C14| Saturday/Sunday, March 21 - 22, 2020 **** THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
T
he U.S.S.R. launched
Sputnik, the first satel-
lite to orbit the Earth,
in 1957. By then, the
country’s bold ambi-
tion to explore outer space was al-
ready a popular theme in Soviet sci-
ence magazines. More than 250
space-themed images are collected in
the new book “Soviet Space Graph-
ics,” by Alexandra Sankova in collab-
oration with the Moscow Design Mu-
seum, which will be published by
Phaidon on April 1. The book traces
the Soviet space program from its as-
pirational origins in the 1920s to its
ultimate decline in the 1980s.
In the U.S.S.R., illustrated science
magazines were published by the
government to drum up popular en-
thusiasm for the space race, as well
as to convey the country’s technolog-
ical superiority over the capitalist
West. At the beginning of the 1950s
THE WORLD-WIDE SPANISHinflu-
enza epidemic that began in 1918
killed about 50 million people,
more than all the combined deaths
in World War I. The current corona-
virus epidemic is just as frighten-
ing. Official reports convey unpre-
paredness rather than reassurance.
No one knows how long it will last
or how much damage it will cause.
The disease incites panic in the
streets and in the shops, and in-
fects us with fear and insecurity.
For this reason, it’s the right
time to consider the brave wisdom
of Albert Camus’s “The Plague”
(1947). Camus (1913-1960) was a
French-Algerian novelist, dramatist,
actor, essayist and Existential phi-
losopher. Handsome in his Bogar-
tian trench coat, he won the Nobel
Prize in 1957 and died—like James
Dean—in a car crash. “The Plague,”
his most ambitious novel, has a lu-
cid style, ironic tone, complex char-
acters, riveting plot, emotional in-
tensity and exalted themes.
Camus’s uninspiring setting,
Oran on the coast of North Africa,
is ugly: baking in summer, muddy
in winter; treeless, glamorless,
soulless. Its citizens are smug,
placid and bored. Their passions
are short-lived, their vices banal.
They cultivate mechanical habits to
get through life and have no inter-
est in anything but money and
BYJEFFREYMEYERS pleasure. They don’t think about
morality, religion or death. The
plague begins suddenly with the
swarming appearance of festering
rats, who carry their infectious ba-
cilli to man and die in the streets.
Camus observes, “It was as if the
earth on which our houses stood
were being purged of its secreted
humors; thrusting up to the surface
the abscesses that had been form-
ing in its entrails.” Like our virus,
the infection is an evil visitation
that seems to come from nowhere
and puts everyone at risk.
“The Plague” is a vivid allegory
of the then-recent Nazi occupation
of wartime France. The mass buri-
als and crematoria recall the con-
centration and extermination
camps; there’s an organized Resis-
tance to the plague and the invad-
ing bubonic rats finally retreat. But
the novel is also a grim account of
the threatening contagion. It shows
how desperate citizens fight the
disease that ravages the city, how
they respond to the quarantine and
lack of a cure during the over-
whelming disaster.
Extending his focus, Camus de-
scribes an entire town in the grip
of disease and emphasizes the sep-
aration of the survivors, not the
suffering of the sick. He writes with
detachment and scrupulous verac-
ity in a clinical yet lyrical manner.
The authorities cannot explain,
control or eliminate the plague.
An Allegory,
But Also a Guide
They are not pre-
pared for its arrival,
unwilling to recog-
nize its existence and
unrealistic about its
effects. Oran suffers
dire consequences:
cuts in electricity, ra-
tioning of food and
gas, severe shortages
and restricted traffic;
the sudden appear-
ance of a black mar-
ket, smuggling, loot-
ing, curfews, press
censorship, police
surveillance and mar-
tial law.
The characters ex-
press various atti-
tudes about the
plague and comment
on the human condi-
tion. The doctor
Rieux, the criminal
Cottard and the clerk
Grand are aware that
the plague implies
evil in mankind; the
journalist Rambert,
the magistrate Othon
and the priest Pan-
eloux develop their understanding
as the plague proceeds. Trying to
reconcile belief in God’s goodness
with the evil in their midst, Pan-
eloux delivers two sermons. In the
first he justifies God’s punishment
and declares, “This same pestilence
which is slaying you, works for
your good and points your path.”
In the second he changes his argu-
ment. He now asks if the promise
of “eternal happiness can compen-
sate for a single moment of human
suffering” yet challenges his con-
gregation by asserting there is noconditions. The self-
less hero Dr. Rieux,
who fights the plague
and narrates the
book, is outraged by
the anguish of the
victims and expresses
the transcendent
theme of love. He be-
lieves in the collective
destiny of human be-
ings and promises a
better life after the
plague disappears.
Like his hero, Ca-
mus gives us hope. He
believes that the
deadly crisis will en-
courage solidarity and
bring out the best
qualities in people,
that endurance and
courage will prevail.
Camus writes, “No
longer were there in-
dividual destinies;
only a collective des-
tiny, made of plague”
and the emotions of
exile and deprivation,
fear and revolt. The
chastened people re-
turn to normal life with a clearer
vision and deeper understanding of
the precarious nature of human ex-
istence. He concludes, “what we
learn in time of pestilence is that
there are more things to admire in
men than to despise....Byrefus-
ing to bow down to pestilence, they
strive their utmost to be healers.”Mr. Meyers, a fellow of the Royal
Society of Literature, has recently
published books on Thomas Mann,
Robert Lowell and the realist
painter Alex Colville. RYAN INZANAroom for doubt: “We must believe
everything or deny everything. And
who among you, I ask, would dare
to deny everything?”
“The Plague” portrays people’s
sense of unreality and lack of read-
iness; their denial and despair, suf-
fering and isolation, selfishness
and sacrifice, indifference and af-
firmation, hatred and sympathy;
the power of love and the will to
prevail in philosophically absurdLife—and hope—in a time of
pestilence and quarantine.MASTERPIECE|‘THE PLAGUE’ (1947), BY ALBERT CAMUS
EXHIBIT|ALEXANDRA WOLFE
space race, the Soviets were
well ahead of the U.S. After
Sputnik, they went on to launch
the first dog (1957) and the
first woman (1963) into space.
Earlier in the century, Soviet
writers and artists could only
imagine what lay beyond
Earth’s atmosphere. Magazines
such as “Knowledge Is Power,”
founded in 1926, combined ac-
counts of new research with
sci-fi conjectures, such as illus-
trations of long-distance hot
air balloon travel. Articles
about how to construct a
homemade radio appeared
alongside artists’ renderings of
future cities under the earth
and in the ocean.
As the space race began in earnest
after World War II, such illustrations
became more realistic. Artists cre-
ated heroic portraits of cosmonautsand detailed renderings of space-
craft. When the U.S. launched its first
satellite in 1958, the Soviets ramped
up their propaganda efforts, high-Soviets in Outer Space
Even before Sputnik, readers in the U.S.S.R. turned to science magazines
for images that evoked ‘the thrill of boundless discovery.’
REVIEW
race, writes Ms. Sankova.
While Soviet space ef-
fortssloweddowninthe
1970s, space remained
prominent in Soviet culture,
such as director Andrei
Tarkovsky’s science-fiction
films “Solaris” (1972) and
“Stalker” (1979). In maga-
zine illustrations, artists
continued to imagine what
discoveries might be on the
horizon, from lunar space
stations to cosmic cities and power
stations.
“Throughout the entire period, So-
viet citizens lived vicariously through
the images they consumed,” writes
Ms. Sankova. “For the majority it was
the only way to experience the thrill
of boundless discovery, and to em-
brace the potential of science to lift a
nation beyond so many years of
struggle.”lighting scientific breakthroughs.
But after the triumph of Yuri Ga-
garin, who became the first human to
go into space in 1961, the Soviet
space program saw a series of set-
backs, including the death of cosmo-
naut Vladimir Komarov in 1967, when
his capsule’s parachute failed during
re-entry. The success of the Apollo 11
mission to the moon in 1969 marked
the American victory in the spaceClockwise from top left:
The cover of a 1976 issue
of ‘Outlook’ magazine,
which came with
arecordingbyYuri
Gagarin; an illustration
from a 1959 article, ‘What
Would a Space Station
on the Moon Look Like?’;
a 1979 cover of ‘Young
Technician’ magazine; an
imagined rendering of
a spacecraft passing over
Mars, created in 1961.THE MOSCOW DESIGN MUSEUM (4)