved the problem of happiness with 100 percent accuracy. Twice a day—from 16:00 to 17:00 and again from 21:00 to 22:00—the single mighty organism breaks down into its individual cells. These are the Personal Hours, as established by the Table. During these hours you’ll see that some are in their rooms with the blinds modestly lowered; others are walking along the avenue in step with the brass beat of the March; still others, like me at this moment, will be at their desks. But I firmly believe—let them call me idealist and dreamer—but I firmly believe that, sooner or later, one day, we’ll find a place for even these hours in the general formula. One day all 86,400 seconds will be on the Table of Hours.