ABSTRACT
Anthony Burgess’s novel has a quite improbable history, which, as we will see, has contributed directly to the diverging interpretations to which it has given rise. It is impossible to ignore this history or the differing interpretations when discussing the work, all the more so when our primary focus is one of the book’s central themes, i.e., violence. Indeed, the disparity between the possible readings stems directly from the fundamental discrepancy in how violence, and our relationship to it, is portrayed in the different editions of the novel. Without a doubt, Humanism and Terror remains Merleau-Ponty’s most neglected and most unread work. Even recently in France, the book was left out of print. Experts have no doubt that the nuclear warhead openly displayed in the first photograph mentioned earlier is real, and that the North Korean regime is rapidly developing the means to propel an intercontinental ballistic missile toward Washington, using the engine depicted in the second photograph.
