We the Living
Encyclopedia
We the Living is the first novel published by the Russian-American novelist Ayn Rand
. It was also Rand's first statement against communism
. First published in 1936, it is a story of life in post-revolutionary Russia
. Rand observes in the foreword to this book that We the Living was the closest she would ever come to writing an autobiography. Her working title for the novel had been Airtight. We the Living was first completed in 1934, but, despite support from H.L. Mencken, who deemed it "a really excellent piece of work," it was rejected by several publishers until 1936, when George Platt Brett
of Macmillan Publishing agreed to publish her book. Brett said "he did not know if they would make money on it or not, but that it was a novel that should be published." It has since sold more than 3 million copies.
Russia
. Kira Argounova, the protagonist of the story, is the younger daughter of a bourgeois family. An independent spirit with a will to match, she rejects any attempt by her family or the nascent Soviet State to cast her into a mold. At the beginning of the story, Kira returns to Petrograd along with her family, after a prolonged exile due to the assault of the revolutionaries
. Kira's father had been the owner of a textile factory, which had been seized and nationalized
. The family, having given up all hopes of regaining their past possessions after the emphatic victories of the Red Army
in the last four years, is resigned to its fate, as it returns to the city in search of livelihood. It finds, to its dismay, that their home has likewise been seized, and converted to living quarters for several families. Left with nowhere to go, the family moves into Kira's aunt Marussia's apartment.
The severity of life in the newly Socialist Russia is biting and cruel, especially for the people belonging to the now-stigmatized middle class. Kira's uncle Vasili has also lost his family business to the state, and has been forced to sell off his possessions, one at a time, for money (which has lost much of its value owing to steep inflation
). Private enterprises
have been strictly controlled, and license
s to run them allotted only to those "enjoying the trust" of the proletariat
. Food is ration
ed. Only laborers of nationalized businesses and students in state-run educational institutions have access to ration cards. The family of five survives on the ration cards allotted to the two younger members of the family, who are students.
After a brief stay at Vasili's home, Kira's family manages to find living quarters. Kira's father also manages to get a license to open a textile shop, an establishment but a shadow of his old firm. Life is excruciatingly difficult in these times. Rand portrays the bleak scenarios by vivid descriptions of long queues, weary citizens and low standards of living. (Everyone regularly cooks on a kerosene
camp stove, usually a Swedish
Primus stove
, and the typical main course is millet
, or whatever can be blended together.)
With some effort, Kira manages to register with the State and obtain her Labor Book (which permits her to study and work). Kira also manages to enroll in the Technological Institute, where she aspires to fulfill her dream of becoming an engineer
. She plans to storm the male bastion of engineers, and show her prowess by building structures like a lightweight aluminum bridge. Kira's strength of resolve to fulfill her dream is asserted at various points in the storyline. Becoming a highly competent engineer would be Kira's carving for herself a niche in a society that has become characterless and anonymous, and whose primary purpose in life has been reduced to subsistence rather than excellence. At the Institute, Kira meets Andrei Taganov, a co-student, an idealistic Communist, and an officer in the G.P.U., the secret police of the Soviet Union. The two share a mutual respect and admiration for each other in spite of their differing political beliefs. Andrei and Kira develop a friendship that endures until the end of the story.
In a chance encounter, Kira meets Leo Kovalensky on a dark night in a seedy neighborhood. Leo is an extremely attractive man with a free spirit matched only by Kira's. It's love at first sight for Kira, and she unflinchingly throws herself at Leo. Leo, who initially takes her to be a prostitute, is also strongly attracted to her and promises to meet her again. Kira and Leo are shown to be united by their desperate lives, and their lofty beliefs that ran counter to what were being thrust on them by the State. After a couple of meetings, when they share their deep contempt for the state of their lives, the two plan to escape together from the land, on a clandestine mission operated by secret ships.
The novel, from this point on, slowly cascades into a series of catastrophes for Kira and Leo. They are caught while attempting to flee the country, but escape imprisonment due to the generosity of a G.P.U. official, Stepan Timoshenko, who had fought under the command of Leo's father before the revolution. Kira leaves her parents' apartment and moves into Leo's. The relationship between Kira and Leo, intense and passionate in the beginning, begins to deteriorate under the weight of their hardships, and because of their different reactions to these hardships. Kira, who is an idealistic realist, keeps her ideas and aspirations alive, but decides to go with the system anyway, until she feels powerful enough to challenge it. Soon the state decides to expel anyone of a bourgeois background. On the verge of starvation, Kira finds work with the help of Andrei, enough to retain her ration card. Leo, however, burdened by his class background, and without any communist friend to help him, fails to find work, and sinks slowly into indifference and depression. He contracts tuberculosis and is prescribed treatment and recuperation in a sanatorium in Crimea in the South. Kira's efforts to finance his treatment fail, and her passionate appeals to the authorities to get State help for his stay at the sanatorium fall on deaf ears.
Andrei, an equally important person in Kira's life, is portrayed by Rand as a man of character, resolve, and an unassailable loyalty to his party and ideology. Despite his political beliefs, Kira finds him to be the one person she could trust, and with whom she could discuss her most intimate thoughts and views. Not even Leo could fulfill that role for her. Andrei's affection and respect for Kira knows no bounds, and it slowly turns into love. Worried what this might do to their "beautiful and rare" friendship, he starts avoiding Kira. Kira misses him, and needs his help. Eventually when she confronts him in his house, Andrei explains his avoidance of her and confesses his love for her. Kira is dismayed at first, but recovers to find in it a way to finance Leo's treatment. Reluctant, but in desperation, she feigns love for Andrei, and agrees to become his mistress
in return for the promise of complete secrecy about their relationship. Kira is never comfortable with what she was doing with her body, but is even more frightened by "what she was doing to another man's soul".
The narrative reaches a climactic pace when Leo returns from Crimea, cured of tuberculosis and healthy, but a changed man. Ignoring Kira's protests, he opens a food store with the help of his morally bankrupt and rich friends, and a corrupt member of the Communist Party. The store is but a facade for illegal speculation and trade. Andrei is tipped off about this venture by Stepan Timoshenko, who commits suicide in despair at what is happening to his Soviet Union, but only after depositing a key piece of evidence with Andrei. Ignoring Kira's pleas, and unaware of her love for Leo, Andrei starts investigating Leo's store. After a search at his house, he arrests Leo for crimes against the State, which could carry a death sentence. In the process, he finds out about Kira's relationship with Leo. The ensuing confrontation between Andrei and Kira is perhaps the most poignant scene in the story. In the end, both realize what they had done to each other and how their passion and pretension had led them to the destruction of what each had held in "the highest reverence". Andrei decides to redress the situation, at least for Kira, and moves to restore Leo to her, risking his own standing in the Party.
After Leo's release from the prison at Andrei's behest, the story ends in tragedy for all the three. Andrei loses his position in the Party, and shortly thereafter commits suicide. Kira, perhaps the only genuine mourner at his State funeral, wonders if she had killed him. Having lost any moral sense that he may have left, Leo leaves Kira to begin a new life as a gigolo
, fulfilling the earlier portrayal of him as such by Kira's perceptive cousin Irina (who has been sentenced to a long prison term for associating with counter-revolutionaries). After Leo's departure, Kira makes a final attempt to cross the border. When she is almost in sight of freedom and liberation from her hellish life, she is shot by a border guard and soon dies. Kira remains loyal to her love for Leo until the end, and says at one point, "When a person dies, one does not stop loving him, does one?"
When Rand's final novel, Atlas Shrugged
, became a best-seller, Random House
decided to republish We the Living. In preparation for the new edition, Rand made some changes to the text. In her Foreword to the 1959 edition, Rand declared that "In brief, all the changes are merely editorial line changes." Some of them have been taken to have philosophical significance. In the first edition, Kira said to Andrei, "I loathe your ideals. I admire your methods." In the second edition, this became simply "I loathe your ideals." A few pages later, Kira said to Andrei, "What are your masses but mud to be ground underfoot, fuel to be burned for those who deserve it?" Rand's revision deleted this sentence. Some scholars regard this as a bitter description of communist treatment of the masses, not Rand's own evaluation.
The significance of these and other revisions has been debated. According to Ronald Merrill, Kira in the first edition "adopts in the most explicit terms possible the ethical position of Friedrich Nietzsche
." Rand had made her break with Nietzsche by the time she published The Fountainhead
. Barbara Branden
says, "Some of her readers were disturbed when they discovered this and similar changes" but insists that "unlike Nietzsche, she rejected as unforgivably immoral any suggestion that the superior man had the right to use physical force as a means to his end.". Mimi Reisel Gladstein
merely commented, "She claims that the revision was minimal. Some readers of both editions have questioned her definition of 'minimal'." Robert Mayhew cautioned that “We should not conclude too quickly that these passages are strong evidence of an earlier Nietzschean phase in Ayn Rand’s development, because such language can be strictly metaphorical (even if the result of an early interest in Nietzsche)” Despite Rand's own description of the changes, Susan Love Brown countered that "Mayhew becomes an apologist for Rand’s denials of change and smooths over the fact that Rand herself saw the error of her ways and corrected them."
Nearly everyone who reads We the Living today reads the second edition. The first is a rare book; the second has sold over 3 million copies.
translation in 1937, was made into a two-part film, Noi Vivi and Addio, Kira in 1942. The films were directed by Goffredo Alessandrini
for Scalera Films of Rome
, and starred Alida Valli
as Kira, Fosco Giachetti
as Andrei, and Rossano Brazzi
as Leo. Prior to their release, the films were nearly censored
by Mussolini
's government, but they were permitted because the story itself was set in Soviet Russia and was directly critical of that regime. The films were successful, and the public easily realized that they were as much against fascism
as communism
. After several weeks, the films were pulled from theaters after the Nazi German
and fascist Italian
governments discovered the story also carried an anti-fascist message.
Rediscovered in the 1960s through the efforts of Rand's lawyers, Erika Holzer
and Henry Mark Holzer, these films were re-edited into a new version with English
subtitles composed by Erika Holzer and Revision co-Producer Duncan Scott. This version was approved by Rand and her estate and re-released as We the Living in 1986. A two-disc DVD
of the film is currently being sold by Duncan Scott Productions.
group We The Living
have explicitly stated that their name is derived from the novel and have often listed Rand and her Objectivist
views as a major influence to their music.
Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand was a Russian-American novelist, philosopher, playwright, and screenwriter. She is known for her two best-selling novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged and for developing a philosophical system she called Objectivism....
. It was also Rand's first statement against communism
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
. First published in 1936, it is a story of life in post-revolutionary Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
. Rand observes in the foreword to this book that We the Living was the closest she would ever come to writing an autobiography. Her working title for the novel had been Airtight. We the Living was first completed in 1934, but, despite support from H.L. Mencken, who deemed it "a really excellent piece of work," it was rejected by several publishers until 1936, when George Platt Brett
George Platt Brett
George Platt Brett, Jr. served at Chairman of the American division of Macmillan Publishing and secured publishing rights to Gone With the Wind.-Career:...
of Macmillan Publishing agreed to publish her book. Brett said "he did not know if they would make money on it or not, but that it was a novel that should be published." It has since sold more than 3 million copies.
Plot
The story takes place from 1922 to 1925, in post-revolutionaryRussian Revolution of 1917
The Russian Revolution is the collective term for a series of revolutions in Russia in 1917, which destroyed the Tsarist autocracy and led to the creation of the Soviet Union. The Tsar was deposed and replaced by a provisional government in the first revolution of February 1917...
Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
. Kira Argounova, the protagonist of the story, is the younger daughter of a bourgeois family. An independent spirit with a will to match, she rejects any attempt by her family or the nascent Soviet State to cast her into a mold. At the beginning of the story, Kira returns to Petrograd along with her family, after a prolonged exile due to the assault of the revolutionaries
Bolshevik
The Bolsheviks, originally also Bolshevists , derived from bol'shinstvo, "majority") were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903....
. Kira's father had been the owner of a textile factory, which had been seized and nationalized
Nationalization
Nationalisation, also spelled nationalization, is the process of taking an industry or assets into government ownership by a national government or state. Nationalization usually refers to private assets, but may also mean assets owned by lower levels of government, such as municipalities, being...
. The family, having given up all hopes of regaining their past possessions after the emphatic victories of the Red Army
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...
in the last four years, is resigned to its fate, as it returns to the city in search of livelihood. It finds, to its dismay, that their home has likewise been seized, and converted to living quarters for several families. Left with nowhere to go, the family moves into Kira's aunt Marussia's apartment.
The severity of life in the newly Socialist Russia is biting and cruel, especially for the people belonging to the now-stigmatized middle class. Kira's uncle Vasili has also lost his family business to the state, and has been forced to sell off his possessions, one at a time, for money (which has lost much of its value owing to steep inflation
Inflation
In economics, inflation is a rise in the general level of prices of goods and services in an economy over a period of time.When the general price level rises, each unit of currency buys fewer goods and services. Consequently, inflation also reflects an erosion in the purchasing power of money – a...
). Private enterprises
Private sector
In economics, the private sector is that part of the economy, sometimes referred to as the citizen sector, which is run by private individuals or groups, usually as a means of enterprise for profit, and is not controlled by the state...
have been strictly controlled, and license
License
The verb license or grant licence means to give permission. The noun license or licence refers to that permission as well as to the document recording that permission.A license may be granted by a party to another party as an element of an agreement...
s to run them allotted only to those "enjoying the trust" of the proletariat
Proletariat
The proletariat is a term used to identify a lower social class, usually the working class; a member of such a class is proletarian...
. Food is ration
Rationing
Rationing is the controlled distribution of scarce resources, goods, or services. Rationing controls the size of the ration, one's allotted portion of the resources being distributed on a particular day or at a particular time.- In economics :...
ed. Only laborers of nationalized businesses and students in state-run educational institutions have access to ration cards. The family of five survives on the ration cards allotted to the two younger members of the family, who are students.
After a brief stay at Vasili's home, Kira's family manages to find living quarters. Kira's father also manages to get a license to open a textile shop, an establishment but a shadow of his old firm. Life is excruciatingly difficult in these times. Rand portrays the bleak scenarios by vivid descriptions of long queues, weary citizens and low standards of living. (Everyone regularly cooks on a kerosene
Kerosene
Kerosene, sometimes spelled kerosine in scientific and industrial usage, also known as paraffin or paraffin oil in the United Kingdom, Hong Kong, Ireland and South Africa, is a combustible hydrocarbon liquid. The name is derived from Greek keros...
camp stove, usually a Swedish
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
Primus stove
Primus stove
The Primus stove, the first pressurized-burner kerosene stove, was developed in 1892 by Frans Wilhelm Lindqvist, a factory mechanic in Stockholm, Sweden. The stove was based on the design of the hand-held blowtorch; Lindqvist’s patent covered the burner, which was turned upward on the stove...
, and the typical main course is millet
Millet
The millets are a group of small-seeded species of cereal crops or grains, widely grown around the world for food and fodder. They do not form a taxonomic group, but rather a functional or agronomic one. Their essential similarities are that they are small-seeded grasses grown in difficult...
, or whatever can be blended together.)
With some effort, Kira manages to register with the State and obtain her Labor Book (which permits her to study and work). Kira also manages to enroll in the Technological Institute, where she aspires to fulfill her dream of becoming an engineer
Engineer
An engineer is a professional practitioner of engineering, concerned with applying scientific knowledge, mathematics and ingenuity to develop solutions for technical problems. Engineers design materials, structures, machines and systems while considering the limitations imposed by practicality,...
. She plans to storm the male bastion of engineers, and show her prowess by building structures like a lightweight aluminum bridge. Kira's strength of resolve to fulfill her dream is asserted at various points in the storyline. Becoming a highly competent engineer would be Kira's carving for herself a niche in a society that has become characterless and anonymous, and whose primary purpose in life has been reduced to subsistence rather than excellence. At the Institute, Kira meets Andrei Taganov, a co-student, an idealistic Communist, and an officer in the G.P.U., the secret police of the Soviet Union. The two share a mutual respect and admiration for each other in spite of their differing political beliefs. Andrei and Kira develop a friendship that endures until the end of the story.
In a chance encounter, Kira meets Leo Kovalensky on a dark night in a seedy neighborhood. Leo is an extremely attractive man with a free spirit matched only by Kira's. It's love at first sight for Kira, and she unflinchingly throws herself at Leo. Leo, who initially takes her to be a prostitute, is also strongly attracted to her and promises to meet her again. Kira and Leo are shown to be united by their desperate lives, and their lofty beliefs that ran counter to what were being thrust on them by the State. After a couple of meetings, when they share their deep contempt for the state of their lives, the two plan to escape together from the land, on a clandestine mission operated by secret ships.
The novel, from this point on, slowly cascades into a series of catastrophes for Kira and Leo. They are caught while attempting to flee the country, but escape imprisonment due to the generosity of a G.P.U. official, Stepan Timoshenko, who had fought under the command of Leo's father before the revolution. Kira leaves her parents' apartment and moves into Leo's. The relationship between Kira and Leo, intense and passionate in the beginning, begins to deteriorate under the weight of their hardships, and because of their different reactions to these hardships. Kira, who is an idealistic realist, keeps her ideas and aspirations alive, but decides to go with the system anyway, until she feels powerful enough to challenge it. Soon the state decides to expel anyone of a bourgeois background. On the verge of starvation, Kira finds work with the help of Andrei, enough to retain her ration card. Leo, however, burdened by his class background, and without any communist friend to help him, fails to find work, and sinks slowly into indifference and depression. He contracts tuberculosis and is prescribed treatment and recuperation in a sanatorium in Crimea in the South. Kira's efforts to finance his treatment fail, and her passionate appeals to the authorities to get State help for his stay at the sanatorium fall on deaf ears.
Andrei, an equally important person in Kira's life, is portrayed by Rand as a man of character, resolve, and an unassailable loyalty to his party and ideology. Despite his political beliefs, Kira finds him to be the one person she could trust, and with whom she could discuss her most intimate thoughts and views. Not even Leo could fulfill that role for her. Andrei's affection and respect for Kira knows no bounds, and it slowly turns into love. Worried what this might do to their "beautiful and rare" friendship, he starts avoiding Kira. Kira misses him, and needs his help. Eventually when she confronts him in his house, Andrei explains his avoidance of her and confesses his love for her. Kira is dismayed at first, but recovers to find in it a way to finance Leo's treatment. Reluctant, but in desperation, she feigns love for Andrei, and agrees to become his mistress
Mistress (lover)
A mistress is a long-term female lover and companion who is not married to her partner; the term is used especially when her partner is married. The relationship generally is stable and at least semi-permanent; however, the couple does not live together openly. Also the relationship is usually,...
in return for the promise of complete secrecy about their relationship. Kira is never comfortable with what she was doing with her body, but is even more frightened by "what she was doing to another man's soul".
The narrative reaches a climactic pace when Leo returns from Crimea, cured of tuberculosis and healthy, but a changed man. Ignoring Kira's protests, he opens a food store with the help of his morally bankrupt and rich friends, and a corrupt member of the Communist Party. The store is but a facade for illegal speculation and trade. Andrei is tipped off about this venture by Stepan Timoshenko, who commits suicide in despair at what is happening to his Soviet Union, but only after depositing a key piece of evidence with Andrei. Ignoring Kira's pleas, and unaware of her love for Leo, Andrei starts investigating Leo's store. After a search at his house, he arrests Leo for crimes against the State, which could carry a death sentence. In the process, he finds out about Kira's relationship with Leo. The ensuing confrontation between Andrei and Kira is perhaps the most poignant scene in the story. In the end, both realize what they had done to each other and how their passion and pretension had led them to the destruction of what each had held in "the highest reverence". Andrei decides to redress the situation, at least for Kira, and moves to restore Leo to her, risking his own standing in the Party.
After Leo's release from the prison at Andrei's behest, the story ends in tragedy for all the three. Andrei loses his position in the Party, and shortly thereafter commits suicide. Kira, perhaps the only genuine mourner at his State funeral, wonders if she had killed him. Having lost any moral sense that he may have left, Leo leaves Kira to begin a new life as a gigolo
Gigolo
Gigolo may refer to:* A male prostitute, escort, or dancer, who offers services to women* Gigolo , a 2006 single by Helena Paparizou* Gigolo , a 2003 single by Nick Cannon...
, fulfilling the earlier portrayal of him as such by Kira's perceptive cousin Irina (who has been sentenced to a long prison term for associating with counter-revolutionaries). After Leo's departure, Kira makes a final attempt to cross the border. When she is almost in sight of freedom and liberation from her hellish life, she is shot by a border guard and soon dies. Kira remains loyal to her love for Leo until the end, and says at one point, "When a person dies, one does not stop loving him, does one?"
Revised edition
We the Living was not a commercial success when it was published in 1936. Macmillan did not expect the novel to sell and set it in movable type instead of making plates. Once the first printing of 3000 copies was exhausted, the novel was out of print. Rand's royalties from the first American edition amounted to $100. There was also a British publication, by Cassell in 1937.When Rand's final novel, Atlas Shrugged
Atlas Shrugged
Atlas Shrugged is a novel by Ayn Rand, first published in 1957 in the United States. Rand's fourth and last novel, it was also her longest, and the one she considered to be her magnum opus in the realm of fiction writing...
, became a best-seller, Random House
Random House
Random House, Inc. is the largest general-interest trade book publisher in the world. It has been owned since 1998 by the German private media corporation Bertelsmann and has become the umbrella brand for Bertelsmann book publishing. Random House also has a movie production arm, Random House Films,...
decided to republish We the Living. In preparation for the new edition, Rand made some changes to the text. In her Foreword to the 1959 edition, Rand declared that "In brief, all the changes are merely editorial line changes." Some of them have been taken to have philosophical significance. In the first edition, Kira said to Andrei, "I loathe your ideals. I admire your methods." In the second edition, this became simply "I loathe your ideals." A few pages later, Kira said to Andrei, "What are your masses but mud to be ground underfoot, fuel to be burned for those who deserve it?" Rand's revision deleted this sentence. Some scholars regard this as a bitter description of communist treatment of the masses, not Rand's own evaluation.
The significance of these and other revisions has been debated. According to Ronald Merrill, Kira in the first edition "adopts in the most explicit terms possible the ethical position of Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...
." Rand had made her break with Nietzsche by the time she published The Fountainhead
The Fountainhead
The Fountainhead is a 1943 novel by Ayn Rand. It was Rand's first major literary success and brought her fame and financial success. More than 6.5 million copies of the book have been sold worldwide....
. Barbara Branden
Barbara Branden
Barbara Branden is an American Objectivist writer, editor, and lecturer, known for her relationship and subsequent break with philosopher Ayn Rand.-Life:...
says, "Some of her readers were disturbed when they discovered this and similar changes" but insists that "unlike Nietzsche, she rejected as unforgivably immoral any suggestion that the superior man had the right to use physical force as a means to his end.". Mimi Reisel Gladstein
Mimi Reisel Gladstein
Mimi Reisel Gladstein is a professor of English and Theatre Arts at the University of Texas at El Paso. Her specialties include authors such as Ayn Rand and John Steinbeck, as well as women's studies, theatre arts and 18th-century British literature.-Life and scholarship:Gladstein was born in...
merely commented, "She claims that the revision was minimal. Some readers of both editions have questioned her definition of 'minimal'." Robert Mayhew cautioned that “We should not conclude too quickly that these passages are strong evidence of an earlier Nietzschean phase in Ayn Rand’s development, because such language can be strictly metaphorical (even if the result of an early interest in Nietzsche)” Despite Rand's own description of the changes, Susan Love Brown countered that "Mayhew becomes an apologist for Rand’s denials of change and smooths over the fact that Rand herself saw the error of her ways and corrected them."
Nearly everyone who reads We the Living today reads the second edition. The first is a rare book; the second has sold over 3 million copies.
Film adaptation
Without Rand's permission, We the Living, which had been published in an ItalianItalian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
translation in 1937, was made into a two-part film, Noi Vivi and Addio, Kira in 1942. The films were directed by Goffredo Alessandrini
Goffredo Alessandrini
Goffredo Alessandrini was an Italian script writer and film director. He also acted, edited, and produced some films.-Biography:...
for Scalera Films of Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
, and starred Alida Valli
Alida Valli
Alida Valli , sometimes simply credited as Valli, was an Italian actress who appeared in more than 100 films, including Mario Soldati's Piccolo mondo antico, Alfred Hitchcock's The Paradine Case, Carol Reed's The Third Man, Michelangelo Antonioni's Il Grido, Luchino Visconti's Senso, Bernardo...
as Kira, Fosco Giachetti
Fosco Giachetti
Fosco Giachetti was an Italian actor.He was the brother of the actor Gianfranco Giachetti.Fosco Giachetti was the protagonist of Lo squadrone bianco , directed by Augusto Genina...
as Andrei, and Rossano Brazzi
Rossano Brazzi
-Biography:Brazzi was born in Bologna to Adelmo and Maria Brazzi. He attended San Marco University in Florence, Italy, where he was raised from the age of four...
as Leo. Prior to their release, the films were nearly censored
Censorship
thumb|[[Book burning]] following the [[1973 Chilean coup d'état|1973 coup]] that installed the [[Military government of Chile |Pinochet regime]] in Chile...
by Mussolini
Benito Mussolini
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism....
's government, but they were permitted because the story itself was set in Soviet Russia and was directly critical of that regime. The films were successful, and the public easily realized that they were as much against fascism
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
as communism
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
. After several weeks, the films were pulled from theaters after the Nazi German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
and fascist Italian
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
governments discovered the story also carried an anti-fascist message.
Rediscovered in the 1960s through the efforts of Rand's lawyers, Erika Holzer
Erika Holzer
Erika Holzer is an American novelist and essayist who was a member of Ayn Rand's inner circle. Her novel Eye for an Eye was the basis for a major motion picture of the same name...
and Henry Mark Holzer, these films were re-edited into a new version with English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
subtitles composed by Erika Holzer and Revision co-Producer Duncan Scott. This version was approved by Rand and her estate and re-released as We the Living in 1986. A two-disc DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
of the film is currently being sold by Duncan Scott Productions.
Release details
- 1936, Macmillan, hardback
- 1937, Cassell, hardback
- 1942, Scalera Films, theatrical film versions, Italy (titled "Noi Vivi" and "Addio Kira")
- 1959, revised edition, Random House, hardback
- 1960, revised edition, Signet, paperback
- 1988, Duncan Scott Productions, US re-edited theatrical film version (titled "We the Living")
- 1996, 60th Anniversary edition, New American Library ISBN 0-451-18784-9, paperback
- 2009, DVD Special Edition of US theatrical film version
Influence
The American alternative rockAlternative rock
Alternative rock is a genre of rock music and a term used to describe a diverse musical movement that emerged from the independent music underground of the 1980s and became widely popular by the 1990s...
group We The Living
We The Living (band)
We the Living is a United States alternative rock group composed of singer, songwriter and guitarist John Paul Roney, electric guitarist Matthew Holmen, and drummer Benjamin Schaefer. Their sound draws on several musical genres, including pop, indie rock, melodic rock, and alternative to which the...
have explicitly stated that their name is derived from the novel and have often listed Rand and her Objectivist
Objectivism (Ayn Rand)
Objectivism is a philosophy created by the Russian-American philosopher and novelist Ayn Rand . Objectivism holds that reality exists independent of consciousness, that human beings have direct contact with reality through sense perception, that one can attain objective knowledge from perception...
views as a major influence to their music.
External links
- IMDB page for Noi vivi (1942)
- Love, Politics And Ayn Rand by Cathy Young, Forbes magazine, May 25, 2010