"Kallocain" by Karin Boye

I have rarely read a work that carries within it such absolute hopelessness and such boundless faith in humanity.

Kallocain is a confession, a parable, and a promise, delicately woven into a single story.

Fellow-soldier Leo Kall is a man who believes in an idea, in the great good it promises, and is ready to perform an act of heroism for its sake. His goal is to overcome the human being within himself: to renounce feelings and emotions, merge with the crowd, and become ideal “human material.”

Leo’s entire world, everything he knows of it, is Chemistry City No. 4. A world driven underground, never knowing external silence, yet deaf within. A world living in “expectation of the barbarians.”

Leo is ambitious and talented. He serves the State and dreams of recognition. He dreams of experiencing a moment of complete unity with society. The only things preventing him from achieving this goal are his wife Linda, whom he both hates and loves, and his boss, Edo Rissen, in whom thought is still alive.

It is for the good of the State that Leo Kall creates the truth serum — Kallocain, a pale-green liquid that will compel anyone to tell the truth.

Confession

I was not simply a human being; I was a fellow-soldier, one among many. I could not, had no right to question the World State. And every time I felt something, I understood — it had to be eradicated within me. And yet.

To myself, fellow-soldier Leo Kall, I confess: the only things that drove me were envy, jealousy, and fear. I killed an innocent man and betrayed the only woman I loved. Because I envied them: they were human.

I did not understand then that it was through these very flaws that I would find my way to the human being within myself.

Without an injection of Kallocain, without interrogation, I confess: I am not a fellow-soldier. I am someone who wants to understand the human being, not overcome him. Someone who, through the pain of loss, hopes that forgiveness is possible.

Parable

Eternal stories in which dates and names change, while everything else remains the same. “Teacher. Messiah,” “Betrayal in the Garden of Gethsemane,” and “control.”

Different stories, yet the same fate of the small, cornered human being, thrown from one era to another, from one system to another, each with the same ultimate purpose — to destroy not the human being, but the humanity within.

Control, complete and unconditional. Control over everything, but most importantly — over thought.

Every system has its own Kallocain, whether torture, the poison of propaganda, or a social network that subtly directs and analyses.

Karin Boye witnessed perhaps some of the most difficult decades in human history. The first half of the twentieth century: Stalinism, fascism, the First and Second World Wars, genocides. She saw executioners and saviours and understood how similar their features could be.

And yet, despite everything, despite all the horror she witnessed, Karin Boye believed in Leo Kall, in the human being, and was ready to fight for him. I think this is precisely why she left us, as a source of hope:

Promise

“I am alive in any case, despite everything that has been taken from me… and now I know that I am going somewhere.”

This is Karin Boye’s promise. Rissen’s words before his execution.

In any case, the human being will live. Despite everything, he will feel and think and, despite every prohibition, will continue to strive for freedom.

Faulkner once said that the human being is remarkably resilient. Resilient enough not only to endure, but to prevail.

I think Karin Boye would have agreed with that thought. She would have fought for the human being.

In my view, this is precisely what makes this novel unique:

Faith.