The Wilder Shores of Marx: Journeys in a Vanishing World by Theodore Dalrymple

Author:Theodore Dalrymple [Dalrymple, Theodore]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Politics & Social Sciences, Politics & Government, Ideologies & Doctrines, Communism & Socialism, Travel
Amazon: B00846MX0W
Goodreads: 18683439
Publisher: Monday Books
Published: 1990-12-31T23:00:00+00:00

For your lifelong commitment to national and social liberation from the forces of fascist and lawless regimes, a commitment which earned for you the honor of having been incarcerated for your political beliefs, thus joining that distinguished company of true leaders of men who, even while political prisoners, affirmed the integrity of the mind through the resoluteness of their will and the strength of their ideas . . .

It was at this point in my copying that I noticed I was joined by a policeman’s boot on my left side. I looked up and there, as they would say in Nigeria, was a whole policeman. The frumpish museum attendant, who had in any case found my entry into the Proofs of Love section highly suspicious, had fetched him as soon as I started my very odd behaviour. I tried to explain to the policeman that I was only copying down this Philippine eulogy to his employer, but it was clear that voluntary devotion to the cult was unwelcome, first because it was voluntary and any voluntary action was suspect, implying as it did the ability to choose and therefore to think, and second because it was obviously mad. My efforts to persuade him of my harmlessness were to no avail: he insisted that I discontinue. Rather than risk confiscation of what I had already written – the only notes I took in Romania – I complied. In any case, the rest of the citation was worded in the same rolling thunder eloquence and was without interest, except as evidence of how completely wrong or cynical in their judgments it is possible for humans to be.

I went from the awards and decorations to the gifts given to the Ceausescus on their journeys round the world. The gifts were divided geographically by continent, and I was particularly anxious to see the certificate of Nicolae’s honorary citizenship of Disneyland, conferred on him by Mickey Mouse. Alas, the room was very ill-lit, and I could scarcely make out the words. In the American section I was surprised to discover that American astronauts had carried a small Romanian flag to the moon, at a time when Ceausescu was considered the ‘good’ communist and it was hoped he might prove a Trojan horse in Eastern Europe.

The gifts displayed were worthless, cheap junk such as tourists bring home from two weeks on a foreign beach. There were coconuts with carved husks, tropical landscapes made out of seashells, cups and saucers with municipal coats of arms, small dolls in national costume, mass-produced tribal masks and shields, and little bronze cathedrals. By all accounts the Ceausescus, crudely avaricious, kept for themselves anything of value that they acquired. But it was in the final room of the Proofs of Love, whose lights had to be switched on specially for me by the incredulous attendant because no one had visited it for days or possibly weeks beforehand, that kitsch really came into its own. Bad taste was here elevated into a government policy.

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