Author Archives: Dan Chira

Sibusiso Hyacinth Madondo
University of South Africa, Cape Town
madonsh@unisa.ac.za

 

 

The  Painted Bird:

Jerzy Kosinski and the Mythopoetics of Dystopia

 

 

Abstract: Jerzy Kosinski’s novel is told from the point of view of an unnamed six year old wandering street urchin who inhabits an unnamed, hellish wonderland bristling with cheating, violence, malevolence, perversion and lies during the Second World War. The little boy’s parents send him to live in the countryside in the hope that he will escape the ravages of war. Unfortunately, his life in the countryside becomes a nightmare as he is destined to undergo the harrowing experience on a daily basis of being bullied by the blue-eyed, blond village louts who speak the rural dialect. He is dark-haired and dark-eyed and speaks the educated dialect, consequently he is considered a “Gypsy or Jewish stray” during a time when these traits are virtually tantamount to a death sentence. For the rest of the Second World War he passes from hand to hand like Lazarillo de Tormes, being exposed to all kinds of vices and evils. Nonetheless, he learns to become a survivor and each time he experiences a run of misfortune, he finds ways to wriggle out of the predicament: he escapes from the captivity of a Nazi concentration camp; he survives after being thrown in a manure pit at the cost of losing the power of speech till the end of the novel when he suddenly feels the urge and rediscovers the ability to speak again.

Keywords: Jerzy Kosinski; Holocaust; Painted Bird; Jewish Stray; Nazi; Concentration Camp; Wandering Jew; Dystopian Fiction; Aristophanes.

 

 

            Jerzy Kosinski’s novel The Painted Bird is a wartime narrative combining the elements of dystopian fiction, the picaresque novel, satire and Bildungsroman told from the perspective of an unnamed six-year old wandering street urchin, who inhabits an unnamed, hellish wonderland bristling with cheating, violence, malevolence, perversion and lies during the Second World War[1].   The little boy’s parents send him to live in the countryside, in the hope that he will escape the ravages of war. Unfortunately, his life in the countryside becomes a nightmare, as he is destined to undergo the harrowing experience, on a daily basis, of being bullied by the blond, blue-eyed village louts who speak the rural dialect. He is dark-haired and dark-eyed and speaks the educated dialect, and is consequently viewed as a “Gypsy or Jewish stray” at a time when these traits are virtually tantamount to a death sentence. For the rest of the Second World War, he lives from hand to mouth, like Lazarillo de Tormes, being exposed to all kinds of vices and evils. Nonetheless, he learns to become a survivor, and each time he experiences a period of misfortune, he finds ways to wriggle out of the predicament: he escapes from the captivity of a Nazi concentration camp and he survives after being thrown in a latrine pit, at the cost of losing the power of speech, until the end of the novel, when he suddenly feels the urge and regains his ability to speak.

 

            The title of The Painted Bird is very significant, as it evokes one of the episodes in the novel and constitutes its central themes, namely racial discrimination and hatred. In fact, the author states that the title was inspired by his memory of Aristophanes’ play The Birds, in which animals are used to satirise society:

 

As I began to write, I recalled The Birds, the satirical play by Aristophanes. His protagonists, based on important citizens of ancient Athens, were made anonymous in an idyllic natural realm, ‘a land of easy and fair rest, where man can sleep safely and grow feathers.’  I was struck by the pertinence and universality of the setting Aristophanes had provided more than two millennia ago Aristophanes’ symbolic use of birds, which allowed him to deal with actual events and characters without the restrictions which the writing of history imposes, seemed particularly appropriate as I associated it with a peasant custom I had witnessed during my childhood. One of the villagers’ favourite entertainments was trapping birds, painting their feathers, then releasing them to rejoin their flock. As these brightly coloured creatures sought the safety of their fellows, the other birds, seeing them as threatening aliens, attacked and tore at the outcasts until they killed them. I decided I too would set my work in a mythic domain, in the timeless fictive present, unrestrained by geography or history. My novel would be called The Painted Bird[2].

 

            The episode of the painted bird is introduced in the fifth chapter of the book, where it is used as a sadistic pastime by Lekh, the frustrated lover and bird catcher who adopts the hero during his peregrinations in the forests of no man’s land. Lekh is frustrated by the fact that his frenzied lover, Stupid Ludmilla as she is known, does not visit him for trysting sessions as she is wont to do. During his bout of rage, Lekh decides to give vent to his frustrations by embarking on a cruel torture of birds, painting them in different colours and releasing them into air, where they are recognised and mutilated by their own:

 

Stupid Ludmilla did not return. Lekh, sulking and glum, removed one bird after another from the cages, painted them in still gaudier colors, and released them into the air to be killed by their kin. One day he trapped a large raven, whose wings he painted red, the breast green and the tail blue. When a flock of ravens appeared over our hut, Lekh freed the painted bird. As soon as it rejoined the flock a desperate battle began. The changeling was attacked from all sides. Black, red, green, blue feathers began to drop at our feet. The ravens flew amuck in the skies, and suddenly the painted raven plummeted to the fresh-plowed soil. It was still alive, opening its beak and vainly trying to move its wings. Its eyes had been pecked out, and fresh blood streamed over its painted feathers. It made yet another attempt to flutter up from the sticky earth, but its strength was gone[3].

 

            The scene can be directly linked to the hellish life of the boy who is narrating the story. He is discriminated against by his own compatriots because of his black hair, dark eyes and the city dialect that he speaks. Throughout the novel, this becomes a big issue for the peasants. Marta, who is the first person to adopt him, is so paranoid about his black eyes and tells him that they are evil, after which she forbids him to look into her eyes or at the livestock, as she maintains that the boy’s blighting eyes will drive diseases into her eyes and transmit pestilence or death to the domesticated animals. In order to avoid being reprimanded by Marta, the hero decides to walk “about the hut with […] eyes closed, stumbling over furniture, overturning buckets, and trampling flower beds outside, knocking against everything like a moth blinded by sudden brightness.[4]” In fact, it is on Marta’s farm that the foreshadowing of the episode of the painted bird takes place, when the pigeon is snubbed by the chicken that he is trying to befriend and is eventually snatched by the hawk, an episode that symbolically represents the inhospitability of the world and its failure to tolerate the outsider:

 

Strange things happen in the farmyard. […] One day when the pigeon was trying as usual to consort with the hens and the chicks, a small shape broke away from the clouds. The hens ran screaming toward the barn and the chicken coop. the black ball fell like a stone on the flock. Only the pigeon had no place to hide. Before he even had time to spread his wings, a powerful bird with a sharp hooked beak pinned him to the ground and struck at him. Marta came running out of the hut, carrying a stick, but the hawk flew off smoothly, carrying in its beak the limp body of the pigeon[5].

 

            The boy’s next adopter, Olga the Wise, as she is known in the village because of her knowledge of herbs, is of the same opinion as Marta that the hero’s eyes have a blighting effect: “Olga declared, I could stare at other people and unknowingly cast a spell over them.[6]”   Evil eyes do not only bewitch people but can also be used to remove a spell from those who are sick. For this reason, Olga used the boy to heal people by making him stare at her patients: “ I must take care, while staring  a people or animals or even grain, to keep my mind blank of anything other than the disease I was helping her to remove from them.[7]” She further adds that the boy whom she calls the Black One is “possessed by an evil spirit which crouched in [him] like a mole deep in a burrow.[8]”  She also suspects him of being a vampire, and for this reason she administers a bitter elixir to him, which he has to take with a garlicked charcoal. Olga is not the only one who has bad suspicions about the boy – other peasants are also afraid of him and whenever they see him, they turn their gaze away and sign themselves. The boy believes everything that they tell him about his dark eyes and black hair, and therefore accepts that he is the source of evil in the society of blond people. He starts hating himself and losing his self-esteem. When he is handed over to the Nazi camps, he tries to bewitch the German officer by stirring at the officer’s eyes with his ‘”blighting eyes”.

            The only time that he feels proud about his appearance is when the Kalmuks invade the country, chasing the peasants away:

 

I looked at the horsemen with keen interest. They all had black oily hair which glistened in the sun. Almost blue-black, it was even darker than mine, as were also their eyes and their swarthy skins. They had large white teeth, high cheekbones, and wide faces that looked swollen.

For a moment, as I looked at them, I felt great pride and satisfaction. After all these proud horsemen were black-haired, black-eyes, and dark skinned. They differed from the people of the village as night and day. The arrival of these dark Kalmuks drove the fair-haired village people almost insane with fear[9].

 

            The boy’s excitement is short-lived and the paranoia of the peasants about his dark skin, black hair and dark eyes is soon proved to be the true outward symbol of his possession by an evil spirit. The drunken Kalmuks pillage the village, castrate men in full view of their wives, and in wild excitement gang- rape girls, women and men alike.  All hell breaks loose and the whole scenery is reminiscent of the atavistic horrors evoked in Saxo Grammaticus’ History of the Danes, when all of a sudden, Frode or Frotho and his friends find themselves without a war to wage and in order to allay their boredom, innocent citizens become the next easy targets to be skinned alive an innocent children are tossed up in the air, only to be caught with a sharp spear[10]. This also evokes the Jacquerie in Froissart’s Chronicles, organised by brigands who terrorised the citizens, torturing knights, burning husbands and forcing their wives to eat their husbands’ charred bodies, as well as raping women and damsels[11].

            As for his black hair, the carpenter and his wife are certain that they will one day attract lightning. Every time there was thunder, the carpenter would chain the boy up and take him to the field to protect his farm from being struck by lightning. One afternoon, the carpenter was ill and did not bother to take the boy away from the farm. The barn was struck by lightning and the carpenter wanted to kill the boy, who had to defend himself by pushing him into a rat-infested bunker, where he was eaten alive by rodents.

As a Bildungsroman, it may be noted that the boy has learned vengeance, and in the subsequent incidents that are narrated, the author provides more narratives of vengeance, which is one of the major themes of the novel[12]. The symbolism of the scene of the painted bird is not limited to the boy, but also applies to other characters such as Stupid Ludmilla and Lekh. Stupid Ludmilla is another painted bird and is directly linked to the painted bird, not only as the one who inspires Lekh to paint the birds, but because Lekh considers her to be his parti-coloured bird, despite her insatiable sexual appetite after undergoing the harrowing experience of being raped by a herd of drunken peasants and losing her mind as a result of having spurned the love of the son of the village psalmist, who is notorious for his ugliness:

 

No one man could satisfy her; yet she was Lekh’s great love. He made up tender songs for her in which she figured as a strange colored bird flying to faraway worlds, free and quick, brighter and more beautiful than other creatures. To Lekh she seemed to belong to that pagan, primitive kingdom of birds and forests where everything was infinitely abundant, wild, blooming, and royal in its perpetual decay, death, and rebirth; illicit and clashing with the human world[13].

 

            She is condemned to roam the forest, seducing men and being hunted by women who are protective of their husbands and boyfriends. She is destined to undergo the same fate as the painted birds that perish at the hands of their own species. Although nobody knew about her lair and she could run as fast as a fierce animal, one day the women kept up with her, and one of them pushed a bottle inside her private part, kicked it and it broke, killing Stupid Ludmilla. Lekh, who tried to protect her, was not strong enough and he had to spit out several teeth after Stupid Ludmilla’s ordeal. Lekh, like Ludmilla, is a fugitive living in the forest, trapping birds and selling raven nests to farmers because his father wanted him to be a priest. In spite of his great knowledge of birds and their language, he enjoys violence and keeps on abusing them. When he is pecked by a stork, he decides to create almost the same scenario as that of the painted bird when he puts the egg of a goose among those of the stork, so that when they are hatched, there will be a gosling and the husband will suspect the female stork of cheating on him. Indeed, when the eggs are hatched, a great dispute arises and the husband wants to kill the gosling, but the female stork protects it:

 

It would seem that this closed the matter and that matrimonial harmony would be restored. But when the time came for flying away, all the storks held a conference as usual. After debate it was decided that the hen was guilty of adultery and did not deserve to accompany the husband. Sentence as duly passed. Before the birds took off in their faultless formation, the faithless wife was attacked with beaks and wings. She fell down dead, close to the thatched house on which she had lived with her husband. Next to her body the peasants found an ugly gosling shedding bitter tears[14].

 

            Like the painted birds, the stork is the victim of its own family because of the gosling that she has not even produced.  Lekh, who enjoys the sadistic violence, is overjoyed to witness such scenes, where animals or people of the same species turn on each other. He is skilled in fomenting discord and violence.

Kosinski is painting a picture of a society where violence, hatred and revenge are rampant. It is the kind of society where law and order seem to be banished and everyone behaves as they please Unbridled sexuality, as shown through Stupid Ludmilla’s personality, is also one of the greatest vices to which the young boy is exposed in this society of perverts. Apart from witnessing the lubricious scenes of Lekh and Ludmilla, as well as the peasants and Ludmilla, he is also the witness to a flirtation between the miller’s wife and the ploughman. The miller’s wife would lift up her skirt and show her breasts to the ploughman, until the miller found out about this and invited the ploughman for an evening meal. Without even confronting or accusing him, he stood up and gouged out both his eyes. The narrator-boy also has the good fortune to witness the fabulous or rare phenomenon of penis captivus or vaginal headlock or de cohesione in coitu , which is referred to as a sticky situation in modern parlance. One Jewish girl tries to escape from the train bound for Auschwitz and is injured. A character by the name of Rainbow arrives and takes her to his dwelling, where he rapes her at night, only to discover that he cannot withdraw, since his member is locked, as in the case of dogs:

 

Rainbow renewed his efforts. He appealed loudly to the Virgin Mary for help. He panted and puffed. He made another big heave, trying to tear himself away from the girl. She screamed and started to hit the bewildered man’s face with her fist, scratch him with her nails, bite his hands. Rainbow licked the blood off his lips, lifted himself on one arm, and dealt the girl a powerful blow with the other. Panic must have dimmed his brain, for he collapsed on top of her, biting her breasts, arms and neck. He hammered her thighs with his fists, then grabbed her flesh as if trying to tear it off. The girl screamed with a high-pitched steady cry that finally broke off when her throat dried up – and then it started to again. Rainbow went on beating her until he was exhausted. […] Rainbow started crying for help. His shouts brought first a band of barking dogs, then some alarmed men with axes and knives. They opened the door of the barn and, uncomprehending, goggled at the couple on the floor. In a hoarse voice, Rainbow quickly explained the situation. They closed the door and, not letting anyone else enter, sent for a witch-midwife who knew about such things.

The old woman came and kneeled by the locked couple, and did something to them with the help of others. I could see nothing; I only heard the girl’s last piercing shriek. Then there was silence and Rainbow’s barn grew dark. At dawn I ran to the knothole. Sunshine was coming in through the slots between the boards, lighting up sparkling beams of grain dust. On the threshing floor, close to the wall a human shape lay stretched out flat, covered from head to foot with a horse blanket[15].

 

            When Stupid Ludmilla comes looking for Lekh and does not find him, she forces the boy to sleep with her and he is saved by the peasants, who come and take turns enjoying themselves with Ludmilla. He experiences serious sexual perversion when he is adopted by the farmer called Makar, who lived with his son and daughter. While life on this farm is not as cruel as in the other places that he visits, the boy is introduced to romance by Ewka, the farmer’s daughter, and enjoys life:

 

I also liked what followed next. Ewka sat on the bench holding me between her open legs, holding me between her open legs, hugging and caressing me, kissing me on my neck and face. Her dry heatherlike hair fell over my face as I looked into her pale eyes and saw a scarlet blush spread from her face to her neck and shoulders. My hands and mouth revived again. Ewka began to tremble and breathe deeper, her mouth turned cold and her shaking hands pulled me to her body[16].

 

            Things seem relatively calm in Makar’s place, where the boy experiences feminine tenderness for the first time after enduring so much hardship at the hands of those who are supposed to look after him. At first, he does not understand why Makar and his son are visiting the goats’ quarters, until Ewka tells him that they are going to enjoy themselves. He discovers that Makar keeps rabbits and has his favourite females that he uses for sexual gratification. To the boy’s amazement, Makar also allows the he-goat into his room and makes it sleep with his daughter Ewka. However, the most odious scene for the boy was when he discovered that the family was also involved in incest, as Makar also forces his daughter to sleep with his son. The boy’s morale hits an all-time low and he experiences a sinking feeling: Something collapsed inside me. My thoughts fell apart and shattered into broken fragments like a smashed jug. I felt as empty as a fish bladder punctured again and again and sinking into deep, muddy waters[17].

            In conclusion, it should be noted that The Painted Bird portrays a world in which discrimination, violence, sexual perversion and lawlessness are the order of the day. It paints a dystopian universe, based on the author’s experience in his homeland, where his own people rejected him because of the colour of his skin, hair and eyes, and when the Germans invaded, he asked himself whether: “they were determined to clear the world of all swarthy, dark-eyed long-nosed, black-haired people.”[18] He is continually beaten up by the peasants, failing which they unleashed their dogs to bite him. For him, the world is nothing but a living hell where he must worry about basic material needs such as food. Even Christians are not tolerant in this hellish world. When he drops the Missal during the Mass, they throw him in the latrine pit and this is how he loses his voice, only to recover it at the end of the novel.

 

 

            Notes

Sibusiso Hyacinth Madondo
University of South Africa, Cape Town
madonsh@unisa.ac.za

 

 

The  Painted Bird:

Jerzy Kosinski and the Mythopoetics of Dystopia

 

 

Abstract: Jerzy Kosinski’s novel is told from the point of view of an unnamed six year old wandering street urchin who inhabits an unnamed, hellish wonderland bristling with cheating, violence, malevolence, perversion and lies during the Second World War. The little boy’s parents send him to live in the countryside in the hope that he will escape the ravages of war. Unfortunately, his life in the countryside becomes a nightmare as he is destined to undergo the harrowing experience on a daily basis of being bullied by the blue-eyed, blond village louts who speak the rural dialect. He is dark-haired and dark-eyed and speaks the educated dialect, consequently he is considered a “Gypsy or Jewish stray” during a time when these traits are virtually tantamount to a death sentence. For the rest of the Second World War he passes from hand to hand like Lazarillo de Tormes, being exposed to all kinds of vices and evils. Nonetheless, he learns to become a survivor and each time he experiences a run of misfortune, he finds ways to wriggle out of the predicament: he escapes from the captivity of a Nazi concentration camp; he survives after being thrown in a manure pit at the cost of losing the power of speech till the end of the novel when he suddenly feels the urge and rediscovers the ability to speak again.

Keywords: Jerzy Kosinski; Holocaust; Painted Bird; Jewish Stray; Nazi; Concentration Camp; Wandering Jew; Dystopian Fiction; Aristophanes.

 

 

            Jerzy Kosinski’s novel The Painted Bird is a wartime narrative combining the elements of dystopian fiction, the picaresque novel, satire and Bildungsroman told from the perspective of an unnamed six-year old wandering street urchin, who inhabits an unnamed, hellish wonderland bristling with cheating, violence, malevolence, perversion and lies during the Second World War[1].   The little boy’s parents send him to live in the countryside, in the hope that he will escape the ravages of war. Unfortunately, his life in the countryside becomes a nightmare, as he is destined to undergo the harrowing experience, on a daily basis, of being bullied by the blond, blue-eyed village louts who speak the rural dialect. He is dark-haired and dark-eyed and speaks the educated dialect, and is consequently viewed as a “Gypsy or Jewish stray” at a time when these traits are virtually tantamount to a death sentence. For the rest of the Second World War, he lives from hand to mouth, like Lazarillo de Tormes, being exposed to all kinds of vices and evils. Nonetheless, he learns to become a survivor, and each time he experiences a period of misfortune, he finds ways to wriggle out of the predicament: he escapes from the captivity of a Nazi concentration camp and he survives after being thrown in a latrine pit, at the cost of losing the power of speech, until the end of the novel, when he suddenly feels the urge and regains his ability to speak.

 

            The title of The Painted Bird is very significant, as it evokes one of the episodes in the novel and constitutes its central themes, namely racial discrimination and hatred. In fact, the author states that the title was inspired by his memory of Aristophanes’ play The Birds, in which animals are used to satirise society:

 

As I began to write, I recalled The Birds, the satirical play by Aristophanes. His protagonists, based on important citizens of ancient Athens, were made anonymous in an idyllic natural realm, ‘a land of easy and fair rest, where man can sleep safely and grow feathers.’  I was struck by the pertinence and universality of the setting Aristophanes had provided more than two millennia ago Aristophanes’ symbolic use of birds, which allowed him to deal with actual events and characters without the restrictions which the writing of history imposes, seemed particularly appropriate as I associated it with a peasant custom I had witnessed during my childhood. One of the villagers’ favourite entertainments was trapping birds, painting their feathers, then releasing them to rejoin their flock. As these brightly coloured creatures sought the safety of their fellows, the other birds, seeing them as threatening aliens, attacked and tore at the outcasts until they killed them. I decided I too would set my work in a mythic domain, in the timeless fictive present, unrestrained by geography or history. My novel would be called The Painted Bird[2].

 

            The episode of the painted bird is introduced in the fifth chapter of the book, where it is used as a sadistic pastime by Lekh, the frustrated lover and bird catcher who adopts the hero during his peregrinations in the forests of no man’s land. Lekh is frustrated by the fact that his frenzied lover, Stupid Ludmilla as she is known, does not visit him for trysting sessions as she is wont to do. During his bout of rage, Lekh decides to give vent to his frustrations by embarking on a cruel torture of birds, painting them in different colours and releasing them into air, where they are recognised and mutilated by their own:

 

Stupid Ludmilla did not return. Lekh, sulking and glum, removed one bird after another from the cages, painted them in still gaudier colors, and released them into the air to be killed by their kin. One day he trapped a large raven, whose wings he painted red, the breast green and the tail blue. When a flock of ravens appeared over our hut, Lekh freed the painted bird. As soon as it rejoined the flock a desperate battle began. The changeling was attacked from all sides. Black, red, green, blue feathers began to drop at our feet. The ravens flew amuck in the skies, and suddenly the painted raven plummeted to the fresh-plowed soil. It was still alive, opening its beak and vainly trying to move its wings. Its eyes had been pecked out, and fresh blood streamed over its painted feathers. It made yet another attempt to flutter up from the sticky earth, but its strength was gone[3].

 

            The scene can be directly linked to the hellish life of the boy who is narrating the story. He is discriminated against by his own compatriots because of his black hair, dark eyes and the city dialect that he speaks. Throughout the novel, this becomes a big issue for the peasants. Marta, who is the first person to adopt him, is so paranoid about his black eyes and tells him that they are evil, after which she forbids him to look into her eyes or at the livestock, as she maintains that the boy’s blighting eyes will drive diseases into her eyes and transmit pestilence or death to the domesticated animals. In order to avoid being reprimanded by Marta, the hero decides to walk “about the hut with […] eyes closed, stumbling over furniture, overturning buckets, and trampling flower beds outside, knocking against everything like a moth blinded by sudden brightness.[4]” In fact, it is on Marta’s farm that the foreshadowing of the episode of the painted bird takes place, when the pigeon is snubbed by the chicken that he is trying to befriend and is eventually snatched by the hawk, an episode that symbolically represents the inhospitability of the world and its failure to tolerate the outsider:

 

Strange things happen in the farmyard. […] One day when the pigeon was trying as usual to consort with the hens and the chicks, a small shape broke away from the clouds. The hens ran screaming toward the barn and the chicken coop. the black ball fell like a stone on the flock. Only the pigeon had no place to hide. Before he even had time to spread his wings, a powerful bird with a sharp hooked beak pinned him to the ground and struck at him. Marta came running out of the hut, carrying a stick, but the hawk flew off smoothly, carrying in its beak the limp body of the pigeon[5].

 

            The boy’s next adopter, Olga the Wise, as she is known in the village because of her knowledge of herbs, is of the same opinion as Marta that the hero’s eyes have a blighting effect: “Olga declared, I could stare at other people and unknowingly cast a spell over them.[6]”   Evil eyes do not only bewitch people but can also be used to remove a spell from those who are sick. For this reason, Olga used the boy to heal people by making him stare at her patients: “ I must take care, while staring  a people or animals or even grain, to keep my mind blank of anything other than the disease I was helping her to remove from them.[7]” She further adds that the boy whom she calls the Black One is “possessed by an evil spirit which crouched in [him] like a mole deep in a burrow.[8]”  She also suspects him of being a vampire, and for this reason she administers a bitter elixir to him, which he has to take with a garlicked charcoal. Olga is not the only one who has bad suspicions about the boy – other peasants are also afraid of him and whenever they see him, they turn their gaze away and sign themselves. The boy believes everything that they tell him about his dark eyes and black hair, and therefore accepts that he is the source of evil in the society of blond people. He starts hating himself and losing his self-esteem. When he is handed over to the Nazi camps, he tries to bewitch the German officer by stirring at the officer’s eyes with his ‘”blighting eyes”.

            The only time that he feels proud about his appearance is when the Kalmuks invade the country, chasing the peasants away:

 

I looked at the horsemen with keen interest. They all had black oily hair which glistened in the sun. Almost blue-black, it was even darker than mine, as were also their eyes and their swarthy skins. They had large white teeth, high cheekbones, and wide faces that looked swollen.

For a moment, as I looked at them, I felt great pride and satisfaction. After all these proud horsemen were black-haired, black-eyes, and dark skinned. They differed from the people of the village as night and day. The arrival of these dark Kalmuks drove the fair-haired village people almost insane with fear[9].

 

            The boy’s excitement is short-lived and the paranoia of the peasants about his dark skin, black hair and dark eyes is soon proved to be the true outward symbol of his possession by an evil spirit. The drunken Kalmuks pillage the village, castrate men in full view of their wives, and in wild excitement gang- rape girls, women and men alike.  All hell breaks loose and the whole scenery is reminiscent of the atavistic horrors evoked in Saxo Grammaticus’ History of the Danes, when all of a sudden, Frode or Frotho and his friends find themselves without a war to wage and in order to allay their boredom, innocent citizens become the next easy targets to be skinned alive an innocent children are tossed up in the air, only to be caught with a sharp spear[10]. This also evokes the Jacquerie in Froissart’s Chronicles, organised by brigands who terrorised the citizens, torturing knights, burning husbands and forcing their wives to eat their husbands’ charred bodies, as well as raping women and damsels[11].

            As for his black hair, the carpenter and his wife are certain that they will one day attract lightning. Every time there was thunder, the carpenter would chain the boy up and take him to the field to protect his farm from being struck by lightning. One afternoon, the carpenter was ill and did not bother to take the boy away from the farm. The barn was struck by lightning and the carpenter wanted to kill the boy, who had to defend himself by pushing him into a rat-infested bunker, where he was eaten alive by rodents.

As a Bildungsroman, it may be noted that the boy has learned vengeance, and in the subsequent incidents that are narrated, the author provides more narratives of vengeance, which is one of the major themes of the novel[12]. The symbolism of the scene of the painted bird is not limited to the boy, but also applies to other characters such as Stupid Ludmilla and Lekh. Stupid Ludmilla is another painted bird and is directly linked to the painted bird, not only as the one who inspires Lekh to paint the birds, but because Lekh considers her to be his parti-coloured bird, despite her insatiable sexual appetite after undergoing the harrowing experience of being raped by a herd of drunken peasants and losing her mind as a result of having spurned the love of the son of the village psalmist, who is notorious for his ugliness:

 

No one man could satisfy her; yet she was Lekh’s great love. He made up tender songs for her in which she figured as a strange colored bird flying to faraway worlds, free and quick, brighter and more beautiful than other creatures. To Lekh she seemed to belong to that pagan, primitive kingdom of birds and forests where everything was infinitely abundant, wild, blooming, and royal in its perpetual decay, death, and rebirth; illicit and clashing with the human world[13].

 

            She is condemned to roam the forest, seducing men and being hunted by women who are protective of their husbands and boyfriends. She is destined to undergo the same fate as the painted birds that perish at the hands of their own species. Although nobody knew about her lair and she could run as fast as a fierce animal, one day the women kept up with her, and one of them pushed a bottle inside her private part, kicked it and it broke, killing Stupid Ludmilla. Lekh, who tried to protect her, was not strong enough and he had to spit out several teeth after Stupid Ludmilla’s ordeal. Lekh, like Ludmilla, is a fugitive living in the forest, trapping birds and selling raven nests to farmers because his father wanted him to be a priest. In spite of his great knowledge of birds and their language, he enjoys violence and keeps on abusing them. When he is pecked by a stork, he decides to create almost the same scenario as that of the painted bird when he puts the egg of a goose among those of the stork, so that when they are hatched, there will be a gosling and the husband will suspect the female stork of cheating on him. Indeed, when the eggs are hatched, a great dispute arises and the husband wants to kill the gosling, but the female stork protects it:

 

It would seem that this closed the matter and that matrimonial harmony would be restored. But when the time came for flying away, all the storks held a conference as usual. After debate it was decided that the hen was guilty of adultery and did not deserve to accompany the husband. Sentence as duly passed. Before the birds took off in their faultless formation, the faithless wife was attacked with beaks and wings. She fell down dead, close to the thatched house on which she had lived with her husband. Next to her body the peasants found an ugly gosling shedding bitter tears[14].

 

            Like the painted birds, the stork is the victim of its own family because of the gosling that she has not even produced.  Lekh, who enjoys the sadistic violence, is overjoyed to witness such scenes, where animals or people of the same species turn on each other. He is skilled in fomenting discord and violence.

Kosinski is painting a picture of a society where violence, hatred and revenge are rampant. It is the kind of society where law and order seem to be banished and everyone behaves as they please Unbridled sexuality, as shown through Stupid Ludmilla’s personality, is also one of the greatest vices to which the young boy is exposed in this society of perverts. Apart from witnessing the lubricious scenes of Lekh and Ludmilla, as well as the peasants and Ludmilla, he is also the witness to a flirtation between the miller’s wife and the ploughman. The miller’s wife would lift up her skirt and show her breasts to the ploughman, until the miller found out about this and invited the ploughman for an evening meal. Without even confronting or accusing him, he stood up and gouged out both his eyes. The narrator-boy also has the good fortune to witness the fabulous or rare phenomenon of penis captivus or vaginal headlock or de cohesione in coitu , which is referred to as a sticky situation in modern parlance. One Jewish girl tries to escape from the train bound for Auschwitz and is injured. A character by the name of Rainbow arrives and takes her to his dwelling, where he rapes her at night, only to discover that he cannot withdraw, since his member is locked, as in the case of dogs:

 

Rainbow renewed his efforts. He appealed loudly to the Virgin Mary for help. He panted and puffed. He made another big heave, trying to tear himself away from the girl. She screamed and started to hit the bewildered man’s face with her fist, scratch him with her nails, bite his hands. Rainbow licked the blood off his lips, lifted himself on one arm, and dealt the girl a powerful blow with the other. Panic must have dimmed his brain, for he collapsed on top of her, biting her breasts, arms and neck. He hammered her thighs with his fists, then grabbed her flesh as if trying to tear it off. The girl screamed with a high-pitched steady cry that finally broke off when her throat dried up – and then it started to again. Rainbow went on beating her until he was exhausted. […] Rainbow started crying for help. His shouts brought first a band of barking dogs, then some alarmed men with axes and knives. They opened the door of the barn and, uncomprehending, goggled at the couple on the floor. In a hoarse voice, Rainbow quickly explained the situation. They closed the door and, not letting anyone else enter, sent for a witch-midwife who knew about such things.

The old woman came and kneeled by the locked couple, and did something to them with the help of others. I could see nothing; I only heard the girl’s last piercing shriek. Then there was silence and Rainbow’s barn grew dark. At dawn I ran to the knothole. Sunshine was coming in through the slots between the boards, lighting up sparkling beams of grain dust. On the threshing floor, close to the wall a human shape lay stretched out flat, covered from head to foot with a horse blanket[15].

 

            When Stupid Ludmilla comes looking for Lekh and does not find him, she forces the boy to sleep with her and he is saved by the peasants, who come and take turns enjoying themselves with Ludmilla. He experiences serious sexual perversion when he is adopted by the farmer called Makar, who lived with his son and daughter. While life on this farm is not as cruel as in the other places that he visits, the boy is introduced to romance by Ewka, the farmer’s daughter, and enjoys life:

 

I also liked what followed next. Ewka sat on the bench holding me between her open legs, holding me between her open legs, hugging and caressing me, kissing me on my neck and face. Her dry heatherlike hair fell over my face as I looked into her pale eyes and saw a scarlet blush spread from her face to her neck and shoulders. My hands and mouth revived again. Ewka began to tremble and breathe deeper, her mouth turned cold and her shaking hands pulled me to her body[16].

 

            Things seem relatively calm in Makar’s place, where the boy experiences feminine tenderness for the first time after enduring so much hardship at the hands of those who are supposed to look after him. At first, he does not understand why Makar and his son are visiting the goats’ quarters, until Ewka tells him that they are going to enjoy themselves. He discovers that Makar keeps rabbits and has his favourite females that he uses for sexual gratification. To the boy’s amazement, Makar also allows the he-goat into his room and makes it sleep with his daughter Ewka. However, the most odious scene for the boy was when he discovered that the family was also involved in incest, as Makar also forces his daughter to sleep with his son. The boy’s morale hits an all-time low and he experiences a sinking feeling: Something collapsed inside me. My thoughts fell apart and shattered into broken fragments like a smashed jug. I felt as empty as a fish bladder punctured again and again and sinking into deep, muddy waters[17].

            In conclusion, it should be noted that The Painted Bird portrays a world in which discrimination, violence, sexual perversion and lawlessness are the order of the day. It paints a dystopian universe, based on the author’s experience in his homeland, where his own people rejected him because of the colour of his skin, hair and eyes, and when the Germans invaded, he asked himself whether: “they were determined to clear the world of all swarthy, dark-eyed long-nosed, black-haired people.”[18] He is continually beaten up by the peasants, failing which they unleashed their dogs to bite him. For him, the world is nothing but a living hell where he must worry about basic material needs such as food. Even Christians are not tolerant in this hellish world. When he drops the Missal during the Mass, they throw him in the latrine pit and this is how he loses his voice, only to recover it at the end of the novel.

 

 

            Notes

Monica Alina Danci
Université Babeş-Bolyai, Cluj-Napoca, Roumanie
danci_monica_alina@yahoo.com

 

 

Eugène Ionesco : L’univers anti-utopique du théâtre de l’absurde

 

 

Abstract: In this study, I analyze Eugene Ionesco’s theater of the absurd as an anti-utopian world. For this purpose, I bring peculiarities of utopian thought to bear on a comparison with the features of this anti-theater. The absurd as anti-utopia reveals itself in the destruction of categories  such as language, action, character, object, space, time. I also take into consideration factors  such as lighting or rhythm of the play. In my opinion, the absurd universe is the perfect illustration of scenarios of the worst possible worlds.

Keywords: Anti-utopia; Theatre of the absurd; Eugene Ionesco; Action; Character; Object; Rhythm, Time.

 

 

Dans cette étude, je me propose de faire une analyse du théâtre de l’absurde d’Eugène Ionesco vu en tant que univers anti-utopique qui  présente non pas le meilleur des mondes, mais le pire. Dans ce but, je m’arrêterai sur quelques particularités de la pensée utopique pour une comparaison avec les traits de ce théâtre.

La première caractéristique de l’utopie est celle de définir un lieu imaginaire, mythique, supposé réel mais géographiquement éloigné et inconnu, qui est un lieu bienheureux, chargé de sens, harmonieux. Par contre, le terme absurde dénonce un état inharmonieux des choses, un désaccord avec la raison et la bienséance, un univers privé de son but vivant, un monde sans explication capitale, sans certitudes fondamentales.

Obéissant aux principes d’une société parfaite ou du moins perfectionnée, l’espace utopique, qu’il soit naturel ou plutôt urbain, est marqué par la raison, la symétrie, la régularité, la maîtrise du détail. Si ce type d’espace, avec son décor concret, minutieusement construit, a le rôle de légitimer cet univers en renforçant l’idée d’une nature organisée, cohérente, l’espace absurde est fait en grande partie d’images scéniques, parfois déformées, parfois incompréhensibles, essais de transcription de la profondeur de l’univers intérieur de l’auteur.

Si l’utopie présente un âge adulte de l’humanité, un temps de la paix, de la justice et de la liberté, les personnages de l’absurde restent prisonniers de leur temps intérieur, qui s’est arrêté à un certain moment dans un certain état.

À la différence de l’utopie, qui témoigne d’une certaine cohérence et même d’une vraisemblance de principe, en posant des questions concernant la religion, le travail, l’égalité, la famille, la propriété et l’autorité, le théâtre de l’absurde est constitué par l’amas des tous les gestes impulsifs, de toutes les attitudes manquées, de tous les lapsus de l’esprit et de la langue par lesquels se manifeste l’impuissance de l’être.

La société utopique désigne une communauté d’individus vivant heureux et en harmonie, qui repose  sur un ensemble de lois et sur une organisation très rationnelle et précise et qui est préservée non seulement du mal, mais aussi de l’altérité menaçante. Par contre, le théâtre de Ionesco présente au public des espèces de marionnettes interchangeables, des êtres sans existence propre, sans destin.

Si l’utopie se réfère à un État idéal, où tous les maux et les torts de la société présente sont guéris et redressés, en impliquant une liberté et une tolérance obligatoires, le théâtre de Ionesco opère avec des véritables tactiques de choc, transformant les personnages dans des victimes d’un système aberrant et  implacable.

Si l’utopie se présente comme l’invention d’un monde idéal, souhaitable, le théâtre de l’absurde se propose de révéler le monde refoulé du cauchemar avec ses pulsions agressives et ses désirs insensés, la peur la plus indéracinable de chacun, l’horreur et l’excès des souffrances intérieures, souvent tenus pour scandaleux et irreprésentables.

Dans la conception de Ionesco, le théâtre doit opérer avec de véritables tactiques de choc; la réalité elle-même, la conscience du spectateur, son instrument habituel de pensée, le langage, doivent être renversés, disloqués, retournés, pour qu’ainsi le spectateur rencontre face à face une nouvelle perception de la réalité. Si le langage, parce qu’il est conceptuel et, par conséquent, schématique et vague, et parce qu’il s’est desséché en clichés sans âme, constitue un obstacle plutôt qu’un moyen de vraie communication, l’accès de la sensibilité et de l’expression de l’écrivain à la conscience des autres êtres humains doit être tenté à un niveau plus fondamental, au niveau pré- ou sub- verbal de l’expérience humaine élémentaire :

 

Si le théâtre n’était qu’un grossissement déplorable des nuances qui me gênait, c’est qu’il n’était qu’un grossissement insuffisant. [… ] Pousser le théâtre au delà de cette zone intermédiaire qui n’est ni théâtre, ni littérature, c’est le restituer à son cadre propre, à ses limites naturelles. […] Pousser tout au paroxysme, là où sont les sources du tragique. Faire un théâtre de violence: violemment comique, violemment dramatique.[1]

 

Sentir l’absurdité du quotidien et du langage, son invraisemblance, c’est déjà l’avoir dépassé; mais pour le dépasser, il faut d’abord s’y enfoncer. C’est un théâtre d’images, de sensations, de réactions presque instinctives. Il y a dans les pièces de Ionesco une violence et un pathologique des attitudes, une exacerbation organique, primaire, nécessaire. Stridence, cri et non pas éloquence. Le théâtre est une formule d’art vulgaire. Parce que c’est un art pour la foule et parce qu’un petit espace doit pouvoir être bien vu de tous les coins d’une grande salle, les subtilités, les détails psychologiques et la discrétion ne sont pas possibles: tout au contraire, ce qui, comme réalité de l’âme, est à peine perceptible, doit sauter aux yeux sur la scène; ce que l’on murmure est clamé, crié. Un pas devient une fuite ; l’inessentiel s’accentue, se colore et nous apparaît déformé et trompeur. C’est que toute nuance revêt des dimensions inacceptables et que toute action particulière manque d’intérêt; l’œuvre doit dévoiler des choses monstrueuses et une justification motivée serait fausse tout comme un sens particulier cacherait la signification essentielle. Tout doit être exagéré, caricatural, pénible, puéril, sans finesse. Ionesco agit sur le spectateur par la force et les outrances.

Un spectacle total doit toucher tous les sens, donc tout est permis au théâtre. C’est un mélange de techniques modernes, décors, éclairage, musique, mais aussi de genres, allant du registre noble à la farce grotesque, aux procédés de guignol, du music-hall ou du cirque. Pourtant, ces œuvres vont au-delà de la simple mise en question des conventions dramatiques.

L’interprétation « classique » soutient que le personnage de Ionesco est la manifestation d’une tendance: l’instinct sexuel (Jacques ou la Soumission), « le petit bourgeois » (La Cantatrice Chauve), l’individu « contaminé » par l’hystérie générale (Les Rhinocéros), le libido dominandi (Victimes du Devoir), etc., et qu’en ce qui concerne le couple Ionesco recourt le plus souvent aux personnages types du ménage petit-bourgeois : M. et Mme Smith, Amédée et Madeleine[2], Choubert et sa Madeleine, le Vieux et sa Vieille, la famille Jacques, le professeur et sa bonne (qui est à la fois une femme et une mère pour lui). La femme joue généralement le rôle de « supporter » du mari, elle est admirative, mais tyrannique, fidèle et infidèle à la fois, alliant  la grâce et la beauté au savoir-faire, comme la jeune employée compatissante, idéale, Dany-Daisy que Bérenger aime. On a observé aussi que le personnage a perdu sa stabilité et sa cohérence car il est interchangeable[3], n’obéit plus au principe de non-contradiction: dans Jacques, Ionesco nous oblige à percevoir la différence de l’identique (rien ne permet de distinguer Roberte 1 de Roberte 2) et dans la Cantatrice l’identité de la différence (les deux Martins sont des « conjoints », alors qu’ils se croyaient étrangers l’un à l’autre), tandis que Choubert (Victimes du devoir) se transforme en une effarante variété de « moi » plus ou moins cohérents.[4]

Il a été remarqué que Ionesco pratique une sorte de démocratisme foncier en ce qui concerne ses personnages et ses apparitions. On n’a pas de porte-paroles il n’a pas de préférences, il ne sélectionne pas de personnages. Les idées les plus sérieuses de l’auteur peuvent sortir de la bouche de n’importe quel personnage et les plus nobles de ses pensées s’allient aux plus crasses niaiseries. Le personnage n’a pas d’âge, il ne vient pas d’un lieu bien défini. Son état agonique a toujours une velléité pénible, sa liberté est toujours provisoire… Aussi n’arrivera-t-il jamais à la conscience d’un héros tragique. Il n’est pas un titan, la grandeur lui manque ; c’est une existence mineure.

La conscience de la convention ne disparaît jamais de la scène.[5] Ce qui dérange Ionesco, c’est la présence sur le plateau des personnages en chair et en os, leur corps matériel:

 

Leur présence matérielle détruisait la fiction. Il y avait là comme deux plans de réalité, la réalité concrète, matérielle, appauvrie, vidée, limitée, de ces hommes vivants, quotidiens, bougeant et parlant sur scène, et la réalité de l’imagination, toutes deux face à face, ne se recouvrant pas, irréductibles l’une à l’autre: deux univers antagonistes n’arrivant pas à s’unifier, à se confondre.[6]

 

Ce qui lui déplaît dans les théories brechtiennes du jeu des acteurs est précisément qu’elles lui paraissent un mélange inacceptable de vrai et de faux. Lui, il est stupéfait par le spectacle de guignol[7].

Les personnages sont inconsistants; la progression n’est soutenue que par la technique d’un mécanisme théâtral fonctionnant à vide pour arriver, si cela était réalisable, à la désarticulation des personnages eux-mêmes. L’idéal serait de voir leurs tètes et leurs jambes se projeter sur le plancher. D’ailleurs, dans la Scène à quatre, la Dame, tiraillée de plus en plus violemment par ses soupirants, perd d’abord ses souliers, un gant, son chapeau, et, après sa jupe, ses bras, une jambe, ses seins. Le corps n’est pas le lieu du désir et même quand il l’est (comme à la fin de Jacques), il ne provoque que le spasme génital: fécondité et prolifération cancéreuse s’équivalent.

Mais outre ces interprétations qui partent de la prémisse que le personnage de Ionesco a perdu son autonomie d’individu, qu’il est l’incarnation d’une tension, Gelu Ionescu pose le problème du personnage spécifique victime du « mécanisme »[8], toutes les autres présences scéniques n’étant en ce qui concerne le conflit que des « objets scéniques », que des personnages-objets qui aident le mécanisme à fonctionner. Ces possibles personnages accompagnent la soumission des « héros », ils donnent la vague illusion de l’impartialité, même d’une sorte de solidarité avec celui-ci. Les femmes revendicatives de Choubert ou d’Amédée, la reine Marie et tous les autres personnages de Le Roi se meurt, Edouard du Tueur, forment une masse malléable qui compose un arrière-plan oscillant, nécessaire au spectacle. Leur capacité d’adaptation, leur grande labilité est signe de la grégarité qui les consomme en effaçant les destins individuels. Le personnage est au centre d’un système d’oppositions qui le dépassent et l’annulent.

Si dans l’utopie il y a un voyage, une découverte, une progression du connu à l’inconnu qui correspond au passage du monde réel au monde utopique, dans le théâtre de Ionesco il n’y a qu’un seul conflit essentiel, celui qui oppose le personnage au mécanisme. Dans les pièces où l’on a affaire au mécanisme du langage, « l’action » est imposée par le désir de chaque personnage d’imposer sa série de phrases, pendant que dans le deuxième cycle, celui des « grandes pièces », le « mécanisme aberrant » est présent en d’autres formes. Il montre sa présence dans les décors, les objets scéniques, la lumière, les sons et même dans le rythme de la pièce.

Le scénario, le schéma et le mécanisme dramatique comporte trois moments: l’agression, l’essai de se « débarrasser » du mécanisme et la soumission.

D’abord il y a une existence anodine, anoste, peu animée par des tracasseries quotidiennes, vaguement ennuyeuses: les banals mécontentements d’un couple (Victimes), les reproches qu’un ami fait à un autre pour une vie négligente (Rhinocéros), un mari qui n’aime pas la maison que sa femme a choisie pour domicile (La Soif et la Faim), une autre visite, un nouveau quartier qu’il espère habiter (Tueur).

La précarité de l’équilibre est presque imperceptible lorsque, brusquement, un premier signe attire l’attention: l’anomalie. La surprise s’insinue rapidement et l’aberration entre en scène, trouble la platitude et déclenche l’inquiétude. Ainsi, la tranquillité dominicale est interrompue par le galop d’un rhinocéros, dans l’appartement de Choubert apparaît un agent de police excessivement poli, le quartier visité, étrangement désert, contient un cadavre, la maison louée est fréquentée par des fantômes.

Une menace commence à se faire sentir et devient subitement une réalité scénique pressante. L’anomalie n’est pas un accident comme on voulait le croire, c’est le premier signe distinctif d’un système agressif qui détruit tout de suite le calme de l’atmosphère précédente. Amédée commence directement dans un tel état d’agression chronique et on assiste seulement à une accélération du rythme. Dans les Victimes, le Policier passe de l’amabilité à l’enquête brutale. Dans les Rhinocéros, la prolifération des rhinocéros se fait sans toucher directement le personnage, l’action est certes et palpable comme dans le Tueur, où l’on découvre le crime à l’égard duquel les autorités sont soit complices, soit impuissantes. Au contraire, dans La soif et la Faim, Jean semble être en proie à une illusion de menaces.

Les signes aberrants forcent le personnage de prendre une première attitude. Celui-ci cherche une solution, mais, comme il n’a pas de vocation tragique, il essaie, dans la majorité des cas, de tromper le mécanisme, de le dérouter. Rien ne lui semble encore perdu. Scandalisant, oui. Irrécupérable, non. Soumis à la torture, Choubert évade dans son inconscient, l’assistance entre pour le moment dans le jeu, mais l’agresseur revient à son but: « Cherche Mallot! »

L’instinct de la conservation apparaît brusquement chez Bérenger aussi, lorsqu’il assiste à la transformation de son ami Jean. Il s’isole dans la maison de peur qu’il ne devienne, lui aussi, un rhinocéros. Ni le Bérenger du Tueur ne craigne pas le criminel. En apprenant qu’il va mourir « dans une heure et demie », le roi Bérenger essaie dans la plus explicite et plus allégorique des pièces de Ionesco, Le Roi se meurt, d’user de toutes ses prérogatives pour arrêter le temps, pour incarcérer tous ceux qui lui semblent être les complices de la mort, pour obtenir un délai qui n’est plus ou pas possible. Contrairement aux autres « héros », Amédée parcourt cette étape du destin commun, en « s’efforçant » de se débarrasser par se complaire, car une cohabitation avec le cadavre lui paraît toujours possible.

Le mécanisme s’installe et fonctionne implacablement, sans arrêt, sans délai. Un mécanisme qui ne se définit que par la perfection de son fonctionnement progressif et par son efficacité. On assiste à une soumission par violence. Le déséquilibre produit est irréversible. Le personnage arrive à la panique, à la perplexité, sa gesticulation prend des proportions, son agitation révoltée devient de plus en plus violente, de plus en plus impuissante, de plus en plus limitée. Assiégé, on a l’impression que c’est justement la résistance indécise et chaotique du personnage qui urgente sa fin car toute réaction certifie l’impression d’une collaboration avec le mécanisme. C’est le mécanisme de la grégarisation par lequel les destins individuels s’effacent et s’annulent. Sa force réside dans son silence, dans le refus de toute explication.

Mais le mécanisme ne se manifeste pas seulement à l’intermède des personnages, mais aussi dans la prolifération des objets, des sons, dans la lumière ou dans le rythme de plus en plus alerte des pièces.

Ionesco explique :

 

Deux états de conscience fondamentaux sont à l’origine de toutes mes pièces… Ces deux prises de conscience originelles sont celles de l’évanescence ou de la lourdeur; du vide et du trop de présence; de la transparence irréelle du monde et de son opacité… la sensation de l’évanescence vous donne une angoisse, une sorte de vertige. Mais tout cela peut, tout aussi bien, devenir euphorique : l’angoisse se transforme soudain en liberté. Certainement cet état de conscience est très rare… Je suis, le plus souvent, sous la domination du sentiment opposé: la légèreté se mue en lourdeur; la transparence en épaisseur; le monde pèse; l’univers m’écrase. Un rideau, un mur infranchissable s’interpose entre moi et le monde, entre moi et moi-même, la matière remplit tout, prend toute la place, anéantit toute liberté sous son poids. ..La parole se brise…[9]

 

On trouve ces deux thèmes dans Amédée : la pesanteur et la prolifération des choses dans les deux premiers actes, la légèreté et l’évanescence dans le  troisième. La matière prolifère aussi dans  L’avenir est dans les œufs (les œufs) et dans Victimes du devoir (les tasses à café).

Lorsqu’on se sent submergé par la matérialité universelle, comment matérialiser la matérialité autrement que par l’afflux de meubles dans une chambre vide, l’encombrant totalement et étouffant le personnage qui s’y trouve, coincé, compressé ? Le Nouveau Locataire, dont la simplicité même est terrifiante, est une pièce sur les objets en mouvement, les objets écrasant l’homme, l’étouffant sous une avalanche de matières inertes:

 

À chaque « là », les Déménageurs hocheront la tète, en signe de « oui » et porteront les meubles; après les quatre armoires, ce seront de plus petits meubles – encore des guéridons, des canapés aussi, des paniers en osier, des meubles inconnus, etc. –, en face des autres meubles, longeant les trois murs, serrant de plus en plus près le Monsieur au milieu du plateau; tout ceci est devenu une sorte de ballet pesant, les mouvements étant toujours très lents.[10]

 

On touche au paradoxe de l’objet dans le théâtre de Ionesco: recours obligé pour donner le spectacle concret du rien, il est le signe, inverse, de son absence; il est présence apparente mais réalité du vide; on le montre pour faire sentir qu’il n’existe pas. Comment exprimer l’absence, ou ce sentiment de l’irréalité du monde que par une quantité de chaises vides sur le plateau, en un tourbillon vertigineux, fou ? Il y a du monde évoqué par les personnages visibles et il n’y a pas de monde. Cela semble, à la fois, être et ne pas être. Ou plutôt exister et ne pas exister. L’objet sert tantôt de décor, tantôt de personnage. La note des Chaises précise:

 

Le nombre des chaises apportées sur le plateau doit être important: une quarantaine au moins; davantage si possible. Elles arrivent très vite, de plus en plus vite. Il y a une accumulation. Le plateau est envahi par ces chaises, cette foule des absences présentes. […] À partir d’un certain moment, les chaises ne représentent plus des personnages déterminés (Dame, Colonnel, la Belle, etc.), mais bien la foule. Elles jouent toutes seules.[11]

 

L’environnement scénique est de première importance dans  ces pièces, ayant son rôle bine défini ; il est parfois même, dans certaines scènes, l’acteur principal. Les décors  sont tantôt banals, multifonctionnels, ne laissant rien à prévoir de l’insolite qui va les envahir comme, par exemple, la modeste salle à manger-salon-bureau d’Amédée, l’intérieur petit-bourgeois des Victimes, ou bien « le cabinet de travail, servant aussi de salle à manger » de La leçon avec ses objets traditionnels: des rideaux simples, des pots de fleurs banales, un buffet rustique, une tapisserie claire, la table qui sert aussi de bureau, bien qu’on aperçoive dans le lointain le ciel « bleu gris ». Dans La Cantatrice, l’élément qui fait prévoir l’insolite est l’adjectif « anglais », répété comme une obsession: M. Smith, anglais, dans son fauteuil anglais et ses pantoufles anglaises, fume sa pipe anglaise et lit un journal anglais, près d’un feu anglais[12]. Ce décor est en contraste avec le décor sombre de Jacques qui suggère dès le début l’épaisseur: la chambre est mal tenue, les rideaux sales. Un tableau ne représentant rien, est remplacé dans L’avenir est dans les œufs par un grand encadrement contenant le portrait du grand-père-Jacques, c’est-à-dire le grand-père Jacques lui-même[13].

Le Nouveau Locataire nous introduit dans une pièce nue, sans aucun meuble, la salle aux murs circulaires des Chaises est très dépouillée, tandis que dans le Tueur sans gages la scène est vide au lever du rideau et l’Architecte apportera lui-même deux chaises et une table. Il ne s’agit pas vraiment d’une absence de décor, sinon d’un décor invisible:

 

Bérenger : Oh, la jolie maison ! La façade est exquise, j’admire la pureté de ce style ! Du XVIII^e ? Non, du XV^e ou fin XIX ? En tout cas c’est classique et surtout que c’est coquet, que c’est coquet…[14]

 

ou bien la cité miraculeuse à laquelle on fait référence dans Victimes du devoir:

 

la cité miraculeuse… ou un miraculeux jardin, une fontaine jaillissante des jeux d’eau, des fleurs de feu dans la nuit.[15]

 

Dans la première partie de La Soif et La Faim, Jean observe que les murs sont couverts de taches d’humidité. Lorsqu’il les montre à sa femme, chacun d’eux découvre dans les mêmes contours d’autres choses : Marie-Madeleine voit « des visages aimables … des arbres … des fleurs dans de beaux vases ». Au contraire, Jean distingue « des gens en agonie », « des corps amputés », « des monstres inconnus et malades ». Dans la même pièce apparaît aussi ce lieu typique pour « l’espace clos » qui change et pourtant reste le même, le « lieu dont on ne part plus jamais ».

La thématique de la lumière est commentée par Ionesco, qui raconte:

 

J’avais environ dix-sept ou dix-huit ans. J’étais dans une ville de province. C’était en juin, vers midi. Je me promenais dans une des rues de cette ville très tranquille. Tout d’un coup j’ai eu l’impression que […] j’étais dans un autre monde, plus mien que l’ancien, infiniment plus lumineux […] il me semblait que le ciel était devenu extrêmement dense, que la lumière était presque palpable, que les maisons avaient un éclat jamais vu, un éclat inhabituel, vraiment libéré de l’habitude […] j’ai senti une joie énorme, j’ai eu le sentiment que j’avais compris quelque chose de fondamental […] À ce moment-là je me suis dit: « Je n’ai plus peur de la mort ».[16]

 

C’est pour cela que, dans les pièces du dramaturge, il y a toujours deux types de personnages, celui qui croit à la lumière et celui qui n’y croit pas.

Dans Amédée, la lumière est associée à l’infini : « des routes dans le ciel, des ruisseaux d’argent liquide, des rivières, des étangs, des f1euves, des lacs, des océans, de la lumière palpable… [… ] Des bouquets de neige fleurie, des arbres dans le ciel, des jardins, des prairies… des dames, des chapiteaux, des colonnes, des temples… [ .. .] Et de l’espace, de l’espace infini »[17].

Dans l’obscurité la plus profonde, le héros de Victimes du devoir semble être saisi par le miraculeux de l’existence même : « Je baigne dans la lumière. (Obscurité totale sur scène) La lumière me pénètre. Je suis étonné d’être, étonné d’être …étonné d’être… […] Je suis lumière! Je vole! »[18].

Le théâtre de Ionesco, la manière dont il représente sur la scène sa vision à lui, la projection de son monde mental, nécessite toujours une lumière irréelle puissante. Il y a toujours des références à la lumière sous toutes ses formes. Lumière verte, lumière vive, lumière froide, lumière chaude, on est toujours à sa recherche par delà les ténèbres.

Dans Jacques ou la soumission, le décor sombre du début devra, dans la scène de la séduction, se transformer par l’éclairage; puis il deviendra verdâtre, aquatique, vers la fin de la même scène; puis il s’obscurcira davantage, tout à la fin[19]. L’obscurité grandissante d’Amédée est peu à peu remplacée par la lumière verte venant de la chambre du mort : ainsi, dans cette scène, c’est la musique, les pieds du mort s’allongeant, la lumière verte qui jouent[20]. La vieille des Chaises allume la lampe qui donne, elle aussi, une lumière verte. Dans Amédée, la lumière de la lune est éclatante, froide, envahissante: Entre les jeux de lumière, d’artifices, et l’aspect macabre de la chambre des deux époux, il y a un contraste frappant. La lumière donne des teintes argenteuses aux champignons qui, entre-temps, eux aussi, ont poussé et sont devenus énormes. La lumière, les jeux de lumière, ne semblent pas seulement venir de la fenêtre, mais d’un peu partout: des murs, des jointures de l’armoire, des meubles, des champignons, des petits germes de champignons qui brillent, sur le plancher, comme des vers luisants […] l’horrible et le beau doivent coexister[21]. C’est la même lumière de maximum intensité des Chaises ou du Tueur sans Gages, pièces dans lesquelles dans le premier acte l’ambiance est donnée uniquement, par l’éclairage: c’est une lumière très forte, très blanche; il y a cette lumière blanche, il y a aussi le bleu du ciel éclatant et dense. Ainsi, après la grisaille, l’éclairage doit jouer sur ce blanc et ce bleu, constituant les seuls éléments de ce décor de lumière [. . .]. Le bleu, le blanc, le silence, la scène vide doivent créer une impression de calme étrange[22]. Dans cette pièce, le jeu de l’obscurité et de la lumière fait apparaître et disparaître les personnages[23], ce jeu étant présent dans beaucoup d’autres pièces.

Voix venant du palier (Amédée), sonneries ininterrompues, bribes de conversation grotesques (Le nouveau locataire), coups de sonnette (La Cantatrice chauve), frappements à la porte des voisins, coups à la porte, bruit du moulin à café (Victimes du devoir), la sonnerie du téléphone (Rhinocéros, Amédée), ce ne sont que d’autres éléments qui prolifèrent dans le théâtre de Ionesco par lesquels le mécanisme montre sa présence. Le monde extérieur menace, envahit, étouffe.

Dans Le Nouveau Locataire le réalisme initial se fixe sur la sonorisation, le fracas assourdissant désagréable certes, mais dramatiquement efficace accompagne une bonne moitié de la pièce; avec ses variations d’intensité, le fond sonore prépare le public à comprendre le protagoniste, son désir d’isolement. Au lever du rideau, on entend, provenant des coulisses, des bruits de voix, de marteaux, des bribes de refrains, des cris d’enfants, des pas dans les escaliers, un orgue de Barbarie, etc.

À la fin des Chaises, Ionesco nous informe : On entend pour la première fois les bruits humains de la foule invisible: ce sont des éclats de rire, des murmures, des « chut », des toussotements ironiques; faibles au début, ces bruits vont grandissant; puis, de nouveau, progressivement, s’affaiblissent[24].

Dans Amédée, pendant la musique, des bruits que font les voisins s’entendront: un lointain « À table », une sonnerie lointaine; dans l’escalier, des bruits de pas assez discrets; des bruits d’assiettes, cliquetis de verres, car c’est l’heure du dîner; puis, progressivement, ces bruits se tairont; seule la musique se fera entendre[25]. Ionesco précise que les coups de la pendule s’ajoutent à cette musique en contraste avec le mutisme des deux personnages. Toujours dans Amédée le glissement du cadavre est rendu en progression par une accumulation de bruits de plus en plus forts : un « long craquement », puis « un craquement énorme » en provenance de la chambre de gauche, bruit de vitres cassées, la respiration d’Amédée, le bruit de leurs efforts, un grand coup violent dans le mur, la sonnerie de plus en plus pressante du téléphone, « craquements puissants », « un violent coup de gong lorsque les pieds du mort atteignent la porte de droite »[26].

Dans Tueur sans gages, les bruits sont signes de la présence menaçante du tueur qui détruit la quiétude de la cité radieuse: on entend le bruit des pierres qui tombent près des protagonistes, ceux des vitres cassées, un cri, le bruit sourd d’un corps tombant dans l’eau, des murmures. Les bruits du tramway, du vent et de la pluie qui cessent à l’instant même où se produit le changement d’éclairage marquent l’espace situé hors de la cité radieuse.

Dans Rhinocéros les bruits vont crescendo et decrescendo, les barrissements sont musicalisés et les voix deviennent rauques.

Un processus de modification subissent aussi les voix d’Amédée II et de Madeleine II qui seront, vers la fin, très aigues ou la voix du Professeur qui devient, de maigre et fluette, de plus en plus forte, et, à la fin, « extrêmement puissante, éclatante, clairon sonore, tandis que la voix de l’Elève se fera presque inaudible, très claire et bien timbrée telle qu’elle a été au début du drame ».[27]

Le rythme se fond soit sur de profonds changements de registres et de tonalités, soit sur le recours à l’accélération et à la décélération.

Dans La Leçon, comme dans un dessin animé, la tension atteint son paroxysme grâce à l’accélération du rythme qui va de paire avec l’augmentation du volume sonore jusqu’à la vocifération :

 

Le professeur: J’en mange une… une.

L’élève: Deux.

Le professeur: Une.

L’élève: Deux.

Le professeur: Une!

L’élève: Deux!

Le professeur: Une!!!

L’élève: Deux!!!

Le Professeur: Une!!!

L’élève: Deux!!!

Le Professeur: Une!!!

L’élève: Deux!!

 

Dans la septième scène de la Cantatrice, le rythme est donné par l’alternance des répliques formées seulement par une progression d’interjections et des silences:

 

Monsieur Smith: Hm.

Silence.

Madame Smith: Hm, hm.

Silence.

Madame Martin: Hm, hm, hm.

Silence.

Monsieur Martin: Hm, hm, hm, hm.

Silence.

Madame Martin : Oh, décidément.[28]

 

Dans les Chaises, les répliques de la Vieille, lorsque celle-ci répètera les derniers mots du Vieux, sont tantôt comme un écho très amplifié, tantôt dites sur un ton de mélopée et de lamentation cadencées[29], tandis que Jacques prononce le crédo de la famille, « J’adore les pommes de terre au lard », « comme un automate ».

Les recommandations d’avaler et de mastiquer des Victimes du devoir ont un rythme « très vif et toujours à la pointe du comique, caricature »[30].

La répétition participe à la création d’un rythme qui porte l’intensité à son comble:

 

Tous ensemble : C’est pas par là, c’est par ici, c’est pas par là, c’est par ici, c’est pas par là, c’est par ici, c’est pas par là, c’est par ici, c’est pas par là, c’est par ici, c’est pas par là, c’est par ici![31]

 

Dans l’obscurité de La leçon, on entend sur un rythme de plus en plus rapide:

 

Le Professeur: Répétez, regardez. (Il fait comme le coucou).

« Couteau… couteau… couteau… couteau… »[32]

 

Dans la réalisation de Marcel Cuvelier, le mot clef, « couteau », répété d’une manière rythmique par l’assassin et la victime, relève sans aucune ambiguïté de l’orgasme. La prolifération est présente dans cette ivresse du mot qui hypnotise l’élève: les sons frémissent, s’agitent, vibrent, vibrent, vibrent ou grasseyent, ou chuintent ou se froissent, ou sifflent, sifflent, mettant tout en mouvement: luette, langue, palais, dents… et le professeur continue: Finalement les mots sortent par le nez, la bouche, les oreilles, les pores, entraînant avec eux tous les organes que nous avons nommés, déracinés, dans un envol puissant, majestueux, qui n’est autre que ce qu’on appelle, improprement, voix, se modulant en chant ou se transformant en un terrible orage symphonique avec tout un cortège… de gerbes de fleurs des plus variées, d’artifices sonores: labiales, dentales, occlusives, palatales et autres, tantôt caressantes, tantôt amères ou violentes[33].

En ce qui concerne la fin de cette pièce, la tragédie finale est réalisée comme une sorte de ballet. Une espèce de tango langoureux et érotique mêlé de poursuites, une espèce de danse autour de la table, une hésitation, quelques pas en avant, quelques pas en arrière, figurant de la part de l’élève, une sorte de refus et de consentement[34]. Il y a là une inversion des comportements, un crescendo contrebalançant un decrescendo alors que la tension atteint son paroxysme.

Ionesco incombe la mise en scène de rythmer le texte, de souligner son mouvement évolutif dans la durée, donc la vie même qui l’anime : Le rythme de ses « Teuf! Teuf! » ira en s’accélérant, ainsi  que les « Cot-cot-codac » ; ainsi que le mouvement de Roberte père et de Jacqueline allant tour à tour, et sans arrêt, chercher et apporter des corbeilles d’œufs; le mouvement est réglé de façon que lorsque l’un de ces derniers arrive, l’autre part, l’un arrive, l’autre part, etc.[35]. La danse des Jacques et des Roberte a lieu autour des amoureux enlacés, tandis que « Roberte père frappe silencieusement, lentement, dans ses mains »[36]. Les variations rythmiques créent l’impression d’une mécanique en marche. L’accélération du tempo dans les Rhinocéros renforce l’impression d’encerclement, les aiguilles d’Amédée bougent doucement à la même cadence que les pieds du mort, tandis que la crinière enflammée de Jacques est accompagnée de hennissements fortement rythmés. L’arrivée des chaises est elle aussi fortement rythmée par l’alternance de l’éclairage et de l’obscurité, conjuguée à la fréquence et à l’intensité des sonneries et cet ensemble rythmique ne correspond pas à une recette, mais a une façon d’être.

Le rythme donne au jeu un « certain caractère de cérémonie »[37]. Il se compose d’une alternance de temps forts et de temps faibles qui communiquent une force incantatoire. Toute la représentation de Le roi se meurt est rythmée par le Garde frappant le plancher de sa hallebarde, tel un grand chambellan.

L’œuvre de Ionesco est parsemée de références au temps. Sortie du monde des frères Marx, la pendule de La Cantatrice qui « sonne tant qu’elle veut » et dont les coups sont de plus en plus nerveux est devenue proverbiale: lorsqu’elle frappe dix-sept coups anglais, Madame Smith sait qu’il est neuf heures. Elle est aussi bien visible dans « Amédée », car elle a le rôle de souligner l’énervement.

Les renseignements concernant le temps sont très exactes : Monsieur Martin a pris « le train d’une demie après huit le matin, qui arrive à Londres à un quart avant cinq »[38], il y a trente ans que le professeur habite la ville, le Vieux et la Vieille sont mariés depuis soixante quinze années, il y a quinze ans qu’Amédée n’a pas d’inspiration, Bobby Watson « est mort il y a deux ans. Il a été enterré il y a un an et demi » et « il y avait quatre ans qu’il était mort et il était encore chaud »[39].

Bien que prisonniers de leur temps intérieur qui s’est arrêté à un certain moment dans un certain état, les personnages craignent toujours d’être en retard ou de perdre le temps: « Vous voyez, je suis venue à l’heure. Je n’ai pas voulu être en retard»[40], dit l’élève qui ne soupçonne pas que « l’heure de sa mort » est proche. « Je suis en retard »[41], dit au début des Victimes du devoir le Policier. « Je regrette de prendre de votre temps »[42]. Jacques et Jacqueline souffrent de la même maladie: « Que de temps perdu! »[43], « Ne perdons pas le temps»[44]. Madeleine, qui s’attarde dans sa chambre, est elle aussi obsédée par cette idée.

Ionesco juxtapose souvent présent et passé, ou présent et futur, comme par exemple lorsque Amedée et Madeleine revivent leur nuit de noces, mais aussi dans les dialogues du Vieux et de la Vieille:

 

Le Vieux, à la Belle: …Je vous aimais, il y a cent ans… il y a en vous un tel changement… Je vous aimais, je vous aime…

 

ou bien :

 

La Vieille: Il viendra, il viendra.

Le Vieux: Viendra.

La Vieille: Il vient.

Le Vieux : Il vient.

La Vieille: Il vient, il est là.[45]

 

Très belle est l’anaphore qui se réfère au temps de Le Roi se meurt:

 

Le roi: Que le temps retourne sur ses pas.

Marie: Que nous soyons il y a vingt ans.

Le roi: Que nous soyons la semaine dernière.

Marie: Que nous soyons hier soir. Temps retourne, temps retourne ; temps arrête-toi![46]

 

Au signal de la Garde, les acteurs quitteront leur place pour se mettre dans une autre formation, la lumière changera, une musique se fera entendre, ou le bruit d’un écroulement, de cloches, etc. Ainsi serons-nous à la fois dans le temporel et l’intemporel, le temps théâtral s’écroulant à la même vitesse que le temps réel, mais à un autre rythme que celui-ci. Cette heure théâtrale est aussi une heure d’éternité. C’est un homme qui disparait, sa courte vie prend fin. Mais c’est aussi toute l’humanité qui disparaît avec lui, des millénaires qui s’achèvent, le Temps lui-même tombe dans un grand trou de silence et d’oubli.

Cet univers absurde, dénonçant la stupidité mécanique des vies vécues dans l’inconscience des vraies réalités, dévoilant des choses monstrueuses en accentuant un inessentiel qui devient déformé et trompeur, éprouvant la nécessité d’une catastrophe qui, dans une éclatante lumière, vient déchirer le voile, constitue une illustration profondément évocatrice de l’antiutopie.

 

 

Bibliographie

 

Œuvres littéraires

Ionesco, Eugène, Théâtre complet, Paris, Gallimard, 1991.

Ionescu, Eugen, Cântăreaţa cheală, Bucureşti, Minerva, 1970.

 

Œuvres critiques

Artaud, Antonin, Le Théâtre et son double, Gallimard, 1995.

Auclaire, Elisabeth, Jean-Marie Serreau découvreur de théâtres, L’Arbre Verdoyant Editeur, 1986.

Balazard, Simone, Le guide du théâtre, Paris, Syros, 1989.

Bablet, Denis, et Jacquot, Jean (éds.), Les voies de la création théâtrale, Paris, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1977.

Bigot, Michel, Savéan Marie-France, La Cantatrice Chauve et La Leçon d’Eugène Ionesco, Paris, Gallimard, 1991.

Décote, Georges, Itinéraires littéraires XX^e siècle, Paris, Hatier, 1991.

Esslin, Martin, Théâtre de l’absurde, Paris, Buchet/ Chastel, 1977.

Ionescu, Eugen, Note şi contranote, Bucureşti, Humanitas, 2002.

 

Anthologies

Decote, Georges, Itinéraires littéraires après 1950, Tome 2, Paris, Hatier, mai 1991.

Lagarde, André, Michard, Laurent, Les grands auteurs français. Anthologie et histoire littéraire, XX^e siècle, Paris, Bordas, 1988.

Lecherbonnier, Bernard, Brunei, Pierre, Rince, Dominique, Moatti, Christiane, Littérature, XX^e siècle, Nathan, 1989.

Mitterand, Henri, Barberis, Dominique, Rince, Dominique, Langue et littérature, Anthologie XIX^e-XX^e siècles, Paris, Nathan, 1992.

 

Dictionnaires

Corvin, Michel, Dictionnaire encyclopédique du théâtre, Paris, Bordas, 1995.

Aquien, Michele, Molinier, Georges, Dictionnaire de rhétorique et de poétique, La Pochotheque, 1996.

Passek, Jean Loup, Dictionnaire du cinéma, Paris, Larousse, 1991.

Pavis, Patrice, Dictionnaire du théâtre, Paris, Dunod, 1996.

Tulard, Jean, Dictionnaire du cinéma. Les acteurs, Robert Laffont, 1991.

 

Encyclopédies

Lista, Giovanni, La scène moderne, Paris, Actes Sud, 1997.

Jomaron, Jacqueline, Le théâtre en France du Moyen Age à nos jours, Paris, 1992.

 

Périodiques

Laville, Pierre, L’année du théâtre (l993-1994), Hachette, 1994.

Leonardini, Jean Pierre, Collin, Marie, Markovits, Josephine, Festival d’automne à Paris, Temps

Actuels, 1982.

 

Internet

www.altavista.com:\TheatreoftheAbsurd.htm

www.altavista.com:\thetheatreoftheabsurd.htm

 

 

Notes

Monica Alina Danci
Université Babeş-Bolyai, Cluj-Napoca, Roumanie
danci_monica_alina@yahoo.com

 

 

Eugene Ionesco: The Anti-Utopian Universe of the Theatre of the Absurd

 

 

Abstract: In this study, I analyze Eugene Ionesco’s theater of the absurd as an anti-utopian world. For this purpose, I bring peculiarities of utopian thought to bear on a comparison with the features of this anti-theater. The absurd as anti-utopia reveals itself in the destruction of categories  such as language, action, character, object, space, time. I also take into consideration factors  such as lighting or rhythm of the play. In my opinion, the absurd universe is the perfect illustration of scenarios of the worst possible worlds.

Keywords: Anti-utopia; Theatre of the absurd; Eugene Ionesco; Action; Character; Object; Rhythm, Time.

 

 

Dans cette étude, je me propose de faire une analyse du théâtre de l’absurde d’Eugène Ionesco vu en tant que univers anti-utopique qui  présente non pas le meilleur des mondes, mais le pire. Dans ce but, je m’arrêterai sur quelques particularités de la pensée utopique pour une comparaison avec les traits de ce théâtre.

La première caractéristique de l’utopie est celle de définir un lieu imaginaire, mythique, supposé réel mais géographiquement éloigné et inconnu, qui est un lieu bienheureux, chargé de sens, harmonieux. Par contre, le terme absurde dénonce un état inharmonieux des choses, un désaccord avec la raison et la bienséance, un univers privé de son but vivant, un monde sans explication capitale, sans certitudes fondamentales.

Obéissant aux principes d’une société parfaite ou du moins perfectionnée, l’espace utopique, qu’il soit naturel ou plutôt urbain, est marqué par la raison, la symétrie, la régularité, la maîtrise du détail. Si ce type d’espace, avec son décor concret, minutieusement construit, a le rôle de légitimer cet univers en renforçant l’idée d’une nature organisée, cohérente, l’espace absurde est fait en grande partie d’images scéniques, parfois déformées, parfois incompréhensibles, essais de transcription de la profondeur de l’univers intérieur de l’auteur.

Si l’utopie présente un âge adulte de l’humanité, un temps de la paix, de la justice et de la liberté, les personnages de l’absurde restent prisonniers de leur temps intérieur, qui s’est arrêté à un certain moment dans un certain état.

À la différence de l’utopie, qui témoigne d’une certaine cohérence et même d’une vraisemblance de principe, en posant des questions concernant la religion, le travail, l’égalité, la famille, la propriété et l’autorité, le théâtre de l’absurde est constitué par l’amas des tous les gestes impulsifs, de toutes les attitudes manquées, de tous les lapsus de l’esprit et de la langue par lesquels se manifeste l’impuissance de l’être.

La société utopique désigne une communauté d’individus vivant heureux et en harmonie, qui repose  sur un ensemble de lois et sur une organisation très rationnelle et précise et qui est préservée non seulement du mal, mais aussi de l’altérité menaçante. Par contre, le théâtre de Ionesco présente au public des espèces de marionnettes interchangeables, des êtres sans existence propre, sans destin.

Si l’utopie se réfère à un État idéal, où tous les maux et les torts de la société présente sont guéris et redressés, en impliquant une liberté et une tolérance obligatoires, le théâtre de Ionesco opère avec des véritables tactiques de choc, transformant les personnages dans des victimes d’un système aberrant et  implacable.

Si l’utopie se présente comme l’invention d’un monde idéal, souhaitable, le théâtre de l’absurde se propose de révéler le monde refoulé du cauchemar avec ses pulsions agressives et ses désirs insensés, la peur la plus indéracinable de chacun, l’horreur et l’excès des souffrances intérieures, souvent tenus pour scandaleux et irreprésentables.

Dans la conception de Ionesco, le théâtre doit opérer avec de véritables tactiques de choc; la réalité elle-même, la conscience du spectateur, son instrument habituel de pensée, le langage, doivent être renversés, disloqués, retournés, pour qu’ainsi le spectateur rencontre face à face une nouvelle perception de la réalité. Si le langage, parce qu’il est conceptuel et, par conséquent, schématique et vague, et parce qu’il s’est desséché en clichés sans âme, constitue un obstacle plutôt qu’un moyen de vraie communication, l’accès de la sensibilité et de l’expression de l’écrivain à la conscience des autres êtres humains doit être tenté à un niveau plus fondamental, au niveau pré- ou sub- verbal de l’expérience humaine élémentaire :

 

Si le théâtre n’était qu’un grossissement déplorable des nuances qui me gênait, c’est qu’il n’était qu’un grossissement insuffisant. [… ] Pousser le théâtre au delà de cette zone intermédiaire qui n’est ni théâtre, ni littérature, c’est le restituer à son cadre propre, à ses limites naturelles. […] Pousser tout au paroxysme, là où sont les sources du tragique. Faire un théâtre de violence: violemment comique, violemment dramatique.[1]

 

Sentir l’absurdité du quotidien et du langage, son invraisemblance, c’est déjà l’avoir dépassé; mais pour le dépasser, il faut d’abord s’y enfoncer. C’est un théâtre d’images, de sensations, de réactions presque instinctives. Il y a dans les pièces de Ionesco une violence et un pathologique des attitudes, une exacerbation organique, primaire, nécessaire. Stridence, cri et non pas éloquence. Le théâtre est une formule d’art vulgaire. Parce que c’est un art pour la foule et parce qu’un petit espace doit pouvoir être bien vu de tous les coins d’une grande salle, les subtilités, les détails psychologiques et la discrétion ne sont pas possibles: tout au contraire, ce qui, comme réalité de l’âme, est à peine perceptible, doit sauter aux yeux sur la scène; ce que l’on murmure est clamé, crié. Un pas devient une fuite ; l’inessentiel s’accentue, se colore et nous apparaît déformé et trompeur. C’est que toute nuance revêt des dimensions inacceptables et que toute action particulière manque d’intérêt; l’œuvre doit dévoiler des choses monstrueuses et une justification motivée serait fausse tout comme un sens particulier cacherait la signification essentielle. Tout doit être exagéré, caricatural, pénible, puéril, sans finesse. Ionesco agit sur le spectateur par la force et les outrances.

Un spectacle total doit toucher tous les sens, donc tout est permis au théâtre. C’est un mélange de techniques modernes, décors, éclairage, musique, mais aussi de genres, allant du registre noble à la farce grotesque, aux procédés de guignol, du music-hall ou du cirque. Pourtant, ces œuvres vont au-delà de la simple mise en question des conventions dramatiques.

L’interprétation « classique » soutient que le personnage de Ionesco est la manifestation d’une tendance: l’instinct sexuel (Jacques ou la Soumission), « le petit bourgeois » (La Cantatrice Chauve), l’individu « contaminé » par l’hystérie générale (Les Rhinocéros), le libido dominandi (Victimes du Devoir), etc., et qu’en ce qui concerne le couple Ionesco recourt le plus souvent aux personnages types du ménage petit-bourgeois : M. et Mme Smith, Amédée et Madeleine[2], Choubert et sa Madeleine, le Vieux et sa Vieille, la famille Jacques, le professeur et sa bonne (qui est à la fois une femme et une mère pour lui). La femme joue généralement le rôle de « supporter » du mari, elle est admirative, mais tyrannique, fidèle et infidèle à la fois, alliant  la grâce et la beauté au savoir-faire, comme la jeune employée compatissante, idéale, Dany-Daisy que Bérenger aime. On a observé aussi que le personnage a perdu sa stabilité et sa cohérence car il est interchangeable[3], n’obéit plus au principe de non-contradiction: dans Jacques, Ionesco nous oblige à percevoir la différence de l’identique (rien ne permet de distinguer Roberte 1 de Roberte 2) et dans la Cantatrice l’identité de la différence (les deux Martins sont des « conjoints », alors qu’ils se croyaient étrangers l’un à l’autre), tandis que Choubert (Victimes du devoir) se transforme en une effarante variété de « moi » plus ou moins cohérents.[4]

Il a été remarqué que Ionesco pratique une sorte de démocratisme foncier en ce qui concerne ses personnages et ses apparitions. On n’a pas de porte-paroles il n’a pas de préférences, il ne sélectionne pas de personnages. Les idées les plus sérieuses de l’auteur peuvent sortir de la bouche de n’importe quel personnage et les plus nobles de ses pensées s’allient aux plus crasses niaiseries. Le personnage n’a pas d’âge, il ne vient pas d’un lieu bien défini. Son état agonique a toujours une velléité pénible, sa liberté est toujours provisoire… Aussi n’arrivera-t-il jamais à la conscience d’un héros tragique. Il n’est pas un titan, la grandeur lui manque ; c’est une existence mineure.

La conscience de la convention ne disparaît jamais de la scène.[5] Ce qui dérange Ionesco, c’est la présence sur le plateau des personnages en chair et en os, leur corps matériel:

 

Leur présence matérielle détruisait la fiction. Il y avait là comme deux plans de réalité, la réalité concrète, matérielle, appauvrie, vidée, limitée, de ces hommes vivants, quotidiens, bougeant et parlant sur scène, et la réalité de l’imagination, toutes deux face à face, ne se recouvrant pas, irréductibles l’une à l’autre: deux univers antagonistes n’arrivant pas à s’unifier, à se confondre.[6]

 

Ce qui lui déplaît dans les théories brechtiennes du jeu des acteurs est précisément qu’elles lui paraissent un mélange inacceptable de vrai et de faux. Lui, il est stupéfait par le spectacle de guignol[7].

Les personnages sont inconsistants; la progression n’est soutenue que par la technique d’un mécanisme théâtral fonctionnant à vide pour arriver, si cela était réalisable, à la désarticulation des personnages eux-mêmes. L’idéal serait de voir leurs tètes et leurs jambes se projeter sur le plancher. D’ailleurs, dans la Scène à quatre, la Dame, tiraillée de plus en plus violemment par ses soupirants, perd d’abord ses souliers, un gant, son chapeau, et, après sa jupe, ses bras, une jambe, ses seins. Le corps n’est pas le lieu du désir et même quand il l’est (comme à la fin de Jacques), il ne provoque que le spasme génital: fécondité et prolifération cancéreuse s’équivalent.

Mais outre ces interprétations qui partent de la prémisse que le personnage de Ionesco a perdu son autonomie d’individu, qu’il est l’incarnation d’une tension, Gelu Ionescu pose le problème du personnage spécifique victime du « mécanisme »[8], toutes les autres présences scéniques n’étant en ce qui concerne le conflit que des « objets scéniques », que des personnages-objets qui aident le mécanisme à fonctionner. Ces possibles personnages accompagnent la soumission des « héros », ils donnent la vague illusion de l’impartialité, même d’une sorte de solidarité avec celui-ci. Les femmes revendicatives de Choubert ou d’Amédée, la reine Marie et tous les autres personnages de Le Roi se meurt, Edouard du Tueur, forment une masse malléable qui compose un arrière-plan oscillant, nécessaire au spectacle. Leur capacité d’adaptation, leur grande labilité est signe de la grégarité qui les consomme en effaçant les destins individuels. Le personnage est au centre d’un système d’oppositions qui le dépassent et l’annulent.

Si dans l’utopie il y a un voyage, une découverte, une progression du connu à l’inconnu qui correspond au passage du monde réel au monde utopique, dans le théâtre de Ionesco il n’y a qu’un seul conflit essentiel, celui qui oppose le personnage au mécanisme. Dans les pièces où l’on a affaire au mécanisme du langage, « l’action » est imposée par le désir de chaque personnage d’imposer sa série de phrases, pendant que dans le deuxième cycle, celui des « grandes pièces », le « mécanisme aberrant » est présent en d’autres formes. Il montre sa présence dans les décors, les objets scéniques, la lumière, les sons et même dans le rythme de la pièce.

Le scénario, le schéma et le mécanisme dramatique comporte trois moments: l’agression, l’essai de se « débarrasser » du mécanisme et la soumission.

D’abord il y a une existence anodine, anoste, peu animée par des tracasseries quotidiennes, vaguement ennuyeuses: les banals mécontentements d’un couple (Victimes), les reproches qu’un ami fait à un autre pour une vie négligente (Rhinocéros), un mari qui n’aime pas la maison que sa femme a choisie pour domicile (La Soif et la Faim), une autre visite, un nouveau quartier qu’il espère habiter (Tueur).

La précarité de l’équilibre est presque imperceptible lorsque, brusquement, un premier signe attire l’attention: l’anomalie. La surprise s’insinue rapidement et l’aberration entre en scène, trouble la platitude et déclenche l’inquiétude. Ainsi, la tranquillité dominicale est interrompue par le galop d’un rhinocéros, dans l’appartement de Choubert apparaît un agent de police excessivement poli, le quartier visité, étrangement désert, contient un cadavre, la maison louée est fréquentée par des fantômes.

Une menace commence à se faire sentir et devient subitement une réalité scénique pressante. L’anomalie n’est pas un accident comme on voulait le croire, c’est le premier signe distinctif d’un système agressif qui détruit tout de suite le calme de l’atmosphère précédente. Amédée commence directement dans un tel état d’agression chronique et on assiste seulement à une accélération du rythme. Dans les Victimes, le Policier passe de l’amabilité à l’enquête brutale. Dans les Rhinocéros, la prolifération des rhinocéros se fait sans toucher directement le personnage, l’action est certes et palpable comme dans le Tueur, où l’on découvre le crime à l’égard duquel les autorités sont soit complices, soit impuissantes. Au contraire, dans La soif et la Faim, Jean semble être en proie à une illusion de menaces.

Les signes aberrants forcent le personnage de prendre une première attitude. Celui-ci cherche une solution, mais, comme il n’a pas de vocation tragique, il essaie, dans la majorité des cas, de tromper le mécanisme, de le dérouter. Rien ne lui semble encore perdu. Scandalisant, oui. Irrécupérable, non. Soumis à la torture, Choubert évade dans son inconscient, l’assistance entre pour le moment dans le jeu, mais l’agresseur revient à son but: « Cherche Mallot! »

L’instinct de la conservation apparaît brusquement chez Bérenger aussi, lorsqu’il assiste à la transformation de son ami Jean. Il s’isole dans la maison de peur qu’il ne devienne, lui aussi, un rhinocéros. Ni le Bérenger du Tueur ne craigne pas le criminel. En apprenant qu’il va mourir « dans une heure et demie », le roi Bérenger essaie dans la plus explicite et plus allégorique des pièces de Ionesco, Le Roi se meurt, d’user de toutes ses prérogatives pour arrêter le temps, pour incarcérer tous ceux qui lui semblent être les complices de la mort, pour obtenir un délai qui n’est plus ou pas possible. Contrairement aux autres « héros », Amédée parcourt cette étape du destin commun, en « s’efforçant » de se débarrasser par se complaire, car une cohabitation avec le cadavre lui paraît toujours possible.

Le mécanisme s’installe et fonctionne implacablement, sans arrêt, sans délai. Un mécanisme qui ne se définit que par la perfection de son fonctionnement progressif et par son efficacité. On assiste à une soumission par violence. Le déséquilibre produit est irréversible. Le personnage arrive à la panique, à la perplexité, sa gesticulation prend des proportions, son agitation révoltée devient de plus en plus violente, de plus en plus impuissante, de plus en plus limitée. Assiégé, on a l’impression que c’est justement la résistance indécise et chaotique du personnage qui urgente sa fin car toute réaction certifie l’impression d’une collaboration avec le mécanisme. C’est le mécanisme de la grégarisation par lequel les destins individuels s’effacent et s’annulent. Sa force réside dans son silence, dans le refus de toute explication.

Mais le mécanisme ne se manifeste pas seulement à l’intermède des personnages, mais aussi dans la prolifération des objets, des sons, dans la lumière ou dans le rythme de plus en plus alerte des pièces.

Ionesco explique :

 

Deux états de conscience fondamentaux sont à l’origine de toutes mes pièces… Ces deux prises de conscience originelles sont celles de l’évanescence ou de la lourdeur; du vide et du trop de présence; de la transparence irréelle du monde et de son opacité… la sensation de l’évanescence vous donne une angoisse, une sorte de vertige. Mais tout cela peut, tout aussi bien, devenir euphorique : l’angoisse se transforme soudain en liberté. Certainement cet état de conscience est très rare… Je suis, le plus souvent, sous la domination du sentiment opposé: la légèreté se mue en lourdeur; la transparence en épaisseur; le monde pèse; l’univers m’écrase. Un rideau, un mur infranchissable s’interpose entre moi et le monde, entre moi et moi-même, la matière remplit tout, prend toute la place, anéantit toute liberté sous son poids. ..La parole se brise…[9]

 

On trouve ces deux thèmes dans Amédée : la pesanteur et la prolifération des choses dans les deux premiers actes, la légèreté et l’évanescence dans le  troisième. La matière prolifère aussi dans  L’avenir est dans les œufs (les œufs) et dans Victimes du devoir (les tasses à café).

Lorsqu’on se sent submergé par la matérialité universelle, comment matérialiser la matérialité autrement que par l’afflux de meubles dans une chambre vide, l’encombrant totalement et étouffant le personnage qui s’y trouve, coincé, compressé ? Le Nouveau Locataire, dont la simplicité même est terrifiante, est une pièce sur les objets en mouvement, les objets écrasant l’homme, l’étouffant sous une avalanche de matières inertes:

 

À chaque « là », les Déménageurs hocheront la tète, en signe de « oui » et porteront les meubles; après les quatre armoires, ce seront de plus petits meubles – encore des guéridons, des canapés aussi, des paniers en osier, des meubles inconnus, etc. –, en face des autres meubles, longeant les trois murs, serrant de plus en plus près le Monsieur au milieu du plateau; tout ceci est devenu une sorte de ballet pesant, les mouvements étant toujours très lents.[10]

 

On touche au paradoxe de l’objet dans le théâtre de Ionesco: recours obligé pour donner le spectacle concret du rien, il est le signe, inverse, de son absence; il est présence apparente mais réalité du vide; on le montre pour faire sentir qu’il n’existe pas. Comment exprimer l’absence, ou ce sentiment de l’irréalité du monde que par une quantité de chaises vides sur le plateau, en un tourbillon vertigineux, fou ? Il y a du monde évoqué par les personnages visibles et il n’y a pas de monde. Cela semble, à la fois, être et ne pas être. Ou plutôt exister et ne pas exister. L’objet sert tantôt de décor, tantôt de personnage. La note des Chaises précise:

 

Le nombre des chaises apportées sur le plateau doit être important: une quarantaine au moins; davantage si possible. Elles arrivent très vite, de plus en plus vite. Il y a une accumulation. Le plateau est envahi par ces chaises, cette foule des absences présentes. […] À partir d’un certain moment, les chaises ne représentent plus des personnages déterminés (Dame, Colonnel, la Belle, etc.), mais bien la foule. Elles jouent toutes seules.[11]

 

L’environnement scénique est de première importance dans  ces pièces, ayant son rôle bine défini ; il est parfois même, dans certaines scènes, l’acteur principal. Les décors  sont tantôt banals, multifonctionnels, ne laissant rien à prévoir de l’insolite qui va les envahir comme, par exemple, la modeste salle à manger-salon-bureau d’Amédée, l’intérieur petit-bourgeois des Victimes, ou bien « le cabinet de travail, servant aussi de salle à manger » de La leçon avec ses objets traditionnels: des rideaux simples, des pots de fleurs banales, un buffet rustique, une tapisserie claire, la table qui sert aussi de bureau, bien qu’on aperçoive dans le lointain le ciel « bleu gris ». Dans La Cantatrice, l’élément qui fait prévoir l’insolite est l’adjectif « anglais », répété comme une obsession: M. Smith, anglais, dans son fauteuil anglais et ses pantoufles anglaises, fume sa pipe anglaise et lit un journal anglais, près d’un feu anglais[12]. Ce décor est en contraste avec le décor sombre de Jacques qui suggère dès le début l’épaisseur: la chambre est mal tenue, les rideaux sales. Un tableau ne représentant rien, est remplacé dans L’avenir est dans les œufs par un grand encadrement contenant le portrait du grand-père-Jacques, c’est-à-dire le grand-père Jacques lui-même[13].

Le Nouveau Locataire nous introduit dans une pièce nue, sans aucun meuble, la salle aux murs circulaires des Chaises est très dépouillée, tandis que dans le Tueur sans gages la scène est vide au lever du rideau et l’Architecte apportera lui-même deux chaises et une table. Il ne s’agit pas vraiment d’une absence de décor, sinon d’un décor invisible:

 

Bérenger : Oh, la jolie maison ! La façade est exquise, j’admire la pureté de ce style ! Du XVIII^e ? Non, du XV^e ou fin XIX ? En tout cas c’est classique et surtout que c’est coquet, que c’est coquet…[14]

 

ou bien la cité miraculeuse à laquelle on fait référence dans Victimes du devoir:

 

la cité miraculeuse… ou un miraculeux jardin, une fontaine jaillissante des jeux d’eau, des fleurs de feu dans la nuit.[15]

 

Dans la première partie de La Soif et La Faim, Jean observe que les murs sont couverts de taches d’humidité. Lorsqu’il les montre à sa femme, chacun d’eux découvre dans les mêmes contours d’autres choses : Marie-Madeleine voit « des visages aimables … des arbres … des fleurs dans de beaux vases ». Au contraire, Jean distingue « des gens en agonie », « des corps amputés », « des monstres inconnus et malades ». Dans la même pièce apparaît aussi ce lieu typique pour « l’espace clos » qui change et pourtant reste le même, le « lieu dont on ne part plus jamais ».

La thématique de la lumière est commentée par Ionesco, qui raconte:

 

J’avais environ dix-sept ou dix-huit ans. J’étais dans une ville de province. C’était en juin, vers midi. Je me promenais dans une des rues de cette ville très tranquille. Tout d’un coup j’ai eu l’impression que […] j’étais dans un autre monde, plus mien que l’ancien, infiniment plus lumineux […] il me semblait que le ciel était devenu extrêmement dense, que la lumière était presque palpable, que les maisons avaient un éclat jamais vu, un éclat inhabituel, vraiment libéré de l’habitude […] j’ai senti une joie énorme, j’ai eu le sentiment que j’avais compris quelque chose de fondamental […] À ce moment-là je me suis dit: « Je n’ai plus peur de la mort ».[16]

 

C’est pour cela que, dans les pièces du dramaturge, il y a toujours deux types de personnages, celui qui croit à la lumière et celui qui n’y croit pas.

Dans Amédée, la lumière est associée à l’infini : « des routes dans le ciel, des ruisseaux d’argent liquide, des rivières, des étangs, des f1euves, des lacs, des océans, de la lumière palpable… [… ] Des bouquets de neige fleurie, des arbres dans le ciel, des jardins, des prairies… des dames, des chapiteaux, des colonnes, des temples… [ .. .] Et de l’espace, de l’espace infini »[17].

Dans l’obscurité la plus profonde, le héros de Victimes du devoir semble être saisi par le miraculeux de l’existence même : « Je baigne dans la lumière. (Obscurité totale sur scène) La lumière me pénètre. Je suis étonné d’être, étonné d’être …étonné d’être… […] Je suis lumière! Je vole! »[18].

Le théâtre de Ionesco, la manière dont il représente sur la scène sa vision à lui, la projection de son monde mental, nécessite toujours une lumière irréelle puissante. Il y a toujours des références à la lumière sous toutes ses formes. Lumière verte, lumière vive, lumière froide, lumière chaude, on est toujours à sa recherche par delà les ténèbres.

Dans Jacques ou la soumission, le décor sombre du début devra, dans la scène de la séduction, se transformer par l’éclairage; puis il deviendra verdâtre, aquatique, vers la fin de la même scène; puis il s’obscurcira davantage, tout à la fin[19]. L’obscurité grandissante d’Amédée est peu à peu remplacée par la lumière verte venant de la chambre du mort : ainsi, dans cette scène, c’est la musique, les pieds du mort s’allongeant, la lumière verte qui jouent[20]. La vieille des Chaises allume la lampe qui donne, elle aussi, une lumière verte. Dans Amédée, la lumière de la lune est éclatante, froide, envahissante: Entre les jeux de lumière, d’artifices, et l’aspect macabre de la chambre des deux époux, il y a un contraste frappant. La lumière donne des teintes argenteuses aux champignons qui, entre-temps, eux aussi, ont poussé et sont devenus énormes. La lumière, les jeux de lumière, ne semblent pas seulement venir de la fenêtre, mais d’un peu partout: des murs, des jointures de l’armoire, des meubles, des champignons, des petits germes de champignons qui brillent, sur le plancher, comme des vers luisants […] l’horrible et le beau doivent coexister[21]. C’est la même lumière de maximum intensité des Chaises ou du Tueur sans Gages, pièces dans lesquelles dans le premier acte l’ambiance est donnée uniquement, par l’éclairage: c’est une lumière très forte, très blanche; il y a cette lumière blanche, il y a aussi le bleu du ciel éclatant et dense. Ainsi, après la grisaille, l’éclairage doit jouer sur ce blanc et ce bleu, constituant les seuls éléments de ce décor de lumière [. . .]. Le bleu, le blanc, le silence, la scène vide doivent créer une impression de calme étrange[22]. Dans cette pièce, le jeu de l’obscurité et de la lumière fait apparaître et disparaître les personnages[23], ce jeu étant présent dans beaucoup d’autres pièces.

Voix venant du palier (Amédée), sonneries ininterrompues, bribes de conversation grotesques (Le nouveau locataire), coups de sonnette (La Cantatrice chauve), frappements à la porte des voisins, coups à la porte, bruit du moulin à café (Victimes du devoir), la sonnerie du téléphone (Rhinocéros, Amédée), ce ne sont que d’autres éléments qui prolifèrent dans le théâtre de Ionesco par lesquels le mécanisme montre sa présence. Le monde extérieur menace, envahit, étouffe.

Dans Le Nouveau Locataire le réalisme initial se fixe sur la sonorisation, le fracas assourdissant désagréable certes, mais dramatiquement efficace accompagne une bonne moitié de la pièce; avec ses variations d’intensité, le fond sonore prépare le public à comprendre le protagoniste, son désir d’isolement. Au lever du rideau, on entend, provenant des coulisses, des bruits de voix, de marteaux, des bribes de refrains, des cris d’enfants, des pas dans les escaliers, un orgue de Barbarie, etc.

À la fin des Chaises, Ionesco nous informe : On entend pour la première fois les bruits humains de la foule invisible: ce sont des éclats de rire, des murmures, des « chut », des toussotements ironiques; faibles au début, ces bruits vont grandissant; puis, de nouveau, progressivement, s’affaiblissent[24].

Dans Amédée, pendant la musique, des bruits que font les voisins s’entendront: un lointain « À table », une sonnerie lointaine; dans l’escalier, des bruits de pas assez discrets; des bruits d’assiettes, cliquetis de verres, car c’est l’heure du dîner; puis, progressivement, ces bruits se tairont; seule la musique se fera entendre[25]. Ionesco précise que les coups de la pendule s’ajoutent à cette musique en contraste avec le mutisme des deux personnages. Toujours dans Amédée le glissement du cadavre est rendu en progression par une accumulation de bruits de plus en plus forts : un « long craquement », puis « un craquement énorme » en provenance de la chambre de gauche, bruit de vitres cassées, la respiration d’Amédée, le bruit de leurs efforts, un grand coup violent dans le mur, la sonnerie de plus en plus pressante du téléphone, « craquements puissants », « un violent coup de gong lorsque les pieds du mort atteignent la porte de droite »[26].

Dans Tueur sans gages, les bruits sont signes de la présence menaçante du tueur qui détruit la quiétude de la cité radieuse: on entend le bruit des pierres qui tombent près des protagonistes, ceux des vitres cassées, un cri, le bruit sourd d’un corps tombant dans l’eau, des murmures. Les bruits du tramway, du vent et de la pluie qui cessent à l’instant même où se produit le changement d’éclairage marquent l’espace situé hors de la cité radieuse.

Dans Rhinocéros les bruits vont crescendo et decrescendo, les barrissements sont musicalisés et les voix deviennent rauques.

Un processus de modification subissent aussi les voix d’Amédée II et de Madeleine II qui seront, vers la fin, très aigues ou la voix du Professeur qui devient, de maigre et fluette, de plus en plus forte, et, à la fin, « extrêmement puissante, éclatante, clairon sonore, tandis que la voix de l’Elève se fera presque inaudible, très claire et bien timbrée telle qu’elle a été au début du drame ».[27]

Le rythme se fond soit sur de profonds changements de registres et de tonalités, soit sur le recours à l’accélération et à la décélération.

Dans La Leçon, comme dans un dessin animé, la tension atteint son paroxysme grâce à l’accélération du rythme qui va de paire avec l’augmentation du volume sonore jusqu’à la vocifération :

 

Le professeur: J’en mange une… une.

L’élève: Deux.

Le professeur: Une.

L’élève: Deux.

Le professeur: Une!

L’élève: Deux!

Le professeur: Une!!!

L’élève: Deux!!!

Le Professeur: Une!!!

L’élève: Deux!!!

Le Professeur: Une!!!

L’élève: Deux!!

 

Dans la septième scène de la Cantatrice, le rythme est donné par l’alternance des répliques formées seulement par une progression d’interjections et des silences:

 

Monsieur Smith: Hm.

Silence.

Madame Smith: Hm, hm.

Silence.

Madame Martin: Hm, hm, hm.

Silence.

Monsieur Martin: Hm, hm, hm, hm.

Silence.

Madame Martin : Oh, décidément.[28]

 

Dans les Chaises, les répliques de la Vieille, lorsque celle-ci répètera les derniers mots du Vieux, sont tantôt comme un écho très amplifié, tantôt dites sur un ton de mélopée et de lamentation cadencées[29], tandis que Jacques prononce le crédo de la famille, « J’adore les pommes de terre au lard », « comme un automate ».

Les recommandations d’avaler et de mastiquer des Victimes du devoir ont un rythme « très vif et toujours à la pointe du comique, caricature »[30].

La répétition participe à la création d’un rythme qui porte l’intensité à son comble:

 

Tous ensemble : C’est pas par là, c’est par ici, c’est pas par là, c’est par ici, c’est pas par là, c’est par ici, c’est pas par là, c’est par ici, c’est pas par là, c’est par ici, c’est pas par là, c’est par ici![31]

 

Dans l’obscurité de La leçon, on entend sur un rythme de plus en plus rapide:

 

Le Professeur: Répétez, regardez. (Il fait comme le coucou).

« Couteau… couteau… couteau… couteau… »[32]

 

Dans la réalisation de Marcel Cuvelier, le mot clef, « couteau », répété d’une manière rythmique par l’assassin et la victime, relève sans aucune ambiguïté de l’orgasme. La prolifération est présente dans cette ivresse du mot qui hypnotise l’élève: les sons frémissent, s’agitent, vibrent, vibrent, vibrent ou grasseyent, ou chuintent ou se froissent, ou sifflent, sifflent, mettant tout en mouvement: luette, langue, palais, dents… et le professeur continue: Finalement les mots sortent par le nez, la bouche, les oreilles, les pores, entraînant avec eux tous les organes que nous avons nommés, déracinés, dans un envol puissant, majestueux, qui n’est autre que ce qu’on appelle, improprement, voix, se modulant en chant ou se transformant en un terrible orage symphonique avec tout un cortège… de gerbes de fleurs des plus variées, d’artifices sonores: labiales, dentales, occlusives, palatales et autres, tantôt caressantes, tantôt amères ou violentes[33].

En ce qui concerne la fin de cette pièce, la tragédie finale est réalisée comme une sorte de ballet. Une espèce de tango langoureux et érotique mêlé de poursuites, une espèce de danse autour de la table, une hésitation, quelques pas en avant, quelques pas en arrière, figurant de la part de l’élève, une sorte de refus et de consentement[34]. Il y a là une inversion des comportements, un crescendo contrebalançant un decrescendo alors que la tension atteint son paroxysme.

Ionesco incombe la mise en scène de rythmer le texte, de souligner son mouvement évolutif dans la durée, donc la vie même qui l’anime : Le rythme de ses « Teuf! Teuf! » ira en s’accélérant, ainsi  que les « Cot-cot-codac » ; ainsi que le mouvement de Roberte père et de Jacqueline allant tour à tour, et sans arrêt, chercher et apporter des corbeilles d’œufs; le mouvement est réglé de façon que lorsque l’un de ces derniers arrive, l’autre part, l’un arrive, l’autre part, etc.[35]. La danse des Jacques et des Roberte a lieu autour des amoureux enlacés, tandis que « Roberte père frappe silencieusement, lentement, dans ses mains »[36]. Les variations rythmiques créent l’impression d’une mécanique en marche. L’accélération du tempo dans les Rhinocéros renforce l’impression d’encerclement, les aiguilles d’Amédée bougent doucement à la même cadence que les pieds du mort, tandis que la crinière enflammée de Jacques est accompagnée de hennissements fortement rythmés. L’arrivée des chaises est elle aussi fortement rythmée par l’alternance de l’éclairage et de l’obscurité, conjuguée à la fréquence et à l’intensité des sonneries et cet ensemble rythmique ne correspond pas à une recette, mais a une façon d’être.

Le rythme donne au jeu un « certain caractère de cérémonie »[37]. Il se compose d’une alternance de temps forts et de temps faibles qui communiquent une force incantatoire. Toute la représentation de Le roi se meurt est rythmée par le Garde frappant le plancher de sa hallebarde, tel un grand chambellan.

L’œuvre de Ionesco est parsemée de références au temps. Sortie du monde des frères Marx, la pendule de La Cantatrice qui « sonne tant qu’elle veut » et dont les coups sont de plus en plus nerveux est devenue proverbiale: lorsqu’elle frappe dix-sept coups anglais, Madame Smith sait qu’il est neuf heures. Elle est aussi bien visible dans « Amédée », car elle a le rôle de souligner l’énervement.

Les renseignements concernant le temps sont très exactes : Monsieur Martin a pris « le train d’une demie après huit le matin, qui arrive à Londres à un quart avant cinq »[38], il y a trente ans que le professeur habite la ville, le Vieux et la Vieille sont mariés depuis soixante quinze années, il y a quinze ans qu’Amédée n’a pas d’inspiration, Bobby Watson « est mort il y a deux ans. Il a été enterré il y a un an et demi » et « il y avait quatre ans qu’il était mort et il était encore chaud »[39].

Bien que prisonniers de leur temps intérieur qui s’est arrêté à un certain moment dans un certain état, les personnages craignent toujours d’être en retard ou de perdre le temps: « Vous voyez, je suis venue à l’heure. Je n’ai pas voulu être en retard»[40], dit l’élève qui ne soupçonne pas que « l’heure de sa mort » est proche. « Je suis en retard »[41], dit au début des Victimes du devoir le Policier. « Je regrette de prendre de votre temps »[42]. Jacques et Jacqueline souffrent de la même maladie: « Que de temps perdu! »[43], « Ne perdons pas le temps»[44]. Madeleine, qui s’attarde dans sa chambre, est elle aussi obsédée par cette idée.

Ionesco juxtapose souvent présent et passé, ou présent et futur, comme par exemple lorsque Amedée et Madeleine revivent leur nuit de noces, mais aussi dans les dialogues du Vieux et de la Vieille:

 

Le Vieux, à la Belle: …Je vous aimais, il y a cent ans… il y a en vous un tel changement… Je vous aimais, je vous aime…

 

ou bien :

 

La Vieille: Il viendra, il viendra.

Le Vieux: Viendra.

La Vieille: Il vient.

Le Vieux : Il vient.

La Vieille: Il vient, il est là.[45]

 

Très belle est l’anaphore qui se réfère au temps de Le Roi se meurt:

 

Le roi: Que le temps retourne sur ses pas.

Marie: Que nous soyons il y a vingt ans.

Le roi: Que nous soyons la semaine dernière.

Marie: Que nous soyons hier soir. Temps retourne, temps retourne ; temps arrête-toi![46]

 

Au signal de la Garde, les acteurs quitteront leur place pour se mettre dans une autre formation, la lumière changera, une musique se fera entendre, ou le bruit d’un écroulement, de cloches, etc. Ainsi serons-nous à la fois dans le temporel et l’intemporel, le temps théâtral s’écroulant à la même vitesse que le temps réel, mais à un autre rythme que celui-ci. Cette heure théâtrale est aussi une heure d’éternité. C’est un homme qui disparait, sa courte vie prend fin. Mais c’est aussi toute l’humanité qui disparaît avec lui, des millénaires qui s’achèvent, le Temps lui-même tombe dans un grand trou de silence et d’oubli.

Cet univers absurde, dénonçant la stupidité mécanique des vies vécues dans l’inconscience des vraies réalités, dévoilant des choses monstrueuses en accentuant un inessentiel qui devient déformé et trompeur, éprouvant la nécessité d’une catastrophe qui, dans une éclatante lumière, vient déchirer le voile, constitue une illustration profondément évocatrice de l’antiutopie.

 

 

Bibliographie

 

Œuvres littéraires

Ionesco, Eugène, Théâtre complet, Paris, Gallimard, 1991.

Ionescu, Eugen, Cântăreaţa cheală, Bucureşti, Minerva, 1970.

 

Œuvres critiques

Artaud, Antonin, Le Théâtre et son double, Gallimard, 1995.

Auclaire, Elisabeth, Jean-Marie Serreau découvreur de théâtres, L’Arbre Verdoyant Editeur, 1986.

Balazard, Simone, Le guide du théâtre, Paris, Syros, 1989.

Bablet, Denis, et Jacquot, Jean (éds.), Les voies de la création théâtrale, Paris, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1977.

Bigot, Michel, Savéan Marie-France, La Cantatrice Chauve et La Leçon d’Eugène Ionesco, Paris, Gallimard, 1991.

Décote, Georges, Itinéraires littéraires XX^e siècle, Paris, Hatier, 1991.

Esslin, Martin, Théâtre de l’absurde, Paris, Buchet/ Chastel, 1977.

Ionescu, Eugen, Note şi contranote, Bucureşti, Humanitas, 2002.

 

Anthologies

Decote, Georges, Itinéraires littéraires après 1950, Tome 2, Paris, Hatier, mai 1991.

Lagarde, André, Michard, Laurent, Les grands auteurs français. Anthologie et histoire littéraire, XX^e siècle, Paris, Bordas, 1988.

Lecherbonnier, Bernard, Brunei, Pierre, Rince, Dominique, Moatti, Christiane, Littérature, XX^e siècle, Nathan, 1989.

Mitterand, Henri, Barberis, Dominique, Rince, Dominique, Langue et littérature, Anthologie XIX^e-XX^e siècles, Paris, Nathan, 1992.

 

Dictionnaires

Corvin, Michel, Dictionnaire encyclopédique du théâtre, Paris, Bordas, 1995.

Aquien, Michele, Molinier, Georges, Dictionnaire de rhétorique et de poétique, La Pochotheque, 1996.

Passek, Jean Loup, Dictionnaire du cinéma, Paris, Larousse, 1991.

Pavis, Patrice, Dictionnaire du théâtre, Paris, Dunod, 1996.

Tulard, Jean, Dictionnaire du cinéma. Les acteurs, Robert Laffont, 1991.

 

Encyclopédies

Lista, Giovanni, La scène moderne, Paris, Actes Sud, 1997.

Jomaron, Jacqueline, Le théâtre en France du Moyen Age à nos jours, Paris, 1992.

 

Périodiques

Laville, Pierre, L’année du théâtre (l993-1994), Hachette, 1994.

Leonardini, Jean Pierre, Collin, Marie, Markovits, Josephine, Festival d’automne à Paris, Temps

Actuels, 1982.

 

Internet

www.altavista.com:\TheatreoftheAbsurd.htm

www.altavista.com:\thetheatreoftheabsurd.htm

 

 

Notes

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

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

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

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

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. 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.

 

 

1. 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).

 

 

1. 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]

 

 

1. 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

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