The Tropics on Love and Loyalty in Gyorgy Konrad's The Loser [Volume: 7(1988), pp. 270-294]

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MARIANNA D. BIRNBAUM
who had tied me up,"-says T. When T. is tortured, the beating of his testicles is described in great detail. Again, the resemblance to rape is identifiable: "The operation requires a certain rhythm, as do the screams so hard
to suppress... you are waiting for the final blow..." (193).
About the day of the outbreak of the revolution (October 23, 1956),
T. says, "Now we exchange words as though we were making love" (203).
"The police are seduced by the crowd's erotic magic.. they melt into the
throngs" (204).
The inevitability of the revolution is compared to "just as in a marriage
things can suddenly come to a head and a decisive reckoning may appear
unavoidable..." (204). The experienced politicians are "old whores,"
they are there to aid the stumbling prostitutes still new at the game (235).
This is the only human relationship that can be established between the
old and the new guard of politicians.
Not just T., but Dani too dips into the same pool of metaphors: "History is feminine, we have to force ourselves on it"-says Dani (214) presenting another example in which the language of politics and sex are built
on each other's metaphors. Teri, his neurotic, sadistic wife, is equated with
the politics of the country. "Now I see Teri and the system as one; they
do resemble each other.. and I am fed up with the hysterics of dictatorships..." (74).
"Tempting death in an auto race or in a war game can be sexually
arousing; political sports provide the same thrill"-contemplates T. But
the dichotomy between sex and love is phrased even more sharply in the
next thought: "What is more difficult is to fall in love with the part" (175).
"Your official award for your role in raping society will be placed on your
corpse at a fancy funeral" (237).
Trying to testify in T.'s favor, Dani quotes: "My brother stated that
he values a sexual experience more highly than a revolution... and he
would want nothing more than a floating brothel where he could hold
orgies with his friends" (211). The language of the new activism of the
1960s is described as "the liberal speech to which local functionaries listen
as if it were pornography" (231). Referring to relationships as one-sided, as
that which T. had with Dani, or as that which the government had with the
people T. concludes: "Oppression is complete when the oppressed smiles."
The hero summarizes the changes in his wife thus:
You no longer want equality but power, like a newly independent
nation, while I am still as permissive as an old colonizer who would
rather smoke his pipe than wage war" (268).... A shared life produces
hurts, even a perfect love is destructive because it leads to slavery (268).
Since in the novel the insane asylum is an extension of the political
arena it is consistent that here too the same transferred vocabulary and
metaphors are used.