MARIO VARGAS LLOSA
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and creates insurmountable chasms between those who have much,
little, or nothing. The curiosity and resourcefulness freedom provokes
has allowed man to master sickness, to explore the depths of the sea,
of matter, and of the body, and, forcing the laws of gravity, to plow
through the heavens . But it has likewise allowed him to create instru–
ments of destruction which potentially turn anyone of our modern
states into an entity capable of causing havoc and holocausts which
would make mere pranks of the murderous exploits of such as Nero,
Genghis Khan, or Tamerlane .
It is not only the sleep of reason that engenders monsters, as
Goya wrote in one of his etchings . For indeed lucid reason, when
fully awake and conjecturing without restraint, can also formulate
impeccable theories about the inequality of human races and thus
justify slavery; can demonstrate the inferiority of women, of black–
or yellow-skinned peoples, and the congenital inferiority ofJews; can
legitimate the extermination of the heretic and the infidel, along with
conquest, colonialism, and war between nations or between classes .
And , in elucidating what are assumed to be laws of history, can de–
cide that the cause of social justice and human emancipation must of
necessity entail terror, crime, torture, censorship, and concentration
camps . The painstaking theories elaborated by the Marquis de Sade
in the Bastille cell where he was imprisoned for maltreatment of a
young lady represent not merely the ratio.nalization of visions exac–
erbated to the point of madness by imprisonment and lust. They are
also a shocking symbol of the self-destructive extremes to which man
can be driven by the unruly practice of free thinking, acting, and
creating.
Once man was able to let his imagination flow freely and opened
the doors of the cage to his private demons, books and paintings be–
came populated, as films now are, with these "monsters." They have
enriched us extraordinarily, offering us that invaluable pleasure fur–
nished by a beautiful painting or a great novel, and showing us–
vividly and graphically, as art does-what we are like, what we hide,
and what could be expected from us if that same unrestricted and irre–
sponsible freedom enjoyed by the creator in fabricating his monsters
were a prerogative in our own lives.
What could be expected? The disappearance of culture and his–
tory; perhaps the extinction of life itself. Or at the very least, the re–
turn of any humans who happened to survive the catastrophe of free–
dom to that state of nature man was in, when the accidental intrusion
of freedom into his destiny snatched him from his condition some-
