Deus Ex Machina-2 > IDEAS & IDEALS

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This literary term, "God from the Machine" in English translation, is often employed in dramatic criticism for the unanticipated or arbitrary intervention of some outside force or person at the end of a play. A rich uncle returning home unexpectedly in the last act and rescues his nephew from poverty, the discovery of an unknown will, a fortunate coincidence or some quirk of fate -- these are instances of the "Deus Ex Machina." It originated in the practice of the Greek theater for solving the problem of the plot to bring the play to a conclusion by lowering a god onto the stage by some mechanical device.

     I have already used it for the title of my essay published several years ago in this column, when President Roh Tae-Woo, as leader of the ruling party then, turned the direction of the country towards democracy about-face, quite unexpectedly, by declaring 9 compromising principles and brought a happy ending to the would-be national tragedy whose plot seemed hopelessly complicated for anybody's solution. I thought that the role played by Mr. Roh at that moment fitted happily into that of the Deus Ex Machina. The title was good, I thought, and I was satisfied.

     But, recently, I came to regret having used the term for Mr. Roh because there came a better person to whom it could be more aptly applied : Mr. Mikhail Gorvachev of the Soviet Union. He came literally out of the machine that was far bigger, more powerful, hard and cold. And he came like a god. He came one day from nowhere, probably from the sky, onto the stage of world politics, and changed the world. He dispensed justice, and brought the drama of East-West confrontation to its end. In its kind and scale the case of Mr. Gorvachev is far more ideal for the application of the term, Deus Ex Machina. But, alas, who can foresee the future?

     In fact, it was not only I who did not foresee the future. When he first came to power in the Soviet Union, no one in the free world ever predicted the cataclysmic changes of the Soviet Union, nor foretold that the peace and freedom of the world would ever be initiated by this man. We just suspected that he would be another Stalin, Khrushchev or Brezhnev at his best and just prayed he would not be worse. We could easily guess that he must be another faithful member of the Communist Party, and he was there, like his predecessors, for the more effective and efficient operation of the party machine. Out of the machine, like a fish out of the water, there was no chance for him to survive. And there was no reason for him to jeopardize his hard-earned power and glory. But, to our surprise and disbelief, he walked out of it for unknown reasons risking his position and his life as well.

     Good out of evil? Is this the way the divine will work its way?

     There is, indeed, something mysterious and even divine about this man. He acts as if he is above human conditions. He moves as if there is nothing in his way. Omnipresent KGB, almighty Soviet military and unfallible Communist Party have proved themselves no match for him. It seems he is afraid of nothing. He went on his vacation knowing well that a military coup was brewing against him by the discontented generals and the high-ranking party members whose privileges and security had been seriously threatened. Like a god in Greek mythology he allowed them to conspire and defeated them with bare hands. He proved himself indestructible and invincible. Something must be behind him or with him.

     If not a god, he must be an angel. And to our great relief, he is a good angel. Suppose he is a bad angel, like Satan, with all his superior intelligence and extraordinary ability, but intent on doing evil. We know and have witnessed many individuals who, endowed with equal ability and intelligence, came to power and led their people only to war, death and destruction. As if evils personified, their intermittent appearance in humasn history has brought unbearable and unmeasurable misery, pain and sorrow to the millions of people, and all our good and productive resources and energies have been exhausted and wasted in encountering this progress of evil. But this man came to us with good news.

     One day he disappeared from the sight of men for a few days without notice, as the angels often do, leaving us all behind where we had just been. Then we realized once again the importance of this man. The world without him was the world of fear and repression, of threat and confrontation, bluffing each other on the brink of mutual destruction. An inch of freedom would cost barrels of blood again, and destroying the missiles loaded with nuclear warhead was just a beautiful dream and any conflict in a nook of the world was ready to flare up into a global Armageddon. His return was a return of hope and light, as the return of the sunshine after the storm.

     For all these unusual and incredible acts and deeds about him, he is simply a man, a good-looking gentleman devoted to his charming wife, Raisa, and I like him all the more for this reason. He accompanies her everywhere he goes, and the happy couple makes us happy. It is evident that he is happier being with her and his family at home than wielding absolute power ruthlessly at his office in the Kremlin. His public appearance with his wife Raisa was the first signal to the world that he is a man for peace, freedom and happiness. My long experience with people in life tells me definitely that a happily-married man has no time to inflict pain on others.

     It is simply a wonder, anyway, how a man like him reached that awful position of power in a state where only the blind believers in the Marxist ideology and dogmatic followers of the Communist Party are supposed to succeed and survive. His success is the triumph of man against machine, of humanity against dogma, of truth against lies. And I hope sincerely there will be another person from the North Korea in the near future who will encourage me to write "Deus Ex Machina-3" unashamedly.
          (October 23, 1991)