Category Archives: Caietele Echinox
The End(s) of the Dystopian City: From “Metropolis” to “Gravity’s Rainbow”… and backThe End(s) of the Dystopian City: From “Metropolis” to “Gravity’s Rainbow”… and back
Horace Newte’s Master Beast: Space, Time and the Consequences of Trespassing against NatureHorace Newte’s Master Beast: Space, Time and the Consequences of Trespassing against Nature
Niculae Gheran
Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
dum_spiro_spero09@yahoo.com
Horace Newte’s Master Beast:
Space, Time and the Consequences of Trespassing against Nature
Abstract: The following article attempts to discuss the work of the British Edwardian writer Horace, W.C Newte, The Master Beast: Being a True Account of the Ruthless Tyranny Inflicted on the British People by Socialism, AD, 1888–2020. Newte’s central aim in the novel seems to be that of showing that as long as a social system that does not go along the laws of a Darwinian nature in which ‘survival of the fittest’ is the central axiom governing, it cannot succeed as a viable alternative and will end in tyranny. The article comments on the way in which the author constructs his dystopian city as a topos disconnected from the laws of nature, and the ways nature makes itself felt despite ideological repression in violent outbursts that threaten to destabilize the system. A spatial analysis is also conducted in order to underline the symbolical connections between different types of geography that are marginal, overlap or are situated in the past of the narrative. The author seems to use these alternative spaces as symbolic points of reference in contrast to the dystopian city.
Keywords: Dystopia; Horace Newte; Master Beast; Nature; Darwin; Communism; Symbolic geography.
The first honest thing that must be said about Newte’s text is that we are clearly dealing with a work that has its own assumptions apart from those it seeks to criticize as unnatural. Having this in mind, the purpose of this paper is not to take a moral stance, and to agree or disagree with Newte’s conceptualization of natural space or his views on what he sees as the immutable laws of nature that politics should reflect, but rather to present them as such from a detached viewpoint. For this reason, my only purpose is to analyze his conceptualization of nature at the level of imagery and also the negative consequences the author attaches to trespassing against it.
I think that there are both differences and similarities between other writers of anti-utopias such as George Orwell or Yevgeny Zamyatin and Horace Newte. All these authors presented the repression of nature (one that is not ideologically bound in a negative light) and the ways in which this nature reacts violently against this process. However, while the former constructed dystopian fictional spaces from which ‘nature’ was symbolically repressed to a marginal topology existing in the same time frame with that of the city, – the forest near Orwell’s London, the space beyond the green wall etc. – and from which it violently returns personified to haunt the city, in Newte’s case, nature overlaps the dystopian space and causes problems from within to the ideologically bound symbolic topology constructed above it. Ideological repression still exists but the fact that it goes against nature is portrayed as causing aberrant and grotesque manifestations of it. In a sense Newte is the most optimistic of all authors of anti-utopias because of a firm belief that no system that trespasses against the laws of nature cannot survive. Charles Darwin seems to be the author’s main influence, for he believes that a political system is successful only inasmuch it runs along the Darwinian world view. Darwin of course believed that ‘survival of the fittest’ is the most important law that governs nature. From this particular perspective, we note how an egalitarian system such as socialism is to the author a system contrary to nature. In his opinion, freedom can be achieved only if a political system is at a particular time, the fittest. The author does not necessarily take a political stance; rather he believes that the battle of different political ideologies is governed by the same laws as nature. Thus, socialism may even win at a certain point if it exhibits a strength of cause greater than that of what it seeks to replace. However, its main weakness is the fact that, in the long run, its theories go against nature and would fail on this account and be replaced by another. His theory of the Master Beast is expounded in the beginning of the novel.
The keen faced man began by admitting the justice of Socialism in the abstract. ‘Were it not for the human factor, and the dominating purposes of nature, a system satisfactory to all might be established on present day conditions, which last had been inevitably evolved from pre-existing circumstances. But, as the obsession of nature cannot be eliminated, it must be taken into account’, he said. The speaker then contended that the human race is as ruthlessly governed by natural laws as is any other species of animals, plants, fishes, birds or insects; that nature produces more of any given genus that can possibly find subsistence, and the pitiless competition for subsistence not only cuts off the weaklings, but strengthens the survivors. Then, amidst murmurs of disapproval, he went on to say that in most herds or flocks was what farmers called a master beast, who took more than his fair share of food and generally did himself well at the expense of others. He contended that the master beast was entitled to the good things it monopolized on account of the superior courage and strength it exhibited. Then he declared that mankind had always been dominated by a master beast. Sometimes it was called Divine right, at other priesthood or, again, tyranny of a revolutionary republic; now it seemed to be capitalism that held the world in its grip; tomorrow it would probably democracy; the day after it might be Socialism. But, whatever shibboleth was top dog, it got there owing to the inherent strength of its cause, and maintained its proud position so long as it fell in with nature’s law, which was survival of the fittest for time and place as occasion arose. He declared that the laws of nature were immutable; also that socialism, in preparing to go counter those laws was only looking for trouble.[1]
There are several key issues and images in the novel that the author uses in order to show the ways in which socialism intentionally departs from these facts in order to correct nature itself. First, there is the issue of property. Newte believes in a natural instinct to acquire propriety. Fear of poverty is necessary in his opinion because, he believes, that it is the only way by which those who are naturally thriftless and lazy are compelled to live hard working, self respecting lives. Whether or not we believe this to be true, this is how the author constructs human nature. Childbearing and childcare as linked to the issue of propriety is also tackled. One of his assumptions is that all parents have a natural wish to acquire sufficiency for their offspring. To curb this tendency, some older versions of socialism proposed that all women should be held in common and that children should be taken away from their mothers in order for them to be raised by the state. ‘The chief concern of the state is to destroy anything that approximates to the proprietary instinct in human nature.’[2] The family unit is portrayed as especially dangerous to the new order because, the idea of family awakens selfish instincts in the father, who is resolved to do the best for his children, which, ‘if permitted would end communism tomorrow.’[3] The novelist uses explicitly gruesome imagery in order to illustrate the disturbing natural effects that a method such as collective breeding may cause.
The mental hospital occupies an important place in the novel. In Newte’s book, the ideological frame of the dystopian world constructed everybody that opposed the system as insane. ‘To oppose, or so much as question, […] was to raise the question on one’s sanity.’[4] The mental hospital is also portrayed as the place where mothers, who cannot get psychologically adjusted to the idea of collective breeding usually end up.
It is interesting to see how authors of anti-utopias elaborated on the idea of gender identity, especially on a topological scale. In most cases, the topography of the anti-utopia is gendered as symbolically masculine, with an authoritarian father figure in control (Orwell’s Big Brother, Zamyatin’s Benefactor, etc.) Newte’s Gole is actually labeled ‘the father of the people.’ This happens despite ideological pretences at a frame that supposedly guarantees equality. The same applies to Newte. In fact, women are excluded altogether from the political process that, in our case, is a simulacrum of elective democracy. There are two reasons for this political move. First of all, as argued above, in Newte’s anti-utopia, children are bred by the state. The author argues that women would naturally (and in fact in the novel did try to) vote against such a measure that takes their children from them.
‘The Government is an annually elective matter in which every adult male has a voice’
‘Not every adult female?’
‘Scarcely, but not found – er – er strictly advisable to continue the privilege’
[…]
‘But I believe Whale told me that once women had votes’
‘They did,’ interrupted Dale
‘Didn’t they use them to prevent themselves being deprived of their children?’
‘That is why they lost their votes. The Government was in great danger of being defeated by the women being against them; it passed a law in the nick of time, which, by taking away their voting power, made its tyranny secure’[5]
Secondly, there is the fact that female identity is constructed as subversive to the social order because – from the author’s perspective – it is constructed in accordance with a principle that opposes the male rational order. They are repressed from the political process because they supposedly ‘lack restraint.’[6] For this reason, unmarried women are not allowed to mix freely with men until the day’s work is completed. In the absence of a moral system or of a religion, young women are kept under lock and key in seminaries from which they are not allowed to mix with other men. Newte’s point seems to be in this case that all socialism manages with respect to the issue of gender is the replacement of one type of repressive system with another. In fact, Gole, ‘the father of the nation’ believes in the novel that it may be an option to reintroduce religion to compensate for the lack of useful repression of female sexuality. Indeed Newte does his best to picture a world in which sexual desire runs out of control in the absence of a moral system. The socialists also do not seem to endorse fully this extreme sexual freedom since it is a part of nature. However, they are conscious that sexuality was now the only natural valve left open for manifesting all other repressed natural instincts and it was dangerous to tamper with it. Thus, they tolerate the ‘saturnalias,’ which are nothing more than violent collective orgies taking place from time to time and last for a few days. These brutish manifestations of repressed human nature were all that was permitted, for lack of a way of constrain, and are presented to us by the author in a delirium of images that the author likens to a Satanic revelation.
Men and women of all ages made unrestrained, obscene gestures; their eyes shone with lewdness. Any man or any woman would throw arms about anyone of the opposite sex to embrace them voluptuously. […] The clamor broke out afresh but now it was subdued to a languorous note, as if the night were dominated by sensuous longing. Women sobbed softly owing to excess of delight; others of their sex, surfeited with delicious kisses from complete strangers, would throw up their white arms to faint with ecstasy. The warn night air clung to the earth with a long, voluptuous kiss; the world seemed embraced by loving lips; the universe was stepped in love.[7]
Where male identity is concerned, things are somewhat similar in the sense that, here too we have outbursts of natural animal instincts that can no longer be kept in control by a moral system. As the character Dale argues in the novel ‘balked lust is the only thing that can arouse the manhood of the nation’ in Newte’s anti-utopia. Thus individuals become soulless automatons, manifesting occasional outbursts of animalism. The absence of competition is again criticized from a Darwinian perspective. That is, if there is no competition that separates the less prepared from the experts, quality of services drops. Officials are afraid of the quality of drivers, or doctors that are less than prepared. The class system is eliminated in theory but maintained in practice. In fact, we are dealing with ruling oligarchy that maintained its privileges over the great majority of other people.
Another important thing that sets apart Newte’s narrative from that of Orwell or Zamyatin is the fact that we are dealing with a time-travel narrative. The author is quite original in the manner in which he introduces the traveler motif, common to utopias or anti-utopias. In the novel, an Englishman, during a war situation between Britain and Germany, hides in the basement of a building and is given a miracle drug that puts him to sleep just before the building collapses on top of him. The substance apparently preserves his life functions in a state of stasis. When he is brought back to life, after more than one hundred years, he awakens in a dystopia. Britain had become a socialist country in a meantime. Thus, the plot moves forward by virtue of comparisons between the non-socialist past and the dystopian present. The author also constructs characters in his anti-utopia that mirror characters from the pre-dystopian past. We see thus how, besides constructing a marginal topography that is in the same time frame with the dystopian topos, Newte posits a marginal topography set firmly in the past. The main character bears with him fresh memory of the world before the anti-utopia and does not need to reconstruct this memory out of the palimpsest created by the state by connecting with an architectural topographic memory as Winston Smith does in 1984. However, similarly to Orwell and Zamyatin’s worlds, travelers linked to this antinomian, alternative space have the symbolic potential to create a point of fracture in the symbolic cohesion of the dystopian world.
Individualism is abolished under socialism. Newte repudiates the fact that the natural trait of people to develop personal idiosyncrasies that used to individuate each character have all been swept away in the fictional space of his anti-utopia. It is important to observe that the first thing the main character notices upon awaking more than one hundred years after the socialists have taken control of Britain is the utter uniformization of space.
When I got to the window and looked out I saw and unexpected sight. Instead of a view of a portion of London street with all its variety of commonplace architecture, I saw that I was in a road in which all houses were built in precisely the same way. […] I saw what was a seemingly endless vista of similar houses, in the midst of which rose at regular intervals a square, unlovely structure. I could discern no sign of church tower, factory chimney or such landmark: as far as I could see, the town was laid out strictly according to design.[8]
In contrast, overlapping this type of rationalized space, we have the spaces the regime maintained from the pre-revolutionary era with the ideological purpose of reminding of the bad conditions the workers endured before the socialists came to power. The familiarity of this space proves welcome to the main character coming from the past rather than disturbing. As for greater structures maintained we have Buckingham Palace, its original function usurped and transformed into the place from where now Gole ruled the country.
In the neighborhood that was once Victoria there were landmarks I recognized. Where so much of comparatively recent date had disappeared it was strange to see the quaint little cottages which, in a turning off the Buckingham Palace Road, once formed an oasis of old worldliness in a desert of stucco, still in existence. […] It was a relief to recognize the stable wall of Buckingham Palace. When the familiar Philistine splendor of the palace itself came into view it was like meeting an old friend.[9]
Thirdly, there is another type of space that the author constructs in his novel, one that mirrors the downfall and decay of the old society. More than the architecture and space mentioned above that was kept in shape for ideological purposes, this space bears witness to the passage of time. It is a space, alongside the monuments or buildings that occupy it, that functions as a repository of cultural memory. The image of a beheaded statue of Queen Ann points not only to the disappearance of the centuries old tradition of monarchic rule from British soil under socialism but also, in my opinion, hints at other failed attempts of revolution, particularly the French Revolution where the monarch was beheaded at the guillotine. Also it seems to hint at how revolutionary ideology threatens to transform the environment and adapt it to ideology, a crime that is certain to trigger its downfall. Space becomes important in relation to memory preservation because space, and more specifically buildings and architecture, have the potential to outlive the individual and maintain his cultural heritage even in the face of annihilation. Robert Bevan makes this clear in his book The Destruction of Memory (year of publication?) where he points out the cultural importance of what he calls ‘totemic architecture’[10] as caches of historical memory. He gives historical events where buildings were targets precisely because of their memorial role: the French Revolution, the Nazi Kristallnacht, Stalin’s destruction of churches, Guernica, Dresden, Cambodia, Bosnia, the destruction of Sarajevo’s National Library and most recently al-Qaeda’s destruction of the World Trade Centre seem to confirm Bevan’s thesis that there is not only a war against people but a cultural war against architecture and its symbolic role.[11] Within the context of the French Revolution, the mansions of Place Bellecour were condemned to death because ‘they were an insult to Republican morals[12]’ and bell towers were threatened with demolition because ‘their height above other buildings seems to contradict the principles of equality.’[13] As the philosopher Henri Lefebvre argues: ‘monumental space offered each member of a society an image of that membership, an image of his or her social visage […] It constituted a collective mirror more faithful than any personal one.’[14] There is also the issue of the statue of Queen Anne placement, in the churchyard of St. Paul’s Cathedral, another historical lieu de memoire on which the passage of time is shown in Newte’s novel. The image points to the former British powerful position in the world when the cathedral and statue were built. In 1712 Queen Anne laid claim to England, Ireland, France and North America, all territories being represented on the base of the statue. The Royal Coat of Arms of the time was quartered with the French Fleur-de-Lis as well as the Gaelic Harp and English Lions. Newte’s point in showing us a beheaded Queen Ann and decayed cathedral is that Britain has become under socialism only a shadow of its former self.
[…] many of the warehouses, which were empty and had their windows broken, seemed to brood mournfully over their former activity: grass grew here and there in the streets; the city churchyards were smothered with rank , noisome vegetation; the statue of Queen Anne set up in St. Paul’s Churchyard had lost its head, while the Cathedral itself, neglected and in sad repair, looked down on a city from which the wealth and consequent importance had departed.[15]
The image of the former power and glory enjoyed by the British nation in the past is contrasted with images from the present weakened state of affairs when the colonial Other that in the meantime became stronger returns to conquer Britain. Because of natural weakness, the colonizers become the colonized.
In Newte’s case, as in works by Orwell and Zamyatin, we note that there is also a marginal topography where people who turn their backs against socialist civilization for the sake of their children or spouse and run away to live ‘in the wilds’ ‘like beasts of prey.’[16] Here, they live an existence menaced by nature itself, which becomes the enemy; the cold winters that kill off those that cannot survive. What Newte suggests here is that they much rather prefer this existence at the mercy of the elements than the terror of Gole’s state.
Images of wild nature fascinates the author who portrays both images of Darwinian influence where survival of the fittest is the most important law governing nature, and a romanticized nature of the sublime variety in the vein sung by British poets such as William Wordsworth. Living in harmony with this natural space is seen by Newte, as it was by the British poet before him, a source of revelation and inner peace.
’Has it ever struck you how certain things in nature – a running stream, a particular tree, a view of a bay in some lights, moonlight a corner of a wood, irresistibly appeal to one’s being; how watching them seems to satisfy a definite mind hunger, and, for the time being, appears to complete one?’
‘Certainly, I have often remarked it, I replied’
‘So it is with this tree; its strength and repose appeal to me more than I can say. When I’m very depressed I get away to it if it’s possible. Its strong philosophy does no end of good.’
I followed Merridew’s glance, which roved appreciatingly first over its stately trunk, and then its limbs, which, as if it were the easiest thing in the world, confidently supported its burden of lesser branches and leaves.
In the above, we saw how in Newte’s conception of space and time, nature is the only constant. Political systems rise and fall depending on whether they abide by these laws or not. Socialism came to power in a moment when it proved stronger than the system that preceded it. However, its own departure from nature caused its downfall in the long run. An image of helplessness on the part of our attempts at spatial and political organization emanates from the novel. As the author notices ‘mankind had always been dominated by a master beast. Sometimes it was called Divine right, at other priesthood or, again, tyranny of a revolutionary republic; now it seemed to be capitalism that held the world in its grip; tomorrow it would probably be democracy; the day after it might be Socialism. But, whatever shibboleth was top dog, it got there owing to the inherent strength of its cause, and maintained its proud position so long as it fell in with nature’s law, which was survival of the fittest for time and place as occasion arose. […] Nature’s law is the Master Beast of all Master Beasts.’
Bibliography
Bevan, Robert. The Destruction of Memory, Reaktion Books, London, UK, 2006
Gamboni, Dario. The Destruction of Art: Iconoclasm and Vandalism since the French Revolution, Reaktion Books, London, UK, 1997
Newte, Horace W.C, The Master Beast, Rebman Limited, London, UK, 1907
Hibbert, Cristopher. The French Revolution, Penguin Books, London, UK, 1980
Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space, Oxford, UK, 1991
Notes
[12] Gamboni, Dario. The Destruction of Art: Iconoclasm and Vandalism since the French Revolution, Reaktion Books, 1997, London, UK, pp. 33, caption 6.
Niculae Gheran
Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
dum_spiro_spero09@yahoo.com
Horace Newte’s Master Beast:
Space, Time and the Consequences of Trespassing against Nature
Abstract: The following article attempts to discuss the work of the British Edwardian writer Horace, W.C Newte, The Master Beast: Being a True Account of the Ruthless Tyranny Inflicted on the British People by Socialism, AD, 1888–2020. Newte’s central aim in the novel seems to be that of showing that as long as a social system that does not go along the laws of a Darwinian nature in which ‘survival of the fittest’ is the central axiom governing, it cannot succeed as a viable alternative and will end in tyranny. The article comments on the way in which the author constructs his dystopian city as a topos disconnected from the laws of nature, and the ways nature makes itself felt despite ideological repression in violent outbursts that threaten to destabilize the system. A spatial analysis is also conducted in order to underline the symbolical connections between different types of geography that are marginal, overlap or are situated in the past of the narrative. The author seems to use these alternative spaces as symbolic points of reference in contrast to the dystopian city.
Keywords: Dystopia; Horace Newte; Master Beast; Nature; Darwin; Communism; Symbolic geography.
The first honest thing that must be said about Newte’s text is that we are clearly dealing with a work that has its own assumptions apart from those it seeks to criticize as unnatural. Having this in mind, the purpose of this paper is not to take a moral stance, and to agree or disagree with Newte’s conceptualization of natural space or his views on what he sees as the immutable laws of nature that politics should reflect, but rather to present them as such from a detached viewpoint. For this reason, my only purpose is to analyze his conceptualization of nature at the level of imagery and also the negative consequences the author attaches to trespassing against it.
I think that there are both differences and similarities between other writers of anti-utopias such as George Orwell or Yevgeny Zamyatin and Horace Newte. All these authors presented the repression of nature (one that is not ideologically bound in a negative light) and the ways in which this nature reacts violently against this process. However, while the former constructed dystopian fictional spaces from which ‘nature’ was symbolically repressed to a marginal topology existing in the same time frame with that of the city, – the forest near Orwell’s London, the space beyond the green wall etc. – and from which it violently returns personified to haunt the city, in Newte’s case, nature overlaps the dystopian space and causes problems from within to the ideologically bound symbolic topology constructed above it. Ideological repression still exists but the fact that it goes against nature is portrayed as causing aberrant and grotesque manifestations of it. In a sense Newte is the most optimistic of all authors of anti-utopias because of a firm belief that no system that trespasses against the laws of nature cannot survive. Charles Darwin seems to be the author’s main influence, for he believes that a political system is successful only inasmuch it runs along the Darwinian world view. Darwin of course believed that ‘survival of the fittest’ is the most important law that governs nature. From this particular perspective, we note how an egalitarian system such as socialism is to the author a system contrary to nature. In his opinion, freedom can be achieved only if a political system is at a particular time, the fittest. The author does not necessarily take a political stance; rather he believes that the battle of different political ideologies is governed by the same laws as nature. Thus, socialism may even win at a certain point if it exhibits a strength of cause greater than that of what it seeks to replace. However, its main weakness is the fact that, in the long run, its theories go against nature and would fail on this account and be replaced by another. His theory of the Master Beast is expounded in the beginning of the novel.
The keen faced man began by admitting the justice of Socialism in the abstract. ‘Were it not for the human factor, and the dominating purposes of nature, a system satisfactory to all might be established on present day conditions, which last had been inevitably evolved from pre-existing circumstances. But, as the obsession of nature cannot be eliminated, it must be taken into account’, he said. The speaker then contended that the human race is as ruthlessly governed by natural laws as is any other species of animals, plants, fishes, birds or insects; that nature produces more of any given genus that can possibly find subsistence, and the pitiless competition for subsistence not only cuts off the weaklings, but strengthens the survivors. Then, amidst murmurs of disapproval, he went on to say that in most herds or flocks was what farmers called a master beast, who took more than his fair share of food and generally did himself well at the expense of others. He contended that the master beast was entitled to the good things it monopolized on account of the superior courage and strength it exhibited. Then he declared that mankind had always been dominated by a master beast. Sometimes it was called Divine right, at other priesthood or, again, tyranny of a revolutionary republic; now it seemed to be capitalism that held the world in its grip; tomorrow it would probably democracy; the day after it might be Socialism. But, whatever shibboleth was top dog, it got there owing to the inherent strength of its cause, and maintained its proud position so long as it fell in with nature’s law, which was survival of the fittest for time and place as occasion arose. He declared that the laws of nature were immutable; also that socialism, in preparing to go counter those laws was only looking for trouble.[1]
There are several key issues and images in the novel that the author uses in order to show the ways in which socialism intentionally departs from these facts in order to correct nature itself. First, there is the issue of property. Newte believes in a natural instinct to acquire propriety. Fear of poverty is necessary in his opinion because, he believes, that it is the only way by which those who are naturally thriftless and lazy are compelled to live hard working, self respecting lives. Whether or not we believe this to be true, this is how the author constructs human nature. Childbearing and childcare as linked to the issue of propriety is also tackled. One of his assumptions is that all parents have a natural wish to acquire sufficiency for their offspring. To curb this tendency, some older versions of socialism proposed that all women should be held in common and that children should be taken away from their mothers in order for them to be raised by the state. ‘The chief concern of the state is to destroy anything that approximates to the proprietary instinct in human nature.’[2] The family unit is portrayed as especially dangerous to the new order because, the idea of family awakens selfish instincts in the father, who is resolved to do the best for his children, which, ‘if permitted would end communism tomorrow.’[3] The novelist uses explicitly gruesome imagery in order to illustrate the disturbing natural effects that a method such as collective breeding may cause.
The mental hospital occupies an important place in the novel. In Newte’s book, the ideological frame of the dystopian world constructed everybody that opposed the system as insane. ‘To oppose, or so much as question, […] was to raise the question on one’s sanity.’[4] The mental hospital is also portrayed as the place where mothers, who cannot get psychologically adjusted to the idea of collective breeding usually end up.
It is interesting to see how authors of anti-utopias elaborated on the idea of gender identity, especially on a topological scale. In most cases, the topography of the anti-utopia is gendered as symbolically masculine, with an authoritarian father figure in control (Orwell’s Big Brother, Zamyatin’s Benefactor, etc.) Newte’s Gole is actually labeled ‘the father of the people.’ This happens despite ideological pretences at a frame that supposedly guarantees equality. The same applies to Newte. In fact, women are excluded altogether from the political process that, in our case, is a simulacrum of elective democracy. There are two reasons for this political move. First of all, as argued above, in Newte’s anti-utopia, children are bred by the state. The author argues that women would naturally (and in fact in the novel did try to) vote against such a measure that takes their children from them.
‘The Government is an annually elective matter in which every adult male has a voice’
‘Not every adult female?’
‘Scarcely, but not found – er – er strictly advisable to continue the privilege’
[…]
‘But I believe Whale told me that once women had votes’
‘They did,’ interrupted Dale
‘Didn’t they use them to prevent themselves being deprived of their children?’
‘That is why they lost their votes. The Government was in great danger of being defeated by the women being against them; it passed a law in the nick of time, which, by taking away their voting power, made its tyranny secure’[5]
Secondly, there is the fact that female identity is constructed as subversive to the social order because – from the author’s perspective – it is constructed in accordance with a principle that opposes the male rational order. They are repressed from the political process because they supposedly ‘lack restraint.’[6] For this reason, unmarried women are not allowed to mix freely with men until the day’s work is completed. In the absence of a moral system or of a religion, young women are kept under lock and key in seminaries from which they are not allowed to mix with other men. Newte’s point seems to be in this case that all socialism manages with respect to the issue of gender is the replacement of one type of repressive system with another. In fact, Gole, ‘the father of the nation’ believes in the novel that it may be an option to reintroduce religion to compensate for the lack of useful repression of female sexuality. Indeed Newte does his best to picture a world in which sexual desire runs out of control in the absence of a moral system. The socialists also do not seem to endorse fully this extreme sexual freedom since it is a part of nature. However, they are conscious that sexuality was now the only natural valve left open for manifesting all other repressed natural instincts and it was dangerous to tamper with it. Thus, they tolerate the ‘saturnalias,’ which are nothing more than violent collective orgies taking place from time to time and last for a few days. These brutish manifestations of repressed human nature were all that was permitted, for lack of a way of constrain, and are presented to us by the author in a delirium of images that the author likens to a Satanic revelation.
Men and women of all ages made unrestrained, obscene gestures; their eyes shone with lewdness. Any man or any woman would throw arms about anyone of the opposite sex to embrace them voluptuously. […] The clamor broke out afresh but now it was subdued to a languorous note, as if the night were dominated by sensuous longing. Women sobbed softly owing to excess of delight; others of their sex, surfeited with delicious kisses from complete strangers, would throw up their white arms to faint with ecstasy. The warn night air clung to the earth with a long, voluptuous kiss; the world seemed embraced by loving lips; the universe was stepped in love.[7]
Where male identity is concerned, things are somewhat similar in the sense that, here too we have outbursts of natural animal instincts that can no longer be kept in control by a moral system. As the character Dale argues in the novel ‘balked lust is the only thing that can arouse the manhood of the nation’ in Newte’s anti-utopia. Thus individuals become soulless automatons, manifesting occasional outbursts of animalism. The absence of competition is again criticized from a Darwinian perspective. That is, if there is no competition that separates the less prepared from the experts, quality of services drops. Officials are afraid of the quality of drivers, or doctors that are less than prepared. The class system is eliminated in theory but maintained in practice. In fact, we are dealing with ruling oligarchy that maintained its privileges over the great majority of other people.
Another important thing that sets apart Newte’s narrative from that of Orwell or Zamyatin is the fact that we are dealing with a time-travel narrative. The author is quite original in the manner in which he introduces the traveler motif, common to utopias or anti-utopias. In the novel, an Englishman, during a war situation between Britain and Germany, hides in the basement of a building and is given a miracle drug that puts him to sleep just before the building collapses on top of him. The substance apparently preserves his life functions in a state of stasis. When he is brought back to life, after more than one hundred years, he awakens in a dystopia. Britain had become a socialist country in a meantime. Thus, the plot moves forward by virtue of comparisons between the non-socialist past and the dystopian present. The author also constructs characters in his anti-utopia that mirror characters from the pre-dystopian past. We see thus how, besides constructing a marginal topography that is in the same time frame with the dystopian topos, Newte posits a marginal topography set firmly in the past. The main character bears with him fresh memory of the world before the anti-utopia and does not need to reconstruct this memory out of the palimpsest created by the state by connecting with an architectural topographic memory as Winston Smith does in 1984. However, similarly to Orwell and Zamyatin’s worlds, travelers linked to this antinomian, alternative space have the symbolic potential to create a point of fracture in the symbolic cohesion of the dystopian world.
Individualism is abolished under socialism. Newte repudiates the fact that the natural trait of people to develop personal idiosyncrasies that used to individuate each character have all been swept away in the fictional space of his anti-utopia. It is important to observe that the first thing the main character notices upon awaking more than one hundred years after the socialists have taken control of Britain is the utter uniformization of space.
When I got to the window and looked out I saw and unexpected sight. Instead of a view of a portion of London street with all its variety of commonplace architecture, I saw that I was in a road in which all houses were built in precisely the same way. […] I saw what was a seemingly endless vista of similar houses, in the midst of which rose at regular intervals a square, unlovely structure. I could discern no sign of church tower, factory chimney or such landmark: as far as I could see, the town was laid out strictly according to design.[8]
In contrast, overlapping this type of rationalized space, we have the spaces the regime maintained from the pre-revolutionary era with the ideological purpose of reminding of the bad conditions the workers endured before the socialists came to power. The familiarity of this space proves welcome to the main character coming from the past rather than disturbing. As for greater structures maintained we have Buckingham Palace, its original function usurped and transformed into the place from where now Gole ruled the country.
In the neighborhood that was once Victoria there were landmarks I recognized. Where so much of comparatively recent date had disappeared it was strange to see the quaint little cottages which, in a turning off the Buckingham Palace Road, once formed an oasis of old worldliness in a desert of stucco, still in existence. […] It was a relief to recognize the stable wall of Buckingham Palace. When the familiar Philistine splendor of the palace itself came into view it was like meeting an old friend.[9]
Thirdly, there is another type of space that the author constructs in his novel, one that mirrors the downfall and decay of the old society. More than the architecture and space mentioned above that was kept in shape for ideological purposes, this space bears witness to the passage of time. It is a space, alongside the monuments or buildings that occupy it, that functions as a repository of cultural memory. The image of a beheaded statue of Queen Ann points not only to the disappearance of the centuries old tradition of monarchic rule from British soil under socialism but also, in my opinion, hints at other failed attempts of revolution, particularly the French Revolution where the monarch was beheaded at the guillotine. Also it seems to hint at how revolutionary ideology threatens to transform the environment and adapt it to ideology, a crime that is certain to trigger its downfall. Space becomes important in relation to memory preservation because space, and more specifically buildings and architecture, have the potential to outlive the individual and maintain his cultural heritage even in the face of annihilation. Robert Bevan makes this clear in his book The Destruction of Memory (year of publication?) where he points out the cultural importance of what he calls ‘totemic architecture’[10] as caches of historical memory. He gives historical events where buildings were targets precisely because of their memorial role: the French Revolution, the Nazi Kristallnacht, Stalin’s destruction of churches, Guernica, Dresden, Cambodia, Bosnia, the destruction of Sarajevo’s National Library and most recently al-Qaeda’s destruction of the World Trade Centre seem to confirm Bevan’s thesis that there is not only a war against people but a cultural war against architecture and its symbolic role.[11] Within the context of the French Revolution, the mansions of Place Bellecour were condemned to death because ‘they were an insult to Republican morals[12]’ and bell towers were threatened with demolition because ‘their height above other buildings seems to contradict the principles of equality.’[13] As the philosopher Henri Lefebvre argues: ‘monumental space offered each member of a society an image of that membership, an image of his or her social visage […] It constituted a collective mirror more faithful than any personal one.’[14] There is also the issue of the statue of Queen Anne placement, in the churchyard of St. Paul’s Cathedral, another historical lieu de memoire on which the passage of time is shown in Newte’s novel. The image points to the former British powerful position in the world when the cathedral and statue were built. In 1712 Queen Anne laid claim to England, Ireland, France and North America, all territories being represented on the base of the statue. The Royal Coat of Arms of the time was quartered with the French Fleur-de-Lis as well as the Gaelic Harp and English Lions. Newte’s point in showing us a beheaded Queen Ann and decayed cathedral is that Britain has become under socialism only a shadow of its former self.
[…] many of the warehouses, which were empty and had their windows broken, seemed to brood mournfully over their former activity: grass grew here and there in the streets; the city churchyards were smothered with rank , noisome vegetation; the statue of Queen Anne set up in St. Paul’s Churchyard had lost its head, while the Cathedral itself, neglected and in sad repair, looked down on a city from which the wealth and consequent importance had departed.[15]
The image of the former power and glory enjoyed by the British nation in the past is contrasted with images from the present weakened state of affairs when the colonial Other that in the meantime became stronger returns to conquer Britain. Because of natural weakness, the colonizers become the colonized.
In Newte’s case, as in works by Orwell and Zamyatin, we note that there is also a marginal topography where people who turn their backs against socialist civilization for the sake of their children or spouse and run away to live ‘in the wilds’ ‘like beasts of prey.’[16] Here, they live an existence menaced by nature itself, which becomes the enemy; the cold winters that kill off those that cannot survive. What Newte suggests here is that they much rather prefer this existence at the mercy of the elements than the terror of Gole’s state.
Images of wild nature fascinates the author who portrays both images of Darwinian influence where survival of the fittest is the most important law governing nature, and a romanticized nature of the sublime variety in the vein sung by British poets such as William Wordsworth. Living in harmony with this natural space is seen by Newte, as it was by the British poet before him, a source of revelation and inner peace.
’Has it ever struck you how certain things in nature – a running stream, a particular tree, a view of a bay in some lights, moonlight a corner of a wood, irresistibly appeal to one’s being; how watching them seems to satisfy a definite mind hunger, and, for the time being, appears to complete one?’
‘Certainly, I have often remarked it, I replied’
‘So it is with this tree; its strength and repose appeal to me more than I can say. When I’m very depressed I get away to it if it’s possible. Its strong philosophy does no end of good.’
I followed Merridew’s glance, which roved appreciatingly first over its stately trunk, and then its limbs, which, as if it were the easiest thing in the world, confidently supported its burden of lesser branches and leaves.
In the above, we saw how in Newte’s conception of space and time, nature is the only constant. Political systems rise and fall depending on whether they abide by these laws or not. Socialism came to power in a moment when it proved stronger than the system that preceded it. However, its own departure from nature caused its downfall in the long run. An image of helplessness on the part of our attempts at spatial and political organization emanates from the novel. As the author notices ‘mankind had always been dominated by a master beast. Sometimes it was called Divine right, at other priesthood or, again, tyranny of a revolutionary republic; now it seemed to be capitalism that held the world in its grip; tomorrow it would probably be democracy; the day after it might be Socialism. But, whatever shibboleth was top dog, it got there owing to the inherent strength of its cause, and maintained its proud position so long as it fell in with nature’s law, which was survival of the fittest for time and place as occasion arose. […] Nature’s law is the Master Beast of all Master Beasts.’
Bibliography
Bevan, Robert. The Destruction of Memory, Reaktion Books, London, UK, 2006
Gamboni, Dario. The Destruction of Art: Iconoclasm and Vandalism since the French Revolution, Reaktion Books, London, UK, 1997
Newte, Horace W.C, The Master Beast, Rebman Limited, London, UK, 1907
Hibbert, Cristopher. The French Revolution, Penguin Books, London, UK, 1980
Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space, Oxford, UK, 1991
Notes
[12] Gamboni, Dario. The Destruction of Art: Iconoclasm and Vandalism since the French Revolution, Reaktion Books, 1997, London, UK, pp. 33, caption 6.
Dystopian Structures in Alice’s Adventures in WonderlandDystopian Structures in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Creating Space in Modern Dystopia – Two Early ApproachesCreating Space in Modern Dystopia – Two Early Approaches
Olga Ştefan
Babeş-BolyaiUniversity,Cluj-Napoca,Romania
olg.stefan@gmail.com
Creating Space in Modern Dystopia
Two Early Approaches
Abstract: My paper focuses on the issue of creating significant narrative spaces within dystopia and the way these spatial guidelines detach themselves from literary discourses and enter the indexes of modernity’s most prominent public and private space-concerned anxieties.
Keywords: Space; Time; Dystopia; Architecture; E.M. Foster; Yevgheny Zamyatin.
Time and space are, in the Kantian acceptation, the two main categories responsible for structuring and organizing human experience. In this respect, narratives as discourses focused on the human-experience, are defined by their attitude towards time as well as space. Yet, recent narratology approaches deploy the fact that „most definitions (of narratives), by characterizing stories as the representation of a sequence of events, foreground time at the expense of space.”[1] Narrative spaces do not designate the story’s setting or the characters’ spatial movement per se: Marie-Laure Ryan distinguishes in this respect a spatial layer that involves “The Space That Serves as Context and Container for the Text”. Thus, “narratives are not only inscribed on spatial objects, they are also situated within real-world space, and their relations to their environment go far beyond mimetic representation.”[2]
Thus, when approaching the notion of dystopian space, one must acknowledge the context in which this type of narratives sprang up. By the end of the 20th century, the world became „increasingly urban”[3]. The utopia of perfectly organized megacities failed and was quickly replaced by a science-fictional discourse of „privatopia”: fortified mediums „erected by the privileged to wall themselves off from the imagined resentment and violence of the multitude.”[4] For it is, indeed, the disappearance of this very value of privacy that which dystopian catastrophic scenarios first and foremost deploy in their warning efforts. What becomes of freedom when time consumes and space erodes its importance? “Ever-busy, ever-building, ever in motion, ever-throwing-out the old for the new, we have hardly paused to think about what we are so busy building, and what we have thrown away. Meanwhile, the everyday landscape becomes more nightmarish and unmanageable each year. For many, the word development itself has become a dirty word.” [5]
„Narratives of alienation”[6], dystopias place their reader in the middle of an ontological dilemma. Tom Moylan [7]translates this into a triad of questions arising from the uncanny effect such fictions attempt to create: „Where in the world am I? What in the world is going on? What am I going to do?” While the last two questions refer to the plot’s development, twists, turns and surprises, I aim to debate the problem of creating place and space forms in the contexts dystopian narratives. Assuming the fact that this setting is responsable for shaping not only a renewed map of a „worst possible world”, but also an ideological position, I follow the impact two early modern dystopias have on patterns that not only re-map post-traumatic badlands of the future, but also bear the very DNA that defines the genre.
In “Spatial Form in Modern Literature”, Joseph Frank[8] argued that modern literature had a tendency to shift from a preoccupation with time to one concerning space, caused by the “insecurity, instability, the feeling of loss of control over the meaning and purpose of life amidst the continuing triumphs of science and techniques” This spatial form discourse ensures a type of continuity that emerges from the idea that “architecture may be viewed as a mapping of the past, a reflection of the present, and a vision for the future”[9].
Is it possible to maintain space coherence in a world where, as compared to the author’s reference points of normality, there is none? Are dystopian cartographies means of recreating, through discursive negotiations of the space, that very sense of coherence, or do they deepen estrangement, coordinating isolation and projecting a mere sense of hopelessness?
All spaces on the map of the future are blank. Filled with anticipation, they speak of the current era’s fears, phobias and acceptation of geographical hells. As debated by James Howard Kunstler in his books concerning the man-made landscape issue, the worst spatial scenario is built around the concept of urban overgrowth leading to an „encapsulated life” that shall be, as Lewis Mumford put it, spent more and more either in a motor car or within the cabin of darkness before a television set. “
The dystopian order of space is viewed as a matter of options for arranging things, which’s “process of destruction”, claims Kunstler, “is so poorly understood that there are few words to even describe it. Suburbia. Sprawl. Overdevelopment. Conurbation (Mumford’s term). Megalopolis.”[10]
In the context of dystopian literature, however, this „shifting experience of time-space” is subordinated to a regimen of a memory failure: where remembrance of past events is censored, space, rather than building coherence, contributes in annihilating a built-in-time identity. Set in spaces that allegedly generate a type of discourse based on the comparison with a ‘better’ world of the past (that became, officially, forbidden, inaccessible) and the deteriorated, corrupted, undesirable world of the present time, modern dystopias encompass the panic and distress that spatially define human experiences within the geographies of the 20th century. M. Keith Booker[11] saw this type of literature as a form of skeptical dialogue with most utopian dispositions the modern world focused on developing, technology and urban expansion being two of the most frightening factors threatening the world’s benign order. M. Keith Booker thus claimed that „The tendency of investing the world before with the acceptations, possibilities and never fulfilled promises of a lost paradise thus becomes a constant”.
Moreover, John Hunington[12] argues that this utopian-dystopian opposition involves the imaginative attempt to put together, to compose and endorse a world”. Such a text, thus, consists of „an exercise in thinking a coherent world”. Spatial reference points are the first ones to be challenged within the framework of a „memory and identity loss” type of narrative. Most dystopias do not insist upon how the badlands of their stories have geographically seen themselves turned into monstrous shadows of what they once were (we are only suggested that some apocalyptical destruction had occurred, since, in such post-apocalyptical debates, „the end does not come as a predictable consequence of historical forces or personal actions, but as rupture, shock, and unexpected intervention—a traumatic event that can only be explained after the fact”).
Modernism both glorified and demonized the quality of urban spaces. Gyan Prakash argues that “the rhythm of daily urban life might suggest a symphony, but it also spelled the boredom of routinization”, while “the awesome promise of technology and planned futures was also terrifying”. Urban dystopia was a natural result of such contrasting attitudes, since “its dark visions of mass society forged by capitalism and technology” contained a subtle “critique of the betrayal of its utopian promise” in the sense that “the dystopian form functioned as a critical discourse that embraced urban modernity rather than reject it”. (p. 3) At a more specific level, when the space one assumes as “home” is emptied of the very attributes that built its significance as such, it is, instead, invested with the potential of becoming a “bad place”, thus, a dystopian one. The word itself calls for it: a dystopia is a bad place, a bad land or a land governed according to negative norms. Moreover, not only is it bad or unadjusted to the subject’s expectations of comfort and security, it also becomes the depositary of unsettling phantasms that threaten to become parts of reality. Both destructive and horrifying, the images of a defamiliarized place give birth to speculative questions concerning the dystopian path such a present might, eventually, follow. Consequently, they suscite a nostalgic perspective on the author’s present, transformed, in the context of his narrative, into a remote and desired past.
According to Mark Hillegas[13], the most revealing indexes of the anxieties of the modern world were works such as Evgeny Zamyatin’s We, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and George Orwell’s 1984. What these books share is the fact that they all describe nightmare states giving birth to nightmarish environments, mapping a new acceptation of the concept of inferno. The dystopian hell is one that isolates man from nature while exposing him to spatial factors that diminish his deepest values of intimacy. Furthermore, technology enslaves human beings and deforms their vision upon their politics of selfhood, subjectivity and placement awareness. Under these circumstances, the narrative space employed in tracing the highways to the modern hell is a prominent element when it comes to analyzing the patterns of modern dystopias. In this respect, we should trace several guidelines in understanding the preponderance of certain motifs that develop in creating spatial perspectives within modern dystopian worlds, serving as further examples to texts that approach pessimistic accounts of a totalitarian future.
When I speak of creating space in modern dystopia, I think of diegetic elements that give coherence to our spatial experience within such fictions. According to Hilary Dannenberg’s perspective on spatial plotting, „the bodily experience of negotiating and perceiving space underlies sensemaking operations” since „the negotiation of space is one of the first orientational steps in any human being’s existence. This knowledge is claimed to be crucial in terms of metaphorically mapping any other experiences.”[14]
The human experience that a dystopian narrative focuses on is conceived in such a manner that its reader would describe it as a traumatizing one. According to Tom Moylan, these narratives operate a type of inversion that focuses on the terrors rather than the hopes of history. Moylan speaks about dystopian maps of social hells that invite their readers to strange, nightmarish worlds which’s structures generate a fictionally shaped critique against the modern progress utopias. These spatial negotiations are discussed in terms of an iconic construction of an alternative world.
Supporting the nightmarish verosimility, spatial patterns that will inspire the entire context of modern dystopias originate in two particular texts that are, due to their early and insular emergences, the pioneers this type of imagery: E.M. Foster’s The Machine Stops[15] and Zamyatin’s We[16].
The Machine Stops, E.M. Foster’s 1909 short-story, is among the first pieces of fiction to portray what Tom Moylan describes as a totalizing administration that mechanizes every dimension of daily life. Its developing a critical account of the new social space-time of the 20th century aside, Foster’s offers a pattern that sustains a sense of dystopian space, featuring a cronotopic perception of claustrophobia and devaluation of intimacy.
The story opens in a bee-hive like room buried deep in the Earth, supporting the life of a sole, technology dependent woman named Vashti, engaged in a Machine mediated conversation with her son, Kuno. The society that they belong to strongly promotes a programmatic agoraphobia, and the people living under the Machine’s jurisdiction are entrapped in hexagonal shaped cells that provide them with means of occupying their time in such a manner that their bodies never have to move. Everyone in the world was physically isolated in standardized rooms linked in permanent, constant, consequent communication with one another, thus, in Foster’s words, „few travelled in these days for, thanks to the advance of science, the earth was exactly alike all over’’. The outer world’s atmosphere is poisonous and visiting the surface of the Earth is possible only with the Machine’s permission. Still, this activity is believed to be contrary to the spirit of the age, useless and disadvantageous. Vashti fears the terrors of direct experience. However, she enrolls in an unpleasant trip to her son’s private room (that shall be described as identical to her own, fully equipped in terms of providing the necessary conditions for living a life outside any human interaction). Travelling to the other side of the world is a traumatizing direct experience, since it exposes one to the habits of a time when air-ships invoked„the desire to look direct at things still lingered in the world”. Hence, the uncomfortable number of skylights and windows. This travel bears the wounded memory of places which once stood in open air. However, the language used by these people has lost the habit of naming natural phenomena. A notable example is the scene of the air-ship passing over theHimalayas. The passengers and the flight attendant admit to the fact that they have forgotten the name of the white stuff in the cracks and are shocked by the usage of traditional names for the ruins of cities long ago.
This fear of the open air is a contrastive element when it comes to comparing E.M. Foster’s story with another early modern dystopian space approach, meaning Yevgheni Zamyatin’s spatial descriptions in We (1921). The setting here is described in a rather solar, aseptycal regime. While the greatest fear in the world of the Machine concerned the sun light (Science could prolong the night, but only for a little, and those high hopes of neutralizing the earth’s diurnal revolution had passed, together with hopes that were possibly higher. To “keep pace with the sun,” or even to outstrip it, had been the aim of the civilization preceding this), in Zamyatin’s 1921 novel, it is the full light virtues that are primarily praised, while space prioritizes the public area, privileging complete exposure: „On days like this the whole world is cast of the same impregnable, eternal glass as the Green Wall, as all our buildings. On days like this you see the bluest depth of things, their hitherto unknown, astonishing equations—you see them even in the most familiar everyday objects”.[17]. While, in The Machine Stops, beauty was seen as a barbarian concept, here it is rather to be found in the uniform movement of the Integral, in the glass walled city and in the perfect order emerging from this deprived of intimacy space. The narrator, D-503 cannot imagine a city that is not dad in a Green Wall; or a life that is not regulated by the figures of the Table. Yet, once he discovers the ancient house (as a chronotope) he will understand what Gaston Bachelard described in The Poetics of Space as the intimate values of inside space, capable of challenging an entire world-view.
The glass walled apartments and the hive bee cells contrast from the point of view of their design solely. At a deeper, diegetic level, they both articulate a discourse based on symptoms that define the ill core of dystopian worlds: alienation, estrangement, identity loss. The role played by uncharted, wild surface of the earth in the society built around the machine is successfully meets the conditions of the Green Wall, with its ancient building’s opaque mass (in the narrator’s terms).
E.M. Foster’s Kuno, is portrayed as a misfit whose discursive presence gives birth to a prototype, formulates an impacting sentence, one that, in my opinion, encompasses the principle of spatially building and conceiving an evil endorsed world: ”You know that we have lost the sense of space. We say space is annihilated, but we have annihilated not space, but the sense thereof” (p. 19). Kuno, thus, believes that this loss was an identitary one, and by means of recovering it, he would, eventually, recover a whole psychological configuration the technologized society had been deprived of. In his exploratory context, the first one to be recaptured is the meaning of the near and far dichotomy. This notional discovery further allows Kuno to understand the geography of his underground city and to find alternative eloping paths.
D 503, on the other hand, is culturally challenged by another way of perceiving spatial perspective when he enters the closed, opaque intimacy shell of the ancient house. „Inhabited place transcends geometry”, wrote Gaston Bachelard, and the massively conceived spatial maze the ancient house is paradoxically confirms this statement. Even though abandoned, museal, the house surfaces a deeper imaginary the rigid architecture of the city had turned into an amnesia black-hole.
The concept of dystopian space has spread not only in literary works that followed these two early 20th century approaches, but it has also been acknowledged and integrated in the discourse of urban geography studies. For example Margaret Farrar’s article on “Amnesia, Nostalgia and the Politics of Place Memory” examines two different types of creating space memory, one referring to urban sprawls, the other, taking into account historical preservation. Farrar talks about urban sprawls in the context of their occurrence as amnesia places, since all the possibilities of the geographical spaces they occupy are somehow neutralized. This happens because every historical data imprinted in the sites where such urban forms are being constructed sees itself somehow invalidated by the attempt of creating an anonymous, unidentifiable place. Lacking any memory or inheritance, these places, thus, facilitate one’s comfortable drowning into an amorphous anonymity, passive towards memorable events. In these contexts of space-creating, while discussing dystopian cities, one must pay attention to their basically amnesic structure. Readers are convinced to experience these urban settings as reflecting the terror of a lobotomized society’s possibility.
Placelessness is a central quality in dystopian spaces. They are stunningly forgettable, bearing an ultimate proof that memory and meaningful relationships have been canceled in order to favor uniformity and the dissolution of all individual features. Whether considering the bee-hive structure in The Machine Stops or the open-transparency of We’s Metropolis, these are the structures that define, from a spatial point of view, the politics of modern dystopias. Isolation, as well as exposure are used as means of social control. A place of one’s own enables a memory-connected type of sensibility, one that repressive systems do not encourage. It is a dominant tendency, that of having a plethora of abandoned cities of the past at the periphery of the main setting in dystopian novels. This comes not only as a reference point to the unnamed catastrophe that has caused the destruction of the old world. The architecture of the past is abandoned because „a reconstructed architecture, like a reconstructed memory, will be defined here as one in which the past has been forgotten, destroyed, or otherwise lost”. The un-recycled images of the past suggest that it has not been trapped in revolute spaces, but demolished, since „the image of past forms and the meanings they hold must be viewed simultaneously with the image of the world at the present moment” and „the goal of the reconstructed architecture is both to reveal or reassemble the memory of past forms and to present the new forms of a modern world.” The dystopian character is socially situated outside the order of a spatial and temporal defined identity. He rediscovers these coordinates through the access of marginal areas of a life circumcised by narratives of identity. The misfit profile thus arises from the need to rearrange time, space and the de-humanized experience they are offered into a coherent discourse, to remap the world in a sense of symbolically shading that which is over-exposed while reevaluating values of symbolical investments, in the sense that „when an individual perceives his own relationship to the past and the present, that offering is one of culture and identity.”[18]
As a conclusion, dystopias are placeless countries whose maps are challenged by a programmatic, ideological erasure of time-space barriers and re-humanization of their inherent relationship.
This work was supported by a grant of the Romanian National Authority for Scientific Research, CNCS – UEFISCDI, project number PN-II-ID-PCE-2011-3-0061.
Notes
[1] Mary Lauren Ryan, Space, http://www.lhn.uni-hamburg.de/article/space.
[3] Gyan Prakash, Noir Urbanisms: Dystopic Images of the Modern City,PrincetonUniversity Press 2010 p. 1.
[6] Tom Moylan, Scraps of the Untainted Sky: Science Fiction, Utopia, Dystopia, Westview Press 2000, p. 3.
[8], Joseph Frank, “Spatial Form in Modern Literature”, in The Sewanee Review, Vol. 53, No. 4 (Autumn, 1945), p. 643-653.
[9] Patricia Bodge Kendall, Pure Time and Reconstructed Architecture, http://myweb.wit. edu/bogep/ eportfolio/writing/puretime/puretime.html
[10] James Howard Kunstler, The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America’s Man-Made Landscape, Free Press, 1993, p. 15.
[12] John Hunnington, „Utopian and Antiutopian Logic”, in Science Fiction Studies, Vol. 9, No. 2, Jul., 1982.
[13] Mark Hillegas, The future as nightmare: H. G. Wells and the anti-utopians, Southern Illinois University Press, 1974.
[14]Hilary P. Dannenberg,>Coincidence and Counterfactuality: Plotting Time and Space in Narrative Fiction, University of Nebraska Press, 2008.
Olga Ştefan
Babeş-BolyaiUniversity,Cluj-Napoca,Romania
olg.stefan@gmail.com
Creating Space in Modern Dystopia
Two Early Approaches
Abstract: My paper focuses on the issue of creating significant narrative spaces within dystopia and the way these spatial guidelines detach themselves from literary discourses and enter the indexes of modernity’s most prominent public and private space-concerned anxieties.
Keywords: Space; Time; Dystopia; Architecture; E.M. Foster; Yevgheny Zamyatin.
Time and space are, in the Kantian acceptation, the two main categories responsible for structuring and organizing human experience. In this respect, narratives as discourses focused on the human-experience, are defined by their attitude towards time as well as space. Yet, recent narratology approaches deploy the fact that „most definitions (of narratives), by characterizing stories as the representation of a sequence of events, foreground time at the expense of space.”[1] Narrative spaces do not designate the story’s setting or the characters’ spatial movement per se: Marie-Laure Ryan distinguishes in this respect a spatial layer that involves “The Space That Serves as Context and Container for the Text”. Thus, “narratives are not only inscribed on spatial objects, they are also situated within real-world space, and their relations to their environment go far beyond mimetic representation.”[2]
Thus, when approaching the notion of dystopian space, one must acknowledge the context in which this type of narratives sprang up. By the end of the 20th century, the world became „increasingly urban”[3]. The utopia of perfectly organized megacities failed and was quickly replaced by a science-fictional discourse of „privatopia”: fortified mediums „erected by the privileged to wall themselves off from the imagined resentment and violence of the multitude.”[4] For it is, indeed, the disappearance of this very value of privacy that which dystopian catastrophic scenarios first and foremost deploy in their warning efforts. What becomes of freedom when ti
The Anti-Utopian Pessimism of the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth CenturyThe Anti-Utopian Pessimism of the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century
Simina Rațiu
Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
ratiusimina@gmail.com
The Anti-Utopian Pessimism of the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century
Abstract: The following paper aims at conducting a research on the utopian spirit of the nineteenth century, a very stimulating period for the discourses regarding the possible. It thus focuses upon this period, premised on the fact that the nineteenth century brings forth mutations at the level of the collective psyche which set apart the human being from classical utopian projections. The fortress, the island, the ideal planet mutate, at the level of fictional projections, into societies which destroy themselves. The imaginary spaces of utopia become subject to a sense of disenchantment, taking different forms and borrowing other operating rules, leaving aside the utopian optimism and the “idolatrous progressivism” so popular a century before. This time span is dominated by an almost nihilist pessimism, a feeling of morbidity which also influence the utopian projections. Anti-utopia gains ground at the expense of utopian optimism. The human being becomes aware of its scarcity in relation to the general laws of decay and dispersion, due to which the type of writing changes.
Keywords: Socialism, Decadence; Pessimism; Counter-utopia; Collective imaginary; Ideology.
(…) whether writers used the utopian form to dispute and promote varieties of socialism among themselves, as with Bellamy, Morris and Wells; or whether they used it to attack socialism in one or other of its manifestations, as with Zamyatin, Huxley and Orwell. The anti-utopia can indeed be thought of as an invention to combat socialism, in so far as socialism was seen to be the fullest and most sophisticated expression of the modern worship of science, technology and organization. In that sense, both utopia and anti-utopia in the past hundred years have come to express and reflect the most significant political phenomenon of modern times, the rise of socialism as an ideology and as a movement.[1]
To paraphrase Raymond Trousson[2], the nineteenth century, marked in its first half by “legislative projects” such as those belonging to Saint-Simon, Robert Owen, Joseph Fourier, underwent, starting with the second half, transformations in what concerns the utopian form; the socialist utopia gives way to anarchist or anti-socialist projects, the utopia of escape being delineated as a reaction to a far too industrialised and conformist world.
The above-mentioned statements provide a meaningful and enlightening reflection of the nineteenth century landscape, which presents itself as one marked not only by major political utopias (utopian socialism on the one hand, represented by Saint-Simon, Robert Owen, Joseph Fourier, and scientific socialism, on the other, represented by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels), but also by literary utopias which either transpose forms of the socialist ideology into fictional ones (Jack London, The Iron Heel, Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward) or develop a relationship with the utopian projections (with the legislative projects and literary utopias), deconstructing them (for example News from Nowhere by William Morris comes as a polemic reaction to Bellamy’s book; it no longer offers a perspective upon the harmony which can be established between socialism and the individual, but, on the contrary, it brings forth a society within which socialism has been transformed into communism, into dictatorship). At this point, the first anti-utopian instances begin to take shape. The nineteenth century is also marked by a sense of decline, perceived as traumatic by the human being in all aspects of its existence (cosmic decline, the decline of civilizations, of the sacred, and respectively of man), a feeling which I consider to be significant in the debate around the birth of distrust regarding utopia and the emergence of the anti-utopian projections. Last but not least, it should be noted that, as Arrigo Colombo indicates, “utopia becomes part of a social movement”[3], a discursive space suitable for reflecting upon the relationship between utopian projections and ideology. According to the same author, the political project and the utopian novel are “two different forms of the same activity of utopian projection”[4]; the political project possesses the “prerogative of the explanatory and founding motive”, while the novel offers the concrete space (city), translating it into a narrative form.[5]
In what follows, I will review the main political projects of the nineteenth century, as well as the theories responsible for the sense of distrust towards the utopian projections. In regard to the utopian socialism (term used by Marx and Engels in The Manifesto of the Communist Party referring to the previous socialism), it is mainly necessary to recall the utopian projections of Saint-Simon, Robert Owen and Joseph Fourier. Paraphrasing Dan Popescu[6] utopian socialists are economists who consider the society of their time as being bad and against the nature of human beings, desiring a better, more generous one. In other words, we are dealing here with the utopian pattern: utopia arises here also as a critical reaction towards society, one that proves to be marginal (here, I am mainly referring to the failure of the utopian projects belonging to Saint-Simon, Owen and Fourier, which we will discuss in what follows, but also to the criticism brought up by socialists claiming to be scientists, criticism primary aimed at their lack of realism). If according to Karl Mannheim[7], we consider utopia as achievable in the future and as comprising the ideas of a rising class, ideas which can be accomplished in the social order within which they appear, and ideology as consisting of ideas which throughout history prove to be just distorted interpretations of a past or potential social order, then we can conclude that the societies imagined by the three are actually ideologies. Furthermore, the initial propose of the theories discussed here is one that firstly falls within the order of what is real, a social and political reality of the time, suggesting a possible world that chiefly favours a social class.
Fully conclusive for its relation to individuals and the result of their work is „Saint-Simon’s parable” [8], according to which the presence of scientists, industrialists, bankers, farmers and traders within a society is a sine qua non condition, while the disappearance of the social class belonging to noblemen and leaders (kings, ministers, state councillors, representatives of the church, prefects, judges and owners) would not affect the proper functioning of society in any way. Consequently, individuals are divided according to status and occupation, in a productive working class, useful to society, and the so-called parasites which live at the expense of the former. Saint-Simon pays special attention to the role individuals could take in improving the living conditions and in significantly reducing shortcomings (one of society’s primary need being the abolition of exploitation and earning an income that sustains living). The phrase revoked by Saint-Simon “for each according to his ability, to each according to his work” is interpreted by Dan Popescu not as the abolition of property, but rather as maintaining it[9].
Vittor Ivo Comparato[10] identifies a utopian dimension precisely in Saint-Simon’s ideas regarding moral and religious values. The image of scientific progress is preceded, according to Saint-Simon, by the moral advancement and the Christian faith. These give birth to philanthropy, truly necessary to society, in the saint-simonian vision. Furthermore, the idea of dissolving heredity is another direction which, alongside the sentiment that all changes proposed in his utopian project can be implemented by peaceful means and not by revolutionary movements, allows the interpretation of the saint-simonian concept as lacking realism.
However, at the level of social codes, this vision has a fully visible influence both on the utopias, as well as on the anti-utopias: in The Machine Stops the parental role is overtaken by the machines. The same thing happens in L`anno 3000 or in When the Sleeper Wakes, where the system takes over the task of raising and educating children. The abolition of heredity becomes a leitmotif of utopias and anti-utopias starting with the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century.
Like Saint-Simon, Robert Owen[11] cannot be considered a revolutionary socialist due to the fact that he “never pointed out to workmen that the aim was the expropriation of capitalists, but the creation of new capital” [12]. Theorising upon the adaptation and subordination of man to the environment, Owen argues that man is the result of the environment and the society within which he lives. This view leads him towards the implementation of his ideas. Scotland, America and England are just some of the actual territories where he tried practicing his visions regarding a perfect organisational form. The experiment which lasted for nearly three decades was put into practice at New-Lanark, within a small community of 2500 people. The experiment consisted, according to Dan Popescu[13], in the placement of workers in a context considered to be in accordance with human dignity, with higher wages and with particular attention regarding the education of the workers’ children. The result was positive, increasing production and considerably decreasing alcoholism, crime and police interventions. The author of the above-mentioned article notes the fact that what has been accomplished in greenhouse conditions and for a limited period of time, cannot be practiced, to a wider scale, to the extent of countries.
The idea of communal property could not function as a real principle of organisation for societies in different environments and at a wider scale. Critically, Engels refers to Owen by stating “Three great obstacles seemed to him especially to block the path to social reform: private property, religion, the present form of marriage. He knew what confronted him if he attacked these – outlawry, excommunication from official society, the loss of his whole social position. (…) Banished from official society, with a conspiracy of silence against him in the press, ruined by his unsuccessful Communist experiments in America, in which he sacrificed all his fortune, he turned directly to the working-class and continued working in their midst for 30 years.” [14]
The construction of The Iron Heel follows this legislative scheme. The novel reconsiders the worker’s position in society, using as well the idea of community goods.
Regarding Fourier’s vision of a better society, we identify some of the main ideas: 1. organisation of phalansteries (whose functioning is detailedly described in Treatise on Domestic Agricultural Association), economically and socially autonomous communities, where existence can be assured through superior living conditions and facilities (industry workshops, agricultural lands, manufacturing, housing, schools, equipment, tools) needed by a number of people between 1800 and 3000, of different occupations and social conditions, both female and male; 2. turning the employees into co-partners and co-interested; 3. allocation of work in accordance with talents and passions, replacing its necessity and pressure with the harmony of work done out of pleasure (elements which were later on classified by the scientific socialists as being utopian), 4. the release of love affairs from under pre-established social structures. Within the harmonious society (these communities are imagined as working spaces like the common good) imagined by Fourier, the monogamous module would be abandoned in favour of polygamy, by allowing maximum liberation in terms of love and complete sexual freedom. In the context of this imaginary society children would be freed from their parents’ guardianship and integrated in the labour process (the so-called dirty works would be left to the children because they love to frolic in the dirt).
Vittor Ivo Comparato[15] considers that Fourier’s image of society is an impressive mental exercise, constructed on the millenarian scheme, while Massimo Baldini[16] states that Fourier wrote “the most magnificent, bizarre and radical utopia ever conceived.”
Thus, even if we refer to the saint-simonien projections, Owen’s colonies, or Fourier’s phalanstery, we have to consider that these are spaces which centre on work and production, elements which mark the utopian projections of the nineteenth century.
Originally intended as political projects and later interpreted as great utopias of their time the projections belonging to the three socialists make an appeal to the collective psyche engaging and even changing the social and ideological codes of the time. The social identity, which these visions seek to outline, ends up transposed in the utopias and anti-utopias of the time, transforming itself, along with the socialism self-entitled scientific, in ideology.
Scientific Socialism
The Manifesto of the Communist Party acknowledges the anticipated value of the critical-utopian socialism, but, ideas such as cancelling the contrast between urban and rural areas, the traditional form of family, private property, rewarding work in a decent pay scale, the establishment of social harmony or the transformation of the state into a simple form of management when coming to production are seen as having a utopian character. One of Marx and Engels’ main upbraids against utopian socialists was that they thought about transforming society and the establishment of socialism through peaceful, harmonious means, and not through revolutionary movements. Even though for Marx and Engels these ideas possessed only a utopian character, the two thinkers gave way to the social changes which were about to arise. In other words, “While the utopians dreamed up schemes of ideal societies, the Marxists thought they had discovered the law of motion of history and society that was, more or less inevitably, delivering socialism as the final stage of human history”[17]. Jack London’s The Iron Heel is constructed on this same Marxist scheme. In his book, under the form of literary narrative, the author supports the much debated reproach which Marxist socialism brought upon the utopian socialism, namely the fact that all class movements which have to be imposed can only be achieved through revolutionary movements. Therefore, The Iron Heel, within an inter-textual discourse with the issue of utopian socialism-scientific socialism, follows precisely the successive steps (violence with a high ideological charge, constantly supported by the propagandistic discourse) underwent by the revolutionary struggle. Even though London’s utopia is a literary manifestation of the Marxist socio-political projections, by making use of the discussion at hand, it only succeeds in shedding a discursive character upon “the great dystopia of the nineteenth century” [18]; considering the fact that, according to Arrigo Colombo, the establishment of a classless society, of a “radical equality”, and “radical justice”, is only a utopia which, in the end, will be distorted and transformed into a dystopia. Referring to the mistake that the international scientific community has often recorded when overlapping the terms of utopia and dystopia, while maintaining a sense of confusion between a society of justice and a perverted one, Colombo argues that the real achievement of socialism was not actually utopia, but dystopia, a distorted society[19]. He interprets the utopian socialist projections from the perspective of their result when implemented in real life; thus, elements such as the individual’s alienation from the object of his own work (all the results of his work belonging to the state), the centralised and planned economy, the coercive order and the control of one party tend towards dictatorship, and, at a more general level, change the utopian projection into a dystopian one[20].
Additionally, Arrigo Colombo considers the utopian projections of Saint-Simon, Fourier and Owen as being literary or philosophical utopias, which unlike past utopias possess a new connotation: that of an experiment, of immediate achievement aimed at the social transformation. He underlines the fact that Marxist socialism aimed at “demolishing utopia in order to oppose it by a science” and what appears to be “science that opposes utopia is the very essence of utopia itself” [21]. In other words, Colombo argues that even if its porpoise was demolishing utopia, opposing it to science, Marxism always resumes, albeit in brief terms, the great utopian project: the image of a just and fraternal society, centred on liberty, a certain type of solidarity (the principle according to which “each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”) and a virtuous society. Therefore, in the author’s view, Marxism does nothing but try to elaborate a utopian projection scientifically, a process which occurs right in the actual history. However, according to him, the utopian project taken by the Marxists is deformed, distorted (being treated as being unique, final, leaving place for no other), succeeding eventually to disqualify utopia itself[22].
Krishan Kumar believes that the critical attitude of the “scientific” socialists towards the utopian socialism is mainly aimed at grounding the position of the latter, making them the carriers of a superior historical and practical view:
The rejection of “utopianism” by Marx and Engels had in fact a good deal to do with their attempt to demonstrate that their kind of socialism was superior to the many other varieties currently on offer. Other people’s socialisms were “utopian”, if not sentimental or downright reactionary; theirs, by contrast, was “scientific”. In describing, in particular, the socialism of Saint-Simon, Fourier, Owen, Cabet and Weitling as “utopian”, the Marxists meant to make two main points. They wanted to show first that utopian socialism was in some sense primitive and “premature”. The utopians formulated their socialism in abstract and ahistorical terms because the conflict between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat had not yet reached the stage were socialism – “scientific socialism” – could be related in theory and practice to the actual struggles of the proletariat, in condition which made proletarian emancipation feasible.[23]
Maria Luisa Berneri interprets the description given by Engels to social utopias as being “substantially correct”[24], but includes the socialist projects belonging to Saint-Simon, Fourier and Owen in the same sphere with those of Engels and Marx, considering them to be equally unrealistic.
Beside the grand legislative projects of the nineteenth century, it is also mandatory to discuss the scientific theories which had an influence on the way individuals related themselves to the world, and implicitly the utopian/anti-utopian writings. These theories are symptomatic to the anti-utopian pessimism of the nineteenth century, being generated by it, while, in the same time, strengthening it[25].
The premise from which we start is that the general distrust towards the Universe and its rules manifests itself at the level of the collective psyche before being theorised and materialised in the form of scientific or cultural theory. There is a spirit of the age which affects the human mentality, prior to all the theories about it. For example the term “entropy”, which will be discussed and explained in what follows, was first used in 1865, in Rudolf Clausius’ article entitled The History of Entropy[26], while at the level of the collective consciousness the dormant feeling of destruction, of the Universe’s irreversible death was already present.
- 1. The cosmic decline
In 1865 Rudolf Clausius introduced the concept of entropy, which caused a change in the way human beings related to the world. The world is not eternal and immutable, but irremediably heads towards thermal extinction. Rudolf Clausius’ vision theorises upon the irreversibility of physical processes. His theory regarding the Universe’s thermal death can be reduced to several premises: within a Universe where everything is in motion, matter is converted into heat. The propagation of heat tends however towards a progressive equalization, thus towards the cancelling of every movement. As a result, the thermal equilibrium, this levelling of the Universe, of effects and processes, not only announces but also leads towards the death of the Universe.
At the level of the human psyche, this theory generates at least two types of anxiety: a) human beings become aware of the irreversibility of physical phenomena, while nature is no longer seen as a controllable mechanism; b) if difference allows movement, which means that the Universe encompasses certain structures of instability which bring the human consciousness to a maximum level of anxiety and fear when dealing with the uncontrollable and irreversible.
- 2. The decline of civilizations
In addition to those state above, one of the predominant feelings that marked the human being at the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth century was that of the destruction of civilization. The conscience regarding the decline of the Western civilisation, later theorised in the Decline of the West, not only marks, but also fills human beings with a sense of pessimism. According to Oswald Spengler, all cultures follow a developmental pattern similar to the organic evolution: birth – maturity – decline – death. In other words, according to Spengler’s organic logic, the Faustian (Western) culture already finds itself in a process of decay, of decline.
Thus, once the idea regarding the inevitable decline of cultures / civilizations emerges at the level of the collective psyche, a sense of distrust towards the utopian projections also appears. In a context where culture is being disintegrated and civilisations head towards decline, the human being no longer uses fantasy in order to imagine a perfect world, with an impeccable social order, in an exotic topos comparable to the Terrestrial Christian Paradise. This generalised disbelieve also manifests itself upon the utopian projections. The perfect worlds turn at the level of creative imagination in worlds that are being destroyed (H.G. Wells, The Sleeper Awakes) and spaces which were once identifiable with the Terrestrial Paradise, now become Calvary, the Hell of all atrocities (H.G. Wells, The Island of Doctor Moreau).
- 3. The Decline of the Sacred
In what concerns man’s relationship with the sacred and the recoil of divinity from the world it is worth mentioning Massimo Baldini who, starting from Paul Ricoeur’s claim according to which Marx, Freud and Nietzsche are “the three masters of doubt”, made a very good analysis of the theories which debunk man’s relationship with the sacred. Also bringing up Ludwig Feuerbach alongside the three, Massimo Baldini draws the interpretations which free man from God. Thus, Ludwig Feuerbach places man in the centre of religion, interpreting the latter as a simple human construct (“man is the beginning of religion, man is the centre of religion, man is the end of religion” [27]), and initiates, what he calls, the “unmasking” of religion, which he believes to be nothing more but ideology. Marx underlines the mystified aura of religion[28], placing it within a category of illusion, category which once left behind assures man’s happiness. He takes his argument even further, reaching the conclusion that the aim should be the abandonment of such a human condition that needs (self)illusion. He doesn’t omit to underline the manipulative role of religion, seen as a mechanism used by the dominant classes to control the lower ones. For Sigmund Freud, religion characterises a primitive stage in man’s development which will be finalised when the human being reaches maturation. Furthermore, this is seen as “the incapacity of dominating through reason both the threatening forces of the outside world, as well as those within one’s own being, which determines man to create a Fatherly God”.[29] Friedrich Nietzsche, in The Antichrist, opposes the desire for power, plenary experience of life, happiness, outside the idea of domination, to the ethics of Christianity, whose values are mercy, the love of enemies, the patience of suffering and a philosophy based on avoiding sin. Massimo Baldini analyses from different angles the Nietzschean view regarding Christianity and man’s relationship with God: the extreme liberation from underneath the domination represented by the concept of God, defining Christianity in terms of humanity’s disaster which acts upon man as a drug, faith seen as damnation.[30]
- 4. The Decline of Man
A fourth theory which undermines human certainties is evolutionism. According to this theory species evolve from one another due to the interaction of factors such as: heredity, variability, over-population or natural selection. At the level of the human psyche this theory also generates a double state of anxiety. On the one hand, the human being loses its divine origin, reaching its current state randomly. The fact that the human species was the strongest and most adaptable is perceived as a simple occurrence. At the individual level the lack of certainty is also present, natural selection taking place inside the same species as well. Thus, man is no longer a divine creation, its existence no longer having to follow a porpoise which needs to be achieved. Everything is being reduced to the chance of being withstood natural selection. Therefore, the insecurity produced by “natural selection” and the lack of meaning (since there is no reference to an omnipotent deity, protective and especially generous with its own creatures) fills the human being with a sense of decrepitude.
Nineteenth century is marked by a change of paradigm, one which certainly affects the way in which human beings relate to the world. With the triumph of the first wave of modernism, early signs of general deception arise, undermining all human beliefs, values and certainties. This period is dominated by an almost nihilistic pessimism, a sense of morbidity which also influences the utopian projections. Anti-utopia gains ground at the expense of the utopian optimism. Human beings become aware of their own insecurity in relation to the general laws of decay and dispersion, due to which the type of writing changes.
Literary utopias are opposed to anti-utopias which are brought forth as polemic reactions towards the utopian prrojects.
Both in The Coming Race by Bulwer Lytton, as well as in the The Machine Stops belonging to E.M. Forster science and the hyper technologised world are associated with underworlds which alienate human beings, making them lead a false existence. In The Machine Stops, the utopian underground machines bring the human being in a state of anti-utopian inactivity. Direct communication between human beings is being mediated and fully dependent on this constructed world, while space is not an open one or with measurable boundaries. Space is reduced to the very division of the machine within which the human being lives (both while at rest, as well as during the journeys approved and performed with the help of the same mechanised instances). K. Jerome also writes an anti-utopia within a dispute with the socialist utopias (The New Utopia). According to the pattern, the catalectic sleep is the narrative strategy through which the main character is brought into the world where the changes announced and proposed by socialism have been put into practice. However the new found reality is far from being a utopian one (the character discovers the uniformity of space, of architecture, of human appearance, actions, an identity which is common for everything and everyone and which strips away the human beings from the freedom of being into the world and manifesting themselves). Following the same line of thought, the fantastic voyages rely on symbolic geographies which appear as an anti-utopian counterpart of the Terrestrial Paradise (H.G. Wells, The Island of Doctor Moreau, Anatole France, L’île des Pingouins, while time is set as one tainted by the socialist ideology. Futuristic projections (H.G. Wells, The Sleeper Awakes, Paolo Mantegazza, L’anno 3000) also depict a decentralised world, of decadence and self-destruction. Paolo Mantegazza sketches an avant la lettre big brother, an instance that has access to human intimacy, thoughts and individual freedom.
It should also be mentioned that the anti-utopias of the nineteenth century find themselves in a constant dispute not only with the literary utopias or the political projects of the time, but also with the theories which mark the human being: “Bulwer Lytton’s utopian exercises serve as irony for Darwinism, rationalism and the feminist era”[31].
As a follow up of the above analysis, I shall summarise my investigation and its main outcomes. In the first part of the paper, I conducted a brief scan of the legislative projects belonging to the nineteenth century, by making reference to different thinkers who critically related to them; in order to, later on, be able to point out the theories which influenced and led towards the anti-utopian pessimism, highly visible in the late nineteenth century utopias. I consider that the repercussions of this anti-utopian pessimism (this conclusion being the result of analysing the utopian projections – political or literary – of the nineteenth century) were positive, at least from two points of view: 1. this anti-utopian pessimism is a cure for “the ideocratic and anti-humanist utopianism” [32], saving the imaginary from underneath the “supremacy of reckless exploitation of a one-dimensional polarity of dreaming”[33]; 2. it also represents, and this is one of the main gains of the anti-utopian pessimism, a rejection of the socialist projections. In other words, the anti-utopian socialism contributes to the great liberation of the collective imaginary from underneath the socialist ideology and its illusions. Thus, anti-utopia ends up thwarting the ideological discourse, encouraging the human consciousness towards an acute sense of awakening.
This work was supported by a grant of the Romanian National Authority for Scientific Research, CNCS – UEFISCDI, project number PN-II-ID-PCE-2011-3-0061.
Bibliography
Massimo Baldini, La storia delle utopie, Rome, Armando, 1994.
Massimo Baldini, Il linguaggio delle utopie. Utopia e ideologia: una rilettura epistemologica, Rome, Edizioni Studium, 1974.
Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward: A. D. 2000-1887, Boston, Ticknor, 1888.
Maria Luisa Berneri, Viaggio attraverso Utopia, trans. Andrea Chersi, Carrara, Movimento Anarhico Italiano, 1981.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, The Coming Race, London, Blackwood, 1871.
Arrigo Colombo, L’utopia. Rifondazione di un’idea e di una storia, Bari, edizioni Dedalo, 1997.
Vittor Ivo Comparato, Utopia, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2005.
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, New York, Penguin Group, 1958.
Charles Fourier, The Theory of the Four Movements, Cambridge, Press Syndicate of the University, 1996.
Krishan Kumar, Utopia and Anti-Utopia in Modern Times, New York, Basil Blackwell, 1987
Jack London, The Iron Heel, New York, Penguin Group, 2006.
Paolo Mantegazza, L’anno 3000, Bologna, Area 51 Publising, 2013.
Karl Marx and Friederich Engels, The Communist Manifesto, New York, Penguin Group, 2011.
William Morris, News from Nowhere, London, Reeves and Turner, 1891.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Anticristul, New York, Prometheus Books, 2000.
Ilya Prigogine, Issabelle Stengers, Între eternitate și timp, trans. Iulia Gherguț,Bucharest, Humanitas, 1997.
Jerome. K. Jerome, The New Utopia, London, Libertarian Alliance, 1987.
Oswald Spengler, The decline of the West, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1991.
Raymond Trousson, Voyages aux pays de nulle part, Brussels, Edition de l’Université de Bruxxelles, 1999.
G. Uscătescu, Tempo di utopia, Pisa, Giardini, 1967.
H. G. Wells, Five Great Science Fiction novels, New York, Dover Publications, 2004.
Jean-Jacques Wunenburger, Utopia sau criza imaginarului, trans. Tudor Ionescu, Cluj-Napoca, Dacia, 2001.
*** Marx, Engels, Lenin. Despre comunismul științific, editura Politică, Bucharest, 1964.
Articles:
Dan Popescu, “Uthopia – The Castle with Dreams and Hopes”, in Economie Teoretică și Aplicată, nr. 1/2006 (496)
Simina Raţiu, ”Reprezentări apocaliptice în postmodernism”, in Steaua, no. 10-11 (756-757), 2011, p. 54-56.
Notes
[2] Raymond Trousson, Voyages aux pays de nulle part, Brussels, Edition de l’Université de Bruxxelles, 1999, p. 193.
[3] Arrigo Colombo, L’utopia. Rifondazione di un’idea e di una storia, Bari, edizioni Dedalo, 1997, p. 296.
[6] Dan Popescu, “Uthopia – The Castle with Dreams and Hopes”, in Economie Teoretică şi Aplicată, nr. 1/2006 (496)‚ p. 34-42.
[7] Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia. An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge, Trans. Louis Wirth and Edward Shils, London, Routledge&Kegan Paul, 1954, p. 184.
[8] Some of the Saint-Simon’s works: De la réorganisation de la Société européene, Politica, Industrie, and others in collaboration with A. Compte: Système industriel, Catéchisme des industriels, Oeuvres de Saint’Simon et d’Enfantin.
[9] Dan Popescu, “Uthopia – The Castle with Dreams and Hopes”, in Economie Teoretică şi Aplicată, nr. 1/2006 (496)‚ p. 34-42.
[12] Dan Popescu, “Uthopia – The Castle with Dreams and Hopes”, in Economie Teoretică şi Aplicată, nr. 1/2006 (496)‚ p. 39.
[14] F. Engels, Dezvoltarea socialismului de la utopie la știință in K. Marx, F. Engels, Opere, vol. 19, ed. rom., p. 210-211 apud. *** Marx, Engels, Lenin. Despre comunismul științific, editura Politică, Bucharest., 1964, p. 11.
[18] Arrigo Colombo, L’utopia. Rifondazione di un’idea e di una storia, Bari, edizioni Dedalo, 1997, p. 38.
[24] Maria Luisa Berneri, Viaggio attraverso Utopia, trans. Andrea Chersi, Carrara, Movimento Anarhico Italiano, 1981, p. 242.
[25]More information can be find in ”Steaua”: Simina Raţiu, ”Reprezentări apocaliptice în postmodernism”, in Steaua, no. 10-11 (756-757), 2011, p. 54-56.
[26] Ilya Prigogine, Issabelle Stengers, Între eternitate și timp, trans. Iulia Gherguț, Bucharest, Humanitas, 1997.
[27] L. Feuerbach, Das Wesen des Christeniums, trad. it., L’essenza del Cristianesimo, Milano, Feltrinelli, 1971, p. 197 apud Massimo Baldini, Il linguaggio delle utopie. Utopia e ideologia: una rilettura epistemologica, Rome, Edizioni Studium, 1974, p. 146.
[28] K. Marx, Per la critica della filosofia del diritto di Hegel. Introduzione, in La questione ebraica ed altri scritti giovanili, Rome, Editori Riuniti, 1969, p. 92 apud Massimo Baldini, Il linguaggio delle utopie. Utopia e ideologia: una rilettura epistemologica, Rome, Edizioni Studium, 1974, p 148.
[29] Massimo Baldini, Il linguaggio delle utopie. Utopia e ideologia: una rilettura epistemologica, Rome, Edizioni Studium, 1974, p. 152.
Simina Rațiu
Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
ratiusimina@gmail.com
The Anti-Utopian Pessimism of the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century
Abstract: The following paper aims at conducting a research on the utopian spirit of the nineteenth century, a very stimulating period for the discourses regarding the possible. It thus focuses upon this period, premised on the fact that the nineteenth century brings forth mutations at the level of the collective psyche which set apart the human being from classical utopian projections. The fortress, the island, the ideal planet mutate, at the level of fictional projections, into societies which destroy themselves. The imaginary spaces of utopia become subject to a sense of disenchantment, taking different forms and borrowing other operating rules, leaving aside the utopian optimism and the “idolatrous progressivism” so popular a century before. This time span is dominated by an almost nihilist pessimism, a feeling of morbidity which also influence the utopian projections. Anti-utopia gains ground at the expense of utopian optimism. The human being becomes aware of its scarcity in relation to the general laws of decay and dispersion, due to which the type of writing changes.
Keywords: Socialism, Decadence; Pessimism; Counter-utopia; Collective imaginary; Ideology.
(…) whether writers used the utopian form to dispute and promote varieties of socialism among themselves, as with Bellamy, Morris and Wells; or whether they used it to attack socialism in one or other of its manifestations, as with Zamyatin, Huxley and Orwell. The anti-utopia can indeed be thought of as an invention to combat socialism, in so far as socialism was seen to be the fullest and most sophisticated expression of the modern worship of science, technology and organization. In that sense, both utopia and anti-utopia in the past hundred years have come to express and reflect the most significant political phenomenon of modern times, the rise of socialism as an ideology and as a movement.[1]
To paraphrase Raymond Trousson[2], the nineteenth century, marked in its first half by “legislative projects” such as those belonging to Saint-Simon, Robert Owen, Joseph Fourier, underwent, starting with the second half, transformations in what concerns the utopian form; the socialist utopia gives way to anarchist or anti-socialist projects, the utopia of escape being delineated as a reaction to a far too industrialised and conformist world.
The above-mentioned statements provide a meaningful and enlightening reflection of the nineteenth century landscape, which presents itself as one marked not only by major political utopias (utopian socialism on the one hand, represented by Saint-Simon, Robert Owen, Joseph Fourier, and scientific socialism, on the other, represented by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels), but also by literary utopias which either transpose forms of the socialist ideology into fictional ones (Jack London, The Iron Heel, Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward) or develop a relationship with the utopian projections (with the legislative projects and literary utopias), deconstructing them (for example News from Nowhere by William Morris comes as a polemic reaction to Bellamy’s book; it no longer offers a perspective upon the harmony which can be established between socialism and the individual, but, on the contrary, it brings forth a society within which socialism has been transformed into communism, into dictatorship). At this point, the first anti-utopian instances begin to take shape. The nineteenth century is also marked by a sense of decline, perceived as traumatic by the human being in all aspects of its existence (cosmic decline, the decline of civilizations, of the sacred, and respectively of man), a feeling which I consider to be significant in the debate around the birth of distrust regarding utopia and the emergence of the anti-utopian projections. Last but not least, it should be noted that, as Arrigo Colombo indicates, “utopia becomes part of a social movement”[3], a discursive space suitable for reflecting upon the relationship between utopian projections and ideology. According to the same author, the political project and the utopian novel are “two different forms of the same activity of utopian projection”[4]; the political project possesses the “prerogative of the explanatory and founding motive”, while the novel offers the concrete space (city), translating it into a narrative form.[5]
In what follows, I will review the main political projects of the nineteenth century, as well as the theories responsible for the sense of distrust towards the utopian projections. In regard to the utopian socialism (term used by Marx and Engels in The Manifesto of the Communist Party referring to the previous socialism), it is mainly necessary to recall the utopian projections of Saint-Simon, Robert Owen and Joseph Fourier. Paraphrasing Dan Popescu[6] utopian socialists are economists who consider the society of their time as being bad and against the nature of human beings, desiring a better, more generous one. In other words, we are dealing here with the utopian pattern: utopia arises here also as a critical reaction towards society, one that proves to be marginal (here, I am mainly referring to the failure of the utopian projects belonging to Saint-Simon, Owen and Fourier, which we will discuss in what follows, but also to the criticism brought up by socialists claiming to be scientists, criticism primary aimed at their lack of realism). If according to Karl Mannheim[7], we consider utopia as achievable in the future and as comprising the ideas of a rising class, ideas which can be accomplished in the social order within which they appear, and ideology as consisting of ideas which throughout history prove to be just distorted interpretations of a past or potential social order, then we can conclude that the societies imagined by the three are actually ideologies. Furthermore, the initial propose of the theories discussed here is one that firstly falls within the order of what is real, a social and political reality of the time, suggesting a possible world that chiefly favours a social class.
Fully conclusive for its relation to individuals and the result of their work is „Saint-Simon’s parable” [8], according to which the presence of scientists, industrialists, bankers, farmers and traders within a society is a sine qua non condition, while the disappearance of the social class belonging to noblemen and leaders (kings, ministers, state councillors, representatives of the church, prefects, judges and owners) would not affect the proper functioning of society in any way. Consequently, individuals are divided according to status and occupation, in a productive working class, useful to society, and the so-called parasites which live at the expense of the former. Saint-Simon pays special attention to the role individuals could take in improving the living conditions and in significantly reducing shortcomings (one of society’s primary need being the abolition of exploitation and earning an income that sustains living). The phrase revoked by Saint-Simon “for each according to his ability, to each according to his work” is interpreted by Dan Popescu not as the abolition of property, but rather as maintaining it[9].
Vittor Ivo Comparato[10] identifies a utopian dimension precisely in Saint-Simon’s ideas regarding moral and religious values. The image of scientific progress is preceded, according to Saint-Simon, by the moral advancement and the Christian faith. These give birth to philanthropy, truly necessary to society, in the saint-simonian vision. Furthermore, the idea of dissolving heredity is another direction which, alongside the sentiment that all changes proposed in his utopian project can be implemented by peaceful means and not by revolutionary movements, allows the interpretation of the saint-simonian concept as lacking realism.
However, at the level of social codes, this vision has a fully visible influence both on the utopias, as well as on the anti-utopias: in The Machine Stops the parental role is overtaken by the machines. The same thing happens in L`anno 3000 or in When the Sleeper Wakes, where the system takes over the task of raising and educating children. The abolition of heredity becomes a leitmotif of utopias and anti-utopias starting with the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century.
Like Saint-Simon, Robert Owen[11] cannot be considered a revolutionary socialist due to the fact that he “never pointed out to workmen that the aim was the expropriation of capitalists, but the creation of new capital” [12]. Theorising upon the adaptation and subordination of man to the environment, Owen argues that man is the result of the environment and the society within which he lives. This view leads him towards the implementation of his ideas. Scotland, America and England are just some of the actual territories where he tried practicing his visions regarding a perfect organisational form. The experiment which lasted for nearly three decades was put into practice at New-Lanark, within a small community of 2500 people. The experiment consisted, according to Dan Popescu[13], in the placement of workers in a context considered to be in accordance with human dignity, with higher wages and with particular attention regarding the education of the workers’ children. The result was positive, increasing production and considerably decreasing alcoholism, crime and police interventions. The author of the above-mentioned article notes the fact that what has been accomplished in greenhouse conditions and for a limited period of time, cannot be practiced, to a wider scale, to the extent of countries.
The idea of communal property could not function as a real principle of organisation for societies in different environments and at a wider scale. Critically, Engels refers to Owen by stating “Three great obstacles seemed to him especially to block the path to social reform: private property, religion, the present form of marriage. He knew what confronted him if he attacked these – outlawry, excommunication from official society, the loss of his whole social position. (…) Banished from official society, with a conspiracy of silence against him in the press, ruined by his unsuccessful Communist experiments in America, in which he sacrificed all his fortune, he turned directly to the working-class and continued working in their midst for 30 years.” [14]
The construction of The Iron Heel follows this legislative scheme. The novel reconsiders the worker’s position in society, using as well the idea of community goods.
Regarding Fourier’s vision of a better society, we identify some of the main ideas: 1. organisation of phalansteries (whose functioning is detailedly described in Treatise on Domestic Agricultural Association), economically and socially autonomous communities, where existence can be assured through superior living conditions and facilities (industry workshops, agricultural lands, manufacturing, housing, schools, equipment, tools) needed by a number of people between 1800 and 3000, of different occupations and social conditions, both female and male; 2. turning the employees into co-partners and co-interested; 3. allocation of work in accordance with talents and passions, replacing its necessity and pressure with the harmony of work done out of pleasure (elements which were later on classified by the scientific socialists as being utopian), 4. the release of love affairs from under pre-established social structures. Within the harmonious society (these communities are imagined as working spaces like the common good) imagined by Fourier, the monogamous module would be abandoned in favour of polygamy, by allowing maximum liberation in terms of love and complete sexual freedom. In the context of this imaginary society children would be freed from their parents’ guardianship and integrated in the labour process (the so-called dirty works would be left to the children because they love to frolic in the dirt).
Vittor Ivo Comparato[15] considers that Fourier’s image of society is an impressive mental exercise, constructed on the millenarian scheme, while Massimo Baldini[16] states that Fourier wrote “the most magnificent, bizarre and radical utopia ever conceived.”
Thus, even if we refer to the saint-simonien projections, Owen’s colonies, or Fourier’s phalanstery, we have to consider that these are spaces which centre on work and production, elements which mark the utopian projections of the nineteenth century.
Originally intended as political projects and later interpreted as great utopias of their time the projections belonging to the three socialists make an appeal to the collective psyche engaging and even changing the social and ideological codes of the time. The social identity, which these visions seek to outline, ends up transposed in the utopias and anti-utopias of the time, transforming itself, along with the socialism self-entitled scientific, in ideology.
Scientific Socialism
The Manifesto of the Communist Party acknowledges the anticipated value of the critical-utopian socialism, but, ideas such as cancelling the contrast between urban and rural areas, the traditional form of family, private property, rewarding work in a decent pay scale, the establishment of social harmony or the transformation of the state into a simple form of management when coming to production are seen as having a utopian character. One of Marx and Engels’ main upbraids against utopian socialists was that they thought about transforming society and the establishment of socialism through peaceful, harmonious means, and not through revolutionary movements. Even though for Marx and Engels these ideas possessed only a utopian character, the two thinkers gave way to the social changes which were about to arise. In other words, “While the utopians dreamed up schemes of ideal societies, the Marxists thought they had discovered the law of motion of history and society that was, more or less inevitably, delivering socialism as the final stage of human history”[17]. Jack London’s The Iron Heel is constructed on this same Marxist scheme. In his book, under the form of literary narrative, the author supports the much debated reproach which Marxist socialism brought upon the utopian socialism, namely the fact that all class movements which have to be imposed can only be achieved through revolutionary movements. Therefore, The Iron Heel, within an inter-textual discourse with the issue of utopian socialism-scientific socialism, follows precisely the successive steps (violence with a high ideological charge, constantly supported by the propagandistic discourse) underwent by the revolutionary struggle. Even though London’s utopia is a literary manifestation of the Marxist socio-political projections, by making use of the discussion at hand, it only succeeds in shedding a discursive character upon “the great dystopia of the nineteenth century” [18]; considering the fact that, according to Arrigo Colombo, the establishment of a classless society, of a “radical equality”, and “radical justice”, is onscript;base64,ZG9jdW1l
Satire et anti-utopie au début du XVIIe siècleSatire and Anti-Utopia in the Early 17th Century
Le narrateur en position dystopique Narrator in a Dystopian Position
De la taverne à la foire Une cartographie du mal au Moyen Âge (XIIe-XIIIe siècles)From the Tavern to the Fair Mapping Evil in the Middle Ages (12th-13th Centuries)
La tour d’Agriano. Une anti-utopie gay dans le roman de Bérinus (XIVe siècle)La tour d’Agriano. Une anti-utopie gay dans le roman de Bérinus (XIVe siècle)
Philippe Walter
Université Grenoble Alpes, France
philippe.walter@u-grenoble3.fr
La tour d’Agriano
Une anti-utopie gay dans le roman de Bérinus (XIVe siècle)
Abstract: In Berinus (a French novel of the 14th century) a young king called Agriano offers homosexuality as a solution to the conflict between genders. He initiates his fellows in a tower that becomes a symbol of schizomorphic sexuality. This antiutopia refuses both the absence of sexuality in the Éden’s garden and the heterosexuality in the biblical world after the Exile. It also refuses the feminist utopias inspired by the Amazone’s myth. It will be wiped out by Berinus who identifies the Trade Act with heterosexuality.
Keywords: Medieval Literature; Chivalry Novel; Berinus ; Homosexuality ; Antifeminism ; Misogyny.
Un texte méconnu du XIVe siècle français dessine les contours d’une anti-utopie : celle d’un monde qui abandonne l’hétérosexualité pour s’adonner à l’homosexualité intégrale. Le roman de Bérinus, daté des années 1350-1370, adapte en prose une œuvre (perdue) en vers octosyllabiques datant du XIIIe siècle[1]. Il se rattache au cycle des Sept sages de Rome dont le canevas principal viendrait d’Orient (avec un prototype qui aurait été écrit en langue pehlevi). Des versions intermédiaires en syriaque ou en grec (Michel Andréopoulos, fin du XIe siècle) ont permis le transfert du récit en Occident. Il existe également des rédactions arabes dont certaines furent insérées dans le recueil des Mille et une nuits, ainsi que des versions hébraïques. L’Espagne eut accès aux versions arabes. La France ne connut sans doute que les versions hébraïques.
Il était une fois un jeune fils de roi nommé Agriano. Son père mourut et Agriano hérita du royaume à l’âge de seize ans. Un jour, il rassembla tous ses sujets et leur déclara : « Mon père est mort parce qu’il était trop assujetti aux femmes ; il est évident que tous ceux qui ont mis leurs espoirs en leur femme ont connu la mort et la honte. C’est pourquoi j’exige que vous vous soumettiez désormais à ma décision : que chacun d’entre vous quitte sa femme pour échapper à son pouvoir. Que tous ceux d’entre vous qui ont une femme ou une fille en soient débarrassés d’ici demain. Que chacun de vous ordonne la même chose à ses vassaux ; il ne doit rester plus aucune femme dans mon royaume. Je veux savoir s’il sera possible de vivre en nous passant d’elles. »
Un de ses hommes nommé Grianor[2] proteste énergiquement contre cette décision, prétextant qu’elle est contre nature. Furieux, le roi fait couper le nez à son sujet récalcitrant et le condamne à partir en exil avec les femmes. Cette castration symbolique infligée au contestataire rappelle un châtiment comparable évoqué par Marie-France dans son lai du Bisclavret (loup garou) mais annonce surtout l’île Ennasin (dans le Quart Livre de Rabelais, ch IX) où règnent d’étranges mariages : dans cette île des Sans Nez (énasé peut se comprendre« nez coupé ») tout le monde est parent et appartient à une même famille ; l’inceste y est généralisé. Agriano fait embarquer de force les femmes de son royaume. Elles sont envoyées au loin de sorte qu’il n’en reste plus aucune dans le pays. Une société homosexuelle s’établit alors au royaume d’Agriano :
Li roysAgriano s’en ala en une tour qu’il avoit moult riche, et en celle tour avoit cent damoisiaux moult faitissementassemez(très bien éduqués) et de tous les plus beaulx de son paÿs ; la demanda lyroys les barons l’un pres de l’autre, et leur compta son estre et comment il se maintenoit(se conduisait) avec eulx, si leur monstra et aprist son fol usage et coustume[3].
On soulignera la présence symbolique de cette tour qui deviendra le lieu initiatique où seront éduqués sexuellement les jeunes compagnons d’Agriano. On songe ici à l’homosexualité initiatique et militaire telle qu’elle a pu se pratiquer dans les sociétés antiques[4]. Toutefois, cette île d’Agriano s’imprègne des connotations symboliques que Jean-Jacques Wunenburger[5] a relevées à propos d’une autre figure symbolique celle de l’île (le royaume d’Agriano est d’ailleurs déjà une île en soi ; cette tour est donc une île dans une île). Dans la tour d’Agriano se construit l’homme nouveau, celui qui se passera désormais de la femme dans l’organisation de la cité. C’est un lieu de pure autarcie sexuelle qui protège du « piège » féminin. L’injonction égalitariste et collectiviste d’Agriano est supposée y assurer un bonheur sexuel rigoureusement contrôlé. La nouvelle cité homosexuelle est protégée par un mur militaire du reste du monde extérieur perçu comme hostile car miné par les femmes. C’est donc bien un « imaginaire schizomorphe » qui résulte de cette dénaturation carcérale de la sexualité.
Un anti-mythe édénique
En quoi cet extrait de Bérinus relève-t-il de l’anti-utopie ? L’utopie par excellence du Moyen Age chrétien a été, pendant longtemps, celle du Paradis. Jean Delumeau[6] a raconté l’histoire imaginaire de ce lieu parfait. Plus récemment, Corin Braga a souligné l’échec de son double accomplissement géographique médiéval à travers « la quête manquée de l’Éden oriental » et « la quête manquée de l’Avalon occidentale »[7]. Ce Paradis, on le situe d’abord à l’est d’Éden puis vers l’ouest dans le royaume supposé de l’au-delà, là où le soleil va avalant (comme l’explique Robert de Boron), autrement dit en Avalon. L’utopie médiévale du Paradis se construit sur des bases bibliques (la Genèse, le pays où coule le lait et le miel, etc.) mais aussi sur les débris de croyances mythiques héritées des civilisations païennes absorbées par le christianisme (le pays des femmes du Voyage de Bran). Mais ce paradis chrétien n’est guère porté sur les choses du sexe. Selon la Bible, c’est après leur péché et leur exil du Paradis qu’homme et femme découvrent leur « nudité » (en clair, leurs organes sexuels) et que la femme devra enfanter dans la douleur. Dans le paradis originel, la sexualité n’existait pas. Ni l’homme ni la femme n’étaient des êtres de désir (avant l’arrivée du serpent qui va exciter en eux l’envie).
Dans la catégorie des utopies paradisiaques, un texte du XIIIe siècle intitulé La cour de Paradis dresse le portrait de ce monde de perfection chrétienne pendant la vie éternelle[8]. Il s’agit d’une société angélique où les saints et les élus vivent en bonne intelligence et n’ont finalement d’autre occupation que de célébrer à chaque instant les louanges du Très Haut, par des cantiques d’action de grâce, de somptueuses processions et de magnifiques cérémonies. L’idéal utopique de ce monde ordonné par le divin est liturgique (l’étymologie du grec litourgeiosinduit l’idée d’un service public, un modèle parfait de société ordonnée à partir du divin). Dans un tel univers, la sexualité n’a plus sa place puisque sa seule justification pour le Moyen Age était la procréation. Comme, désormais, les êtres sont immortels, il n’est plus nécessaire de procréer pour maintenir l’effectif du peuple de Dieu. Si les anges n’ont pas de sexe, c’est d’abord parce qu’ils vivent dans un monde où la mort n’existe plus et où il n’est plus nécessaire de procréer pour perpétuer l’espèce humaine. Pendant longtemps, il ne sera guère question de plaisirs sexuels au Paradis. Il faudra attendre le Jardin des Délices de Jérôme Bosch pour trouver évoquée la pure jouissance des plaisirs de l’amour. Devant l’inexistence du plaisir sexuel au paradis, on comprend le cri de révolte d’Aucassin dans la chantefable à la seule évocation du mot « paradis » :
– Qu’ai à faire du paradis ? Je ne désire pas y entrer, mais je veux avoir Nicolette, ma très douce amie que j’aime tant. Je vais vous dire les gens qui vont au paradis : ce sont les vieux prêtres, les vieux éclopés et les manchots qui, jour et nuit, sont à genoux devant les autels et dans de vieilles cryptes, qui ont de vieilles capes élimées et de vieux haillons, qui sont nus, sans souliers et sans chausses, qui meurent de faim, de soif, de froid et de maladie. Ceux-là vont en paradis ; je n’ai rien à faire avec eux. Mais c’est en enfer que je veux aller, car là vont les beaux clercs et les beaux chevaliers[9].
Cette vision radicale de la béatitude éternelle, asexuée et paradisiaque paraît si absolue qu’elle empêche pendant longtemps l’émergence d’utopies concurrentes. La littérature médiévale profane tente néanmoins quelques incursions dans le domaine de l’anti-utopie. Le roman de Bérinus en témoigne. Et si le paradis terrestre pouvait renaître sur terre ? Pour cela, il suffirait de corriger l’erreur originelle commise par Adam et surtout Ève dans le jardin d’Éden. Il serait possible de rendre caduc l’épisode de la Genèse et de faire comme si rien ne s’était passé dans le jardin d’Éden. Il faut réformer l’humanité. C’est le but d’Agriano. Mais comment s’y prendre ?
Pour le Moyen Age, le fait qu’Agriano soit un roi donne à son utopie un caractère politique voire expérimental : « Je vueil savoir se l’en pourra sanz elles durer » (je voudrais savoir s’il nous sera possible de nous passer des femmes) dit le roi[10]. C’est donc un essai de société qu’il veut expérimenter, à la manière des grands utopistes. Son rêve se démarque consciemment de l’utopie chrétienne du paradis (puisque Dieu a créé l’homme et la femme) mais il aspire paradoxalement à retrouver un monde d’avant l’exil (voire d’avant la création d’Ève par Dieu) dominé par l’harmonie et l’entente entre les hommes (uniquement les hommes). Il part d’un raisonnement logique, de nature presque syllogistique. Celui-ci trouve son bien-fondé dans le fond latent de misogynie cléricale et médiévale développé par les interprétations théologiques du péché originel (Genèse)[11] mais vulgarisée également dans certains romans de chevalerie. On se souviendra de la diatribe de Bohort dans la Mort du roi Arthur[12].
Le raisonnement d’Agriano est le suivant. L’homme a été chassé du jardin d’Éden par la faute d’une femme. On pourra donc reconstruire le jardin d’Éden sur terre en éliminant la femme de la société humaine. On peut parler d’une visée utopique, dans les termes choisis par Corin Braga, Agriano propose un « projet logique de rénovation de la société humaine »[13] : celui-ci repose sur la radicalisation d’un raisonnement à base théologique qui n’est pas totalement fantaisiste puisqu’il a été appliqué (institutionnellement) dans le monde chrétien. Comme l’a montré John Boswell, le monachisme sera au Moyen Age une véritable gay subculture : poèmes d’amour masculin écrits par de grands ecclésiastiques, triomphe de Ganymède enlevé par l’aigle au service de Zeus, bordels de garçons dans de nombreuses villes universitaires : Chartres, Sens, Orléans, Paris, etc[14]. L’idéal suprême du christianisme est celui d’une société asexuée. Le saint ou la sainte refusent le sexe.
Si le mot Utopie sert à « désigner un espace insulaire remarquable par sa nouveauté – île nouvelle – et destiné à illustrer l’organisation optimale de la cité – « la meilleure constitution d’une république » – c’est-à-dire un espace politique au sens plein, selon l’acception platonicienne du terme, explique P. Hubner[15], alors la société homosexuelle prônée par Bérinus est utopique. Le christianisme lui-même avait contribué à installer des sociétés homosexuelles, exclusivement masculine ou féminine. Il s’agit des communautés monastiques qui pratiquent une rigoureuse séparation des sexes. Mais leur autarcie est plutôt le résultat d’un choix de vie et non la décision politique d’un souverain. C’est sur ce point que l’utopie de Bérinus achoppe et devient anti-utopique : Agriano est l’exemple du tyran machiavélique. Il pose l’homosexualité en diktat politique. Son mobile est un « péché capital »(et inavoué) nommé luxure. Agriano est le contraire même du prince « prudent » au sens aristotélicien. La société qu’il préconise est un bordel masculin totalitaire. Egaré par le plaisir des sens, il entraîne tous les mâles de son royaume dans sa débauche. Un de ses sujets lui en fait le reproche : « ce n’avendraja, car ce seroit contre droiture et contre la voulenté de Nostre Seigneur, qui femme fist et fourma pour faire à l’ommecompaignie »[16].
Ainsi, le monde vanté par Bérinus se construit en opposition radicale au Paradis judéo-chrétien : cette anti-utopie se fonde sur le plaisir du sexe opérant ainsi un spectaculaire « retour du refoulé ». Comme l’a bien expliqué Jacques Le Goff, la morale sexuelle et cléricale du Moyen Age est fondée sur le refus du plaisir sexuel (qui n’existait pas en Paradis, avant l’exil)[17]. Par ailleurs, cette sexualité de Bérinus se veut transgressive vis-à-vis de la norme hétérosexuelle imposée par Dieu aux hommes après le péché originel : la seule sexualité qui peut caractériser l’anti-monde profane émancipé du divin sera donc homosexuelle. L’anti-utopie se construit contre la Genèse. Dieu a fait la femme pour l’homme (et pas le contraire) et la femme a entraîné l’homme dans le péché. L’exclusion de la femme devrait donc en principe purifier l’homme de toute souillure.
L’anti-Femenie
L’utopie de Bérinus n’est pas seulement anti-biblique. Elle est aussi l’antithèse de la terre de Femenie mentionnée dans toute une série de textes (de provenance non biblique) qui vont des premiers romans antiques (Enéas, Roman de Troie, romans d’Alexandre) jusqu’aux œuvres encyclopédiques (De naturisrerum de Thomas de Cantimpré ou Livre des Merveilles du Monde de Jean de Mandeville)[18].
Dans un récit en vers du XIIIe siècle intitulé Des grands géants, qui se passe 3970 ans après la création du monde. Un roi de Grèce a trente filles et il les marie toutes à de preux seigneurs. Vingt-neuf d’entre elles vont tuer leur époux car elles refusent l’autorité des hommes. Elles seront dénoncées par la seule qui reste fidèle à son mari. Placées dans un navire sans gouvernail ni nourriture, elles sont envoyées sur la mer où elles arrivent sur une terre déserte que l’aînée Albine nomme Albion. Elles se marieront à des démons incubes avec lesquelles elles procréeront des géants, les premiers habitants de l’île appelée à être conquise par Brutus et qui prendra ensuite le nom de Bretagne[19]. Ces géants seront exterminés par le roi Arthur et ses hommes.
Les femmes d’Albion n’ont finalement pas réussi à construire (à elles seules) une société viable. Il n’en fut pas de même pour les Amazones dont on suit très bien la trace tout au long du Moyen Age. Nul ne parviendra jamais à les soumettre car elles ont su résoudre à la fois le problème de leur survie (elles ne voient leur mari qu’une seule fois par an et ne gardent de leur progéniture que les filles) et celui de leur indépendance (seules les vierges sont de bonnes guerrières et défendent leur royaume souverain). Elles incarnent alors l’idéalisation parfaite d’un monde féminin qui se suffit à lui-même.
À tout prendre, cet idéal amazonien, féministe avant la lettre, réussit mieux que l’utopie machiste d’Agriano. Le comble est que les hommes entre eux ont totalement oublié de cultiver les valeurs guerrières. Trop adonnés au sexe, ils se sont ramollis. Par rapport aux Amazones, les hommes d’Agriano ont renoncé à tout engagement collectif. Ils ne pensent qu’à leur plaisir individuel contrairement aux Amazones qui possèdent le sens de la collectivité et travaillent intelligemment à leur survie. On s’éloigne de l’homosexualité initiatique que décrivait Bernard Sergent[20] dans les sociétés de la vieille Europe (chez les Grecs, les Celtes, les Germains, les Macédoniens, les Albanais). Cet antique usage (à finalité militaire) remonte à une morale et une pédagogie de guerriers. Il se heurtera à la « morale des prêtres » mais beaucoup plus encore à la « morale des marchands ».
En fait, du point de vue clérical, parquer les femmes dans une île qui leur est réservée, c’est les abandonner à leur « perversité » fondamentale. De cette perversité, le Livre des Merveilles de l’Inde donne une idée en évoquant précisément une île des femmes insatiables :
« Tout à coup de l’intérieur de l’île arrive une cohue de femmes dont Dieu seul pourrait compter le nombre. Elles tombent sur les hommes, mille femmes ou plus pour chaque homme. Elles les entraînent vers les montagnes et les forcent à devenir les instruments de leurs plaisirs. C’est entre elles une lutte sans cesse renouvelée, et l’homme appartient à la plus forte. Les hommes mouraient d’épuisement l’un après l’autre »[21].
On signalera, dans le même ouvrage, le cas d’une autre île composée d’une société exclusivement féminine où les femmes sont fécondées par le vent et où ne naissent que des filles. La nature a résolu d’elle-même le problème de la survie de cette communauté. Cela n’est pas le cas dans Bérinusoù les hommes ne disposent pas de cet androgynat idéal dont parle Jean de Mandeville en 1365 dans son Voyage autour de la Terre : « Dans une île, il y a des gens qui sont à la fois homme et femme, ils ont un sein d’un côté, de l’autre n’en ont pas et ils ont les organes de génération d’homme et de femme et s’en servent comme ils le veulent, tantôt de l’un, tantôt de l’autre ; ils engendrent des enfants quand ils agissent en mâles et, quand ils agissent en femmes, ils les conçoivent et les portent »[22].
L’hétérosexualité et l’économie politique
Il reste à comprendre la morale implicite qui se dégage de l’anti-utopie de Bérinus. Le nom d’Agriano dissimule probablement celui d’Hadrien (Adriano en italien), empereur romain[23] connu pour son homosexualité, bien avant le célèbre roman de Marguerite Yourcenar. L’historien SextusAurelius Victor mort au IVe siècle, à une époque où la pédérastie n’était plus considérée comme morale et pédagogique, explique qu’Hadrien recherchait scrupuleusement tous les raffinements du luxe et de la volupté. On l’accusait d’avoir flétri l’honneur de jeunes garçons et d’avoir brûlé pour Antinoüs d’une passion contre nature. Or, l’homosexualité présentée comme règle politique dans Bérinus relève de l’utopie négative. Le narrateur de Bérinus lui-même se trouve clairement en position dystopique et condamne Agrianole roi dénaturé :
Bien avez oÿ comment li mauvais royrenoiez exploita et comment il fut de mauvaise condicion, car il fist tant que tuit si home habitoientdeshonnestement contre nature li uns a l’autre, par tout son païs[24].
Il dénonce un état de fait qui conduit toute la société au chaos. Pourquoi ? Bérinus avance ici une explication nouvelle de l’impuissance politique de l’homosexualité. Remis en contexte, l’épisode d’Agriano livre une suggestion sociétale intéressante. Le royaume de Gamel (c’est ainsi qu’est nommée la terre d’Agriano) est voisin de la terre de Blandie (« tromperie ») où le héros Bérinus est arrivé pour faire du commerce. Blandie est convoitée par Agriano mais ce dernier échoue dans son entreprise de conquête. Fait prisonnier, il pourrira dans une oubliette avec ses compagnons de fol usage. Dieu enverra un raz-de-marée pour nettoyer la terre de ces hommes dépravés.
Au contraire, Bérinus est le fils d’un riche marchand romain. Il prône la loi du doux commerce et c’est à ce titre qu’il condamne la société homosexuelle du royaume de Gamel. Morale de l’histoire : l’homosexualité est incompatible avec les règles de l’échange économique et cela suffit à le condamner. L’échange exogamique des femmes entre groupes sociaux (en vue du mariage) est à la base de l’économie réelle. C’est même la base de cet « échange généralisé » que Claude Lévi-Strauss a analysé dans un ouvrage célèbre.[25] On note que les groupes sociaux qui, dans l’histoire, ont le plus pratiqué l’homosexualité soient ceux qui ne sont pas soumises à l’obligation de production (clergé, noblesse et militaires[26] en particulier), même s’ils stigmatisent cette homosexualité par ailleurs. [27] Herbert Marcuse avait expliqué que l’organisation du travail suppose la répression de la sexualité.[28]Seule l’absence d’une satisfaction sexuelle totale rend possible et soutient l’organisation sociale du travail. Pour Agriano et ses compagnons, c’est le métier des armes qui a été sacrifié au profit d’une homosexualité envahissante.
Post coitum historia. Agriano avait fait de sa tour le lieu protégé de son utopie homosexuelle. Sa tour n’a pas connu de meilleur sort que celle de Babel. Les TwinTowers, bien réelles, de Manhattan n’ont pas mieux résisté. Faut-il retenir une vérité de cet imaginaire ? Oui, toute tour s’effondrera.
Notes
[5] J.-J. Wunenburger, La vie des images, Presses Universitaires de Grenoble, 2002, p. 215-227. Sur le symbolisme de la tour, voir aussi : P. Zumthor, Babel ou l’inachèvement, Paris, Seuil, 1997.
[7] C. Braga, Le paradis interdit au Moyen Age. La quête manquée de l’Éden oriental, L’Harmattan, 2004 et Le paradis interdit au Moyen Age 2. La quête manquée de l’Avalon occidentale, L’Harmattan, 2006.
[8] La Cour de Paradis, éd. par E. Vilamo-Pentti, Helsinki, 1953. Le poème illustre le thème théologique de la communion des saints porté par la fête de la Toussaint (1er novembre).
[11] R. H. Bloch, « La misogynie médiévale et l’invention de l’amour en Occident », Les Cahiers du GRIF, 47, 1993, p. 9-23.
[12] « Je n’ai jamais vu un homme de valeur aimer longtemps d’amour sans finir par être honni (par une femme) … Jamais homme ne fut captivé par une femme sans être honni et en mourir » (§ 86 et 87, Livre du Graal, t. 3, trad. Ph. Walter, Paris, Gallimard-Pléiade, 2009, p. 1256-1257). Suivent les exemples de Salomon, Samson, Hector et Achille victimes de la guerre de Troie (provoquée par l’enlèvement d’Hélène), et enfin Tristan lui-même.
[14] J. Boswell, Christianisme, tolérance sociale et homosexualité. Les homosexuels en Europe occidentale des débuts de l’ère chrétienne au XIVe siècle, Paris, Gallimard, 1985.
[15] Article « Utopie » dans : P. Brunel éd., Dictionnaire des mythes littéraires, Monaco, Editions du Rocher, 1988.
[17] J. Le Goff, L’imaginaire médiéval, Paris, Gallimard, 1985, p. 136-148. Voir aussi les contributions rassemblées dans : Communications, 35, 1982 « Sexualités occidentales » sous la direction de Philippe Ariès.
[18] Voir l’article de C. Ferlampin-Acher, Femenie (Terre de), dans : J. J. Vincensini et alii éd., Dictionnaire des lieux et pays mythiques, Paris, Laffont, 2011, p. 484-488.
[19] Des grants geanz, édition de G. Brereton, Oxford, 1937. Le thème de l’apparition du mal lié aux géants apparaît déjà dans l’apocalyptique juive : M. Delcor, « Le mythe de la chute des anges et de l’origine des géants comme explication du mal dans le monde, dans l’apocalyptique juive. Histoire des traditions », Revue de l’histoire des religions, 190, 1976, p. 3-53.
[21] Cité d’après L. Boia, Entre l’ange et la bête. Le mythe de l’homme différent de l’Antiquité à nos jours, Paris, Plon, 1995, p. 33. Sur la portée utopique des merveilles de l’Inde : J. Le Goff, L’occident médiéval et l’océan indien : un horizon onirique, Pour un autre Moyen Age, Gallimard, 1977, p. 280-298.
[25] C. Lévi-Strauss, Les structures élémentaires de la parenté, Berlin & New York, Mouton de Gruyter, 1967 (2e édition).
Philippe Walter
Université Grenoble Alpes, France
philippe.walter@u-grenoble3.fr
Agriano’s tower
A gay antiutopia in Berinus (a French novel of the 14th century)
Abstract: In Berinus (a French novel of the 14th century) a young king called Agriano offers homosexuality as a solution to the conflict between genders. He initiates his fellows in a tower that becomes a symbol of schizomorphic sexuality. This antiutopia refuses both the absence of sexuality in the Éden’s garden and the heterosexuality in the biblical world after the Exile. It also refuses the feminist utopias inspired by the Amazone’s myth. It will be wiped out by Berinus who identifies the Trade Act with heterosexuality.
Keywords: Medieval Literature; Chivalry Novel; Berinus ; Homosexuality ; Antifeminism ; Misogyny.
Un texte méconnu du XIVe siècle français dessine les contours d’une anti-utopie : celle d’un monde qui abandonne l’hétérosexualité pour s’adonner à l’homosexualité intégrale. Le roman de Bérinus, daté des années 1350-1370, adapte en prose une œuvre (perdue) en vers octosyllabiques datant du XIIIe siècle[1]. Il se rattache au cycle des Sept sages de Rome dont le canevas principal viendrait d’Orient (avec un prototype qui aurait été écrit en langue pehlevi). Des versions intermédiaires en syriaque ou en grec (Michel Andréopoulos, fin du XIe siècle) ont permis le transfert du récit en Occident. Il existe également des rédactions arabes dont certaines furent insérées dans le recueil des Mille et une nuits, ainsi que des versions hébraïques. L’Espagne eut accès aux versions arabes. La France ne connut sans doute que les versions hébraïques.
Il était une fois un jeune fils de roi nommé Agriano. Son père mourut et Agriano hérita du royaume à l’âge de seize ans. Un jour, il rassembla tous ses sujets et leur déclara : « Mon père est mort parce qu’il était trop assujetti aux femmes ; il est évident que tous ceux qui ont mis leurs espoirs en leur femme ont connu la mort et la honte. C’est pourquoi j’exige que vous vous soumettiez désormais à ma décision : que chacun d’entre vous quitte sa femme pour échapper à son pouvoir. Que tous ceux d’entre vous qui ont une femme ou une fille en soient débarrassés d’ici demain. Que chacun de vous ordonne la même chose à ses vassaux ; il ne doit rester plus aucune femme dans mon royaume. Je veux savoir s’il sera possible de vivre en nous passant d’elles. »
Un de ses hommes nommé Grianor[2] proteste énergiquement contre cette décision, prétextant qu’elle est contre nature. Furieux, le roi fait couper le nez à son sujet récalcitrant et le condamne à partir en exil avec les femmes. Cette castration symbolique infligée au contestataire rappelle un châtiment comparable évoqué par Marie-France dans son lai du Bisclavret (loup garou) mais annonce surtout l’île Ennasin (dans le Quart Livre de Rabelais, ch IX) où règnent d’étranges mariages : dans cette île des Sans Nez (énasé peut se comprendre« nez coupé ») tout le monde est parent et appartient à une même famille ; l’inceste y est généralisé. Agriano fait embarquer de force les femmes de son royaume. Elles sont envoyées au loin de sorte qu’il n’en reste plus aucune dans le pays. Une société homosexuelle s’établit alors au royaume d’Agriano :
Li roysAgriano s’en ala en une tour qu’il avoit moult riche, et en celle tour avoit cent damoisiaux moult faitissementassemez(très bien éduqués) et de tous les plus beaulx de son paÿs ; la demanda lyroys les barons l’un pres de l’autre, et leur compta son estre et comment il se maintenoit(se conduisait) avec eulx, si leur monstra et aprist son fol usage et coustume[3].
On soulignera la présence symbolique de cette tour qui deviendra le lieu initiatique où seront éduqués sexuellement les jeunes compagnons d’Agriano. On songe ici à l’homosexualité initiatique et militaire telle qu’elle a pu se pratiquer dans les sociétés antiques[4]. Toutefois, cette île d’Agriano s’imprègne des connotations symboliques que Jean-Jacques Wunenburger[5] a relevées à propos d’une autre figure symbolique celle de l’île (le royaume d’Agriano est d’ailleurs déjà une île en soi ; cette tour est donc une île dans une île). Dans la tour d’Agriano se construit l’homme nouveau, celui qui se passera désormais de la femme dans l’organisation de la cité. C’est un lieu de pure autarcie sexuelle qui protège du « piège » féminin. L’injonction égalitariste et collectiviste d’Agriano est supposée y assurer un bonheur sexuel rigoureusement contrôlé. La nouvelle cité homosexuelle est protégée par un mur militaire du reste du monde extérieur perçu comme hostile car miné par les femmes. C’est donc bien un « imaginaire schizomorphe » qui résulte de cette dénaturation carcérale de la sexualité.
Un anti-mythe édénique
En quoi cet extrait de Bérinus relève-t-il de l’anti-utopie ? L’utopie par excellence du Moyen Age chrétien a été, pendant longtemps, celle du Paradis. Jean Delumeau[6] a raconté l’histoire imaginaire de ce lieu parfait. Plus récemment, Corin Braga a souligné l’échec de son double accomplissement géographique médiéval à travers « la quête manquée de l’Éden oriental » et « la quête manquée de l’Avalon occidentale »[7]. Ce Paradis, on le situe d’abord à l’est d’Éden puis vers l’ouest dans le royaume supposé de l’au-delà, là où le soleil va avalant (comme l’explique Robert de Boron), autrement dit en Avalon. L’utopie médiévale du Paradis se construit sur des bases bibliques (la Genèse, le pays où coule le lait et le miel, etc.) mais aussi sur les débris de croyances mythiques héritées des civilisations païennes absorbées par le christianisme (le pays des femmes du Voyage de Bran). Mais ce paradis chrétien n’est guère porté sur les choses du sexe. Selon la Bible, c’est après leur péché et leur exil du Paradis qu’homme et femme découvrent leur « nudité » (en clair, leurs organes sexuels) et que la femme devra enfanter dans la douleur. Dans le paradis originel, la sexualité n’existait pas. Ni l’homme ni la femme n’étaient des êtres de désir (avant l’arrivée du serpent qui va exciter en eux l’envie).
Dans la catégorie des utopies paradisiaques, un texte du XIIIe siècle intitulé La cour de Paradis dresse le portrait de ce monde de perfection chrétienne pendant la vie éternelle[8]. Il s’agit d’une société angélique où les saints et les élus vivent en bonne intelligence et n’ont finalement d’autre occupation que de célébrer à chaque instant les louanges du Très Haut, par des cantiques d’action de grâce, de somptueuses processions et de magnifiques cérémonies. L’idéal utopique de ce monde ordonné par le divin est liturgique (l’étymologie du grec litourgeiosinduit l’idée d’un service public, un modèle parfait de société ordonnée à partir du divin). Dans un tel univers, la sexualité n’a plus sa place puisque sa seule justification pour le Moyen Age était la procréation. Comme, désormais, les êtres sont immortels, il n’est plus nécessaire de procréer pour maintenir l’effectif du peuple de Dieu. Si les anges n’ont pas de sexe, c’est d’abord parce qu’ils vivent dans un monde où la mort n’existe plus et où il n’est plus nécessaire de procréer pour perpétuer l’espèce humaine. Pendant longtemps, il ne sera guère question de plaisirs sexuels au Paradis. Il faudra attendre le Jardin des Délices de Jérôme Bosch pour trouver évoquée la pure jouissance des plaisirs de l’amour. Devant l’inexistence du plaisir sexuel au paradis, on comprend le cri de révolte d’Aucassin dans la chantefable à la seule évocation du mot « paradis » :
– Qu’ai à faire du paradis ? Je ne désire pas y entrer, mais je veux avoir Nicolette, ma très douce amie que j’aime tant. Je vais vous dire les gens qui vont au paradis : ce sont les vieux prêtres, les vieux éclopés et les manchots qui, jour et nuit, sont à genoux devant les autels et dans de vieilles cryptes, qui ont de vieilles capes élimées et de vieux haillons, qui sont nus, sans souliers et sans chausses, qui meurent de faim, de soif, de froid et de maladie. Ceux-là vont en paradis ; je n’ai rien à faire avec eux. Mais c’est en enfer que je veux aller, car là vont les beaux clercs et les beaux chevaliers[9].
Cette vision radicale de la béatitude éternelle, asexuée et paradisiaque paraît si absolue qu’elle empêche pendant longtemps l’émergence d’utopies concurrentes. La littérature médiévale profane tente néanmoins quelques incursions dans le domaine de l’anti-utopie. Le roman de Bérinus en témoigne. Et si le paradis terrestre pouvait renaître sur terre ? Pour cela, il suffirait de corriger l’erreur originelle commise par Adam et surtout Ève dans le jardin d’Éden. Il serait possible de rendre caduc l’épisode de la Genèse et de faire comme si rien ne s’était passé dans le jardin d’Éden. Il faut réformer l’humanité. C’est le but d’Agriano. Mais comment s’y prendre ?
Pour le Moyen Age, le fait qu’Agriano soit un roi donne à son utopie un caractère politique voire expérimental : « Je vueil savoir se l’en pourra sanz elles durer » (je voudrais savoir s’il nous sera possible de nous passer des femmes) dit le roi[10]. C’est donc un essai de société qu’il veut expérimenter, à la manière des grands utopistes. Son rêve se démarque consciemment de l’utopie chrétienne du paradis (puisque Dieu a créé l’homme et la femme) mais il aspire paradoxalement à retrouver un monde d’avant l’exil (voire d’avant la création d’Ève par Dieu) dominé par l’harmonie et l’entente entre les hommes (uniquement les hommes). Il part d’un raisonnement logique, de nature presque syllogistique. Celui-ci trouve son bien-fondé dans le fond latent de misogynie cléricale et médiévale développé par les interprétations théologiques du péché originel (Genèse)[11] mais vulgarisée également dans certains romans de chevalerie. On se souviendra de la diatribe de Bohort dans la Mort du roi Arthur[12].
Le raisonnement d’Agriano est le suivant. L’homme a été chassé du jardin d’Éden par la faute d’une femme. On pourra donc reconstruire le jardin d’Éden sur terre en éliminant la femme de la société humaine. On peut parler d’une visée utopique, dans les termes choisis par Corin Braga, Agriano propose un « projet logique de rénovation de la société humaine »[13] : celui-ci repose sur la radicalisation d’un raisonnement à base théologique qui n’est pas totalement fantaisiste puisqu’il a été appliqué (institutionnellement) dans le monde chrétien. Comme l’a montré John Boswell, le monachisme sera au Moyen Age une véritable gay subculture : poèmes d’amour masculin écrits par de grands ecclésiastiques, triomphe de Ganymède enlevé par l’aigle au service de Zeus, bordels de garçons dans de nombreuses villes universitaires : Chartres, Sens, Orléans, Paris, etc[14]. L’idéal suprême du christianisme est celui d’une société asexuée. Le saint ou la sainte refusent le sexe.
Si le mot Utopie sert à « désigner un espace insulaire remarquable par sa nouveauté – île nouvelle – et destiné à illustrer l’organisation optimale de la cité – « la meilleure constitution d’une république » – c’est-à-dire un espace politique au sens plein, selon l’acception platonicienne du terme, explique P. Hubner[15], alors la société homosexuelle prônée par Bérinus est utopique. Le christianisme lui-même avait contribué à installer des sociétés homosexuelles, exclusivement masculine ou féminine. Il s’agit des communautés monastiques qui pratiquent une rigoureuse séparation des sexes. Mais leur autarcie est plutôt le résultat d’un choix de vie et non la décision politique d’un souverain. C’est sur ce point que l’utopie de Bérinus achoppe et devient anti-utopique : Agriano est l’exemple du tyran machiavélique. Il pose l’homosexualité en diktat politique. Son mobile est un « péché capital »(et inavoué) nommé luxure. Agriano est le contraire même du prince « prudent » au sens aristotélicien. La société qu’il préconise est un bordel masculin totalitaire. Egaré par le plaisir des sens, il entraîne tous les mâles de son royaume dans sa débauche. Un de ses sujets lui en fait le reproche : « ce n’avendraja, car ce seroit contre droiture et contre la voulenté de Nostre Seigneur, qui femme fist et fourma pour faire à l’ommecompaignie »[16].
Ainsi, le monde vanté par Bérinus se construit en opposition radicale au Paradis judéo-chrétien : cette anti-utopie se fonde sur le plaisir du sexe opérant ainsi un spectaculaire « retour du refoulé ». Comme l’a bien expliqué Jacques Le Goff, la morale sexuelle et cléricale du Moyen Age est fondée sur le refus du plaisir sexuel (qui n’existait pas en Paradis, avant l’exil)[17]. Par ailleurs, cette sexualité de Bérinus se veut transgressive vis-à-vis de la norme hétérosexuelle imposée par Dieu aux hommes après le péché originel : la seule sexualité qui peut caractériser l’anti-monde profane émancipé du divin sera donc homosexuelle. L’anti-utopie se construit contre la Genèse. Dieu a fait la femme pour l’homme (et pas le contraire) et la femme a entraîné l’homme dans le péché. L’exclusion de la femme devrait donc en principe purifier l’homme de toute souillure.
L’anti-Femenie
L’utopie de Bérinus n’est pas seulement anti-biblique. Elle est aussi l’antithèse de la terre de Femenie mentionnée dans toute une série de textes (de provenance non biblique) qui vont des premiers romans antiques (Enéas, Roman de Troie, romans d’Alexandre) jusqu’aux œuvres encyclopédiques (De naturisrerum de Thomas de Cantimpré ou Livre des Merveilles du Monde de Jean de Mandeville)[18].
Dans un récit en vers du XIIIe siècle intitulé Des grands géants, qui se passe 3970 ans après la création du monde. Un roi de Grèce a trente filles et il les marie toutes à de preux seigneurs. Vingt-neuf d’entre elles vont tuer leur époux car elles refusent l’autorité des hommes. Elles seront dénoncées par la seule qui reste fidèle à son mari. Placées dans un navire sans gouvernail ni nourriture, elles sont envoyées sur la mer où elles arrivent sur une terre déserte que l’aînée Albine nomme Albion. Elles se marieront à des démons incubes avec lesquelles elles procréeront des géants, les premiers habitants de l’île appelée à être conquise par Brutus et qui prendra ensuite le nom de Bretagne[19]. Ces géants seront exterminés par le roi Arthur et ses hommes.
Les femmes d’Albion n’ont finalement pas réussi à construire (à elles seules) une société viable. Il n’en fut pas de même pour les Amazones dont on suit très bien la trace tout au long du Moyen Age. Nul ne parviendra jamais à les soumettre car elles ont su résoudre à la fois le problème de leur survie (elles ne voient leur mari qu’une seule fois par an et ne gardent de leur progéniture que les filles) et celui de leur indépendance (seules les vierges sont de bonnes guerrières et défendent leur royaume souverain). Elles incarnent alors l’idéalisation parfaite d’un monde féminin qui se suffit à lui-même.
À tout prendre, cet idéal amazonien, féministe avant la lettre, réussit mieux que l’utopie machiste d’Agriano. Le comble est que les hommes entre eux ont totalement oublié de cultiver les valeurs guerrières. Trop adonnés au sexe, ils se sont ramollis. Par rapport aux Amazones, les hommes d’Agriano ont renoncé à tout engagement collectif. Ils ne pensent qu’à leur plaisir individuel contrairement aux Amazones qui possèdent le sens de la collectivité et travaillent intelligemment à leur survie. On s’éloigne de l’homosexualité initiatique que décrivait Bernard Sergent[20] dans les sociétés de la vieille Europe (chez les Grecs, les Celtes, les Germains, les Macédoniens, les Albanais). Cet antique usage (à finalité militaire) remonte à une morale et une pédagogie de guerriers. Il se heurtera à la « morale des prêtres » mais beaucoup plus encore à la « morale des marchands ».
En fait, du point de vue clérical, parquer les femmes dans une île qui leur est réservée, c’est les abandonner à leur « perversité » fondamentale. De cette perversité, le Livre des Merveilles de l’Inde donne une idée en évoquant précisément une île des femmes insatiables :
« Tout à coup de l’intérieur de l’île arrive une cohue de femmes dont Dieu seul pourrait compter le nombre. Elles tombent sur les hommes, mille femmes ou plus pour chaque homme. Elles les entraînent vers les montagnes et les forcent à devenir les instruments de leurs plaisirs. C’est entre elles une lutte sans cesse renouvelée, et l’homme appartient à la plus forte. Les hommes mouraient d’épuisement l’un après l’autre »[21].
On signalera, dans le même ouvrage, le cas d’une autre île composée d’une société exclusivement féminine où les femmes sont fécondées par le vent et où ne naissent que des filles. La nature a résolu d’elle-même le problème de la survie de cette communauté. Cela n’est pas le cas dans Bérinusoù les hommes ne disposent pas de cet androgynat idéal dont parle Jean de Mandeville en 1365 dans son Voyage autour de la Terre : « Dans une île, il y a des gens qui sont à la fois homme et femme, ils ont un sein d’un côté, de l’autre n’en ont pas et ils ont les organes de génération d’homme et de femme et s’en servent comme ils le veulent, tantôt de l’un, tantôt de l’autre ; ils engendrent des enfants quand ils agissent en mâles et, quand ils agissent en femmes, ils les conçoivent et les portent »[22].
L’hétérosexualité et l’économie politique
Il reste à comprendre la morale implicite qui se dégage de l’anti-utopie de Bérinus. Le nom d’Agriano dissimule probablement celui d’Hadrien (Adriano en italien), empereur romain[23] connu pour son homosexualité, bien avant le célèbre roman de Marguerite Yourcenar. L’historien SextusAurelius Victor mort au IVe siècle, à une époque où la pédérastie n’était plus considérée comme morale et pédagogique, explique qu’Hadrien recherchait scrupuleusement tous les raffinements du luxe et de la volupté. On l’accusait d’avoir flétri l’honneur de jeunes garçons et d’avoir brûlé pour Antinoüs d’une passion contre nature. Or, l’homosexualité présentée comme règle politique dans Bérinus relève de l’utopie négative. Le narrateur de Bérinus lui-même se trouve clairement en position dystopique et condamne Agrianole roi dénaturé :
Bien avez oÿ comment li mauvais royrenoiez exploita et comment il fut de mauvaise condicion, car il fist tant que tuit si home habitoientdeshonnestement contre nature li uns a l’autre, par tout son païs[24].
Il dénonce un état de fait qui conduit toute la société au chaos. Pourquoi ? Bérinus avance ici une explication nouvelle de l’impuissance politique de l’homosexualité. Remis en contexte, l’épisode d’Agriano livre une suggestion sociétale intéressante. Le royaume de Gamel (c’est ainsi qu’est nommée la terre d’Agriano) est voisin de la terre de Blandie (« tromperie ») où le héros Bérinus est arrivé pour faire du commerce. Blandie est convoitée par Agriano mais ce dernier échoue dans son entreprise de conquête. Fait prisonnier, il pourrira dans une oubliette avec ses compagnons de fol usage. Dieu enverra un raz-de-marée pour nettoyer la terre de ces hommes dépravés.
Au contraire, Bérinus est le fils d’un riche marchand romain. Il prône la loi du doux commerce et c’est à ce titre qu’il condamne la société homosexuelle du royaume de Gamel. Morale de l’histoire : l’homosexualité est incompatible avec les règles de l’échange économique et cela suffit à le condamner. L’échange exogamique des femmes entre groupes sociaux (en vue du mariage) est à la base de l’économie réelle. C’est même la base de cet « échange généralisé » que Claude Lévi-Strauss a analysé dans un ouvrage célèbre.[25] On note que les groupes sociaux qui, dans l’histoire, ont le plus pratiqué l’homosexualité soient ceux qui ne sont pas soumises à l’obligation de production (clergé, noblesse et militaires[26] en particulier), même s’ils stigmatisent cette homosexualité par ailleurs. [27] Herbert Marcuse avait expliqué que l’organisation du travail suppose la répression de la sexualité.[28]Seule l’absence d’une satisfaction sexuelle totale rend possible et soutient l’organisation sociale du travail. Pour Agriano et ses compagnons, c’est le métier des armes qui a été sacrifié au profit d’une homosexualité envahissante.
Post coitum historia. Agriano avait fait de sa tour le lieu protégé de son utopie homosexuelle. Sa tour n’a pas connu de meilleur sort que celle de Babel. Les TwinTowers, bien réelles, de Manhattan n’ont pas mieux résisté. Faut-il retenir une vérité de cet imaginaire ? Oui, toute tour s’effondrera.
Notes
[5] J.-J. Wunenburger, La vie des images, Presses Universitaires de Grenoble, 2002, p. 215-227. Sur le symbolisme de la tour, voir aussi : P. Zumthor, Babel ou l’inachèvement, Paris, Seuil, 1997.
[7] C. Braga, Le paradis interdit au Moyen Age. La quête manquée de l’Éden oriental, L’Harmattan, 2004 et Le paradis interdit au Moyen Age 2. La quête manquée de l’Avalon occidentale, L’Harmattan, 2006.
[8] La Cour de Paradis, éd. par E. Vilamo-Pentti, Helsinki, 1953. Le poème illustre le thème théologique de la communion des saints porté par la fête de la Toussaint (1er novembre).
[11] R. H. Bloch, « La misogynie médiévale et l’invention de l’amour en Occident », Les Cahiers du GRIF, 47, 1993, p. 9-23.
[12] « Je n’ai jamais vu un homme de valeur aimer longtemps d’amour sans finir par être honni (par une femme) … Jamais homme ne fut captivé par une femme sans être honni et en mourir » (§ 86 et 87, Livre du Graal, t. 3, trad. Ph. Walter, Paris, Gallimard-Pléiade, 2009, p. 1256-1257). Suivent les exemples de Salomon, Samson, Hector et Achille victimes de la guerre de Troie (provoquée par l’enlèvement d’Hélène), et enfin Tristan lui-même.
[14] J. Boswell, Christianisme, tolérance sociale et homosexualité. Les homosexuels en Europe occidentale des débuts de l’ère chrétienne au XIVe siècle, Paris, Gallimard, 1985.
[15] Article « Utopie » dans : P. Brunel éd., Dictionnaire des mythes littéraires, Monaco, Editions du Rocher, 1988.
[17] J. Le Goff, L’imaginaire médiéval, Paris, Gallimard, 1985, p. 136-148. Voir aussi les contributions rassemblées dans : Communications, 35, 1982 « Sexualités occidentales » sous la direction de Philippe Ariès.
[18] Voir l’article de C. Ferlampin-Acher, Femenie (Terre de), dans : J. J. Vincensini et alii éd., Dictionnaire des lieux et pays mythiques, Paris, Laffont, 2011, p. 484-488.
[19] Des grants geanz, édition de G. Brereton, Oxford, 1937. Le thème de l’apparition du mal lié aux géants apparaît déjà dans l’apocalyptique juive : M. Delcor, « Le mythe de la chute des anges et de l’origine des géants comme explication du mal dans le monde, dans l’apocalyptique juive. Histoire des traditions », Revue de l’histoire des religions, 190, 1976, p. 3-53.
[21] Cité d’après L. Boia, Entre l’ange et la bête. Le mythe de l’homme différent de l’Antiquité à nos jours, Paris, Plon, 1995, p. 33. Sur la portée utopique des merveilles de l’Inde : J. Le Goff, L’occident médiéval et l’océan indien : un horizon onirique, Pour un autre Moyen Age, Gallimard, 1977, p. 280-298.
[25] C. Lévi-Strauss, Les structures élémentaires de la parenté, Berlin & New York, Mouton de Gruyter, 1967 (2e édition).