The Early Ayn Rand

The most brilliant visualization of the theme occurs in the prison library. Kareyev is standing between a Communist poster and a painting left on the island by ancient monks. The poster depicts ant-sized men sweating beneath a slogan demanding sacrifice for the collective; the painting depicts a saint ecstatically burning at the stake. And across from both there is Joan with "her head thrown back, her body on the dark altar steps, tense, listening to the song [of Dancing Lights]... seeming to be] a sacrificial offering to the Deity she was serving." Here is the reverence of man-worship contrasted with its two destroyers — and all of it captured in one visual scene. That is "writing for the movies."

It is astonishing how much of purely literary worth this mere synopsis contains. There is Ayn Rand's eloquent economy of means, enabling one or two words in the right context to speak volumes. (For example, when Kareyev asks Joan why she came to the island, she tells him she heard that he was the loneliest man in the republic. "I see," he says. "Pity?" "No. Envy.") There are the dramatic antitheses in the style of Victor Hugo, whose novels Ayn Rand admired above all others. ("The civil war had given him a scar on his shoulder and a contempt of death. Peace gave him Strastnoy Island and a contempt of life.") There are the sensuous descriptions with their evocative images (for instance, the description of the monastery at twilight, or of the waves at night).

After Red Pawn and

We the Living, Ayn Rand rarely wrote again about Soviet Russia. She had had her say about the slave state in which she had grown up. Thereafter, her interest moved from politics to the fundamental branches of philosophy, and from slavery to the achievements (and problems) of life in a human country.

A note on the text: Ayn Rand wrote an original draft of this synopsis, then edited about twenty pages, to the point where Michael first sees Joan on the island. Presumably, these pages were sufficient as a submission to the studios and further editing proved unnecessary. This is why the early pages are somewhat tighter and smoother than the rest.

In her editing, Miss Rand changed the names and backgrounds of some of the characters. Joan was originally Tania, a Russian princess; Michael was Victor, a Russian prince; and the prisoners generally were drawn from the Russian nobility. I have had to make many small changes to render the manuscript consistent with the new opening. I have not, however, written new sentences; I have merely changed the necessary names and deleted references to backgrounds that were altered.

L.P.

Red Pawn

------I------

"No woman," said the young convict, "could accept such a thing."

"As you can observe," said the old convict, shrugging, "there's one who has."

They leaned over the tower parapet to look far out at the sea. From the frost-glazed stone under their elbows, the tower was a straight drop of three hundred feet to the ground below; far out at sea, where the white clouds rolled softly like a first promise of snowdrifts to come, a boat plowed its way toward the island.

Down on the shore guards were ready, waiting under the wall, on a landing of old, rotted boards; on the wall, guards stopped in their rounds; they leaned on their bayonets and looked at the boat. It was a serious breach of discipline.

"I've always thought," said the young convict, "that there was a limit to a woman's voluntary degradation."

"That," said the old convict, pointing at the boat, "proves there isn't any."

He shook his hair, for it got tangled in his monocle; there was a strong wind and he needed a haircut.

A faded gilt cupola rose high over them, like the countless peaks that raised gold crosses into the heavy sky over Russia; but its cross had been broken off; a flag floated over it, a bright, twisted, flickering tongue of red, like a streak of flame dancing through the clouds. When the wind unfurled it into a straight, shivering line, a white sickle and hammer flashed for a second on the red cloth — the crossed sickle and hammer of the Soviet Republic.

In the days of the Czar the island had been a monastery. Fanatical monks had chosen this bit of land in the Arctic waters off the Siberian coast; they had welcomed the snow and the winds, and bowed in voluntary sacrifice to a frozen world no man could endure for many years. The revolution had dispersed the monks and brought new men to the island, men who did not come voluntarily. No letter ever left the place; no letter ever reached it. Many prisoners had landed there; none had returned. When a man was sentenced to Strastnoy Island, those he left behind whispered the prayers for the dead.

"I haven't seen a woman for three years," said the young convict. There was no regret in his voice; only a wistful, astonished wonder.

"I haven't seen a woman for ten years," said the old convict. "But this one won't be worth looking at."

"Maybe she's beautiful."