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    86 views93 pages

    Faber

    Uploaded by

    Benjamin Zich

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF or read online from Scribd
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    of 93
    TIP Soret sma a8 c Contents i i | Introduction Holy Snakes |“ Anon., The Tale of the Shipsorecked Sailor, c.1940 BC Golden Ages and Elysiums HESIOD, HOMER, OVID c.800 BC Philosophers Rule PLATO, Republic, 6.360 BC ure Germans TACITUS, Germania, AD 98 Spartan Conditions PLUTARCH, Life of Lycurgus, ¢. AD 120 ‘Arrangements in the Beyond TRENAEUS, LUCIAN etc., second century AD ‘Watching the Damned Fry TERTULLIAN, De Spectaculis, ¢. AD 200 Ina Chinese Mountain TAO QIAN, ¢. AD 400 More's Conundrum SR THOMAS MORE, Utopia, 1516 ‘Moon Landing | _FRancts Gopwin, The Man in the Moon, c.1580 | Utopian Cannibals | __Micuen pe Montatce, Essays, ¢.1580 | My America JOHN DONNE, ‘To His Mistress Going to Bed’, c.1595 Sun City TOMMASO CAMPANELLA, City of the Sun, 1602 ‘The Island of Scientists FRANCIS BACON, New Atlantis, 1627 Wl aE ‘THE FABER BOOK OF UTOPIAS Honours for Schoolteachers samveL Gort, Nova Solyma, 1648 ‘The Earth Shall Be Made a Common Treasury GERRARD WINSTANLEY, 61659 On Not Being a Round Quadrangle tHoMas HOBBES, Leviathan, 1657 Holy and Cheerful ANDREW MARVELL, ‘Bermudas Paradise Regained 1653 ‘The Empress's New Clothes ‘MARGARET CAVENDISH, The Blazing World, 1666 Perfect Humans? JOHN MILTON, Paradise Lost, 1667 Increase and Multiply HENRY NEVILLE, The Isle of Pines, 1668 Reasonable Behaviour History of the Severambians, 1667-9 Unisex Australi ‘GABRIEL DE FOIGNY, A New Discovery 1693 Alchemists Rule ‘ANON., The Sophick Constitution, x700 Paradise Found TAMBROSE EVANS, Adventures of James Dubourdiew, 1719 Desert Island Discontent DANIEL DEFOE, Robinson Crusoe, 1719 How to Discourage Adultery AMBROSE PHILIPS, The Fortunate Shipwreck, 1720 Horse Sense JONATHAN swiFT, Gulliver's Travels, 1726 Wise Trees Lupwic HOLBERG, Niels Klim’s Journey, 174% Difficulties with a Flying Suit RoBERT paLTOCK, Adventures of Peter Wi ‘The Happy Savage JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU, Discourse on the Origins of Inequality, 1754 Utopian Fishing ANon., Voyage to the Centre of the Earth, 1755 is, 175% mas 127 129 139 conrenrs \dorado Bidowerarne, Candide, 1758 Pastoral Idyll A PRNUEL JOHNSON, Rasselas, 1759 “American in London ‘an Bon. Private Letters from an American, 1769 tn the South Seas LOUIS ANTOINE, the World, x72 Happy Taxpayers OP reenaoien Macey The Year 2440) 177 Mathematical Perfect ANTOINE NICOLAS DE CONDORCET, Sketch, 1794 Sanctuaries for Sadists Tite MARQUIS DE SADE, Justine, 1791; Philosophy in the Bedroom, 1795 Equality PRANGOIS-NOEL BABEUF, Deferice, 1797 COMTE DE BOUGAINVIELE, Voyage round ‘The Pa 3f Single Mothers JAMES LAWRENCE, The Empire of the Nairs, x80x “The Gospel of Industrialism CLAUDE-HENRI DE SAINT-SIMON, Works, 1802-19 How to Run a Cotton-Mill ROBERT OWEN, A New View of Society, 1813-16 Passions Set Free CHARLES FOURIER, Selected Texts, ¢.1800-37 Head-Bumps and Destiny JOHN TROTTER, Travels in Phrenologasto, 1829 Lotos-Eaters ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON, 1832 Plastic-Wood Paradise J. A. Er2ieR, A Paradise within the Reach of All Men, 1833 ‘The Joys of Sameness ETTENNE CABET, Voyage to Icaria, 18. The Water Cure . 8 HENRY J. FORREST, Dream of Reform, 1848 167 174 179 228 231 238 ‘THE FABER BOOK OF UTOPIAS Noble Savage To le roxens, Household Words, 1853 cious Things ‘Modern Painters, 1856 A New Nation [ABRAHAM LINCOLN, Gettysburg Address, 1863 Almost Human EDWARD LEAR, ‘The Jumblies’, 1870 Vril, Father of Bovril EDWARD BULWER LYTTON, The Coming Race, 1871 ‘Sick Criminals SAMUEL BUTLER, Erewhon, 1872 The Withering State KARL MARX, Critique of the Gotha Programme, 1875 Good Deaths Antony TROLLOPE, The Fixed Period, 1881=2 Women in Power WALTER BESANT, The Revolt of Man, 1882 Green England RICHARD JEFFERIES, After London, 1885 ‘The Frustration of Smith Ww. H. HUDSON, A Crystal Age, 1887 Bring Back National Service EDWARD BELLAMY, Looking Backward, 1888 A Cure for Wrinkles ELIZABETH BURGOYNE CORBETT, New Amazonia, 1889 ‘An Ideal Ireland EDWARD JOSEPH MARTYN, Morgante the Lesser, 1890 Socialism for Acsthetes Oscar witpe, The Soul of Man under Socialism, 1891 ‘Going Nowhere WILLIAM MORRIS, News from Nowhere, 1891 Suicide on Tap IGNATIUS DONNELLY, Caesar's Column, 1891 Utopian Menopause _ ENZASETH WOLSTENHOLME, Woman Free, 1893 39 246 249 asx 253 258 262 264 269 272 276 280 284 294 299 302 31S gar 323 | | contents “The Law of the Jungle Te ba ip aiiinen The Jungle Book, x894 s7 Garden Cities EBENEZER HOWARD, Tomorrow, 1898 345 foung Man Goes East weoaten connar, Youth 898 Eliminating the Unfit 1H. G. WELLS, Anticipations, 1901 Progressing to the Higher Life JOHN MACMILLAN BROWN, Limanora, 1903 373 Deep-Frozen Genius ‘GABRIEL TARDE, Underground Man, 1905 377 Fish Heaven RUPERT BROOKE, ‘Heaven’, 1913 380 Virgin Births ‘CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN, Herland, 1915 382 ‘A Surgical Cure for Imagination YEVGENY ZAMYATIN, We, 1920 387 Sailing to Byzantium W. B. YEATS, A Samoan Fibs MARGARET MEAD, Coming of Age in Samoa, 1929 393 Imaginary Etruscans D. H. LAWRENCE, Etruscan Places, 1932 399 Shan JAMES HILTON, Lost Horizon, 1933 ne) ‘Women in Cages KATHARINE BURDEKIN, Swastika Night, 1937 4x2. Christ Takes Over NEWMAN watts, The Man Who Did Not Sin, 1939 419 Hitler's Russian Garden ADOLF HITLER, Mein Kampf, 19243 Table Talk, 1941-44 423 On Not Licking Your Lollipop 349, 367 ion, 1925 390 3B. F, SKINNER, Walden Two, 1948 26 The Worst Thing ‘ GEORGE ORWELL, Nineteen Eighty-Four, 1949 2 Men or Machines? ° KURT vonnecur, Player Piano, 1953 440 fix] THE FABER BOOK OF UTOPIAS Huxley's Hell and Heaven Brave New World, 19323 The Doors of Perception, 194; Island, 1962 Disneyland at Christmas E. L. poctorow, The Book of Daniel, 197 Describing Venice TTALO CALVINO, Invisible Cities, 1972 Space Potatoes FREEMAN J. DYSON, J. D. Bernal Lecture, 1972 Infertile Solution NAOMI MITCHISON, Solution Three, 1975 Mixed Motherhood MARGE Piercy, Woman on the Edge of Time, 1979 Having What You Want JULIAN BARNES, A History of the World in x0% Chapters, 1989 ‘The Lottery State BARBARA GOODWIN, Justice by Lottery, 1992 ‘What Women Want BERNADETTE VALLELY, What Women Want, 1996 Utopian Coursework JiM DaToR, Desirable Societies, 1996 The Intelligent Planet ‘MICHIO KAKU, Visions, 1998 Designer Children Lee M. siLvEr, Remaking Eden, 1998 ‘Acknowledgements Index of Authors Index 447 435 460 463 472 475 483 488 500 505 508 513 518 sar 533 Introduction Utopia means nowhere or no-place. It has often been taken to mean good place, through confusion of its first syllable with the Greek ew ae in euphemism or eulogy. As a result of this mix-up, another word dystopia has been invented, to mean bad place. But, strictly speaking, Smaginary good places and imaginary bad places are all utopias, or nowheres. Both are represented in this book. To reject the useful ‘word dystopia just because it arose from a misunderstanding woul though, be pedantic and self-defeating, and in the following pages have used it freely, I have generally reserved utopia for imaginary good places ot for places which (like the Utopia of Sir Thomas More, tho made the word up) resist being classified as either good or bad. $o this is a book of nowheres, But it is not every nowhere that can call itself a utopia. Many imaginary places lie outside utopia’s boundaries. To count as a utopia, an imaginary place must be an expression of desire, To count as a dystopia, it must be an expression of fear. As well as being a book of nowheres, then, this is a collec tion of humanity’s desires and fears as recorded over the past two thousand years and more. Because they grow from desire and fear, ‘utopias cry out for our sympathy and attention, however impractical or unlikely they may appear. Anyone who is capable of love must at aes sie have wanted the world to be a better place, for we all ve free of suffering, injustice and heartbreak, Those who construct utopias build on that universal human longing. What they build may, however, carry within it its own potential for crushing or limiting human life. : This is the dilemma that confronts all utopian projects. They aim at 2 new world, but must destroy the old. Their imaginative ccitement comes from the recognition that everything inside out beads, and much outside, are human constructs and can be changed. jut how and what to change is endlessly controversial. For this [xi] que FABER BOOK OF UTOPIAS i is the most divisive of literary form reson the i ee me, “utopian” means “hose shame generates di Peles ‘Gehers insist that without the capacity to formula,” regress would be inconceivable. The divisiveness rere, too, by the development of dystopias, Foyt pstopia is merely a utopia from another point of view. Orwell Big aoeeee or the diectors of Huxley’ Brave New World (pp. 432, 445) Brother sas in thir own eyes. With many utopias (More's, Swift a OL H, G. Wells's) you cannot be sure whether their authors ros them as utopias or dystopias. They divide against themselves, Ultimately it is the divisiveness of utopias that ensures their vitality, They reveal intractable divisions within their cultures ~ and within us. In this introduction I shall try to identify some of these divisions and the topics that engender them. “The first is the human race and its composition. The aim of all utopias, o a greater or lesser extent, isto eliminate real people. Even ips not a conscious aim, it is an inevitable result of their good intentions. In a utopia real people cannot exist, for the very obvious treason that real people are what constitute the world that we know, dnd itis that world that every utopia is designed to replace. Though this fact is obvious, itis one that many writers of utopias are reluctant to acknowledge. For if real people cannot live in utopias, then the utopian effort to design an ideal commonwealth in which human beings can lead happier lives is evidently imperilled. However (and this is the point over which opinion divides) to to eliminate real people may not be as bad as it sounds ~ may not, indeed, be bad at all. When we consider the atrocities that real people have committed within our own century alone, it must occur to us that chere are some human types ~ tyrants, torturers, terrorists ~ that could, with advantage, disappear. The real people eliminated from utopias generally include such noxious specimens. Readers of this book will notice that visitors to utopias are often informed that criminals of every description have been made obsolete. That has odin atractins, however keen we may be on preserving the Sh and varied apse of human lif ts tue that many wii sie Silode lawyers (the Diaget, Gerrard Winstanley, recommends 'y shoul executed ~ see p. 68), But even this ht arouse less widespread indignation than those within th " ' indignation than th gal professio would like to think, =—_ as } i sre: INTRODUCTION ie who are admitted to live in utopias differ from real ‘The people orandard ways. They are often represented as having sori elishnes, an achievement that disposes of many of Oe weal world’s uglier features. Tommaso ‘Campanella’s sun-worshippers {p. 61), almost wholly purged of self-love, are typical in tis respect (p erlie Sebastien Mercier’s The Year 2440, citizens cheerfully Pay Lie more tax than they need, out of sheer public spirit (p. 158). In tae riguee America of Edward Bellamy's imagination, falschood isso despised that even criminals refuse to lie to evade Punishment (p. 284). It is clear that if these are human beings, then the people (Pave been living among all our lives belong to some other species. “Writers of utopias deal with this problem in different ways. Some defiantly advertise the fact that their utopians are not real people. Jonathan Swift, for example, substitutes talking horses for people; Ludwig Holberg, talking trees (see pp. 121 and 125). More com monly, the inventors of utopias suggest that, given certain radical ‘adjustments, human beings could be converted into utopians without ceasing to be human. They often argue that the abolition of money or private property would improve the human character out of all recognition. But how people are to be improved enough to give up their money and private property in the first place, so that utopia can begin, remains a difficulty. H. G. ‘Wells’s novel In the Days of the Comet proposes an astronomical solution, A comet approaches the earth and by some mysterious magnetic means has the effect ‘of making all earth-dwellers good and rational. Wells's book was considered improper and banned from circulating libraries, because rational behaviour, in his view, included free love. In Aldous Huxley's utopia Island (p. 447) people with anti-social tendencies simply take two pink pills after meals, and that cures them. The composition of the pills is not disclosed. Newman Watts's The Man Who Did Not Sin (p. 419) solves the problem by having Christ rerurn to earth, But that is not an eventuality mortal planners can count on, and if it did happen it might involve unwelcome surprises for virtuous utopians. _tmewete social experiment in human history = Soviet Commu nism ~ was ine understood by it founders to be sistem that could not accommodate real people and must therefore eliminate rem. The ‘higher’ phase of Communism that will eventually dawn on a grateful world presupposes, Lenin frankly admits, a species of human being quite different from th ‘ current model. “The present rie FABER BOOK OF UTOPIAS not be able to enter the Socialist ted or transformed. The attentie dig aid their transformation, Lenin, © a al change. People must pete unselfish, good-hearted workaholics, labouring with no h ordinary run of people’ w They will have been erad armed workers’ militia Bue there must also be an inner, ope of sonal gain (p. 265)- Though Lenin ~ and Marx ~ ridiculed upg, itis clear that this vision fits precisely (and, as events have py? disastrously) into a utopian mould. ‘Over, ‘Lenin's recipe for turning real people into utopians include and severe punishments’, and punishment is a subject that inevigan® concerns creators of utopias, since the eradication of wrong-doine? cone of their prime targets. Tit-for-tat deterrents ~ burning off" hands of arsonists, castrating rapists, destroying an adulterese', ‘an ~ have all gained utopian approval in the past and still have the adherents (pp. 120, 174, 501). At the other end of the scale, the ideal England of William Morris's News from Nowhere (p. 315) hag no legal system or penal code, Where there is no punishment 4 evade and no law to triumph over, Morris believes, criminals wil inevitably feel remorse for what they have done. By that time, of course, their victims may have been irreparably harmed ~ a consider ation Morris chooses not to investigate. A recurrent utopian worry is that criminals, whatever harm they do, and whether or not they feel remorse, are not responsible for their crimes, so should not be treated as criminals. This view is by no means modern. At the start of the nineteenth century the utoy cotton-mill owner Robert Owen was already insisting that, since character is formed by education and upbringing, it is irrational to suppose that any human being can deserve praise or blame, reward or punishment (p. 193). Oddly enough the irreproachably upright Ses iin pre agreement here with the Marquis de Sade, whose rere rneaiently explain, as they whip or sodomize their fists that they ate in no sense to blame for their perversions, a ee their natural inclinations (p. 168) used, howenes aise

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