Logan's Run

Script
Novel Triology

Penny Dreadfuls: Proto Scandal Sheet Rag and True (-ish) Crime Dreadfuls

Black Bess (1866)
Black Bess; or, the knight of the road : a tale of the good old times by Viles, Edward

A Book of Remarkable Criminals

A Book of Remarkable Criminals by H Irving

A Book of Scoundrels

A Book of Scoundrels, by Charles Whibley


The Newgate Calendar 1700-1800

A chronological list of all entries in the Newgate Calendar from 1700 to 1800 A.D. Source.

Some examples.

John Larkin

Who committed so many Forgeries and Cheats that he had not Time to confess them all before he died, on
19th of April, 1700

Michael Van Berghen, Catherine Van Berghen And Dromelius, Their Servant, Publicans

Executed 10th of July, 1700, for the Murder of their Guest, Mr Oliver Norris

George Caddell

Executed for the Cruel Murder of Miss Price, Whom he had Seduced and Promised Marriage

John Holliday or Simpson

Housebreaker and Highwayman, who robbed a King at Hertford, and a Church, and was hanged at Tyburn in 1700

George Griffiths 

Who courted his Master's Daughter and then robbed him. Hanged at Tyburn on 1st of August, 1700 .

John Stanley

An Insolent Puppy who presumed on his Swordsmanship. Executed at Tyburn, 23rd of December, 1723, for murdering his Mistress

Stephen Gardener 

Executed at Tyburn, 3rd of February, 1724, for House-breaking, after being warned that the Bellman would say his Verses over him

Joseph Blake Alias Blueskin 

Made an Unsuccessful Attempt to kill Jonathan Wild by cutting his Throat. Executed in November, 1724, at Newgate

The Terrific Register

The Terrific Register (1825)

The Whitechapel Murders or the mysteries of the East End
The Whitechapel Murders or the mysteries of the East End (1888)

Jack the ripper penny dreadful.


The Wild Boys of London, or Children of the Night

Illustrations from The Wild Boys of London

A Selection of Stories

The Body-Snatchers

Dreadful Account of Cannibalism

Extraordinary Female Duel

Horrid Parricide

The Life of Dick Turpin

Providential Escape

I Fell for a Commie (1953 Love Secrets Comic)

In full.

The Malleus Maleficarum

Source.

"The Malleus Maleficarum (Latin for 'The Hammer of Witches,' or 'Hexenhammer' in German) is one of the most famous medieval treatises on witches. It was written in 1486 by Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger, and was first published in Germany in 1487. Its main purpose was to challenge all arguments against the existence of witchcraft and to instruct magistrates on how to identify, interrogate and convict witches."

c/f The Dicoverie of Witchcraft - Scot, Reginald (1584)

Kant with Sade - Jacques Lacan (In English Translation) (1967)

Source.

Hegel's Philosophy of Right

In full.
Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right - Karl Marx (1843)

Genet TV!

Jean Genet (interview 1981)

Un Chant d'amour

Scans of 19th Century Scottish Broadsides, with Murder Ballads

Broadside entitled 'Ann Semple's Confession'
Broadside ballad entitled 'Billy Pattison'
Broadside ballad entitled 'The Confession of James Bryce'
Broadside entitled 'Confessions made by William Burke'
Broadside entitled 'Elegiac Lines On the Tragical Murder of Poor Daft Jamie
Broadside entitled 'Elegie'
Broadside entitled 'Elegie'
Broadside ballad concerning the execution of Captain Thomas Green for piracy and murder
Broadside ballad entitled 'The Fate of Johnny Johnson'
Broadside ballad entitled 'Hare's Dream!'
Broadside ballad entitled 'Jamie Wilson's Mother's Dream'
Broadside entitled 'A Lament for Dr Pritchard's Children'
Broadside entitled 'Lament of Macfarlane, Blackwood and Young'
Broadside entitled 'The Lament of Mr Taylor'
Broadside entitled 'Lament of Peter Mclean, now lying under the Sentence of Death'
Broadside entitled 'Lamentation of Elizabeth Banks'
Broadside entitled 'Lamentation of Mary Braid'
Broadside entitled 'Lamentations As of John Thomson & David Dobie'
Broadside entitled 'The Lamentations of McFarlane, Blackwood and Young
Broadside ballad entitled 'The Last Words of James Mackpherson Murderer'
Broadside entitled 'Lines On The Gilmerton Murder'
Broadside ballad entitled 'Lines Supposed to have Been Written by Mrs Wilson, Daft Jamie's Mother'
Broadside ballad entitled 'Margaret Bell's Lament'
Broadside entitled 'Margaret Dickson's Penetential Confession'
Broadside ballad entitled 'McGorran's Lament'
Broadside entitled 'Murder of Betsy Smith'
Broadside ballad entitled 'The Murder of Maria Marten'
Broadside ballad entitled 'The Recent Murders'
Broadside entitled 'Robert Stirrat's'
Broadside entitled 'The Sorrowful Lamentation'
Broadside entitled 'The Vision'
Broadside ballad entitled 'Widow MacFarlane's Lamentation for Her Son'
Broadside ballad entitled 'William Burke.--A New Song'
Broadside ballad entitled 'William Burke's Confession'
Broadside ballad entitled 'William Burke's Murders in the Westport'
Broadside ballads entitled 'William Burke's Murders in the Westport' and 'Late Murders. A New Song'

Jean Genet, Poems Online

The Prisoner Condemned to Death
Funeral March
The Galley
The Parade
Love Song
The Fisherman of Suquet
Dialogue Between the Sun And the Moon

Police (1916)

Illustrations to Dante's "Divine Comedy" by William Blake

Source.

"The Wood of the Self-Murderers: The Harpies and the Suicides"

object 1 (Butlin 812.1)-- "Dante Running from the Three Beasts" object 2 (Butlin 812.3)-- "The Mission of Virgil" object 3 (Butlin 812.2)-- "Dante and Virgil Penetrating the Forest" object 4 (Butlin 812.4)-- "The Inscription over Hell-Gate" object 5 (Butlin 812.5)-- "The Vestibule of Hell and the Souls Mustering to Cross the Acheron" object 6 (Butlin 812.6)-- "Charon and the Condemned Souls" object 7 (Butlin 812.7)-- "Homer Bearing the Sword and His Companions" object 8 (Butlin 812.8)-- "Homer and the Ancient Poets" object 9 (Butlin 812.9)-- "Minos" object 10 (Butlin 812.10)-- "The Circle of the Lustful: Francesca Da Rimini" object 11 (Butlin 812.11 recto)-- "The Circle of the Gluttons with Cerberus" object 12 (Butlin 812.12)-- "First Version of Cerberus" object 13 (Butlin 812.13)-- "Second Version of Cerberus" object 14 (Butlin 812.14)-- "Plutus" object 15 (Butlin 812.16)-- "The Goddess of Fortune" object 16 (Butlin 812.15)-- "The Stygian Lake with the Ireful Sinners Fighting" object 17 (Butlin 812.17)-- "Dante and Virgil about to Pass the Stygian Lake" object 18 (Butlin 812.18 recto)-- "Virgil Repelling Filippo Argenti from the Boat of Phlegyas" object 19 (Butlin 812.19 recto)-- "The Angel Crossing the Styx" object 20 (Butlin 812.20 recto)-- "The Angel at the Gate of Dis" object 21 (Butlin 812.21)-- "Dante Conversing with Farinata Degli Uberti" object 22 (Butlin 812.101 recto)-- "The Circles of Hell" object 23 (Butlin 812.22 recto)-- "The Minotaur" object 24 (Butlin 812.23)-- "The Centaurs and the River of Blood" object 25 (Butlin 812.24)-- "The Wood of the Self-Murderers: The Harpies and the Suicides" object 26 (Butlin 812.25)-- "The Hell-Hounds Hunting the Destroyers of Their Own Goods" object 27 (Butlin 812.100)-- "Unidentified Scene in Hell" object 28 (Butlin 812.26)-- "The Blasphemers with the Usurers and the Sodomites" object 29 (Butlin 812.27)-- "Capaneus the Blasphemer" object 30 (Butlin 812.28 recto)-- "The Symbolic Figure of the Course of Human History Described by Virgil" object 31 (Butlin 812.29)-- "The Punishment of Jacopo Rusticucci and His Companions" object 32 (Butlin 812.30)-- "The Usurers" object 33 (Butlin 812.31 recto)-- "Geryon Conveying Dante and Virgil Down Towards Malebolge" object 34 (Butlin 812.32)-- "Demons Tormenting the Panders and Seducers in Malebolge" object 35 (Butlin 812.33)-- "Dante and Virgil Gazing into the Ditch of the Flatterers" object 36 (Butlin 812.35)-- "The Simoniac Pope" object 37 (Butlin 812.36)-- "The Necromancers and Augers" object 38 (Butlin 812.37)-- "The Devil Carrying the Lucchese Magistrate to the Boiling Pitch Pool of Corrupt Officials" object 39 (Butlin 812.34)-- "The Devils Under the Bridge" object 40 (Butlin 812.38)-- "Virgil Abashing the Devils" object 41 (Butlin 812.39 recto)-- "The Devils Setting Out with Dante and Virgil" object 42 (Butlin 812.40)-- "The Devils with Dante and Virgil by the Side of the Pool" object 43 (Butlin 812.41)-- "Ciampolo the Barrator Tormented by the Devils" object 44 (Butlin 812.42)-- "The Baffled Devils Fighting" object 45 (Butlin 812.43 recto)-- "Dante and Virgil Escaping from the Devils" object 46 (Butlin 812.44 recto)-- "The Hypocrites with Caiaphas" object 47 (Butlin 812.45 recto)-- "The Laborious Passage Along the Rocks" object 48 (Butlin 812.46)-- "The Laborious Passage Along the Rocks" object 49 (Butlin 812.47 recto)-- "The Thieves and the Serpents" object 50 (Butlin 812.102)-- "The Punishment of the Thieves" object 51 (Butlin 812.48)-- "The Serpent Attacking Vanni Fucci"

object 52 (Butlin 812.49 recto)-- "Vanni Fucci Making Figs Against God" object 53 (Butlin 812.50)-- "The Centaur Cacus" object 54 (Butlin 812.51 recto)-- "The Six-Footed Serpent Attacking Agnolo Brunelleschi" object 55 (Butlin 812.52)-- "Agnolo Brunelleschi Half Transformed by the Serpent" object 56 (Butlin 812.53 recto)-- "The Serpent Attacking Buoso Donati" object 57 (Butlin 812.54)-- "Buoso Donati Transformed into a Serpent; Francesco De' Cavalcanti Retransformed from a Serpent into a Man" object 58 (Butlin 812.55)-- "Ulysses and Diomed Swathed in the Same Flame" object 59 (Butlin 812.56 recto)-- "The Schismatics and Sowers of Discord: Mohammed" object 60 (Butlin 812.57)-- "The Schismatics and Sowers of Discord: Mosca De' Lamberti and Bertrand De Born" object 61 (Butlin 812.58)-- "The Pit of Disease: The Falsifiers" object 62 (Butlin 812.59 recto)-- "The Pit of Disease: Gianni Schicchi and Myrrha" object 63 (Butlin 812.60)-- "The Primaeval Giants Sunk in the Soil" object 64 (Butlin 812.61 recto)-- "The Complaint of the Giant Nimrod" object 65 (Butlin 812.62 recto)-- "Ephialtes and Two Other Titans" object 66 (Butlin 812.63)-- "Antaeus Setting Down Dante and Virgil in the Last Circle of Hell" object 67 (Butlin 812.64)-- "The Circle of Traitors: The Alberti Brothers" object 68 (Butlin 812.65)-- "Dante Striking Against Bocca Degli Abati" object 69 (Butlin 812.66 recto)-- "Dante Tugging at Bocca's Hair" object 70 (Butlin 812.67)-- "Ugolino Relating His Death" object 71 (Butlin 812.68)-- "Ugolino and His Sons in Prison" object 72 (Butlin 812.69 recto)-- "Lucifer" object 73 (Butlin 812.71)-- "Dante with Virgil and Cato" object 74 (Butlin 812.70)-- "Virgil Girding Dante's Brow with a Rush" object 75 (Butlin 812.72)-- "The Angel in the Boat Departing after Wafting Over the Souls for Purgatory" object 76 (Butlin 812.74)-- "The Ascent of the Mountain of Purgatory" object 77 (Butlin 812.73 recto)-- "The Rest on the Mountain Leading to Purgatory" object 78 (Butlin 812.75 recto)-- "The Souls of Those Who Only Repented at the Point of Death" object 79 (Butlin 812.76)-- "The Lawn with the Kings and Angels" object 80 (Butlin 812.77)-- "Lucia Carrying Dante in His Sleep" object 81 (Butlin 812.78)-- "Dante and Virgil Approaching the Angel Who Guards the Entrance of Purgatory" object 82 (Butlin 812.79)-- "The Angel Marking Dante with the Sevenfold P" object 83 (Butlin 812.80)-- "The Rock Sculptured with the Recovery of the Ark and the Annunciation" object 84 (Butlin 812.81)-- "The Proud Under Their Enormous Loads" object 85 (Butlin 812.82)-- "The Angel Descending at the Close of the Circle of the Proud" object 86 (Butlin 812.83)-- "The Terrace of Envious Souls" object 87 (Butlin 812.84)-- "The Angel Inviting Dante to Enter the Fire" object 88 (Butlin 812.85)-- "Dante at the Moment of Entering the Fire" object 89 (Butlin 812.86)-- "Dante and Statius Sleeping with Virgil Watching" object 90 (Butlin 812.87)-- "Beatrice on the Car with Matilda and Dante" object 91 (Butlin 812.88)-- "Beatrice Addressing Dante from the Car" object 92 (Butlin 812.89)-- "The Harlot and the Giant" object 93 (Butlin 812.91)-- "The Spiral Stairway" object 94 (Butlin 812.90 recto)-- "Dante Adoring Christ" object 95 (Butlin 812.92)-- "The Recording Angel" object 96 (Butlin 812.93)-- "Dante and Beatrice in the Constellation of Gemini and the Sphere of Flame" object 97 (Butlin 812.94)-- "Saint Peter Appears to Beatrice and Dante" object 98 (Butlin 812.95)-- "Saint Peter and Saint James with Dante and Beatrice" object 99 (Butlin 812.96)-- "Saint Peter and Saint James with Dante and Beatrice and with Saint John Also" object 100 (Butlin 812.97)-- "The Vision of the Deity from Whom Proceed the Nine Spheres" object 101 (Butlin 812.98)-- "Dante in the Empyrean Drinking at the River of Light" object 102 (Butlin 812.99)-- "The Queen of Heaven in Glory"

Francois Villon - Poetry in Translation

See Also: Société François Villon

Ballad Of The Gibbet
Les Regrets De La Belle Hëaulmiere
Rondel
The Ballad Of The Ladies Of Yore
Abor Amorris
To Death Of His Lady
The Debate Between Villon And His Heart
Ballade
Le Testament: Ballade: ‘Item: Donne A Ma Povre Mere’
Ballade: Epistre
Ballade: Du Concours De Blois
Le Testament: Ballade: Pour Robert d’Estouteville
Le Testament: Epitaph et Rondeau
Le Testament: Ballade: A S’amye
Rondeau

Five Translations

A Ballad of Francois Villon
Ballads from Francois Villon

Three Translations by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
I. The Ballad of Dead Ladies

II. To Death, of His Lady
III. His Mother's Service to Our Lady

Ten Translations by Charles Swinburne
I. The Complaint of The Fair Armouress
II. A Double Ballad of Good Counsel
III. Fragment on Death
IV. Ballad of The Lords of Old Times
V. Ballad of The Women of Paris
VI. Ballad Written for a Bridegroom
VII. Ballad against the Enemies of France
VIII. The Dispute of the Heart and Body of Francois Villon
IX. Epistle in Form of a Ballad to His Friends
X. The Epitaph in Form of a Ballad

Seven Translations by John Payne

I. Ballad of Old-Time Lords
II. The Doctrine of The Fair Helm-Maker to The  Light O' Loves
III. Seemly Lesson of Villon to The  Good-for-Noughts
IV. Ballad of Good Doctrine to Those of Ill Life
V. Ballad Crying All Folk Mercy
VI. Ballad, by Way of Ending
VII. Epitaph

Jobelin ballade 6
Jobelin ballade 5
Jobelin ballade 4
Jobelin ballade 3
Jobelin ballade 2
Jobelin ballade

To Death Of His Lady 

Death, of thee do I make my moan, / Who hadst my lady away from me,

Rondel 

Goodbye! the tears are in my eyes; / Farewell, farewell, my prettiest;

Ballad Of The Gibbet 

Brothers and men that shall after us be, / Let not your hearts be hard

Abor Amorris 

I have a tree, a graft of Love, / That in my heart has taken root;

The Debate Between Villon And His Heart

Who's that I hear?—It's me—Who?—Your heart / Hanging on by the thinnest

The Ballad Of The Ladies Of Yore 

Tell me now in what hidden way is / Lady Flora the lovely Roman?
Les Regrets De La Belle Hëaulmiere 

ADVIS m'est que j'oy regreter / La belle qui fut hëaulmiere,

Ballade 

I know flies in milk / I know the man by his clothe
Ballade: Du Concours De Blois

I’m dying of thirst beside the fountain, / Hot as fire, and with chatte

Le Testament: Ballade: ‘Item: Donne A Ma Povre Mere’ 

This I give to my poor mother / As a prayer now, to our Mistress

Ballade: Epistre

Have pity now, have pity now on me, / If you at least would, friends of

Le Testament: Ballade: Pour Robert d’Estouteville 

At dawn of day, when falcon shakes his wing, / Mainly from pleasure,

Le Testament: Epitaph et Rondeau 

Epitaph / Here there lies, and sleeps in the grave,

Rondeau 

Oh, grant him now eternal peace, / Lord, and everlasting light,

Le Testament: Ballade: A S’amye 

 False beauty that costs me so dear, / Rough indeed, a hypocrite sweet

Victorian Gallows Ballads

Source.

Mary Arnold, The Female Monster
Former prostitute uses carnivorous beetles to blind her own infant child. Hopes to increase its value as a tool for begging, but wins only prison and transportation.

The Execution of Nathaniel Mobbs
Drunken bully cuts his wife's throat in a fit of jealous rage. Bungles his own suicide attempt, and lives long enough to be hanged at Newgate.

Mrs Dyer, The Old Baby-Farmer
Reading woman takes in illegitimate babies for cash. Strangles 40 or more, then dumps their bodies in the Thames.

The Gallows Child
Nine-year old boy is condemned to death for stealing six handkerchiefs from an Oxford Street shop. Shopkeeper had paid five shillings each for them.

The Life and Trial of Palmer
Boozy, gambling doctor poisons family and friends to clear his debts. Hanged at Stafford Gaol, but survives as footnote in the Sherlock Holmes stories.

The Silent Grove
Young man gets his girlfriend pregnant, then kills both her and the baby to avoid responsibility. One of many Bloody Miller/ Berkshire Tragedy variants - a combination of which eventually became Knoxville Girl.

The Liverpool Lodger
Evil lodger slaughters family and robs them. Victims include pregnant mother and two very young boys.

The Unnatural Murder
Disguised sailor returns home to his parents, hoping to surprise them with his new-found wealth. They mistake him for a stranger, kill him, and steal his gold.

Murder at Westmill
Nine-year-old boy brutally murders his infant sister. Mother driven mad by the crime.

Streams of Crimson Blood
Burglar breaks into rich old couple's house and kills them both.

The Murdered Maid
Poverty-stricken yokels kill lodger for her savings. But it's really their own daughter.

Cruel Lizzie Vickers
Housekeeper bullies her way into elderly employer's will then beats him to death for the £1,000 involved. That's the ballad's version, but the Old Bailey jury found her not guilty.

Kafka Short Stories Online

A Hunger Artist
A Report to an Academy
The Neighbour (transl. Annika Eder)
The Neighbour (transl. Tanya Ellerbrock)
The Metamorphosis
Selected shorter writings, transl. by Ian Johnston (Before the Law, The Hunter Gracchus, Up in the Gallery, An Imperial Message, Jackals and Arabs)
A Hunger Artist (transl. by Ian Johnston)
In the Penal Colony (transl. by Ian Johnston)
A Country Doctor (transl. Ian Johnston)
A Report for an Academy (transl. Ian Johnston)
The Metamorphosis (transl. Ian Johnston)
The Great Wall of China (transl. Ian Johnston)
My Destination (transl. Alex Flores)
On the Gallery (transl. Maja Sinn)
Unhappiness (transl. Claudia Furrer)
Five short texts from Kafka's youth

Frank Lima's Sacttered Vignettes

Frank Lima's Scattered Vignettes.

One of the few contemporary poems I stumbled across in my adult life and felt it contained a world within that I could inhabit, Frank Lima's Scattered Vignettes remains for me one of the most magical sustained invocations of language (English).

Elsewhere in this quixotic library and toy store, I have collected material of those who address misery by making an aesthetic object of consumption out of it. That is, while enjoyable, often, the trap. One cannot possess meaninglessness (the ultimate ghost of upheaval and trauma) by turning it into a product, buying and consuming it. Meaninglessness is more elusive than, say, delicious candy. In meaninglessness (death, violence, despair), the hunger is not sated by eating more of the same.

The groping towards any space of serenity in this relationship between observer, meaning and world, one that retains not only the images of trauma, violence and beauty but also the meaninglessness of those very things which make our time here storied, would require one to communicate or build something actually transformative.

This is not easy. Misery has stubbornly resisted prognostication and prescriptions, as in Marx, or magical solutions, as in Fascism. Often it hovers just outside the purview of Liberalism, the phantom limits of its ability to act. The nostalgia of religious fanaticism can only hold it at bay for so long. Ignoring it does not dispel it.

Frank Lima, so despairing, so ritually beautiful in his figures, so uncomplicatedly attuned to myth and the ceremonial gestures of magic, in a matter of a few pages, manages to cover a continental scourge of difficult and ambivalent territory. The miracle in these vignettes is how he never drops out of poetic voice. He takes things that are already meaningless (failed lives, the sad household objects that are the props for traditional magic) and uses them to help communicate the ultimate things, which are generally resistant to meaning (violence, ultimate taboos, spirit). Somehow the ineffable--by sheer conjuration of this sensitive but semantically perilous alchemy--manages to pass through.

For More on Frank Lima:
Here is an interview.

Oedepis Rex

Oedepis Rex by Sophocles.

Original 1937 Time review for Cocteau's adaption (including set descriptions, etc.).

Christian Bérard, Oedipus and the Sphinx, 1932
Mural for Jean Cocteau’s flat, Paris

This play is perhaps the hardest-to-look at, harshest, eeriest dramatizations of Fate as well as one of the clearest articulations of it and the earliest. One looks into crime and the despair of the world, and through the maze of accusations, despair, evidence and hunches, at the end of the journey, one finds oneself. In this, the plot is almost dream-like.

For Freud, this play is the statement of the primal taboo and its punishment: a man kills his father to bed his mother. In how Sophocles describes fate we see, also, something like what for Freud would become the unconscious: this terrible crime is committed while hidden from Oedipus' (the perpetrator's) concious knowledge. And yet one can read Freud through Sophocles as well: one looks too hard at Freud's theory, and one sees only Freud. The theory dies and withers away.

Unlike in Freud, Sophocles' Fate is also a trap of external riddles and prophecies. Everything is laid bare in advance. The struggle to cheat Fate's inexorable bureaucracy is often the fulfillment of its miseries. What we call plot, though in meticulous evidence here as each move by Oedipus furthers the revelation of his guilt, leading to his ultimate punishment, is less to uncover what is true, but to be drowned in truth, destroyed by it. The tendrils of fate and plot affix to Oedipus like strands of quicksand to a drowning man. One does not, with knowledge, cheat death.

Greek drama keeps close to a religious, ceremonial practice. One senses in the elevated, poetic invocations and liturgical recitations of the chorus that this crime is ritualistically reenacted to address similar, uncanny signs of doom in the present. In this, the fate of Oedipus also resembles agrarian ceremonies where the fertility god is ritually sacrificed to appease the dying fields.

Goethe's Faust - Part 1

Introductory Note
Dedication
Prologue for the Theatre
Prologue in Heaven
Part I. Night
Auerbach's Cellar in Leipzig
The Neighbour's House
Night. Street Before Margaret's Door
Walpurgis-Night
Walpurgis-Night's Dream
A Gloomy Day. A Plain
Night. Open Country
Dungeon

Other Faust Folklore, Literature and Materials

• THE TRAGICAL HISTORY OF DOCTOR FAUSTUS  from The Quarto of 1604 by Christoper Marlowe
• Faust Legends at Folk Text
• The Devil's Charter (1607) - Among its sources, Marlow's Faust, this is Barnabe Barnes take on Pope Alexander VI reign, the papal reign described as a pact with the devil for worldly gain.

Eichmann in Jerusalem: a Report on the Banality of Evil

What I find, perhaps, the most haunting criticism of Hannah Arendt's compelling characterization of evil within modernity is the charge that, Arendt having mostly observed the trial of Eichmann before he is to testify, the philosophical writer was not present to witness the more forceful aspects of his personality, exhibited during his defense.

For one, in reading parts of the transcripts, Eichmann's attempts to mystify his own accountability by drawing such an elaborate, labyrinthine picture of Nazi bureaucracy might easily be construed as an active strategy of a lively, even megalomaniacal mind engaged in the business of the will and survival (Nazi themes). This would hardly suit the portrait of the blase spirit of bureaucratic automaton giving platitudes after the defeat of his leaders. Even his deference to superiors in the immediate courtroom has a manipulative aspect.

That is not a criticism of Arendt's basic premise: but a way of reading this *accepted* account (accepted at least in the post-war West) that draws her themes in a sharper, more critical relief. This is, after all, one of the few completely secular accounts of the existence of evil, outside of theology, or at least outside of a theology with an active, living God.

One should not forget that the Holocaust was the first fully globally visible attempt, on the part of a fully technologically modernized state, to bring all the instruments of bureaucratic rationalization and scientific advance to bear upon the systematic extermination of a peoples. In that, that it happened, does not subtract from the violence and atrocities committed and currently being committed on other human populations.

Most of Eichmann in Jerusalem (with a page irritatingly withdrawn here or there) is available online at google books.

The transcripts from Eichmann's trials are available in full online.

Original articles Arendt wrote for the New Yorker, covering the Eichmann trial: part one, part two, part three, part four, and part five are available from the New Yorker's archives.