The Eye of Purgatory

This novel about death and decay was published in 1945 in the context of mass destruction of life. Its author, Jacques Spitz (born 1 October 1896), is regarded as the most important French writer of science fiction of his generation. He was born in Algeria where his father, a military officer, was stationed. Having completed his engineering studies at the École Polytechnique in Paris, he joined the army. He also served in the army in the Second World War and was awarded the Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur for this service to his country.

The two key characters in The Eye of Purgatory are a self-proclaimed German genius, Christian Dagerlöff, and an artist that he befriends, Jean Poldonski. Dagerlöff, having observed that Poldonski has lost interest in life, decides that he would be a suitable guinea pig for his experimental use of Siberian hare bacillus. He infects Poldonski with this. Poldonski’s initial response is ecstatic, considering himself to have recovered from his worldweariness:
“Something extraordinary has happened to me. I woke up cured!
My resumptions of consciousness on emerging from sleep are always immediate. When I woke up, this morning, I initially experienced a diffuse sensation, a sort of internal inflation of unknown nature, which surprised me until — at the moment when my misty gaze, encountering a pool of pale sunlight displayed on the wall facing my divan, recovered therein the magic of colour — I recognised  the sensation that is inflating my bosom as happiness: the happiness of which I had lost even the memory, the very idea; the joy of existence, quite simple, quite bald, given gratuitously, without cause or reason, accompanied by an appetite for life that multiplied my strength tenfold and made everything appear to me with a stupefying facility.”

Soon, however, he realises that the cure is more like a poison. From his experience of daily life, he concludes:
“I see things in the location where they are but in the state they will be in subsequently.”
His observation of the world is dominated by visions of decay and death, dust and ashes. A letter from Dagerlöff explains the process:
“In this bacillus, the advancement of time — the same one that confers upon the Siberian hare the presentiment of the boyar shotgun or the muzjik snare and ensures its salvation by flight or a clever detour — is a few seconds. In the improved conditions of culture that sufficed to secure the glory of the all-too-mortal Pasteur, the gene corresponding to the specific character of advancement is transmitted to the next generation in such a way that the advancement in time of the microbial colony increases with every generation.”
Poldonski has been infected with presentiment in his optic nerve and the condition is progressive, forcing him to see further and further into the future. He sees more and more decay, more and more death.
With this concept, Spitz enables the reader to look at the society shaped by war and genocide and observe no beauty and instead continuous degradation, disintegration and annihilation.