374
EVGENY ZAMYATIN
been dogmatized no longer inflames, it is merely warm-and soon
it
is
to be cool. The Sermon on the Mount, delivered beneath the
scorching sun
to
upstretched arms and rending sobs, gives way to
slumberous prayer in some well appointed abbey. Galileo's tragic
UE
pur si muoue"
gives way to calm calculations in some well–
heated office in an observatory. On the Galileos the epigones build
-slowly, coral upon coral, forming a reef: this is the path of evolu–
tion. Till one day a new heresy explodes and blows up the dogma's
crust, together with all the ever so stable, rock-like structures that
had heen erected on it.
Explosions are not comfortable things. That is why the ex–
ploders, the heretics are quite rightly annihilated by fire, by axes
and by words. Heretics are harmful to everybody today, to every
evolution, to the difficult, slow, useful, so very useful, constructive,
process of coral reef-building; imprudently and foolishly they leap
into today from tomorrow. They are romantics.
It
was right and
proper that in 1797 Babeuf had his head cut off: he had leaped
into 1797, skipping one hundred and fifty years. It is equally right
and proper that heretical literature, literature that is damaging to
dogma, should also have its head cut off: such literature is harmful.
But harmful literature is more useful than useful literature:
because it is anti-entropic, it militates against calcification, sclerosis,
encrustedness, moss, peace. It is Utopian and ridiculous. Like Ba–
heuf in 1797 it is right one hundred and fifty years later.
We know Darwin, we know that after Darwin came mutations,
Weismannism, nec-Lamarckism. But these are only penthouses and
balconies while Darwin is the building itself. And the building con–
tains not only tadpoles and toadstools, it also contains man. Fangs
grow sharp only if there is someone to gnaw on; the domestic hen's
wings serve only to flap with. Ideas and hens obey the same law:
ideas which feed on minced meat lose their teeth just as civilized
men do. Heretics are necessary to health.
If
there are no heretics,
they have to he invented.
Live literature does not set its watch by yesterday's time, nor by
today's, but by tomorrow's. Live literature is like a sailor who
is
