Novel published in Serbian as "Besnilo", Sveučilišna Naklada Liber, 1983, Zagreb, © Borislav Pekić; English translation © by Bernard Johnson.
Rabies part 1
"Peste si grande viendra a la grande gousse
Proche secours, est bien loinge les remedes,
Nostradamus
Mrs. Andrea Milliner of Stroud, Gloucestershire, died two months after being bitten by a dog while on holiday in India… Fifteen people have died from rabies in Britain since 1945. Mrs. Milliner's death was the firs for three years.
The Guardian, 9th October, 1981.
PROLOGUE – RHABDOVIRUS
Penetrating into the live cell of a foreign body, the virus substitutes its own for the cell's substance and transforms it into a factory for the production of new viruses. The changes which it brings about in this way in the life medium of the cell are incomparably deeper and more dramatic than man can ever hope to bring about in his own milieu.
The virus is the most perfect being in the cosmos. Its biological organization is nothing less than a machine for producing life in its purest sense. The virus is the summit of natural creative evolution.
The summit of artificial creative evolution is – an intelligent virus. A creation with the form of a man and the nature of a virus, the vitality of a virus and the intelligence of a man.
A symbiosis of a virus, divested of its lack of purpose and of man, freed of his limitation would rule over nature, which both otherwise serve only as refuse.
...
Wherever It passed, worlds would be transformed by cataclysms more terrible than any earthquake that had ever struck the Planet since its very beginnings.
Wherever It passed It would transmit fear, hatred and frenzy to those with the misfortune not to go mad at once from its touch; to those lucky enough to go mad it would transmit some other consciousness whose very nature no one would ever be able to penetrate.
It would once again become what It was created to be, what arrogant man had for some short time disputed: the smallest, yet the most powerful, the most dangerous, the most pitiless living creation in the Universe, incomprehensible to the unity of worlds to which its Neuron belonged. Born to die only when It alone would be left, and when there would be no more death for It to live on.
This time man would not be able to stand against It. Only Aristaeus, the son of Apollo, could have done so, but there was no belief left in the old gods any more.
And so It set off calmly to fulfill its destiny; to annihilate and to die."
Rabies part 1
"Peste si grande viendra a la grande gousse
Proche secours, est bien loinge les remedes,
Nostradamus
Mrs. Andrea Milliner of Stroud, Gloucestershire, died two months after being bitten by a dog while on holiday in India… Fifteen people have died from rabies in Britain since 1945. Mrs. Milliner's death was the firs for three years.
The Guardian, 9th October, 1981.
PROLOGUE – RHABDOVIRUS
Penetrating into the live cell of a foreign body, the virus substitutes its own for the cell's substance and transforms it into a factory for the production of new viruses. The changes which it brings about in this way in the life medium of the cell are incomparably deeper and more dramatic than man can ever hope to bring about in his own milieu.
The virus is the most perfect being in the cosmos. Its biological organization is nothing less than a machine for producing life in its purest sense. The virus is the summit of natural creative evolution.
The summit of artificial creative evolution is – an intelligent virus. A creation with the form of a man and the nature of a virus, the vitality of a virus and the intelligence of a man.
A symbiosis of a virus, divested of its lack of purpose and of man, freed of his limitation would rule over nature, which both otherwise serve only as refuse.
...
Wherever It passed, worlds would be transformed by cataclysms more terrible than any earthquake that had ever struck the Planet since its very beginnings.
Wherever It passed It would transmit fear, hatred and frenzy to those with the misfortune not to go mad at once from its touch; to those lucky enough to go mad it would transmit some other consciousness whose very nature no one would ever be able to penetrate.
It would once again become what It was created to be, what arrogant man had for some short time disputed: the smallest, yet the most powerful, the most dangerous, the most pitiless living creation in the Universe, incomprehensible to the unity of worlds to which its Neuron belonged. Born to die only when It alone would be left, and when there would be no more death for It to live on.
This time man would not be able to stand against It. Only Aristaeus, the son of Apollo, could have done so, but there was no belief left in the old gods any more.
And so It set off calmly to fulfill its destiny; to annihilate and to die."
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