Bender - Biological Time, Historical Time

Biological Time, Historical Time
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Études de langue et littérature françaises
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Alexander Roose
VOLUME 431
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Biological Time,
Historical Time
Transfers and Transformations in
19th Century Literature
Edited by
Niklas Bender
Gisèle Séginger
LEIDEN | BOSTON
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Contents
The Authors ix
Introduction 1
Niklas Bender and Gisèle Séginger
Part 1
Rethinking the Order of Time
From Biblical Time to Darwinian Time: Discourses on the Living World in the
18th and 19th Centuries 13
Pascal Duris
Memory Strata, Geology and Change of Historical Paradigm in France

around 1830 29
Paule Petitier
Devilish Words: Pierre Boitard, “maître Georges” and the Advance

of Nature 45
Claude Blanckaert
From Biological Time to Historical Time: the Category of “Development”

(Entwicklung) in the Historical Thought of Herder, Kant, Hegel,
and Marx 61
Christophe Bouton
“O man! wilt thou never conceive that thou art but an ephemeron?”:
the Reception of Geological Deep Time in the Late 18th Century 77
David Schulz
Part 2
Atavism and Heredity
The Law of Progress, Atavism, and Prehistory in the Belle Époque 95

Arnaud Hurel
vi Contents
Nietzsche, or Culture Put to the Test at the Timescale of Heredity 111

Emmanuel Salanskis
Zola, Hereditability of Character and Hereditability of Deviation: after a

Remark by Bergson in L’Évolution Créatrice 123
Arnaud François
Life, Sex and Temporality in Zola’s La Faute de l’Abbé Mouret 140

Rudolf Behrens
Part 3
Nature and Culture
Time of History and Time of Nature in the Historical Novels of

Victor Hugo 157
Niklas Bender
Historical Time, Cultural Time, and Biological Time in Baudelaire 180

Thomas Klinkert
Evolution and Time in the Chants de Maldoror 196

Frank Jäger
Memory of the Body in Proust: Historical Time and Biological Time 207

Edward Bizub
Part 4
Poetics of Time
The Poetics of Restored Time: Balzac, His Age and the Figure of Cuvier 223
Hugues Marchal
The Evolution of Social Species in Balzac’s Comédie humaine 241

Sandra Collet
Time as Imagined in the Evolutionary Epic 258

Nicolas Wanlin
Contents vii
Evolutionism and Successivity in Antediluviana, Poème géologique by

Ernest Cotty (1876) 279
Yohann Ringuedé
End of the World, End of Time: the Theory of Evolution and Its Fate in the
Novel of Anticipation 294
Claire Barel-Moisan
A Biologist Literary History: August Wilhelm Schlegel and the Franco-German

Natural Sciences 312
Stefan Knödler
Part 5
Biology and Ideology
Evolutionary Time and Revolutionary Time (Michelet, Flaubert, Zola) 327

Juliette Azoulai
Michelet and La Mer: Biology and the Philosophy of History 343

Gisèle Séginger
“Il faut manger et être mangé pour que le monde vive”: the Zolian Belly
amidst Evolution, Revolution, and Convolutions 359
Carine Goutaland
Gobineau’s Heroes Are Ageless 374

Pierre-Louis Rey
Darwinus anarchistus explodens: Science and the Legend of the Struggle for
Life (Louise Michel) 389
Claude Rétat
Index 407
The Authors
Note: abbreviations are explained in the first occurrence.
Many contributors were part of the research programme “Biolographes”, co-

financed by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinshaft (DFG) and the ANR, directed
by Thomas Klinkert and Gisèle Séginger, from 2014 to 2018. Members: Juliette
Azoulai, Claire Barel-Moisan, Rudolf Behrens, Niklas Bender, Frank Jäger,
Hugues Marchal, Yohann Ringuédé, Nicolas Wanlin. Associated researchers:
Claude Blanckart, Pascal Duris, Claude Rétat.
Juliette Azoulai
Maître de conférences in French Litterature at the University of Paris-Est
Marne la Vallée, LISAA (LIttérature, SAvoirs et Arts) EA4120.
Claire Barel-Moisan
is Researcher at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS)
at the École Normale Supérieure (Lyon) and teaches at Middlebury College
(Vermont). Her research focuses on sciences in the French novel and in the
press (19th and 20th century). She is PI of the research programm Anticipation,
financed by the ANR (Agence nationale de la recherche), which analyses an-
ticipation novels (http://anranticip.hypotheses.org/)
Rudolf Behrens
is emeritus Professor for Romance Literatures at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum
(French and Italian). His main fields of research are literary anthropology, 16th
and 17th century theatre, the history of rhetoric, and the modern novel.
Niklas Bender
is substitute Professor for Romance Literatures at Trier University (French and
Italian). His works focus on literature and scientific knowledge, comic, laugh-
ter and anthropology.
Edward Bizub
has taught Comparative Literature in Geneva and Lausanne. He is the author
of two books on Proust (La Baconnière, 1991; Droz, 2006) and of a book on
Beckett and Descartes (Classiques Garnier, 2012).
x The Authors
Claude Blanckaert
Director of research (first class) at the CNRS (Centre Alexandre Koyré), is a
historian of the human and natural sciences, as well as their relation, from the
18th century until today.
Christophe Bouton
former Fellow of the Institut Universitaire de France (2008–2013), is full
Professor of Philosophy at the University Bordeaux Montaigne (Philosophy
Department).
Sandra Collet
teaches at the University of Paris-Est Marne la Vallée and is member of the
LISAA. Her research is focussed on Balzac and more generally on the relation-
ship between literature and scientific knowledge in the 19th century.
Pascal Duris
is full Professor of Epistomology and the History of Sciences at the University
Bordeaux; he has published on Linnaeus, the history of life sciences and the
impact of science on cultural debate.
Arnaud François
is full Professor of Philosophy at the University of Poitiers. He has published on
Bergson, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and the history of health.
Carine Goutaland
is teaching at the Institut national des sciences appliquées (INSA) of Lyon
and member of the UMR (= Unité mixte de recherche, “Mixed research unit”)
Institut d’Histoire des Représentations et des Idées dans les Modernités
(IHRIM) 5317. She has recently published her doctoral thesis on the role of ali-
mentation in French naturalist fiction (De régals en degoûts—Le naturalisme
à table, 2017).
Arnaud Hurel
is Researcher in the department Homme et Environnement (UMR 7194) of the
Muséum national d’histoire naturelle (Paris) and associated Researcher of the
Centre Koyré in history of science (UMR 8560).
Frank Jäger
is a postdoctoral research fellow affiliated to the department of Romance
Languages at the University of Freiburg (Germany) and the University of
Zurich (Switzerland).
The Authors xi
Thomas Klinkert
is full Professor of French Literature at the University of Zurich. His areas of
research include literature and science studies, literary theory, literature of
modernity.
Stefan Knödler
is Lecturer of German Literature at the University of Tübingen and co-editor of
the lectures of August Wilhelm Schlegel.
Hugues Marchal
is Professor of modern French and General Literature at the University of Basel
and honorary member of the Institut universitaire de France. He directs the
project Reconstruire Delille, financed by the Fonds national Suisse de la re-
cherche scientifique (FNS).
Paule Petitier
is full Professor of French literature at the University Dénis Diderot-Paris 7. She
is a specialist of the representation of history in the 19th century, especially
concerning Jules Michelet. She has co-founded the journal Ecrire l’histoire in
2008 and she is at the head of the Center Jacques Seebacher (University Paris
Diderot).
Claude Rétat
is Director of research at the CNRS (UMR 8599-CELLF, CNRS/Paris-Sorbonne).
Specialist of nineteenth-century literature, she just published several critical
editions of Louise Michel (Trois romans, La Commune, La Chasse aux loups,
the Mémoires inédits de 1890, Prise de possession …) and is actually preparing
further editions.
Pierre-Louis Rey
is emeritus Professor of French literature at the University Sorbonne nouvelle
(Paris 3).
Yohann Ringuedé
is a doctor of French literature (University of Marne-la-Vallée [Lisaa-EA4120],
and University of Basel).
Emmanuel Salanskis
is Maître de conférences at the University of Strasbourg and member of the
International Nietzsche Research Group (GIRN). He is also member of the
Centre Prospéro of the Université Saint-Louis-Bruxelles.
xii The Authors
David Schulz
studied literature, history and rhetoric in Tübingen and Knoxville, Tennessee.
His PhD-thesis explores the inferences between human history and natural
history.
Gisèle Séginger
full professor at the University of Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée, director of the
LISAA and of a research program at the Fondation Maison des Sciences de
l’Homme in Paris, is a specialist on Flaubert, Nerval, Musset and on the re-
lations between literature and scientific knowledge. She is a member of the
Institut Universitaire de France.
Nicolas Wanlin
is a Professor of French literature at the Ecole polytechnique of Paris. He is a
member of the FNS-project Reconstruire Delille.
Translators
Colin Keaveney
has extensive experience in research, writing and translation in the Humanities,
as well as in the areas of education and journalism. He holds a PhD from the
University of California and has taught for more than twenty years at universi-
ties in the United States, Great Britain and France, notably at the University of
Paris, the University of Bristol and the University of Southern California (USC).
Anna Pevoski
is a teaching and research assistant at the University of Zurich. After having
completed her studies in Romance Literature and Linguistics and Political
Science at the University of Freiburg (Germany), she is currently preparing a
PhD project in Comparative Literature focused on the Italian and French nar-
rative of the early 20th century.
Introduction
Niklas Bender and Gisèle Séginger
Numerous literary and philosophical studies on time and the narrative exist:
one may call to mind the great works of Paul Ricœur on the configuration of
time in the fictional and in the historical narrative, the thematic and psycho-
logical studies of Georges Poulet or also of Jean-Pierre Richard, inspired by the
theories of Gaston Bachelard and by psychoanalysis. One may also think of
the reflections of the historian François Hartog, theorizing the notion of the
regime of historicity, which permits an understanding, at once, of the man-
ner in which a society treats its past, and of its rendering in literature. Literary
studies readily broach the topics of subjective or historical time in the con-
science of characters and of the narrator, or of historiographical knowledge in
a narratological or broader poetic perspective, in order to explain the arrange-
ment of the narrative and its meanings. By contrast, they do not account for
the genesis of temporal regimes. Yet, the modern conception and awareness
of time themselves take shape in the course of a long 19th century, by virtue
of interdisciplinary exchanges, in which literature has its part. They are char-
acterized by an intense circulation of thought models between natural history
and historiography. Whereas their importance was recently highlighted by the
biologist Michel Morange, in his book La Vie, l’évolution et l’histoire (2011), the
genesis of the modern concept of time, particularly in the literary domain, has
so far not been approached from this angle. For this reason, the present vol-
ume is focused on the development of a new order of time, at the intersection
of the natural and life sciences, of history, and of literature. It applies pluri-
disciplinary expertise, in order to fully grasp its manifold implications, and in
order to understand a process, which is itself as complex as it is important for
the comprehension of the literature, and indeed more generally, the culture of
the past two centuries.
In spite of doubts expressed, since the 17th century, by a number of inde-
pendent-minded thinkers, Christian doctrine had long imposed a religious
conception of natural time. In the 18th century, Linné still holds the conviction
that the world he is studying is identical to that created by God: the fixity of spe-
cies and the order of nature are the foundations of his enterprise of inventory
and classification. Although a time of the earthly world, relatively independent
of divine will, could be evoked—the wheel of Fortune is perhaps its most well-
known illustration—, this time could, in the last instance, be reduced to that of
Genesis and of Providence. However, in the 18th century new concepts of time
2 Bender and Séginger
begin to emerge, be it in literature, with Restif de la Bretonne,1 or in natural

history, with Buffon. Though one would have to await the 19th century for fixity
to be effectively attacked, the ancient order of nature already appears shaken.
Reflections on the age of the earth, then, at the end of the century, the discov-
ery of extinct species—all of this raises questions, even doubts; and geology
would come to play an important role in the development of new notions of
time, and in the very history of living creatures.
In the second half of the 18th century, natural history also benefits from
a broader epistemological context: thanks to the scientific spirit initially kin-
dled by developments in physics, positivity requirements progressively gain
other fields of knowledge, and in particular the study of nature. While in the
Classical period the mechanist model had been dominant, towards the end of
the 18th century, natural history, in search of another type of rationality, turns
to history. Historiography provides it with the model of a scientific approach
to emulate: Buffon explains, in Les Époques de la nature, that, in the manner of
historians, he intends to base his study on “les faits consignés dans les archives
de la nature” / “the facts consigned to the archives of nature” (1778: 70). He
goes even further in the juxtaposition of the two disciplines, in remarking that
“debris de végétaux” / “plant remains” are “les plus anciens monuments de la
nature vivante” / “the most ancient monuments of living nature” (1778: 119),
and that fossils bear witness to bygone periods. He historicizes nature, whose
order is not immutable, contrary to the theory of creationism still prevalent in
his era. Fossils and geological stratification have compelled him to acknowl-
edge changes, though, as a precaution, he attempts to show his conception of
natural time to be compatible with biblical Genesis—provided that the seven
days of creation are allegorically reinterpreted as epochs of nature. But the
Sorbonne, which orders Buffon to retract, is not duped by this. Indeed, Buffon
clearly shows that the formation of the earth occurred progressively,2 in a
1 See his utopian, science-based novel La Découverte australe par un Homme-volant, 1781 and
Loty, 2012.
2 One can read for example: “La production des argiles paraît avoir précédé celle des coquil-
lages; car la première opération de l’eau a été de transformer les scories et les poudres de
verre en argiles; aussi les lits d’argile se sont formés quelque temps avant les bancs de pierres
calcaires; et l’on voit que ces dépôts de matières argileuses ont précédé ceux des matières
calcaires, car presque partout les rochers calcaires sont posés sur des glaises qui leur serve
de base. Je n’avance rien ici qui ne soit démontré par l’expérience ou confirmé par les obser-
vations […].” / “The production of clays seems to have preceded that of shells; for the first
action of water was to transform scoria and powdered glass into clays; thus clay beds formed
some time before the banks of limestone; and one can see that these deposits of clay matter
preceded those of calcareous matter, since almost everywhere the limestone rests on clay
Introduction 3
“longue suite de siècles” / “long succession of centuries”, and that the globe
is continuing to transform, as the same causes continue to take effect. He is
also brought to reject the theory of cataclysms and the religious marvel sur-
rounding it.3 For Lamarck, his disciple, life is history, and to explain it is to
relate it in a temporal dimension. By virtue of the ideas of organization, com-
plexification, and transformation, he is able to grasp the temporal dimension
of living beings, allowing him to conceive diversity and unity simultaneously,
and to envision the founding of a new science: that of biology, the idea for
which he formulates in 1800.4 Though Lamarck retains the idea of a “sublime
auteur de la nature” / “sublime author of nature” (Lamarck, 1809: 56), the lat-
ter acts solely in providing nature, once and for all, with an internal force: the
capacity for organization. Lamarck also manages to avoid the word “God” in his
Philosophie zoologique (1809), in favour of a Nature acting alone and develop-
ing autonomously:5 it thus becomes the acting subject of a veritable histoire
naturelle.6
While, in the years between 1800 and 1830, this historization of nature be-
comes further established—to the effect that Cuvier himself cannot disregard
it, obliging him to multiply the acts of creation by four and to explain the
extinction of species with the aid of the theory of cataclysms—, the moral
which serves as its base. I am not claiming anything, here, which has not been demonstrated
by experience or confirmed by observations […].” (Buffon, 1778: 200)
3 Despite the precautions he takes in attempting to demonstrate the consistency of his theory
with the account of Genesis (the metaphorical days of which must be interpreted as ages)
and with the idea of the on-going action of God, the Church understands the logical conse-
quences of his ideas quite well, and the Sorbonne forces him to retract.
4 In 1802, in Hydrogéologie, Lamarck uses the word “biologie”, referring back to an introductory
lecture of his course on zoology that he held at the Museum of Natural History in 1800. He re-
uses it, then, in a classification of the sciences, the summit of which must consist in the study
of living creatures: “Terrestrial Physics” shall comprise “Meteorology” and “Hydrogeology”, “la
troisième enfin, celle des corps vivants, la Biologie” / “the third, finally, that of living bodies,
Biology” (Lamarck, 1802: 7–8).
5 In Recherches sur l’organisation des corps vivants, God is mentioned but once and his role is
limited to the first impulse: “Un savant célèbre (Lavoisier, Chimie, I: 202) a dit avec raison que
Dieu, en apportant la lumière, avoit répandu sur la terre le principe de l’organisation du sen-
timent et de la pensée” / “A famous scholar (Lavoisier, Chimie, I: 202) rightly stated that God,
in bringing light, spread the principle of the organization of feeling and of thought through-
out the Earth” (Lamarck, 1802b: 102). In Philosophie zoologique, it is Nature which “produit
successivement les différents corps doués de la vie en procédant du plus simple vers le plus
composé” / “successively produces the various bodies that are endowed with life, proceeding
from the most simple to the most compound” (Lamarck, 1809: II).
6 The term “histoire naturelle” exists since the 16th century, but in the beginning, he was close
to the ancient meaning of “historia”.
sciences concomitantly strive to naturalize humanity, to identify the laws of its

development and, like the natural sciences, to obey a standard of rationality.
The turn of the two centuries and the first decades of the 19th century thus
witness the putting in place of strategies of reciprocal legitimation. In 1826, in
his preface to the Esquisses de philosophie morale by Dugald Stewart, Théodore
Jouffroy—who is not a positivist, but a disciple of the spiritualist philosopher
Victor Cousin—explains that by “procédant comme les sciences naturelles la
philosophie peut s’élever à des résultats tout aussi positifs et tout aussi cer-
tains” / “proceeding like the natural sciences, philosophy can attain just as
positive and just as certain results” (1826: I).
Natural beings, as well as human beings, are henceforth projected into an
active temporality. Consequently, the idea of transformation meets that of
progress, a shared logic seems to structure the history of nature and that of
humanity. Philosophy of history and the natural sciences had been readily
exchanging metaphors and models of thought since the end of the 18th cen-
tury, but the 19th century would go much further. Herder had already imag-
ined a continuity between the two domains in his Ideen für eine Philosophie
der Geschichte der Menschheit (1784–1791), which Quinet translates in 1827.7
Moreover, the French historian is himself intrigued by the idea of a “unité de
plan et de composition” / “unity of plan and of composition”, formulated by
his friend Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire:8 it provokes a resounding controversy with
Cuvier (Tort, 1983), which, in 1830, holds the full attention of Goethe, philoso-
pher of plant metamorphoses (Goethe, 2006: 508–538). Stating in La Création
that “chaque peuple construit dans son histoire, une forme qui lui est propre” /
“each people, in its history, constructs a form of its own”, just as “chaque espèce
de bryozoaire construit une certaine figure qui lui est particulière” / “each spe-
cies of bryozoans constructs a certain figure that is particular to it” (1870, II:
7 Under the title Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit. In his Introduction,
Quinet writes: “Depuis la plante qui végète, depuis l’oiseau qui fait son nid, jusqu’au phé-
nomène le plus élevé du corps social, il vit tout procéder à l’épanouissement de la fleur de
l’humanité, les mondes se débrouiller du chaos, et l’être organique préparer, par des modi-
fications successives, la substance dont les siècles s’emparent pour l’élaborer à leur tour.” /
“From the vegetating plant, from the bird making its nest, through to the most elevated
phenomenon of the social body, he sees everything proceed towards the blossoming of the
flower of humanity, the worlds disentangling themselves from chaos, and the organic being,
by successive modifications, prepare the substance, which following centuries seize upon, in
order to develop it further in their turn.” (Herder, 1827: 21)
8 This idea is the “at the core of our age”, says Quinet in his accolade of Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire,
in 1844: “Désir, pressentiment, nécessité d’une vaste unité, c’est là ce qui travaille le monde” /
“Desire, presentiment, need of a vast unity, that is what is shaping the world” (1857: 340).
Introduction 5
309), Quinet proposes to extend to human history the intuitions expressed

by Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire on the unity of plan and of composition in nature.
He would set the objective, for the thought of his era, of “découvrir les points
de relation entre le domaine des sciences naturelles et celui des sciences his-
toriques” / “discover[ing] the points of contact between the domain of the
natural sciences and that of the historical sciences”, judging the boundaries
between these two worlds to be, as of yet, unexplored.9
These boundaries remain little explored even today, though reciprocal loans
between the two domains were numerous and fruitful in the 19th century. Yet,
life is history, as we are reminded by the biologist Michel Morange (2011), who
laments the evolution of biology in our times, as it is forgetful of this temporal
dimension, which indeed characterized it in the 19th century, and which had
allowed it to provide other disciplines with globalizing models of thought. Our
choice is, therefore, also justified from the standpoint of the history of science:
accordingly, it seemed gainful to close a gap, by centering our volume on the
hybridization of thought models in the 19th century and the mediating role of
literature in the genesis of new notions of time.
We are attentive to strategies of reciprocal legitimation of historiography
and natural history, to the transfer of thought models, and to the cognitive
dimension of literature, for which the question of time is essential: not only
do writers give varied representations and interpretations of natural and his-
torical time, but temporality also plays a role in the structuring of works, the
rhythm of narratives, the scansion of poetic works. Temporality and poetics are
indissolubly linked. This fact, well-known since Aristotle, becomes especially
important in an era in which the religious order of time, although it may still
structure certain works—the novels of Barbey d’Aurevilly come to mind—,
has come under attack from other conceptual models. The epistemological
transformations of the 19th century have liberated the interpretation of the
world and have made paradigm shifts and the competition of thought models
possible. Yet more fundamentally, the entire configuration of thought is trans-
formed. History in the singular becomes an a priori of knowledge, as Reinhart
Koselleck has emphasized (1967: 196–219), while life imposes itself as a new
object of research, as Michel Foucault (1968) and François Jacob (1970) remark.
The representation of the world as a whole is affected by these changes, whilst
new disciplines—biology and biochemistry, for instance—acquire growing
9 Quinet, 1870, I: II. Or also: “La nature s’expliquait par l’histoire, l’histoire par la nature: toutes
deux s’harmonisaient dans un même tissu.” / “Nature explained itself through history, history
through nature: both harmonized in one fabric.” (Quinet, 1870, I: II–III)
prestige and fascinate writers. Science has conquered new domains for liter-
ature, and the world appears to expand, while writers’ awareness of time is
sharpened by the existence of differing representations, by the development of
philosophies of history, and above all by debates on the logic of living things.
How else to explain the interest in the perception of time, in the infinity of
natural time or in social time, but also in the time that merely passes, individ-
ual time, the time of habit, increasingly asserted since Stendhal and Flaubert?
The plurality of temporal strata contributes to the pluridimensionality of the
modern novel observed by Mikhaïl Bakhtine (1970), among others. Lastly, one
may point to the fact that these new thought models are sufficiently supple
to facilitate interdisciplinary transfers, to appeal to the literary imagination,
which takes hold of them, and to stimulate the invention of innovative forms,
in order to convey them. This is, moreover, one of the reasons for which the
present volume required the expertise of various domains, of literary scholars,
philosophers and science historians.
From Lamarck to Haeckel, via Darwin and Spencer, scientists and philoso-
phers discuss theories of transformation, of evolution and of natural selection,
of heredity and of degeneration. They share a conception of the long duration
and of the impassibility of life: it regards a time of Nature, indifferent to the di-
mensions and aspirations of human life, although some, such as Félix Pouchet,
still perceive the effect of a divine shaping power within it (1865: 42, 186). From
Wilhelm Humboldt to Jacob Burckhardt, via Quinet and Michelet, from Hegel
to Victor Cousin, the historical disciplines and philosophy of history inquire
into the structuring of the individual and collective dimensions, the subjects
of history—the men or the forces at work—, into its sense and its defining
parameters. Marked by the experience of the changes since 1789, notions of
history attempt to describe the developments and upheavals of social and cul-
tural life, to discern their inherent laws; the concepts of progress, of revolution,
of the spirit of the times (or of local colour), but also of constancy, of stasis
circulate between history and the natural sciences. Loans and transfers are
frequent: thus, the concept of revolution can mark the study of biological life
(Cuvier), that of evolution the study of history (Spencer, Haeckel). But the case
of Lamarck, who adopts Montesquieu’s idea of circumstances influencing the
genesis of institutions, in order to apply it to the domain of life and the notion
of milieu, also indicates that philosophy and literature can contribute to the
formulation of new scientific hypotheses.
Hence, we aimed to examine the cognitive role of literature and its poten-
tial impact on science, in an age in which the natural and life sciences are still
frequently narrative, and quite far from the abstraction which Bachelard, in
Introduction 7
the 20th century, would make the requirement of modern science, freed of all
imagery (1938). What role does literature play in the 19th century, in the nego-
tiation of exchanges between history and biology, in the dialogue between dis-
ciplines, in the formation of significant and durable cultural representations,
issuing from the hybridization of theories of time of diverse origin? How and
at what level does it integrate new notions of time? Does it not, in turn, con-
tribute to the transformation of models loaned from biology and, in certain
cases, to their ideological endowment? These questions, rather than a concern
for exhaustivity, presided over the selection of the articles we are presenting.
The objective of this volume is, first and foremost, to grasp a number of
important epistemological transformations and the emergence of models, of
categories, and of new paradigms, that, in the 19th century, allows a rethinking
of the order of time to take place. The hybridization of knowledge between the
sciences of nature and history favours its circulation. Literature appropriates
it all the more easily, as certain areas of it, relating to heredity and to atavism,
may possess a fictional productivity and a power of rationalization of consid-
erable importance for fiction. Here, we reach the point in which notions of
time also produce narrative arrangements, formes pensantes (thought forms):
it is in this sense that we can speak of poetics of time. While this hybridiza-
tion and aesthetic productivity of new notions of time must be highlighted, we
should also call to mind that the development of a new disciplinary awareness
in the 19th century, and the progressive foundation of biology met with a con-
siderable echo, at once in history and in literature, because the new approach
to living things found itself at the centre of debates, the ideological implica-
tions of which are undeniable.
For reasons of scientific consistency, we have chosen to focus our volume
essentially on one corpus. Nonetheless, it seemed essential, not only to ap-
proach our subject from a pluridisciplinary perspective, but also to take note of
transnational exchanges and to capture the specificity of other national con-
texts. Thus, several articles focus either on German cases providing points of
comparison, but also on the French reception of German and English thought
(Darwin, Haeckel), or inversely, on the notable case, for the end of the century,
of the late impact of Lamarckism on the philosophy of Nietzsche, whose own
influence on French thought and literature is well-known through numerous
studies. In this manner, the circulation of knowledge is observed and anal-
ysed between disciplines, between science and literature, and also between
different cultures and languages. In other instances, we, lastly, refer back to
studies already realized or presently in progress within our research team, on
Spencer and Haeckel for example. Indeed, this volume is the fruit of a more
vast collective research project, of which we aim already to present the first
results, relating to the exploration of temporality in the 19th century, where
previous studies had not yet adequately shown its development at the cross-
roads of biology and history.
We would like to thank several institutions for their generous support: on
the French side, the Université Paris Est Marne-la-Vallée, the Fondation Maison
des Sciences de l’Homme de Paris (FMSH), and the Institut Universitaire de
France, accorded their financial and logistical aid to the program “Temps bi-
ologique, temps historique”, to the organisation of one congress in October
2014 as well as to the translation of the present volume. Bénédicte Percheron
realized the index.
On the German side, the Forum Scientiarum (University of Tubingen)
helped to organize the cooperation—our gratitude to Niels Weidtmann and
his team—and the Fritz Thyssen Stiftung fur Geisteswissenschaften very gen-
erously financed one congress in April 2014, as well as the other part of the
translation. Julia Blaeser’s work guaranteed bibliographic homogeneity, Birgit
Imade helped in the process of edition. Last but not least, we would like to
thank our translators Colin Keaveney and Anna Pevoski for their conscientious
work. Finally, we would like to thank Christa Stevens and Dinah Rapliza for
their professional assistance all along the publishing process.
Translated by Anna Pevoski
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Part 1
Rethinking the Order of Time
⸪
From Biblical Time to Darwinian Time:
Discourses on the Living World in the 18th and
19th Centuries
Pascal Duris
Abstract
Until the mid-18th century, naturalists were convinced that the age of Earth is about
6,000 years, and that animal species are fixed for eternity (Linné). From the end of
the 18th century on, they become gradually conscious of the fact that this chronology,
based on a literal reading of the Bible, had to be extended (Buffon) and that living be-
ings may become extinct (Cuvier) or, on the other hand, that they transform slowly in
the course of time (Lamarck, Darwin). By 1800, it is due to the fact that scientists reflect
on the temporal dimensions of life that a progressive passage from a creationist to an
evolutionist paradigm can take place.
Until the middle of the 18th century, the geological history of the Earth and the
account of how life appeared on its surface were deduced by scholars through
close reading of the Bible and its exegetes. The Bible was their primary source,
and astronomers, geologists, botanists, as well as zoologists all looked to it for
answers to current issues in their disciplines. So, what did the Bible, or rather
the account in Genesis, have to say? That God created Heaven and Earth out of
nothing, and in six days, after having divided the night from the day (1st day),
and the land from the sea (3rd day), stocked it and embellished it with living
creatures of all sorts: first of all with plants and fruit-bearing trees, “according
to their kinds”, on the 3rd day; then the sun, the moon, and the stars, on the
4th day; then the creatures of the sea and birds, once again “according to their
kinds”, on the 5th day. And that on the 6th day, God created all land creatures
(livestock, animals that crawl, wild animals etc.), once again each “according
to their kinds”, and finally mankind, in his likeness, so that he might rule over
all of his creatures. Be fruitful and multiply, God commanded each species
(I, 1–31). In the view of the natural and physical sciences up until the middle of
the 18th century, the Genesis account was a factual one, to be taken literally; its
facts could thus be dated precisely.
That indeed is just what the Irish Archbishop, James Ussher (1581–1656),
set out to do in his weighty The annals of the world deduced from the origin
14 Duris
of time (Annales veteris testamenti, a prima mundi origine deducti) (1650), in

which he asserted, based on a learned analysis of the Bible, that the heavens
and the earth were created by God on Sunday, 23 October 4004 BC; at 9am,
to be precise, according to Sir John Lightfoot, vice-chancellor of Cambridge
University. In other words, for seventeenth-century scholars, the Earth was
obviously 6,000 years old. Ussher would go even further, calculating for in-
stance that Adam and Eve were expelled from Eden on Monday, 10 November
4004 BC, and that Noah reached Mount Ararat on Wednesday, 5 May 1491 B.C.
The biblical account of Creation, and its attendant chronology, underpinned
the natural sciences until the middle of the century of the Enlightenment. The
Swedish naturalist, Carl Von Linné (1707–1778) was emblematic in this respect.
For him, there could be no doubt that God had created the world as we know it
about 6,000 years ago, that he had created plant and animal species with mor-
phological features that allowed them to be distinguished one from another so
that we could easily categorize them, and that he asked Adam, in Eden, to give
each of them a name—even those whose existence, such as the unicorn, was
doubtful—, which they had kept right down until the present day. Linnaeus is
the very epitome of the creationist and fixist natural scientist; taking the per-
fection of creation as a given, he considered that none of the living creatures
created by God 6,000 years before had either changed in the interim or, perish
the thought, disappeared. There was the same number of species on Earth as
were created in the beginning, and they had remained unchanged: they were
both immutable and eternal. It was this profound conviction that the world in
which he lived was identical to that created by God at the beginning of time
that led Linnaeus, who saw himself as a new Adam, to list, categorize and
name all known plant and animal species in his Systema Naturae, which first
appeared in 1735. Deus creavit, Linnaeus disposuit, was one of his mottos. The
fixedness of species was the theoretical foundation of Linnaeus’s work and the
guarantor of the order of nature (Duris, 2006).
The immutability of a perfect world created by God 6,000 years before
formed the operative conceptual framework for the overwhelming majority of
naturalists up until the end of the 18th century. However, from the end of the
17th century on, we come across a few free thinkers who, rejecting Christian
teachings, proposed an alternative version of life on Earth, radically different
to the biblical account. In their view, living things, including humans, were the
products of the material world and not of divine Creation. A case in point was
Benoît de Maillet (1656–1738), French consul in Egypt in the years around 1700,
and author in 1748 of Telliamed ou Entretiens d’un philosophe indien avec un mis-
sionnaire françois Sur la Diminution de la Mer, la Formation de la Terre, l’Origine
From Biblical Time to Darwinian Time 15
de l’Homme, &c. / Telliamed: or, Discourses between an Indian Philosopher and

a French Missionary, on the Diminution of the Sea, the Formation of the Earth,
the Origin of Men and Animals, and Other Curious Subjects, Relating to Natural
History and Philosophy, which appeared in Amsterdam ten years after his death,
but which had been circulating clandestinely since about 1720. According to
Maillet, life emerged on Earth when seeds and grains, which had always ex-
isted in the universe, fell into the oceans that originally covered our planet.
All the first living organisms were thus marine-based. Evaporation over time
having caused the oceans to recede somewhat—Maillet imagines this happen-
ing over billions of years—, many of these beings must have become “accus-
tomed” to living on dry land. Flying fish turned into birds, deep water fish into
beasts able to walk or crawl, etc. Even mankind, now land-based, clearly had
its origins in marine men, as was obvious from their skin, which “is covered
in little scales, like a carp’s” when viewed through a microscope (De Maillet,
1748: 206. The author dedicates his book to Cyrano de Bergerac). This type of
account, which a few hasty commentators have wrongly interpreted as the first
outline of a theory of evolution, was rare in the 18th century. It can almost be
seen as a thought experiment: what if it wasn’t God that created the world as
we know it, what then? Well, the age of the Earth, no longer confined by any
certain limits, could go through the roof, and mankind, no longer the children
of Adam and Eve, could take on different curious, albeit unflattering forms, like
the men with tails, or without beards, or with only one leg that “never laugh
and hop along” (De Maillet, 1748: 186) that Benoît de Maillet mentions in his
book. In short, this exuberant natural world left to its own devices, without any
definite goal, would be totally chaotic. This was Linnaeus’s nightmare.
This type of narrative had the advantage of stimulating the thought pro-
cesses of those who were ready for it. Georges-Louis Leclerc, comte de Buffon
(1707–1788), who published in 1749 the 490-page-long Preuves de la théorie de
la Terre (Proofs of the Theory of the Earth) in the first volume of his major work,
Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière (Natural History) was one of these.
Buffon’s work was one of real scholarship and he was, along with Linnaeus, the
other tutelary figure of natural history in the Europe of the 18th century. In this
work, Buffon dealt with the formation of the planets (article I), the production
of the Earth’s layers (art. VII), shells and other marine life found on dry land
(art. VIII), the transformation of land into sea and vice versa (art. XIX), etc.
The proof that his work was taken seriously by his contemporaries is that the
Sorbonne immediately identified 14 points that it described as “reprehensible”.
As a result, Buffon was forced to recant at the beginning of volume 4 of his
Histoire naturelle, which was published in 1753:
16 Duris
Je déclare que je n’ai eu aucune intention de contredire le texte de

l’Écriture; que je crois très-fermement tout ce qui y est rapporté sur la
création, soit pour l’ordre des temps, soit pour les circonstances des faits;
& que j’abandonne ce qui, dans mon livre, regarde la formation de la
terre, & en général tout ce qui pourroit être contraire à la narration de
Moïse, n’ayant présenté mon hypothèse sur la formation des planètes que
comme une pure supposition philosophique.
Buffon, 1753: XIJ
I declare that I had no intention to contradict the text of Scripture; that I

believe most firmly all therein related about the creation, both as to order
of time and matter of fact; and I abandon everything in my book respect-
ing the formation of the earth, and generally all which may be contrary
to the narration of Moses. My hypothesis regarding the formation of the
planets was only intended as purely philosophical supposition.
Had this been a case of purely philosophical supposition? Notwithstanding his

responding to the theologians in exactly the terms they want to hear—Buffon
apparently admitted to Hérault de Séchelles, when the latter came to visit him
in 1785 in Montbard that
quand la Sorbonne m’a fait des chicanes, je n’ai fait aucune difficulté de
lui donner toutes les satisfactions qu’elle a pu désirer: ce n’est qu’un per-
siflage, mais les hommes sont assez sots pour s’en contenter,
quoted by Roger, 1989: 556
when the Sorbonne quibbled with me, I had no hesitation in giving them
everything they could possibly ask for: it’s all nonsense, but people are
stupid enough to be satisfied with such things,
Buffon was convinced very early on that the history of the Earth was much
longer and more complex than what was recounted in the Book of Genesis.
In 1778, thirty years after formulating his “hypothesis”, he returned to the
topic in his Époques de la nature (Epochs of Nature) which was included in the
fifth tome of the Supplément to his Histoire naturelle. Drawing on his experi-
ments with the cooling time of iron cannon balls of varying diameters, and 150
pages of calculations he had published three years previously, Buffon set out
the idea that the age of the Earth was in the neighbourhood of 75,000 years—
74,832, to be precise. In unpublished manuscript notes to his Epochs, he even
mentions three to ten million years. But Buffon did not wish to overly offend
his contemporaries:
pourquoi l’esprit humain semble-t-il se perdre dans l’espace de la durée

plutôt que dans celui de l’étendue, ou dans la considération des mesures,
des poids & des nombres? Pourquoi cent mille ans sont-ils plus difficiles à
concevoir & à compter que cent mille livres de monnoie? Seroit-ce parce
que la somme du temps ne peut se palper ni se réaliser en espèces vi-
sibles, ou plutôt n’est-ce pas qu’étant accoutumés par notre trop courte
existence à regarder cent ans comme une grosse somme de temps, nous
avons peine à nous former une idée de mille ans, & ne pouvons plus nous
représenter dix mille ans, ni même en concevoir cent mille?
Buffon, 1778:1 67–68
why does the human spirit seem to lose its bearings in the realm of time
rather than in that of space, or when it comes to measures, weights and
numbers? Why is it more difficult to conceive of and count one hundred
thousand years rather than one hundred thousand pounds in money?
Could it be that the sum of time cannot be touched or made visible in
physical form, or rather that, being accustomed, due to our too short ex-
istence, to consider one hundred years as a large amount of time, we find
it hard to imagine one thousand years, and we can no longer visualize ten
thousand years, never mind conceive of one hundred thousand?
Buffon divided the general history of the Earth into seven epochs: the first was
that of the Earth and the other planets created out of matter undergoing fu-
sion, which had been torn from the sun by a comet; in the second, this incan-
descent matter solidified, forming mountains; during the third, which occurred
after about 35,000 years, the waters covered the newly-formed continents, and
life began to appear; these waters then receded during the fourth period, leav-
ing behind them, in the words of Buffon, “authentic monuments of Nature,
namely: shells in marble, fish in slate, & vegetal matter in coal mines” (Buffon,
1778: 161); the fifth period saw the emergence through spontaneous generation
of elephants and “other animals from southern climes”, initially around the
poles where the Earth had cooled the quickest; during the sixth period, the
continents separated; and in the seventh and last period, mankind appeared.
In 1778, Buffon’s account of geology and the development of life on Earth was
1 The book was only put on sale in April 1779.

18 Duris
noteworthy in that it presupposed a long-term process involving the cooling,

then the condensation of incandescent matter of solar origin, a process which
was thus irreversible and directed toward an end.
This time, the Church chose to ignore what it considered the ravings of an
old man … (Bachaumont, 1781: 49)2 But, we now know that they were nothing
of the sort. With the advent of Buffon’s secular narrative, we might be tempted
to think that we are close to a break with creationism, on the one hand, and
fixism, on the other, as they were represented at that time by Linnaeus. But this
was not so, for the naturalists of the second half of the 18th century did not
yet possess conclusive evidence that might have prompted them the abandon
the biblical narrative and chronology, which still provided perfectly accept-
able answers to the questions they were asking themselves. The story of the
Flood, for instance, which the Bible says lasted 40 days and 40 nights (VII, 4)
and covered the whole earth for 150 days (VII, 24), was a very good explanation
for most naturalists for the presence of animal fossils—terrestrial and, more
often, marine—even on mountain tops. At the very most, the shortness of its
duration relative to the extent of the geological and palaeontological events
imputed to it was beginning to provoke a few questions: “On ne peut douter” /
“There is no doubting,” wrote le baron d’Holbach in 1757 in his article “Fossile”
in Diderot’s Encyclopédie,
de la réalité du déluge, de quelque voie que Dieu se soit servi pour opé-
rer cette grande révolution […]. Cela posé, il y a lieu de croire que ce
n’est point au déluge dont parle Moyse, qui n’a été que passager, que
sont dûs les corps marins que l’on trouve dans le sein de la terre. En
effet l’énorme quantité de coquilles & de corps marins dont la terre est
remplie, les montagnes entieres qui en sont presque uniquement com-
posées, les couches immenses & toujours paralleles de ces coquilles, les
carrieres prodigieuses de pierres coquillieres, semblent annoncer un sé-
jour des eaux de la mer très-long & de plusieurs siecles, & non pas une
inondation passagere & de quelques mois, telle que fut celle du déluge,
suivant la Genèse.
the reality of the Deluge, or any other means God may have used to bring
about this great revolution […]. If we take this as given, there is reason
to believe that it was not to the deluge referred to by Moses, which was
short-lived, that we owe the marine remains that are found in the bowels
2 Dated 10 February 1780.

of the earth. Indeed, the huge quantities of shells and marine life that fill
the earth, which virtually make up whole mountains, the enormous and
invariably parallel layers of these shells, the prodigious quarries of rock
composed of shell, suggest that the marine waters remained for a long
time, a period of centuries, and that it was not a quick flood, lasting a few
months, such as the one that followed the Creation.
Without really noticing it, the field of natural history of the latter half of the
18th century was beginning to feel constrained by the chronology of the Bible.
But what else could be proposed as an explanation that did not contradict a
literal reading of the text?
Around the turn of the century, Georges Cuvier (1769–1832) would surmise
that, even if the Flood was the only global catastrophe that the collected mem-
ory had retained, other earlier catastrophes might have befallen the planet.
That in no way affected the age of the Earth, still pegged at 6,000 years, but it at
least allowed for an appreciation of the extent of the overwhelming changes it
had undergone, which were visible in the geological strata. This was even more
essential given that, in 1795, Cuvier had made a very unsettling discovery, one
which was frankly difficult to explain in the context of the creationist and fixist
paradigm of the period: some species of quadruped present in the fossil record
were now “lost”. In other words, God apparently created animals—big ones, to
boot—which were sufficiently imperfect that they became totally extinct. This
was in direct contradiction with the idea of the plenitude and perfection of
God’s Creation. Cuvier was not the first to propose this notion. Buffon before
him, having noticed that certain fossils did not seem to have living equivalents,
had suggested that these species had “perished”:
les os fossiles extraordinaires, he wrote, qu’on trouve en Sibérie, au

Canada, en Irlande & dans plusieurs autres endroits, semblent confirmer
cette conjecture, car jusqu’ici on ne connoît pas d’animal à qui on puisse
attribuer ces os qui, pour la plûpart, sont d’une grandeur & d’une gros-
seur démesurée.
Buffon, 1749: 290; article VIII “Sur les Coquilles & les autres Productions de la
mer, qu’on trouve dans l’intérieur de la terre” in: Preuves de la théorie de la Terre
the extraordinary fossilized bones found in Siberia, Canada, Ireland & in

several other places seem to confirm this conjecture, for up until now, we
have no knowledge of any animal to which we can attribute these bones,
which are, for the most part, exceptionally large and thick.
20 Duris
In the article “Chain of Created Beings” of his Dictionnaire philosophique

(1764) (Philosophical Dictionary), Voltaire too had pointed out that murices
had died out (Voltaire, 1964: 107 (article “Chaîne des êtres créés”)). However,
the most generally agreed upon explanation, one compatible with a religious
vision of the world, was that these animals had not actually become extinct,
but had migrated to other part of the globe, where they had not yet been found.
Thus was safeguarded the continuity between the fossil record and present-
day animals.
Founder of comparative anatomy and vertebrate palaeontology, as well as
a firm believer in the fixity of species, Cuvier nevertheless had no doubts but
that many species of large animal had indeed died off. Such was the case of the
Megatherium, a mammal similar to the present-day sloth, of the Palaeotherium,
a relation of the tapir, found in the gypsum quarries of Montmartre, as well as
the Pterodactyl, a flying reptile present in the lithographic limestone of Bavaria,
which, to the utter stupefaction of his contemporaries, he pieced together out
of fragments of skeleton. Convinced of their extinction, Cuvier supposed they
had been destroyed in giant, brutal natural catastrophes, such as earthquakes,
tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, etc., of which the biblical Flood was the most
recent; these are what he called global revolutions.
Rather than saying that all of these species had purely and simply disap-
peared, thus introducing a violent break between today and yesterday, could
we not imagine that they were transformed over time to the point that we
were no longer able to detect the similarity between what they had become
and their predecessors’ fossils? That was the thesis put forward by the founder
of invertebrate palaeontology, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744–1829), in opposi-
tion to Cuvier in the 1800s. Let there be no mistake: like his predecessors and
his contemporaries, Lamarck continued to hold a religious view of the world,
even though he no longer believed in a 6,000-year-old Earth. In his 1809 work,
Philosophie zoologique (Zoological Philosophy), he was loathe, in particular, to
allow that species could purely and simply disappear without trace:
S’il y a des espèces réellement perdues ce ne peut être, sans doute, que
parmi les grands animaux qui vivent sur les parties sèches du globe, où
l’homme, par l’empire absolu qu’il y exerce, a pu parvenir à détruire tous
les individus de quelques-unes de celles qu’il n’a pas voulu conserver ni
réduire à la domesticité.
Lamarck, 1809: 76
If there really are lost species, they can only really be some of the large
species living in the arid parts of the globe, where mankind, through the
absolute dominion he enjoys, has managed to kill off all members of a

certain number of species he has not chosen to conserve or domesticate.
This was the most plausible explanation of the observations made by Cuvier.
However, added Lamarck, “this is merely a possibility.” (Lamarck, 1809: 76)
In fact, his theory was rather that the species that have come down to us
as fossils, which do not appear to have present-day equivalents, in reality un-
derwent changes under the influence of what he called circumstances. For
instance,
l’oiseau que le besoin attire sur l’eau pour y trouver la proie qui le fait
vivre, wrote Lamarck, écarte les doigts de ses pieds lorsqu’il veut frapper
l’eau et se mouvoir à sa surface. La peau qui unit ces doigts à leur base,
contracte par ces écartemens sans cesse répétés des doigts, l’habitude
de s’étendre. Ainsi avec le temps, les larges membranes qui unissent les
doigts des canards, des oies, &c. se sont formées telles que nous le voyons.
Lamarck, 1802a: 56 [emphasis added]
the bird that is drawn by necessity to water in search of prey in order to

survive, spreads his toes as he goes to land and manoeuver on its surface.
The skin linking these toes at their base grows accustomed to stretching
through this process of repeated spreading of the toes. Thus, over time,
the broad membranes linking the toes of ducks, geese, etc. came to ap-
pear as they do now.
In other words, for Lamarck,
ce ne sont pas les organes, c’est-à-dire la nature et la forme des parties du

corps d’un animal, qui ont donné lieu à ses habitudes et à ses facultés par-
ticulières; mais ce sont au contraire ses habitudes, sa manière de vivre, et
les circonstances dans lesquelles se sont rencontrés les individus dont il
provient, qui ont avec le temps constitué la forme de son corps, le nombre
et l’état de ses organes, enfin les facultés dont il jouit.
Lamarck, 1802a: 50 [emphasis added]
it is not the organs—i.e. the type and form of the animal’s body parts—
that determine its habits and particular faculties; rather, it is its habits, its
way of living, and the circumstances in which its progenitors met, which,
over time, determined the form of his body, the number and make-up of
his organs, and finally the faculties with which he is endowed.
22 Duris
For Lamarck, the study of fossils bore witness to “a continual, albeit infinite-
ly slow process of change, which is at work at different rates in all the climates
around the globe.” (Lamarck, 1802b (an X): 301)
The question of time was central to Lamarck’s argument and is at the heart
of his disagreement with Cuvier. From 1802 on, he insisted upon the long peri-
ods of time necessary for species transformation:
Oh! quelle est grande, l’antiquité du globe terrestre! et combien sont

petites les idées de ceux qui attribuent à l’existence de ce globe une
durée de six mille et quelques cents ans, depuis son origine jusqu’à nos
jours! […] Combien cette antiquité du globe terrestre s’agrandira encore
aux yeux de l’homme, lorsqu’il se sera formé une juste idée de l’origine
des corps vivans, ainsi que des causes du développement et du perfec-
tionnement graduels de l’organisation de ces corps, et surtout lorsqu’il
concevra que, le tems et les circonstances ayant été nécessaires pour don-
ner l’existence à toutes les espèces vivantes telles que nous les voyons
actuellement, il est lui-même le dernier résultat et le maximum ac-
tuel de ce perfectionnement, dont le terme, s’il en existe, ne peut être
connu!
Lamarck, 1802c (an X): 88–90
Oh, how ancient is the Earth! And how small are the ideas of those who
put its age at six thousand and a few hundred years, from the beginning
until today! […] Mankind will come to see that it is even longer once they
have gained a better understanding of the origin of its living organisms,
as well as of the development and gradual perfecting of the structure of
these living things; and above all when they have understood that, time
and circumstances having been crucial to the emergence of all the life we
see around us, they are themselves the final and most perfect result yet of
a process whose end, if there is one, is impossible to predict!
Lamarck revisited this idea in his 1809 work, Philosophie zoologique: “Les natu-
ralistes” / “Naturalists,” he wrote, still with Cuvier in mind,
qui n’ont pas aperçu les changemens qu’à la suite des temps la plupart des
animaux sont dans le cas de subir, voulant expliquer les faits relatifs aux
fossiles observés, ainsi qu’aux bouleversemens reconnus dans différens
points de la surface du globe, ont supposé qu’une catastrophe universelle
avoit eu lieu à l’égard du globe de la terre; qu’elle avoit tout déplacé, et
avoit détruit une grande partie des espèces qui existoient alors.
Il est dommage que ce moyen commode de se tirer d’embarras, lors-

qu’on veut expliquer les opérations de la nature dont on n’a pu saisir les
causes, n’ait de fondement que dans l’imagination qui l’a créé, et ne puisse
être appuyé sur aucune preuve.
[…] Si l’on considère, d’une part, que dans tout ce que la nature opère,
elle ne fait rien brusquement, et que partout elle agit avec lenteur et par
degrés successifs, et de l’autre part, que les causes particulières ou locales
des désordres, des bouleversemens, des déplacemens, etc., peuvent
rendre raison de tout ce que l’on observe à la surface de notre globe, et
sont néanmoins assujetties à ses lois et à sa marche générale, on recon-
noîtra qu’il n’est nullement nécessaire de supposer qu’une catastrophe
universelle est venue tout culbuter et détruire une grande partie des opé-
rations mêmes de la nature.
Lamarck, 1809: 79–81
who have not noticed the changes that most animals undergo over time,
wishing to explain both how fossils came about, as well as known up-
heavals around the world, imagined that a worldwide catastrophe had
taken place, causing everything to move and destroying a large number
of the species that existed at that time.
It is a pity that this convenient means of explaining away natural pro-
cesses whose causes are unclear has no foundation outside of the mind
that imagined it.
[…] If one keeps in mind, on the one hand that, wherever it is at work,
nature does nothing quickly, but works slowly and by subtle degrees, and,
on the other, that the individual and local causes of disorder, disruptions,
and displacements, etc., can explain everything that happens on the sur-
face of our planet, and are nevertheless subject to its general laws and
modes of functioning, then there is no need to suppose that a universal
catastrophe came along to overthrow and destroy a large number of nat-
ural processes.
Cuvier’s reply can be found in the Discours préliminaire (Preliminary Discourse)

in his Recherches sur les ossements fossiles de quadrupèdes (1812). In his view,
contrary to what Lamarck would have us believe, nothing suggests that species
change over time:
Il y a […], dans les animaux, des caractères qui résistent à toutes les in-
fluences, soit naturelles, soit humaines, et rien n’annonce que le temps
ait, à leur égard, plus d’effet que le climat.
24 Duris
Je sais que quelques naturalistes comptent beaucoup sur les milliers

de siècles qu’ils accumulent d’un trait de plume; mais dans de semblables
matières nous ne pouvons guère juger de ce qu’un long temps produirait,
qu’en multipliant par la pensée ce que produit un temps moindre.
Cuvier, 1992: 117
In animals […], there are characteristics that resist all influences, wheth-
er natural or human, and nothing suggests that time has any more effect
on them than the climate does.
I know that certain naturalists are quick explain things by reference to
the accumulated effects of millions of centuries, but in such cases we can
only judge what transpires over long periods by extrapolating from what
can take place over a shorter period of time.
Well, a shorter period of time, for example, had no effect on the morphology of
the ibis of the Ancient Egyptians, which is today the same as in the time of the
Pharaohs. Thus, species were unchanging, and their disappearance from the
Earth could only be due to some cataclysmic event. In general, Cuvier moved
gradually from the notion of general catastrophe—revolutions affecting the
whole planet—to one of more localized disasters—cataclysms limited to par-
ticular continents. For if a global catastrophe had destroyed all the planet’s
fauna and flora, how could life have been reborn in the wake of this event if not
through a second divine intervention? This was difficult to believe.
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, who died three years before Cuvier in 1829, would
never manage to convince him—nor his contemporaries for that matter—of
the need to think in terms of long periods of time in order to give an account
of life on Earth. Cuvier, on the other hand, whose catastrophism offered the
advantage of reconciling scientific and religious points of view, was supported
by the scholarly community and artists. The Cuvierian view of a world periodi-
cally struck by catastrophes was in harmony with Romanticism. The history of
science shows us that Lamarck opened a new avenue, which Charles Darwin
(1809–1882) soon followed. The voyage of exploration along the coast of South
America, in which he participated between 1831 and 1836, first of all convinced
him that geological variations came about slowly and gradually, that, since
its formation, the Earth had never seen a single “revolution”, as Cuvier would
have it, and that, in a word, catastrophism should be rejected in favour of the
actualism professed by Charles Lyell (1797–1875)—i.e. that the geological phe-
nomena of the past were the same in nature and intensity as those at play in
the present. Darwin then quickly became convinced that living species were
not immutable. In 1859, exactly 50 years after the publication of Lamarck’s
Philosophie zoologique, he published On the Origin of Species, where he set out

in detail his theory, which was based on two main observations: firstly, the
extreme variability from one individual to the next within a species, be they
plants or animals, due to climatic or other conditions, or to the use or non-use
of one organ or another; secondly, the “struggle for life” on three levels: be-
tween individuals, and against competitors of the same species; between spe-
cies, against predators belonging to other species; and with the environment
(drought, the cold, etc.). As a consequence, said Darwin, it was almost certain
that some individuals would exhibit variations that would give them an ad-
vantage in their struggle for survival, and which they would be able to pass on
to their offspring. The others, on the contrary, would be pitilessly eliminated:
this is what Darwin referred to as natural selection, a mechanism by which he
explained “reproduction with modification”, which in 1864 would come to be
known as evolution.
But, for new species to appear and others to disappear, as Lamarck had al-
ready realized, a lot of time was needed. In the first edition of On the Origin
of Species (1859), Darwin stressed the slowness of the marine erosion of the
coasts and of the depositing of sedimentary rock. He estimated that it had
taken 306,662,400 years—let’s say 306 million—for the Weald, in Southern
England, to be “eroded”. His compatriot, Lord Kelvin, retorted that the solar
system in its entirety could not have been that old. Darwin did not insist and
withdrew this passage in later editions of the book. His mind was made up,
however: “What an infinite number of generations, which the mind cannot
grasp, must have succeeded each other in the long roll of years!” (Darwin, 1992:
341) Darwinian time no longer bore any relation to biblical time.
…
In his Introduction to Psychoanalysis (1916), Freud considered the discovery by
Copernicus that the Earth was not at the centre of the universe, by Darwin that
mankind was not the result of any particular act of creation, and by himself
of the importance of the subconscious as the three great “blows” dealt to the
“naïve egotism” of mankind over the centuries (Part 3 (“General Theory of the
Neuroses”), chapter 18 (“Traumatic Fixation. The Unconscious”)). In fact, when
looking at the history of time in the natural and biological sciences, it is essen-
tial to weigh up the influence of dominant contemporary paradigms. Modern
historiography has underestimated the causal role of affect in history. At the
close of the 17th century, a time when the biblical paradigm of time reigned
supreme, La Bruyère made no secret of the melancholy the present inspired
in him:
26 Duris
Tout est dit, & l’on vient trop tard depuis plus de sept mille ans qu’il y a
des hommes, & qui pensent. Sur ce qui concerne les mœurs le plus beau
& le meilleur est enlevé; l’on ne fait que glaner aprés les Anciens & les
habiles d’entre les Modernes.
La Bruyère, 1688: 158
Everything has been said, and we have come too late, after more than
7,000 years of human thought. As far as morals and manners go, we are
mere gleaners following along in the wake of the Ancients and the most
able Moderns.
Approximately 150 years later, on the contrary, Balzac was utterly intoxicated
by the vast open spaces of time he read about in the geological works of Cuvier:
“Vous êtes-vous jamais lancé dans l’immensité de l’espace et du temps, en
lisant les œuvres géologiques de Cuvier?” / “Have you ever launched into the
immensity of time and space while reading the geological writings of Cuvier?,”
he asked in La Peau de chagrin (The Wild Ass’s Skin, 1831).
Emporté par son génie, avez-vous plané sur l’abîme sans bornes du passé,
comme soutenu par la main d’un enchanteur? En découvrant de tranche
en tranche, de couche en couche, sous les carrières de Montmartre ou
dans les schistes de l’Oural, ces animaux dont les dépouilles fossilisées
appartiennent à des civilisations antédiluviennes, l’âme est effrayée d’en-
trevoir des milliards d’années, des millions de peuples que la faible mé-
moire humaine, que l’indestructible tradition divine ont oubliés et dont
la cendre, poussée à la surface de notre globe, y forme les deux pieds de
terre qui nous donnent du pain et des fleurs. Cuvier n’est-il pas le plus
grand poëte de notre siècle? Lord Byron a bien reproduit par des mots
quelques agitations morales; mais notre immortel naturaliste a recons-
truit des mondes avec des os blanchis, a rebâti comme Cadmus des cités
avec des dents, a repeuplé mille forêts de tous les mystères de la zoologie
avec quelques fragments de houille, a retrouvé des populations de géants
dans le pied d’un mammouth. […] En présence de cette épouvantable
résurrection due à la voix d’un seul homme, la miette dont l’usufruit nous
est concédé dans cet infini sans nom, commun à toutes les sphères et
que nous avons nommé le temps, cette minute de vie nous fait pitié.
Nous nous demandons, écrasés que nous sommes sous tant d’univers en
ruines, à quoi bon nos gloires, nos haines, nos amours; et si, pour deve-
nir un point intangible dans l’avenir, la peine de vivre doit s’accepter?
Déracinés du présent, nous sommes morts jusqu’à ce que notre valet de

chambre entre et vienne nous dire:—Madame la comtesse a répondu
qu’elle attendait monsieur.
Balzac, 1839: 26–283
Carried along by his fancy, have you hung as if borne up by a magical hand
over the illimitable abyss of the past? When the fossil bones of animals
belonging to civilizations before the Flood are turned up in bed after bed
and layer upon layer of the quarries of Montmartre or among the schists
of the Ural range, the soul receives with dismay a glimpse of millions of
peoples forgotten by feeble human memory and unrecognized by per-
manent divine tradition, peoples whose ashes cover our globe with two
feet of earth that yields bread and flowers to us. Is Cuvier not the great
poet of our era? Byron has given admirable expression to certain moral
conflicts, but our immortal naturalist has reconstructed past worlds from
a few bleached bones; has rebuilt cities, like Cadmus, with monsters’
teeth; has animated forests with all the secrets of zoology gleaned from
a piece of coal; has discovered populations of giants in the footprint of a
mammoth. […] After the tremendous resurrection that took place in re-
sponse to the voice of a single man, the scrap whose usufruct is left to us
in this nameless infinitude common to all spheres, which we call TIME,
this minute of life inspires our pity. We might well ask ourselves, crushed
as we are under the rubble of so many universes, the purpose of our tri-
umphs, our hatreds, our loves, and whether it is worthwhile accepting the
pain of life in order that hereafter we may become an intangible speck.
Uprooted from the present, we are dead till the valet de chambre comes in
and says, “Madame la comtesse says that she is expecting you, Sir”.
No other text could better illustrate than this one does the hybridization of
fields of knowledge within literature.
Translated by Colin Keaveney
3 There are many variants between the 1831 and subsequent editions.
28 Duris
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Daubenton. Paris, Imprimerie royale.
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Daubenton. Paris, Imprimerie royale.
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Imprimerie royale.
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établit les caractères de plusieurs espèces d’animaux que les révolutions du globe para-
issent avoir détruites. Discours préliminaire [1812]. Paris, Flammarion, GF.
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Memory Strata, Geology and Change of Historical
Paradigm in France around 1830
Paule Petitier
Abstract
The contribution analyses the metaphor of layers of memory in the precise moment
of its creation, viz. at the beginning of the 19th century, in the works of Chateaubriand.
Subsequently one can observe how its appropriation by the memorialist corresponds
to a transformation of his conception of history during the Revolution of 1830. This
transformation in his relation to time coincides with the “actualist” thesis of Lyell: this
does not necessarily hint at a causal connection but rather at one of those synchronici-
ties which are the possible basis of a global history of the models of thought.
The “emergence of the abyss of geological time around 1830” constitutes, ac-
cording to Marcel Gauchet, one of “major events in the history of ideas”
(Gauchet, 1992: 69) in the 19th century. In the first half of the 19th century, the
developing field of stratigraphy—linked to the needs of the coal and mineral
industry—disseminated an awareness of this deep time, of this time literally
piled up beneath our feet; through striking images of cross sections of the mul-
tiple layers that lay beneath the landscape, this awareness also had a visual
component. The consequences were significant, as Marcel Gauchet’s brief re-
mark suggests. The “dark abyss of time” (Buffon) which extended well beyond
the appearance of mankind, had an extraordinary relativizing effect on human
history:
l’histoire humaine, désormais minoritaire [n’est plus qu’] une pellicule de

connaissances relatives flottant à la surface d’un abysse ignoré.
Olivier, 1992: 25
human history, now in the minority [was only] a film of relative knowl-
edge floating on the surface over an uncharted abyss.
This was another blow to Man’s self-esteem, in addition to those already identi-
fied by Freud (Copernicus, Darwin and Freud himself). The second significant
transformation was due to geology’s causing an evaluation of what remained
30 Petitier
from the past in the present. The past had not disappeared − it was right there,
invisible, buried but retrievable, and it was the very stuff of which was made
the present in which we lived.
Since it was connected with his relationship with time, it is hardly surprising
that this revolution in the history of ideas should have impacted upon man-
kind’s sense of self. Indeed, thanks to a large number of literary examples, we
observe a very rapid transposition of the deep time of geology into the realm
of psychology. Geological phenomena became one of the favoured ways of
figuring the mysterious depths of the self. Just think of Schreckenstein’s cave,
where the Sandian hero Albert de Rudoldstadt takes refuge during his bouts
of acute melancholy, a cave in which the memory of the officially-censored
Hussite revolt lives on (Consuelo); or, just to restrict ourselves to the most obvi-
ous examples, the underwater cave in which Gilliat encounters the squid and
whose mineral-veined interior calls to mind a brain (Les Travailleurs de la mer).
The representation of memory as composed of strata has by now become
commonplace. The naturalization of this image can likely be explained by the
spread of a model of the psyche theorized by Freud, as illustrated for instance
in this letter to Fliess: “You know that, in my work, I begin with the hypothesis
that our psychic mechanism was established through a process of stratifica-
tion: material present in the form of mnemonic traces are, from time to time,
rearranged in response to changing circumstances.” (Freud, 2009: 153)
Proust’s sentence, in Albertine disparue, underlining the composite charac-
ter of the ‘self’ is probably not unrelated to the success of this metaphor either:
Notre moi est fait de la superposition de nos états successifs. Mais cette
superposition n’est pas immuable comme la stratification d’une mon-
tagne. Perpétuellement des soulèvements font affleurer à la surface des
couches anciennes.
Proust, 1998: 126
Our self is made of the superposition of our successive states. But this
superposition is not immutable like the stratification of a mountain.
Perpetual upheavals bring old layers to the surface.
However, it is my intention to return to older usages in an effort to get to the

meaning of this metaphor before it became confined to its present scope under
the influence of Freudian notions. Which brings me to examine the author
who, it seems to me, was the true inventor of this representation of time and
memory (one marked by the model of geological strata), i.e. the Chateaubriand
of Mémoires d’outre-tombe.
Memory Strata, Geology and Change of Historical Paradigm 31
1 The Paradigmatic Time of Mémoires d’outre-tombe
A number of works anterior to his autobiographical monument, in par-

ticular l’Essai sur les Révolutions and the Génie du christianisme, reveal that
Chateaubriand knew about geological strata, even if he refers to interpreta-
tions that were both dated and apologetic: the “couches parallèles et horizon-
tales des sols” / “parallel and horizontal layers of soil” (Chateaubriand, 1834: 18)
were cited as proof of the Flood in l’Essai sur les Révolutions, and appeared in
the Génie as indicators of the Earth’s age similar to the growth rings in trees or
certain animals (stags’ horns, horses teeth …; Chateaubriand, 1966: v).
In Mémoires d’outre-tombe, however, the allusions to geological levels plays a
larger role, since they are used to describe the very stuff of the work: memory.
They thus fulfil a metadiscursive function, especially in part IV, where they
resonate with a style of writing based on repetitions and parallels between per-
sonal life and history:
Nos ans et nos souvenirs sont étendus en couches régulières et parallèles,

à différentes profondeurs de notre vie, déposés par les flots du temps qui
passent successivement sur nous.
Chateaubriand, 1998: 361
Our years and memories are laid out in regular and parallel layers, at dif-
ferent depths of our lives, deposited by the successive waves of time pass-
ing over us.
In the fourth part of Mémoires d’outre-tombe, the paradigmatic functioning

of memory takes over from the sequential order of events. As Jean-Claude
Berchet points out, this part was not the last to be written; instead
[s]a rédaction a, au contraire, accompagné celle des précédentes, si bien

qu’elle a la particularité de réfléchir, comme dans un miroir, toutes les
autres.
Berchet, Chateaubriand, 1998: 11
it had, on the contrary, been written simultaneously with the preceding

ones, so that it has the distinctive feature of reflecting, as in a mirror, all
the others.
Opening “au sortir du fracas des trois journées” / “after the turmoil of the three
days” (Berchet, Chateaubriand, 1998: 29) of the July Revolution which, in a
32 Petitier
sense, shattered history, the fourth part breaks in several ways the continu-
ity of the retrospective narrative and adopts juxtaposition as its new guiding
principle, both in terms of formal diversity (journal, letters, quotations) and
by the widespread use of asyndeton, as well as abrupt changes of topic (what
Chateaubriand calls “arabesque”). In the bumpy and fragmented post-1830 pe-
riod, the links between consecutive moments were less strong than between
the present and the distant past. For Jean-Claude Berchet, the fourth part of
the book is closely related to the first; indeed, its fundamental intent is to
convey in a different fashion the theme of exile and illusion. Ploughing the
highways and byways of Europe in the service of the fallen Bourbon dynasty,
Chateaubriand finds himself again and again repeating previous travels, which
provokes a curious form of stereoscopic vision where images from different
periods are superimposed upon one another. This repetition also occurs in the
short term: the ambassador of the duchesse de Berry goes twice to Prague, vis-
its, then revisits, the small Bavarian town of Waldmünchen … The actual order
of events seems not to be of much importance; the narrative draws its interest
from the constant diving into memories associated with the same place. It is
clear then that the metaphor of geological levels is particularly applicable to
memory in this part of the book.
Again and again, a place conjures up two different, and often antithetical,
states (of the world and of the soul), which are separated by a greater or lesser
length of time, and whose evocation often takes the shape of a parallel:
Deux fois j’avais rencontré ce lac, une fois en me rendant au congrès de

Vérone, une autre fois en allant en ambassade à Rome. Je le contemplais
alors au soleil, dans le chemin des prospérités; je l’entrevoyais à présent
la nuit, du bord opposé, sur la route de l’infortune. Entre mes voyages,
séparés seulement de quelques années, il y avait de moins une monarchie
de quatorze siècles.
Twice I had encountered this lake, once on my way to the Verona Congress,
another time on my way to the embassy in Rome. I contemplated it then
in the sun, on the path of prosperity; I saw it now at night, on the opposite
side, on the road of misfortune. Between my journeys, only a few years
apart, a monarchy of fourteen centuries had become a thing of the past.
Memories from different levels thus render visible dissimilarities, or even

breaks. Among geologists, the supporters of the doctrine of catastrophism
believed that each successive geological stratum corresponded to a change
in climate, water levels, flora and fauna, and revealed different “creations”,
separated by violent upheavals, so many revolutions remaking the surface of
the globe. Likewise, as he compared the present to the previous levels within
his memory, Chateaubriand relived the swallowing up of whole worlds (“une
monarchie de quatorze siècles”). In history, as in nature, revolutions produced
dissimilar strata, each with its particular fauna:
De temps en temps, la Révolution nous envoyait des émigrés d’une espèce

et d’une opinion nouvelles; il se formait diverses couches d’exilés: la terre
renferme des lits de sable ou d’argile, déposés par les flots du déluge.
From time to time, the Revolution sent us emigrants of a new species

and with new opinions; various layers of exiles were formed: the earth
contains beds of sand or clay, deposited by the floodwaters.
This remark introduces the arrival in London of Fontanes, presented less as an

individual than as the representative of an era which was bygone at the time
Chateaubriand was writing. Fontanes appears as the embodiment of a late
form of classicism, whose distinctive feature is apparently its melancholy. His
portrait underscores all at once what ties him most closely to his time (he bore
“l’empreinte de l’époque où il a vécu” / “the mark of the times he had lived in”,
both in his prose and his verse) and the gulf that separates him, ontologically
so to speak, from Chateaubriand’s generation.
[…] il ne pouvait ramener ces productions [Atala, René] aux règles com-
munes de la critique, mais il sentait qu’il entrait dans un monde nouveau;
il voyait une nature nouvelle; il comprenait une langue qu’il ne parlait
pas.
[…] he was unable to bring those productions within the scope of the
common rules of criticism, but he felt that he was entering into a new
world; he saw a new form of nature; he understood a language which he
could not speak.
The image of geological layers at the chapter’s opening is inextricably linked

to what follows. It is consistent with a vision of the past which postulates both
the coherence of eras (they form wholes with definite characteristics) and the
idea that there are breaks between them. It leads to a tendency to think of the
34 Petitier
past in terms of ‘cuts’ or, if you like, of discreet temporal points, rather than of
an unbroken chain.
2 The Long Term Instead of the Event
1830, due to its effect in repeating and confirming the irreversible nature of the
French Revolution, in all probability modified Chateaubriand’s vision of his-
tory and historical processes:
Le mouvement de Juillet, he wrote in “Ce que sera la révolution de Juillet”,

ne tient point à la politique proprement dite; il tient à la révolution
sociale qui agit sans cesse.
The events of July, he wrote in ‘What the July revolution will be’, is not
about politics per se; it’s about the social revolution that is constantly at
work.
The seismic shock that side-lined Chateaubriand’s political career, sent him
into virtual exile, and set him writing his Mémoires again. It also led him to
put the event into perspective. Not merely because the three days of the July
Revolution amounted to an event of niggardly proportion exploited by politi-
cians of low calibre, bringing about a “quasi légitimité” (everything is in the
“quasi”); but because they merely confirmed a transformation that had already
taken place, one which had been accomplished by other means, i.e. “la révolu-
tion sociale qui agit sans cesse” [emphasis added]. However, this is the paradox
explored in this chapter: that the July Revolution, in itself a minor event, had
suddenly revealed the fact that the French monarchy was spent, that it was, in
no uncertain terms, a fossil.
Around about the same time as Chateaubriand decided to go back to his
Mémoires and to turn it into his major work, the English geologist Charles Lyell
brought out his three-volume Principles of Geology (1830–1833). This work,
which had a readership well beyond the scientific community (15,000 copies
sold, and 11 editions before 1872) came out against the Cuvier’s catastrophist
theory, and argued that, in order to understand natural phenomena, we had
only to look to the same causes at work in the present. His “uniformitarianism”
set out to dispense with violent and rapid upheavals on the Earth’s surface,
which according to Cuvier were responsible for complete changes of flora and
figure 1 Coupes géologiques de Georges Cuvier et Alexandre Brongniart. Planche

extraite de l’Essai sur la géographie minéralogique des environs de Paris.
Paris, Baudoin, 1811
© MNHN, Bibliothèque centrale, 15 422
36 Petitier
fauna. The imperceptible, yet endlessly repeating, action of contemporary fac-

tors (erosion, sedimentation, slow soil upheavals) were sufficient to explain,
once their long duration was taken to account, the most monumental of trans-
formations over time. Subsequently, Darwin would explain the evolution of
the species in the same way, as a slow process taking place constantly right
under our noses. I am not suggesting for a minute that Chateaubriand read
Lyell, whose theories would only take hold in France much later. Around 1830,
French geology was still dominated by the theory of revolutions perpetuated
by Élie de Beaumont’s work dedicated to the formation of mountain ranges.
As we have seen, it was, on the face of it, this vision of the Earth’s history, one
marked by catastrophes (for which the Flood was the paradigm) that informed
Chateaubriand’s geological references. And yet, uncannily, at this turning
point of 1830, which in England, under the influence of uniformitarianism,
brought a change in how the past was seen (at the very moment that geologi-
cal time was expanding in extraordinary fashion), France was undergoing a
comparable revolution in the realm of ideas concerning human history. The
work of Chateaubriand, it would seem to us, bears the mark of this revolution.
With reference to the 1830 July Revolution, Chateaubriand added:
Il n’est révolution si prodigieuse, qui, décrite de minute en minute, ne se

trouvât réduite aux plus petites proportions.
There’s no revolution so prodigious which, described minute by minute,

is not reduced to its meanest proportions.
The July Revolution required a new approach to history. Carried out by the
people (even if it was confiscated from them), and leaderless according to
Michelet (Michelet, 1972: 254–255), it required that we recognize it as the work
of a multitude of anonymous individuals. Observed in real time (a time that
constitutes not merely a point of view, but a rhythm—‘minute-by-minute’—,
this three-day revolution revealed that history did not take place in any other
time frame than that of daily life. It deprived History of its capital “h”, of its
heroes, of its straightforwardly “historical” acts. Make no mistake, the point
was not to deny history and the profound changes that it brought about, but
to dissociate its modus operandi (habitual and constantly occurring causes)
from the long-term results that we notice in retrospect (fall of empires, dif-
ferences between generations, changes in values), results whose importance
stand out sharply with the benefit of hindsight. Michelet, accusing Victor Hugo
of drawing too dramatic picture of history, leaping from “couleur en couleur, de
montagne en montagne”, felt that the historian should, on the contrary, “suivre
les ondulations de la vie” (“colour to colour, from mountain to mountain […]
follow the undulations of life”).1 Henceforth, he would have to be a chronicler,
intimately acquainted with the everyday workings of time in order to be able
to seize how history was made, and to be able retrospectively to adopt an ex-
tremely long perspective so as to be able to comprehend the results of history.
The import of historical events could only be appreciated through an aware-
ness of this hindsight, and of the perspective that produced their significance.
It was impossible simultaneously to conceive of the way history unfolded in
terms of a single human lifespan as well as of its consequences without chang-
ing scales.
The promotion of the time frame of human existence as a laboratory of
history allows us to understand the new status of the “self” for memorialists.
While they had previously unfolded the narrative of the more or less impor-
tant events with which their lives had brought them into contact, drawing
authority from their privileged position as witness (due to their proximity to
the halls of power), post-Revolutionary memorialists instead wrote about their
own lives, which shed light on history—whether or not they were close to the
centre or on the periphery of power. And this in two ways: firstly, because lived
time was not of a different order to historical time—since history, of course,
did not happen in a different, nobler, or even transcendental, time frame; and
secondly, because the imperceptible passing of subjective and individual time
could suddenly give way to a realization and a violent awareness of a realm of
time that henceforth had the look of history:
Ah! dans trois mois j’aurai cinquante ans; est-il bien possible? 1783, 93,
1803: je suis tout le compte sur mes doigts … et 1833: cinquante. Est-il bien
possible?
Stendhal, 1988: 18
Ah! in three months I will be fifty; is it really possible? 1783, 93, 1803: I’m all
counting on my fingers … and 1833: fifty. Is it really possible?
It only took the passing of life to allow individual existence to provide the
model for how lived time could turn into history, at the moment when the
accumulating years made plain a painful reality, i.e. that time was turning into
chronology. The insistence by Chateaubriand on his age in the fourth part of
1 Michelet, Jules, “Dossier Méthode historique et enseignement”, Papiers Michelet (Cote A

3887), Bibliothèque historique de la Ville de Paris.
38 Petitier
the Mémoires d’outre-tombe is not a mere reminder of the weight of old age, or
a case of the author being coquettish. Neither is it an argument to the effect
that age brings with it more wisdom or knowledge, or even that it allows one to
take into account more events; rather, a lengthening life span puts one on a par
with history, which is continuously and discreetly at work in the background
throughout the common course of events, and yet which comes strikingly to
the fore in the end. Because it allows one to see these different scales, a lifetime
becomes a key advantage in comprehending the interplay of perspectives that
constitutes history.
3 An Interplay of Scales
In the fourth part of Mémoires d’outre tombe, the strata of memories constantly
awoken by the trip operate like an optical device affording an understanding
of historical changes free of any mystification about the way in which they oc-
curred. As already demonstrated by the quotation dealing with the two visits to
the shores of Lake Maggiore, the comparison of two levels of personal memory
allows him to understand historical time thanks to his own experience of time:
Entre mes voyages, séparés seulement de quelques années, il y avait de

moins une monarchie de quatorze siècles.
Between my journeys, only a few years apart, a monarchy of fourteen

centuries had become a thing of the past.
This relation allows him to combine two otherwise incompatible scales or

rhythms: that of the workings of time (equivalent to the individual lifespan)
and that of the meaning of history (the large boundaries or units only percep-
tible when they are past). Simply put, the preterit of history (the salience of
certain events relative to the present) is only perceptible through the present
perfect of lived experience (still attached to the present).
His receptivity to the reiterations of personal history make Chateaubriand
sensitive to the repetitions of history, to the way events occurring in the same
place become superimposed on one another:
Entre Dilingen et Donauwerth, on traverse le champ de bataille de

Blenheim. Les pas des armées de Moreau sur le même sol n’ont point
effacé ceux des armées de Louis XIV; la défaite du grand roi domine dans
la contrée les succès du grand empereur. […] Rien ne fait mieux sentir la
grandeur de Louis XIV que de trouver sa mémoire jusqu’au fond des ra-
vines creusées par le torrent des victoires napoléoniennes. Les conquêtes
de ce monarque ont laissé à notre pays des frontières qui nous gardent
encore. L’écolier de Brienne, à qui la légitimité donna une épée, enfer-
ma un moment l’Europe dans son antichambre; mais elle en sortit: le pe-
tit-fils de Henri IV mit cette même Europe aux pieds de la France; elle y
est restée.
Between Dilingen and Donauwerth, we cross the battlefield of Blenheim.

The footprints left by Moreau’s armies on the same ground did not erase
those of Louis XIV’s armies; the defeat of the great king overshadows the
great emperor’s successes in the region. Nothing conveys the greatness
of Louis XIV better than to find his memory at the bottom of the ravines
created by the torrent of the Napoleonic victories. The conquests of this
monarch gave our country borders that still protect us. The schoolboy
from Brienne, to whom legitimacy gave a sword, locked Europe in his
antechamber for a moment; but she escaped: the grandson of Henri IV
brought this same Europe to France’s heel; and she remained there.
The geological metaphor reoccurs in the image of earth being eroded by a

streaming torrent, which is used to describe the deep mark left in people’s
memory by the Napoleonic victories. However, this mark merely served to ex-
pose an older memory, that of Louis XIV. We could stick to the obvious mean-
ing: the celebration of France under the monarchy, and its military might which
surpassed that of Napoleon, the usurper. But, beyond the ideological aspect of
the remark, another history, or even a geopolitics, emerges. The text not only
establishes a hierarchy between Louis XIV and Napoleon, but it also points
out a continuity, i.e. France’s repeated attempts at European hegemony over
the long term. Pertinently, this superimposition might perhaps even reveal a
decline: Louis XIV was defeated at Blenheim, but he had brought “Europe to
France’s heel” while the Napoleonic conquests prompted Europe to throw off
the French yoke. Napoleon, in the final analysis, probably marked both the
apotheosis and the beginning of the end for the “grande nation”.
We thus find other ‘conceptions’ of history than the factual and political
varieties in such passages. The metaphor of memory strata still appears to us
linked to the question of different scales for interpreting history, to the dif-
fering points of view they provide, as well to possible avenues of historical
interpretation based on the longue durée. Let us return to the context of the
40 Petitier
sentence in Mémoires d’outre-tombe which most clearly describes memory as

being made up of levels.
Upon returning from his first trip to Prague, Chateaubriand arrives in
Metz.
Je fus frappé, en entrant à Metz, d’une chose que je n’avais pas remarquée
en 1821; les fortifications à la moderne enveloppent les fortifications à la
gothique: Guise et Vauban sont deux noms bien associés.
When I entered Metz, I was struck by something I had not noticed in 1821;
the modern fortifications are wrapped around the Gothic fortifications:
Guise and Vauban are two names that go well together.
This is a new type of superimposition—memories of travel, but also of urban

topography. What Chateaubriand had not noticed before the Revolution of
1830 was the way the walls interlocked, or rather how two names associated
with the monarchy but usually seen as polar opposites fitted together. On the
one hand, a princely clan, which had distinguished itself in François’ victory
at the siege of Metz in 1552, but also because of Henri’s turbulent opposition
to the royal house during the Catholic Ligue. On the other, Vauban, of minor
noble stock, an example of the type of men of talent who served Louis XIV
totally and utterly. After 1830, the topography of Metz revealed, in the final
analysis the existence of a profound kinship between these two names, both of
which harked back to the same heyday of the monarchy, now past. The super-
imposition of the walls leads to the image of geological levels in the following
paragraph:
Nos ans et nos souvenirs sont étendus en couches régulières et parallèles,

à différentes profondeurs de notre vie, déposés par les flots du temps qui
passe successivement sur nous.
Our years and memories are laid out in regular and parallel layers, at dif-
ferent depths of our lives, deposited by the successive waves of time pass-
ing over us.
This image is immediately expanded by an example combining once again

personal recollections and history:
C’est de Metz que sortit en 1792 la colonne engagée sous Thionville avec
notre petit corps d’émigrés. J’arrive de mon pèlerinage à la retraite du
prince banni que je servais dans son premier exil. Je lui donnai alors un
peu de mon sang, je viens de pleurer auprès de lui; à mon âge on n’a guère
que des larmes.
It was from Metz in 1792 that emerged the column that had engaged out-
side Thionville with our small corps of émigrés. I have just come from my
pilgrimage to the place of retreat of that banished prince I served dur-
ing his first exile. At that time I gave him a little of my blood; this time I
merely cried at his side; at my age we have hardly anything but tears left.
The two trips to Metz underscore the opposition between two ages (youth/old
age), but only to suggest a commonality beyond the antithesis. Here we have
the same thing, this time produced by means of symmetry: a prince already in
exile, a battle already lost. Result: just like in the case of Guise and Vauban, the
gap in time brings out a fundamental continuity, that of the downfall of the
monarchy, which had already occurred in 1792, only to be confirmed in 1832.
A change of paragraph introduces the consideration of a new interval in time:
En 1821 M. de Tocqueville, beau-frère de mon frère, était préfet de la

Moselle. Les arbres, gros comme des échalas que M. de Tocqueville plan-
tait en 1820 à la porte de Metz, donnent maintenant de l’ombre.
In 1821 de Tocqueville, my brother’s brother-in-law, was prefect of the

Moselle. The trees, as thin as beanpoles, that M. de Tocqueville planted in
1820 at the Metz Gate, now give shade.
Returning to the good times of the Restoration, Chateaubriand mentions a

memory that seems to bear no relation to the previous ones. All the same, the
“porte de Metz” is there, recalling Vauban and the military character of the city
in Lorraine. But, planting trees is a peaceful activity, and is thus a detail that
sits uneasily with the conjuring up of the monarchy’s success in the area of
warfare. These trees, furthermore, had quietly continued to grow between 1822
and 1832, not disturbed in the slightest by the passing of the Restoration. Let us
further note that the planter, despite the aristocratic particle in his name, by
fulfilling the responsibilities of préfet (a post created under the Empire) and of
42 Petitier
préfet de la Moselle (a department name created by the Assemblée Constituante)

displayed even under the Restoration the continuity of a new order, one which,
like his trees, was destined to last in spite of political revolutions.
The reference to the strata of memory thus corresponds to the various per-
spectives on history adopted by the author, an approach in which the most
ordinary of time frames (for example, the growth of trees) serves to offer an
insight into a truth about history. By this interplay of different scales, the life of
the individual allows him to comprehend historical changes not envisaged in a
traditional chronology founded on events and divorced from the real processes
of history.
The analysis of the metaphor of memory strata in Chateaubriand highlights
the importance of the events of 1830 to the appearance of a new relation-
ship with the past. 1830 was a revolution which, paradoxically, seems to have
weakened the idea of a history of great events punctuated by rapid and radical
changes. The short-lived character of the July Revolution made it appear the
inevitable consequence of long term changes, a result of processes all the more
irreversible because they of their differing forms and utterly ordinariness.
Across the Channel at the same moment, geology was turning to uniformitari-
anism and excluding as possible agents of change all but those actors readily
observable in the present day. It would appear that in France the same trans-
formation was taking place in the way that history was being thought about.
We see it in the work of the great memorialist, Chateaubriand, but also in a
novelist like Balzac, and a historian such as Michelet. It all adds up to a conclu-
sive convergence. To the question, ‘What fundamentally makes me a historical
being and a witness to history?’, each man answered in similar fashion. For the
memorialist, it was not so much the fact of having been a witness to important
events and of having recorded them, but rather of having been able to make
use of his own life, and of the present, in order to see how the past turned into
history. Is this not also true of Balzac’s post-1830 novels? Henceforth, was it
not a matter of conveying history in the present, of showing what it was truly
made of: the complexity of human interactions taking place before the very
eyes of the novelist, and the way this explained the deep upheavals observ-
able decades later? The present really was the best way to understand the past,
allowing one, as it did, to grasp history much better than any historical novel
that overlaid a plot on a canvas of events seen as decisive only in retrospect.
Finally, when we consider Michelet, we also see that he combined his role as
historian with that of diarist. His Journal, which he wrote daily, is not a record
of the great events of the day, but rather of his existence, details of his working
habits, the people he saw, as well as his physical activity. Yet, the Journal was
also where the author observed the strata of his intellectual life and the way
in which his memory worked: the recording of the present thus amounted to
a modelling of history. In his 1831 work, l’Introduction à l’histoire universelle, in
which he lay out his vision, Michelet announced that he had rethought history
in the light of “l’éclair de juillet” / “lightning bolt of July”: indeed, this sudden
lightning bolt led him to return to the roots of human history and to present
it as a long voyage from India to France. The storminess of the present engen-
dered in him a boundless openness to historical time.
1830 thus turns out to have been the moment the present became “le lieu
dans lequel, véritablement, se joue la construction du passé” / “the stage on
which the process of constructing the past truly took place” (Olivier, 2008: 205).
And Laurent Olivier’s conclusion regarding Lyell’s epistemological revolution
seems, in conclusion, perfectly applicable to the three authors we have dis-
cussed, and to their stance vis-à-vis the July Revolution:
Du coup, l’histoire—comme connaissance du passé—en est transfor-

mée: elle n’est plus le récit de la succession des temps ou des périodes
du passé: elle devient une discipline encore inédite qui observe le passé
comme l’accumulation d’une mémoire toujours en construction.
Olivier, 2008: 210
As a result, history—as knowledge of the past—was transformed: it

was no longer the narrative of a series of times or periods in the past:
it became a discipline that had never been seen before, one that con-
sidered the past as the accumulation of a memory that was still under
construction.
Bibliography
Chateaubriand, François-René de, 1834. Œuvres complètes, 22 vols., vol. 1: Essai histo-
rique sur les révolutions. Paris, Pourrat frères.
Chateaubriand, François-René de, 1966. Génie du christianisme. Paris, Flammarion.
Chateaubriand, François-René de, 1998. Mémoires d’outre-tombe, 4 vols., edited by
Jean-Claude Berchet. Paris, Librairie Générale Française, Le Livre de poche.
Freud, Sigmund, 2009 [French translation]. La Naissance de la psychanalyse. Paris,
PUF.
44 Petitier
Gauchet, Marcel, 1992. L’Inconscient cérébral. Paris, Éditions du Seuil.

Michelet, Jules. “Dossier Méthode historique et enseignement.” Papiers Michelet
(Cote A 3887). Paris, Bibliothèque historique de la Ville de Paris.
Michelet, Jules, 1972. “Introduction à l’histoire universelle.” Œuvres complètes, 21 vols.,
vol. 2, edited by Paul Viallaneix. Paris, Flammarion.
Olivier, Laurent, 2008. Le Sombre Abîme du temps. Paris, Éditions du Seuil.
Proust, Marcel, 1998. Albertine disparue. Paris, Gallimard.
Stendhal, 1988. Vie d’Henry Brulard. Paris, Editions Glénat.
Devilish Words: Pierre Boitard, “maître Georges”
and the Advance of Nature
Claude Blanckaert
Abstract
Pierre Boitard (1789–1859), an ancient officer reconverted to natural history, is one of

the first vulgarizers of a transformist doctrine based on the “metamorphosis” of matter
and the “genealogical tree of organization”. Since the mid-1830s, he takes up Le Diable
boiteux by René Lesage in order to give a literary form to a novel on the origins, found-
ed on Lamarck. Contesting the system of catastrophes, claimed by Georges Cuvier
(“maître Georges”), he carries his reader along into the abyss of time. He covers the
lost worlds of the past ages of Earth and shows him the imperative march of Nature,
growing more and more complex from period to period, since the formation of our
globe 875,000 years ago.
Contemporary historiography has highlighted just how eclectic and confusing

were the general ideas about organic change and the origin of species before
1859. Pietro Corsi (2011: 127) noted recently that after 1825 the evolutionist de-
bate, taken in its broadest sense, was not limited to the refinement of episte-
mological categories, and that it was notable for the “plurality of voices”, among
which those of professional naturalists were not in the majority. Indeed, with-
out denying the stubbornness of certain intellectual lines of descent, the once
highly popular search for Darwin’s “precursors” requires revision. Firstly, it
is clear that a whole raft of controversies, however bitter and recurrent they
might have been, did not preclude shared beliefs, for instance regarding the
perfecting of forms (established by palaeontology) or the idea that the Earth
had a long history, an idea which was less than compatible with the Book of
Genesis. Furthermore, hundreds of participants all over Europe conferred a
spiritual, or even eschatological dimension on this world view, whether they
expressed it in the form of deciphering, confronted their assumptions or root-
ed it in the broader culture.
It was a society-wide phenomenon. It was of little consequence that, using
poetic licence, Balzac turned the “thousands of centuries”, which Cuvier so-
berly allocated to our pre-diluvian history, into “billions of years”. There re-
mained the terror in the soul and that exalted feeling that “the magical voice of
46 Blanckaert
science” was capable of conjuring up ghosts from the deepest and darkest past
(Boitard, 1837: 55). Well-known or overlooked scholars, journalists of varying
professional standards, philosophers and artists all lent it meaning and kept it
before the public in word and image. The popularisers were not shy either. The
agitation that followed allowed the question of the reality of the species, the
incremental speed of creation and its incredible, literally geological, duration
to be posed.
While the concept of “transformism” is attested to only after 1867, the new
doctrine already had a name when Darwin’s masterwork appeared. In 1845, the
botanist and journalist Frédéric Gérard, an admirer of Lamarck who was open-
ly and personally hostile to Cuvier, set out in Charles d’Orbigny’s Dictionnaire
universel d’histoire naturelle the “theory of the evolution of organic forms”
(Laurent, 1987: 384). In 1855, the professor of the Royal University of Turin
Filippo de Filippi in turn discussed the “theory of the transformation of spe-
cies” (Filippi, 1858: 24). A year or two later, bringing up to date some old pub-
lications dating from 1836–1838, Pierre Boitard was subscribing to the “system
of transformation or rather of organic modifications in animals” (Boitard, 1861:
137). Speaking to his friend Thomas Henry Huxley about the initial reactions
to On the Origin of Species in August 1860, Charles Darwin referred to his work
tongue-in-cheek as “the devil’s testament” (Darwin, 1888, II: 198). Unbeknown
to him, he had a predecessor in this regard. Boitard had made dramatic use
of Asmodeus, a 1707 creation of René Lesage, in order to embody his revolt
against the learned ignorance of Parisian geologists and to strip off the “mask of
scholarly pretence and pedantry”: “Je crois ce que croyaient Buffon, Lamarck,
Lamétherie et tant d’autres qui n’étaient pas aussi crédules que la plupart de
nos géologues d’aujourd’hui.” / “I believe what Buffon, Lamarck, Lamétherie
and so many others believed, who were not as gullible as our present-day geo
logists” (Boitard, 1861: 137). These were devilish words indeed!
1 Against “Scholarly Hair-Splitters”
Pierre Boitard (1789–1859), ex-senior officer in the free forces during Napoleon’s
Hundred Days, enrolled in the king’s guards of Henri I (King of Haiti), who
committed suicide in October 1820. With the contract thus terminated, Boitard
returned to Paris and took a new path. A naturalist and a “man of letters”, mak-
ing a living from his copious writings, he became a “populariser” famous for
his numerous Roret agronomic manuals, his Botanique des dames and also the
Astronomie amusante (cf. Thiébaud, Tissot-Robbe, 2011: 400–402). While a jack-
of-all-trades in appearance, Boitard’s natural history expertise was real, and he
Devilish Words 47
put it in the service of a systematic, irreverent “popular science”, as resistant

to hypothesisers as it was to established scholars “who no longer want any-
thing but facts while they wait and see what they will do with them” (Boitard,
1839–1840: 38).
His sole work still remembered today, the posthumous Paris avant les hom-
mes (1861), is immediately notable because of its clearly “evolutionist” bent
and its numerous full length illustrations of ante-diluvian animals, down to
even large reptiles and “fossil man”, sketched as a beast, a hairy savage drink-
ing hyena blood. According to historian Martin Rudwick (1992: 166ff.), this
was the first pictorial representation of Boucher de Perthes’ views on man’s
geological antiquity. By thus reintroducing our forebear into the ante-diluvian
world, Boitard confirmed the worst fears of the traditionalists and apparently
provoked the publication two years later of La Terre avant le déluge by Louis
Figuier. By exposing unwitting readers to such images, Boitard was breaking
with the Edenic style of popular imagery and was exploding a political and
religious consensus. For a short time, Figuier was the winner in this struggle
for influence, and his adamic, Arcadian tableaux (Rudwick, 1992: 206–208,
239–250) assuaged the broken-hearted. Paris avant les hommes did not enjoy
the same success.
Published in the heat of the initial discussion of Darwin’s scandalous the-
ses, but effectively dating from 1856–1857, this novel of origins was a take on
the always popular theme of a descent into the “dark abyss of time”, in other
words a “palaeontological stroll” through “the virgin forests of a bygone world”
(Boitard, 1861: 6–7). All that was needed was a guide and a neophyte to put the
questions. Since Fontenelle, the didactic dialogue between the scholar and the
well-disposed but unaware individual had been a staple. Boitard did not break
with the rules of the form, yet he was totally original. For this “agreeable” trip,
destined to be instructive for the well-prepared schoolchild (whose knowledge
was in fact the fruit of university-taught preconceptions), would be led by an
unexpected cicerone: Lesage’s diable boiteux, the “lame demon”. True to form,
this character knows how to baffle the foolish and to use his caustic eloquence
against parvenus. Also in his favour is the fact that he does not mislead his pub-
lic and that, with a wave of his magic crutches, he can whisk his companion
away at virtually no cost. He is a convenient device—one that becomes quickly
highly believable—for going back in time (Boitard, 1861: 116).
In a classic novelistic move, Paris avant les hommes begins with the narrator
half asleep. Asmodeus, Lesage’s irascible genius, appears in a whirl of smoke,
while Boitard, the unwilling hero of this mad escapade, sinks sleepily deeper
into his armchair as he meditates on the mysteries of creation. Deep in this
state so propitious to escapism, the devil promises him a strange initiation.
48 Blanckaert
Since he had the power to “go back thousands of centuries into the past”
(Boitard, 1861: 3), he would not restrict himself “to cobbling together bits and
pieces of the past” (Boitard, 1861: 2). He would take him to the heart of the ac-
tion on a moonstone-cum-aircraft, getting off at each stop to observe and point
out what was taking place at the different “ages” of nature:
Nous allons suivre pied à pied la marche que prit la matière lorsque, pour
la première fois, elle frémit et s’agita dans le temps et l’espace à ces pa-
roles de la sagesse de Dieu, qui retentiront à jamais dans l’éternité: “Que
l’univers soit fait!”
Boitard, 1861: 7
We are going to follow step-by-step the course taken by matter, beginning

with the first time it shivered and moved in space at these words of God’s
wisdom, which will echo forever in eternity: “Let the universe be!”
The genie’s travels offered the significant advantage of freeing the travellers
and the readers from the constraints of time and place, and of distinguishing
clearly the fossil strata of the Earth, as well as providing explanatory pauses
between two picturesque “palaeoscenes”. This rhythm is totally characteristic
of Boitard’s style, in which situational comedy and diatribe vied for space with
instruction aimed at the neophyte. Without sacrificing the “magic of science”
(he knew what his audience wanted), the scholarly devil waves his crutch on
a number of occasions in the direction of academic orthodoxy, such as the
accepted doctrine concerning the differences between species and their fixed-
ness, the recent refusal to accept the idea of fossil man, and even the way that
the past was reconstructed based on dubious analogies, etc.
Even displaced into the realm of conjecture, Lesage’s influence was patent
and productive. The narrative thus took a literary turn, even if it was in the
shape of a hypertext. Let it also be said that the similarity of approach and of
satirical intent between both authors increased the Voltairean and philosophi-
cal power of a work whose intent was also to show the real “path” taken by
nature and to denounce those scholars-for-hire, followers of Cuvier or William
Buckland who “are more attached to their dreadful cataclysms than to natural
history” (Boitard, 1861: 231–232). Claiming to be the successor of the long since
dead Lesage, that unmasker of subterfuge, was thus a smart move.
The jeering and sardonic aspect of the demon, his peremptory yet, in the
end, appealing character, would turn many a situation around. Thanks to his
role as intercessor, as almost Socratic figure, evolution runs through the novel
and vice versa. Of course, Boitard plays advocate for the devil with horned
Devilish Words 49
feet. There is no distinction between the author and this strange Cupid fig-
ure, champion of the truth, who knows the past. Beyond an all-too-perceptible
play on words stressing their homonymy, Boitard—just like his mouthpiece—
enjoyed “disturbing minds much more than putting them at ease” (Lesage,
1840: 39). Thanks to this use of mask, he got around religious and political pro-
hibitions, the “preconceived ideas of the deceased master Georges [Cuvier]”
(Boitard, 1861: 252), and could freely champion spontaneous generation, the
metamorphoses of living beings and the materiality of the soul with provoca-
tive and assertive arguments. Boitard’s intention was to retrace the unavoid-
able mechanism by which nature got to be how it was and how it changes,
“from the simplest to the most complicated life forms”, in other words from
monad to man (Boitard, 1861: 6–7).
However, the permutation of roles places him above suspicion. Asmodeus
appears to him in a dream, and the narrative could be read as pure imagina-
tion, just like the “magic glasses” that this considerate devil places on his nose
so that he can see “the first atoms of matter as they come together” (Boitard,
1861: 19)—which is a pleasant way of suggesting that French scholars “are quite
short-sighted”. But with the devil insisting that he finds repulsive the notion
“that God went back six times to restart the same creation, only to annihilate
it six times in succession”, the doctrine of telluric convulsions is put to rest
once and for all. The followers of Cuvier are subjected to ridicule. They are
compromising both science and religion (Boitard, 1861: 58, 100–102). If they
so often contradict one another when it comes to their reconstitutions—
Constant Prévost even mistook a fossil of a tibia from a crocodile for that of a
giant palmiped—it is because theirs is all empty talk (Boitard, 1861: 83–85). If
Boitard is to be believed, they were all “romanciers” / “writers of fiction” and
“savants caillouteurs” / “scholarly hair-splitters”.
Nevertheless, this was not Boitard’s first venture, either in terms of the sub-
ject matter or the dialogical structure. This prehistoric novel was reusing mate-
rial that had been published in the form of articles in the Musée des familles
and the Magasin universel as early as 1836–1838 under the same title. The limp-
ing devil had thus early on struck him as the best possible means of casting
scorn on the quirks of “our naturalists”. From this perspective, Paris avant les
hommes (1861) represents the fruit of a long period of reflection. The careful
use of quotation from his own work shows how little his views had changed—
which just goes to show what a committed, pugnacious and highly consistent
thinker he was. Every one of his articles bears this out with their desire to break
with the “supposedly natural method” of Cuvier’s followers (Boitard, 1837: 47),
their “utopias” (Boitard, 1838: 216), their “twisted logic”. The modern-day reader
delights in finding beneath this philippic so many serious ideas put forward
50 Blanckaert
by geologists to explain the floods, the alternation of tropical and temperate

fauna on our continent and the pseudo-transfer of the poles to the equator.
Boitard “believed” in the stubbornness of the living world, and in the modi-
fications that accompanied the constitution of the earth and of its organisms.
Above all, he was an actualist. He thus took advantage of the contradictions
within the work of the scholars he was challenging in order to offer the reader
of the Musée des familles lessons about things, and in order to extract maxi-
mum comic effect. His riff on the Dinotherium remains, in this respect, exem-
plary. In 1836 a complete pachyderm’s head, which until then had only been
seen in fragmentary form, was exhibited in Paris; Johann Jakob Kaup had
uncovered it in the tertiary sands of the Grand Duchy of Hesse. The animal
defied all classification. Everyone, in accordance with their systems, found
that it was similar to one or other present-day species and, by turns, it was de-
clared categorically by experts to be a giant tapir (Cuvier), an edentate (Kaup),
a sort of manatee (Blainville) and, eventually, an elephant (cf. Balan, 1997).
With great delight, Boitard even added that in Germany, there had even been
talk of whales. Dubious after having attended the exhibition, the character-
Boitard finds himself faced with a monster “that seems to have been found
expressly in order to disappoint scholars”. Happily for him, the devilishly clever
Asmodeus reappears and, as is his wont, lambasts all “the [usual] authors”. The
Dinotherium with inverted tusks is nothing other, in his judgment, than a giant
mole, a mole grafted onto the body of an elephant. He pursues his demonstra-
tion, in the process showing up the failings of the Cuvierian law of correlation,
as well as the classification according to the form or number of teeth which,
he maintains, is really not appropriate in the case of the family of the marsu-
pials, and concluding with a philosophical lecture in which, according to the
Buffonian axiom, the important is “to see nothing as being impossible, to ex-
pect anything, and to suppose that anything that might be actually is” (Buffon,
1954: 360). The scientific establishment is slated in the process. But that is not
all. Following the devil, the incredulous “schoolboy” mounts his magic crutch
and, with one shot of a crossbow, becomes witness to an altercation between
the Dinotherium, freshly emerged from his crater, and an aggressive mast-
odon. After a furious attack, the former turns into a living gimlet and burrows
into the earth. We immediately understand that the devil had got it right: the
Dinotherium had fought its way out of the earth only to return back into it
(Boitard, 1837: 45–49).
Boitard the author would rework this anecdote (Boitard, 1861: 140–151). For,
let there be no mistake, for him only those presumptuous anatomists who,
like Cuvier, wanted to identify the class, and even the genus, of an unknown
animal “after having inspected a single bone” were capable of such ridiculous
Devilish Words 51
nonsense (Cuvier, in Rudwick, 1997: 286). In his “Études astronomiques”, dat-

ing from 1839, in which the same protagonists meet, Boitard gives us solution
of the mystery. Emboldened by his recent discovery of “analogy”, that alleged
Ariadne’s thread in the great labyrinth of forms, the poor unfortunate narrator
declares punctiliously that the Dinotherium, which people had groundlessly
identified as an elephant or a walrus, was none other “than the grandmother
of the mole”. He stops short when he sees Asmodeus and his fellow interstel-
lar travellers bursting into laughter at such nonsense. The absurdity of the
situation becomes crystal clear. The limping devil is no university professor
dispensing truths. He is the incarnation of a vigilant form of maieutics, ex-
posing the impostures of the gurus and the sterile naivety of those they have
trained.
Boitard had not always been so resentful of his contemporaries. In one of
his articles from 1836, he trips over himself to praise the “vast knowledge” of
the “baron Georges Cuvier”, his “immense work” in the restoration of fossils,
and what almost amounted to a gift of divination which had opened a “com-
pletely new field” of study of the past (Boitard, 1835–1836: 278–279). A few years
later he was condemning his intransigence.
The discovery of fossil man, which Boitard accepted early on, but which the
Académie des sciences refused for a generation on the grounds that Cuvier
“had positively ruled it out and that the great man was infallible” (Boitard,
1861: 139), was not a negligible factor in this change of attitude (cf. Blanckaert,
2000; Rudwick, 2008: 420–422). Clearly, the controversy was not a matter of
“facts” but one of freedom of thought. In particular, the truth of the matter
took second place to the higher priority of preserving the biblical flood, a fact
denounced by Boitard. As early as 1837, his mind was made up. The caves in the
South of France containing bones had yielded their secrets. Long ago, man had
really lived side-by-side with cave-dwelling bears and rhinoceroses, and it had
to be admitted that in this “revolting” form and with this homicidal disposi-
tion, “the race of Cain had already penetrated the Gauls” (Boitard, 1837: 61–63).
The continuity of the work of creation made the appearance of man at the ap-
propriated time inevitable, just after the fossil monkey, his “caricature”, which
Edouart Lartet had just dug up, purely by chance, in tertiary deposits at Sansan
(in the Gers) in 1836.
Fully acquainted with recent discoveries, and a chronicler of a science on
the march, Boitard was no Pyrrhonian. Thanks to their scrupulous documen-
tary basis, his long articles had an uncontestably instructive power, notwith-
standing their fictional trappings. They were even more remarkable for the way
in which they divided into chapters the geological “periods”, a dynamic factor
that Cuvier stressed in lectures on geology when he stated that “there were
52 Blanckaert
different periods, producing different types of fossils” (Rudwick, 1997: 291), but
that were overlooked by both popular manuals (Rudwick, 1992: 170) and by
all too many mainstream scholars. Thus, it came about after Cuvier’s death
in 1832 that his disciple Pierre Flourens, perpetual secretary of the Académie
des sciences, would say in his Éloge of December 1834, that a debt was owed to
his genius for having conceived in detail of “the idea of a complete creation of
animals preceding the present creation, that is to say of a completely destroyed
and lost creation” (Flourens, 1856, I: 145).
Boitard was not impressed by the double sequence, the cataclysm which
bisected it and the telescoping of chronology in order to lend a fake coher-
ence to the previous “ante-diluvian” or, more precisely, pre-adamite world. His
alternative to catastrophism was coherent in its terms, and it merits attention.
With anatomy as his guiding light, Cuvier believed himself capable of “break-
ing through the limits of time” and of plumbing “the murky depths of the
earth’s infancy” (Cuvier, 1885: 62–63). Unlike him, Boitard was writing under
divine dictation. What is more, catastrophes were, in his view, the work of the
devil, “and they are as much an offence to the laws of common sense as to the
dogmas of religion” (Boitard, 1861: 117). Moreover, he warned, the progress of
nature contradicts this “stupidity”. Since it is necessary and sufficient, whispers
Asmodeus to him,
je pense que vos savants, pour expliquer raisonnablement les phéno-

mènes dont ils ignorent les causes, devraient un peu moins souvent
mettre à l’écart le doigt de Dieu …
Boitard, 1861: 154
I think that your scholars should be less quick to set aside the hand of
God when it comes to finding reasonable explanations for phenomena
whose causes they ignore …
2 The Natural History of Creation
Despite a few rare utterances directly equating “nature” and “matter” (1861: 37),
Boitard belongs to that category of thinkers who, like Lamarck, Geoffroy Saint-
Hilaire or Bory de Saint-Vincent, considered the organising laws of nature to
be divine decrees. It was a deist view that could shock the official churches,
but one that it would be wrong to confuse with atheist materialism. When all
is said and done, Boitard never said anything explicitly about his metaphysical
views, nor his intellectual points of reference. He barely mentions Lamarck
Devilish Words 53
in his 1861 testamentary work and even this is the only mention in this highly
repetitive body of work stretching back to 1830. Boitard jealously guarded his
sources and was aware that he was a tinkerer. Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire,
suspected of pantheism and, of course, an adept of the unity of composition
doctrine was not quoted any more than Bory de Saint-Vincent. The intertext
usually described as “transformist” was found wanting and the accepted sce-
narios describing organic progress had a hard time coalescing in this idiosyn-
cratic outlook.
However, just like Lamarck or Bory de Saint-Vincent, whom he clearly drew
upon, Boitard was “progressionist” and necessitarist. The living natural world
initially emerged from matter via spontaneous generation and, from that point,
pursued its necessary course through becoming more complicated (Boitard,
1835–1836: 266). Boitard bizarrely uses the term “analytical” advance to refer
to the successive “creation” of groups and species that led elementary beings,
the mere “gropings” of nature (Boitard, 1838: 213), to its (provisional?) conclu-
sion, i.e. mankind, “the most perfect” … He would also refer to a “rational ad-
vance” (Boitard, 1839: 79). The ascending dynamic of nature traced a “arbre
généalogique de l’organisation” / “genealogical tree of organisation”, an evoca-
tive phrase we find in his work as early as 1838 (Boitard, 1838: 215), and one
which scrupulously respected the order in which classes appeared, diverged
and were perfected, as could be observed in palaeontological strata. The ad-
vance of time and the advance of living organisms were one and the same.
Out of the figure of the tree plunging its roots into the undifferentiated “va-
riety” of micro-organisms, there came the striking image of a common trunk,
with new lateral branches growing out of it from one age to the next. Plants
and animals had a common origin. In a later phase, the two realms grew apart
according to their respective “outlines”, with algae on one side, zoophytes on
the other.
Like Lamarck, Boitard never referred to the spontaneous generation of com-
plex organisms. That was limited in reality to the primitive, inchoate “phases”
of a creation drawn by the “hand of God”. However, the current existence of
spontaneous generation fulfilled other purposes. In particular, it acted to com-
plete the series of visible forms set out by the “genealogical tree of organisa-
tion” which, in the course of its immemorial growth, could seem destined to
detach itself from its tiniest lower levels and to take on the shape of a “coral of
life”, dead at the base and alive on its edges. This was one of Charles Darwin’s
favourite expressions and I use it on purpose, not merely because it comes
from a notebook dated 1837–1838 and is thus contemporaneous with Boitard,
but also because it answers in advance this embarrassing problem. The tree
of life, wrote Darwin (1980: 182), “should perhaps be called the coral of life,
54 Blanckaert
base of branches dead; so that passages cannot be seen”. Thanks to spontane-

ous generation, Boitard could henceforth point out the living “analogues”, the
equivalent of the original monads, with his microscope, thus justifying their
anachronistic survival.
There remained the unknown element in this unshakeable equation: what
were the guiding mechanisms of this orderly unfolding of living matter? Despite
using a disconcertingly creationist vocabulary—“Enfin les mammifères sont
créés” / “At last mammals were created” (Boitard, 1835–1836: 267)—which
could be misleading, Boitard did not subscribe to William Buckland’s and the
physico-theologians providentialism. To be sure, the inherent finality of life
guided the process, but there was no other transcendent “design” that would
lead one to adore the power and wisdom of the supreme Legislator. Moreover,
Boitard did not support the idea of the fixity of species. He even declared him-
self to be a nominalist.
Comme Buffon, je crois que la nature n’a fait ni ordres, ni familles, ni

genres, mais seulement des individus.
Boitard, 1842: LXIV
Like Buffon, I believe that nature has created neither orders, nor families,
nor genera, only individuals.
In fact, the sort of actualism he had in mind, especially in its “uniformitarian”

version which presupposes similar conditions throughout the history of the
earth put even more strain on the idea of miraculous creations, and favoured
the idea of “simple, natural, and still active causes” (Boitard, 1838: 238). These
causes remained nevertheless difficult to discern. Boitard allowed that envi-
ronmental factors might be important, albeit accessory, factors in the “modifi-
cation” of “types”.
Even so, the overall organisational composition, present across its numer-
ous elements and its inevitable stages, required a different type of explana-
tion altogether. The creation of types, carried out according to a progressive
and consistent operating schema, was difficult to combine with the disturb-
ing effects of the environment. Boitard sidestepped all these obstacles. The
successive changes in the living world were, for him, the products of “grada-
tions de métamorphose” / “gradual metamorphosis” (Boitard, 1861: 50), a con-
cept that was so vague as to fit in with any causal explanation. The term is
not at all detailed and is related to the “advance of nature” that he intends to
explain:
Devilish Words 55
En suivant la matière dans ses métamorphoses, depuis la plus simple

organisation jusqu’à la plus compliquée, nous trouverons sans doute le
point où l’homme, brut et sauvage comme il devait l’être aux premiers
jours de sa naissance, a dû nécessairement prendre rang dans la création
de l’univers.
Boitard, 1838: 211
Following matter through all its metamorphoses, from its most simple
form to its most complicated, we shall doubtless come across the point
when man, rough and wild as he must have been at his beginnings, must
have taken his place in the universe’s great design.
The variations of living matter all had their place on the great arrow of time. In
Boitard’s scheme, the series exhausted the available circumstances.
Without wishing to, he introduced contradiction into the very heart of
Lamarckian thinking. Unless, of course, in criticizing catastrophism, he was
using the term “metamorphosis” as an antonym aggressively turned against the
idea that the earth had been through a series of convulsive destructions and
reparatory recreations. It should not be forgotten that, for Boitard, catastroph-
ist geologists were guilty of blasphemy and that religion, “which had no need of
them”, stood on its “truth and holiness” alone (Boitard, 1861: 102). In any event,
nothing in Paris avant les hommes explains the ultimate intentions of the au-
thor nor what motivated his choice of vocabulary. Boitard, at this time, clearly
knew nothing about the resources of the embryological model of “develop-
ment” and if he happened to use the word “metamorphosis”—which was well
within his rights to do—it was merely ornamental. In fact, as much because of
its etymology as of the way it is used, the concept of metamorphosis reflects
the difference between a form and its primitive type, a disposition that may be
systematic, such as in the case of insects (i.e. organogeny), or accidental and
destined to be repeated or not by reproduction. Since Boitard never talks about
the productive aspects of chance, it would seem reasonable to understand the
term in its epigenetic meaning, i.e. as the activation of the potential already
present—from the outset?—in the simplest of organisms.
Going back over the history of organisms as Boitard did, the advance of
nature amounted to a voyage through time and equally to a confirmation of
the harmonious correspondence between homogenous palaeontological de-
posits, a diachrony and taxonomical types distributed in levels, which were all
interconnected over time and by “intermediate links”. These links appeared at
the appointed time during necessary “phases” of a design that altered and got
56 Blanckaert
more detailed “as God perfects the organisation” (Boitard, 1838: 224). Because
of these incontestable parallels, Boitard could remain purely descriptive. Their
suggestive power made up for the lack of any convincing demonstration. Thus,
when the first tortoise appeared, it was not “complete”. It had no shell, its nose
was more of a trump and it had not yet severed the “analogical thread” link-
ing it to fish. “Perfection” would come later. Thankfully! Since otherwise, he
explained, the necessary stages “would not have been sufficiently observed”.
It was thus necessary that the tortoise be “soft” (Boitard, 1861: 50–51). Boitard’s
system was overloaded with transitional forms, with synthetic types announc-
ing differences promising groups that would become stable at a later stage.
Pivotally, many species functioned to facilitate the “natural move” from one to
the other, like the opossum, a monotreme mammal that went back and forth
between being viviparous and oviparous, and which preserved “habits and
even anatomical features of certain reptiles”:
Il est nécessaire, si la nature suit réellement la marche que nous croyons,

que cet animal soit bizarre dans ses formes et ses mœurs, car il doit tenir
encore un peu du lézard.
Boitard, 1838: 221
It is necessary, if nature really does follow the path that we believe it does,
that this animal be bizarre in shape and behaviour, for it still must take
after the lizard.
Nature did no leaps. More out of boldness than insight, Boitard contested the
sophisticated principle of the correlation of parts, a classificatory requisite that
ruled physiology and comparative anatomy. Cuvier made the best use of this
principle in distinguishing four zoological branches and their different taxons
in order of decreasing size: classes, orders, genera, etc. Beyond this, Cuvier took
advantage of this powerful principle to rule out the idea of “unity of composi-
tion” so dear to Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire and the transformists. Boitard, for his
part, stressed other concordances. He drew parallels between physical features
based on rough functional similarities. In terms of its body, its jaws and its
dolphin flippers, the ichthyosaur was the “natural transition between reptiles
and cetaceans” (Boitard, 1838: 220). “Half pike, half tortoise”, the megalictis
“was the natural transition between fish and reptiles”, just like the sauroids,
which were “fish-reptiles” (Boitard, 1837: 52). The plesiosaur, so “fantastical” in
appearance, displays “features taken from all the classes of vertebrates” and
seems “to constitute a link between, on the one hand, reptiles and fish and,
on the other, cetaceans” (Boitard, 1861: 66). The progression of forms lost all
Devilish Words 57
its supernatural aura as long as one did not sunder what nature had brought
together. Gradualist philosophy, sidestepping all the problems involved in the
reconstruction of ancient fauna, is satisfied to remind us that separate types do
not appear without prefigurations.
The result was that the metamorphoses of the living world seemed prede-
termined and that the advances in knowledge would consist henceforth mere-
ly in filling in the gaps. Right down to today, observes Boitard, the method for
making distinctions used by naturalists is “disproved” by the discovery or re-
examination of strange and incongruous creatures (Boitard, 1861: 127), which,
properly understood, would overturn the fundamentals of zoological classifi-
cation. A cave-dwelling animal, the adult proteus was both a fish due to its gills
and a reptile thanks to its lungs. It would thus appear to be the living equiva-
lent of the megalictis of long ago. But this case attracted Boitard’s attention
for another reason. It showed that time had not finished its work, and that its
undiminished “creative power” was subservient to often overlooked teleologi-
cal tendencies: the proteus “has four short legs that appear stunted, suggesting
that they shall either be eliminated or disappear over the coming centuries,
or that they will develop to become perfect legs, depending on whether time
pushes this amazing being into the class of fish or that of reptiles” (Boitard,
1838–1839: 95).
Did the doctrine of the modification of species also reveal the blind necessity
of a compromise between form and function in accordance with the Buffonian
adage “anything that might be actually is”, or the radical turn of a prophetic
cult of planning? Boitard does not go into much detail regarding final causes.
Nevertheless, the preadaptation of the proteus to some future state of the earth
either points to the inadequacies of the present or the palingenesis of a future
turn of events. History was thus apparently virtually present in the seed. Was it
therefore possible that, awaiting their awakening, the various “types” had been
all present from the very beginning of the world?
An order of created things supposing someone to lend them order, Boitard,
caught between a rock and a hard place, left it to the reader to take his choice.
But a sentence, just a single sentence, spoken by Asmodeus, allows us to glimpse
the activist role he saw the Almighty playing with regard to the here-and-now:
La création s’est opérée d’une seule fois, lorsque Dieu a dit dans l’éternité:
“que la matière s’organise”. Dès cet instant tous les types furent créés en
principe ou en germe, avec la loi de la modification des êtres selon les
temps, les climats, et mille autres circonstances qu’il avait prévues et diri-
gées à l’avance dans l’immensité de sa Sagesse.
Boitard, 1861: 58
58 Blanckaert
Creation took place only once, with God saying in his eternal realm: “let
matter take shape”. From that moment, all types were created in principle
or potential, along with the law on the modification of beings according
to time, climate, and a thousand other circumstances which, in the im-
mensity of his Wisdom, he had planned and set out in advance.
People thought he was an atheist; he was merely an exegete.
3 Final Words
Boitard is no longer read, but he is quoted all the same. In his case, the quality
of the illustrations he had Théodore Susemilh make beginning in 1836 eclipsed
the text that was meant to explain them. These realistic vignettes have lasting
power, and some of them, such as those that illustrated palaeo-landscapes or
fossil man, would continue to be popular right until the end of the century.
However, I have chosen to restrict myself to the problematic aspects of the
work, without dodging the fact that Boitard is an author on the margins, which
is not to say marginal. Boitard refused to subscribe to mainstream systems,
even of course (and this is the ambiguity of what he wrote) at the risk of put-
ting together a system whose value and originality were not always shared by
others.
It is certainly worthwhile thinking about his relationship with Buffon, whom
he first read with “distrust”, but came to celebrate in the end as the “greatest
naturalist we have ever had”. We should not confuse, he said in an effort to find
excuses, the “genius” and the “method”. In a way, he appreciated his breadth of
vision and for him the philosopher in Buffon compensated for his iconoclasm
(Boitard, 1837: 58). The same applies, in my view, to Boitard. His style sums
him up as a man and amphibology suits him down to the ground. It serves him
well, for it allows us to see what he was hiding. Taking him seriously is not a
pointless exercise, for he embodies the contradictions of his time. Let us not
forget, when all is said and done, that the clear dividing line between fixism
and progressionism, i.e. between creation and evolution, that exists today was
only a borderline case during the half-century preceding Darwinism. Scores of
authors were speaking to the same popular and scholarly audiences, and their
daring formulations coincided or clashed. Darwin, or even Lamarck and Bory
de Saint-Vincent (whom we think better of today) are available to us because
of this effervescence. It would appear that the history of science now considers
them as established figures rather than as initiators.
Devilish Words 59
All told, Boitard does not fit into our narrow categories. He was a go-be-
tween. Not immune to fantastic excesses in his writing, he expressed himself
on purpose in an often-light form, rich in dialogue, one that cared not a whit
for the rules and the “enforcers” of scholarly discourse. In the process, the per-
formative role of literature is confirmed. In this authentic “novel of origins”, lit-
erature thus meets popular science, resulting in a work of vulgarisation “with
a message”.
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From Biological Time to Historical Time:
the Category of “Development” (Entwicklung)
in the Historical Thought of Herder, Kant, Hegel,
and Marx
Christophe Bouton
Abstract
The category of “development” (Entwicklung in German) is a good example of the

transfer of biological time into historical time: it is a category borrowed from biology
of the 18th century which, in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century thought, serves to
conceive history as the development of a universal substrate ((a) people, humanity,
the spirit of the world, etc.). After indicating some milestones in the history of the con-
cept of development in Germany from the mid-17th to the late 18th century, I study this
category in four German theories of history (Herder, Kant, Hegel and Marx). The thesis
that I will defend is that during the 19th century, the development category proved
to be inadequate or incomplete for thinking the historical experience in its practical
dimension, that is to say, as something that is effected partly by individuals.
The present study inscribes itself within the methodological framework of

the critical theory of history, as defined by Reinhart Koselleck (1987, 2004a),
i.e. the search for categories constituting conditions of possibility of histori-
cal experience (see also Bouton, 2016). A category is a fundamental concept
(Grundbegriff) forming a structural element of historical experience—where
history is understood, alternatively, as a course of events (Geschichte) or as
the discipline studying them (Historie). Certain categories, such as the “space
of experience” and the “horizon of expectation” (Koselleck, 2004c) are “meta-
historical”, that is to say valid throughout the ages. The majority, however, are
confined to a given period; they are context-specific, leading them to emerge
only in a determined era. The theory of history must, therefore, give attention
to the linguistic expression of the categories it studies, i.e. examine the manner
in which they are worded, the texts and the contexts in which they appear. It
claims to be “critical”, in that it may also evaluate the pertinence or the limits
of certain historical categories.
62 Bouton
Koselleck analysed a great number of historical categories, notably in his

dictionary Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe (1972–1997) and eminently in its semi-
nal article on “The Concept of history” (Koselleck, 1975). This study will focus
on the category of “development” (Entwicklung, in German), because it would
appear to be a very good example of the transfer of biological time onto histor-
ical time.1 What we are dealing with, here, is a category taken from eighteenth-
century biology, in order to conceive history as the development of a universal
substrate (the people, humanity, the spirit of the world, etc.). In view of the
vast scope of this question, I propose to circumscribe it, by limiting my analy-
sis to four exponents of German historical thought (Herder, Kant, Hegel, and
Marx). The hypothesis advanced here is that, in the course of the 19th century,
the category of development revealed itself to be inadequate or to fall short in
conceptualizing historical experience in its practical dimension, i.e. as some-
thing shaped, at least in part, by individuals and peoples.
1 Some Milestones in the History of the Notion of Development

in Germany from the Mid-17th Century to the End of the
18th Century
A few preliminary remarks on the history of the term “Entwicklung”:2 one

of its first occurrences can be found in 1645, in a translation of the Latin evo-
lutio, meaning “to unfold”. Here, it has a material sense: to untie a knot, un-
furl a parchment, unwrap a package, deploy troops in marching order, etc. In
German, the word “wickeln” means: to wrap. The prefix “Ent-” indicates the re-
verse motion of unwinding, unfolding. Not until the beginning of the 18th cen-
tury does the term “Entwicklung” receive an abstract meaning, to denote the
activity of breaking down a content into various points (to develop a thought).
In this sense, a poem can analogously be said to develop a character or a set of
events. In the mid-18th century, the term is, then, applied to the emerging dis-
cipline of biology, in the context of the theory of preformation:3 the embryo
already contains the whole of the individual, in seed form, in miniature, to the
effect that ontogenesis merely consists in the development of preformed enti-
ties, already present in the egg.
1 In the abovementioned dictionary, the entry “Entwicklung” / “Development” was written by
Wolfgang Wieland, 1975.
2 Following Wieland, 1975.
3 On this point, see Canguilhem et al., 2003.
From Biological Time to Historical Time 63
This theory enjoys the favour of the Church. It is espoused by Albrecht von
Haller (1708–1777) in Germany and Charles Bonnet (1720–1793) in Geneva, but
disputed by Caspar Friedrich Wolff (1734–1794), who endorses the theory of
epigenesis, according to which the embryo develops by the multiplication and
gradual differentiation of its parts, the process of generation thus consisting in
the succession of “a series of forms which cancel out one another” (Huneman,
2008: 129). Hence, the seed is partially undifferentiated, and the various organs
emerge in the course of an individual’s development. This theory of epigenesis
would ultimately prevail at the end of the 18th century, perhaps because the
theory of preformation does not allow for the emergence of novelty. The lat-
ter is a view inspired by the idea of Creation: all living creatures are present in
miniature and contained, one within the other, in the primordial womb of Eve.
By contrast to epigenesis, the theory of preformation implies that organisms
remain identical throughout the centuries, rendering unthinkable the idea of
an evolution of species over time.
In the mid-18th century, the concept of development taken from biology is
defined as follows: development is the progressive actualization of seeds (Keime),
dispositions (Anlagen), and faculties (Fähigkeiten). With two alternative ver-
sions: the first, deriving from the interpretation of ontogenesis suggested by
the theory of preformation, posits that dispositions and faculties are given in
the embryo from the start, and that generation is nothing but an unfurling, a
progressive increase in size. The second, deriving from epigenesis, allows for
the creation of new faculties and dispositions in the course of development.
Starting in 1770, the term “development” is applied to the political and so-
cial sphere, and notably to the philosophy of history. As Wieland notes, the
category of development, as it is defined in this era, lacks a unified definition
(Wieland, 1975: 201). Let us highlight a few of its salient features:
– Mobility: development falls within the broader category of change
(Veränderung), it is a form of change or a change of form.
– Disposition: development is a dispositionalist category, it presupposes the
existence of dispositions (seeds, powers, faculties, etc.), of which it is the
completion, the actualization.
– Continuity or Progressivity: development is an irreversible change, and
progressive in time, in the medium or long term. It is progressive, not in
the sense of progress towards the better, but in that of a process occurring
gradually, in stages or by degrees. It illustrates Leibniz’s principle, according
to which nature never makes leaps.4
4 Cf. Duprey, 2011, who explores this principle in Leibniz and Bonnet.
64 Bouton
– Automaticity: development is a change that follows its own laws, and is in-
dependent of planned and conscious action. In other words, development
is not made, it takes place on its own.
– Substantiality: development presupposes something persisting throughout
the change, a substrate, i.e. an individual or supra-individual subject defin-
ing a modicum of continuity throughout the changes (the individual, in bi-
ology; humanity or the spirit of history, in the philosophy of history)
– Finality: development entails an orientation, an immanent finality, consist-
ing in the preservation of the organism and the entrance into adulthood.
2 Herder
The first great philosophy of history in Germany is Herder’s Auch eine

Philosophie der Geschichte / Another Philosophy of History (Herder, 2004: 3–97),
written in response to Voltaire’s Philosophie de l’histoire, published nine years
earlier, in 1765.5 In this work, Herder makes abundant use of the category
of development, established as a fundamental category of the philosophy of
history: the history of humanity is the progressive development of human-
ity’s dispositions, of human powers. The era of Ancient Greece, for instance,
is characterized by “developments out of ancient seeds [Entwicklung uralter
Keime] whose season and place had come to blossom and to disseminate their
fragrance throughout the world” (Herder, 2004: 19).
Herder is convinced that history has a meaning, that it is not an absurd and
indefinite cycle. He holds that history is a “Fortgang” / “progression”, a “fort-
gehende Entwicklung” / “progressing development”, obeying a master plan.
Yet, this progression is not ordered hierarchically, it is not, strictly speaking, a
“Fortschritt” / “progress”. To elucidate his notion, Herder himself takes up two
analogies deriving from biological development, that of the tree and that of
the ages of life (Herder, 2004: 31). In a growing tree or a maturing man, each
stage is an irreducible moment in a constant and continuous progression. It
does not make sense to privilege the roots over the trunk or the branches of
the tree, childhood over adulthood, or vice versa, since these elements are all
necessary for the harmony and cohesion of the whole to which they belong.
The same is true of the history of humanity: each era is an indispensable factor
in a continuous process of growth, each people is part of a general develop-
ment and carries “the centre of its happiness” (Herder, 2004: 31) within itself.
5 On Herder’s critique of Voltaire, see Bouton, 2006.

Any hierarchical ranking, based on the criteria of happiness or of morality, is

wholly out of place here.
The analogy of the ages of life aims to present what one might call the the-
ory of inverted recapitulation, dear to philosophies of history. Ernst Haeckel
(1834–1919), in his theory of recapitulation, would later hold that ontogenesis
recapitulates phylogenesis, in the sense that the embryo’s stages of develop-
ment repeat the history of its various anterior species. In Herder, we find the
reverse: phylogenesis repeats ontogenesis. The historical development of hu-
manity reproduces the principal stages in the life of an individual on a grand
scale. The age of patriarchs (Ancient Testament, Middle East) corresponds to
the toddler stage of humanity, Egypt represents its childhood, Greece embodies
its adolescence, and Rome its adulthood. This analogy—which appears to end
in the Middle Ages—is supplemented by that of the plant, taking the shape of
a seed, flower, then fruit. For Herder, each people experiences its history as an
internal development, cadenced by three phases; like any organic creature, it
has “its period of growth, of blossoming, and of decline” (Herder, 2004: 25). In
this process, events arise after a certain period of maturation “when their time
has come”. Everything that must transpire, arises in its own place and time, it
has its proper place in the course of history. The idea of development allows
Herder to reconcile finitude in history, the caducity of civilizations, with the
notion of progression. For “every plant in nature is condemned to wither, but
the withered plant scatters its seed, and thereby living creation renews itself”
(Herder, 1887: 149). What is true of generations, is also true of historical eras.
The decline of a civilization is attended by the birth of a new nation, to which
it yields its place on the stage of history.
Herder thus applied the category of development, originating in eighteenth-
century biology, where it has an individual dimension, to the philosophy of
history, where it takes on a collective dimension (the people, humanity). The
use of this category has several objectives (Wieland, 1975: 201):
– In opposition to the universalism of the Enlightenment à la Voltaire, it is
meant to criticize the category of progress (Fortschritt), as devaluing the
past in favour of the present: in a development, each step is important; there
is no hierarchical organization, no primacy of the endpoint. As each stage
in the development of an individual is necessary, each era in the history of
humanity is likewise indispensable: “The Egyptian could not exist without
the Oriental; the Greek built upon them, the Roman lifted himself atop the
back of the entire world” (Herder, 2004: 31)
– Moreover, the category of development aims to criticize the category of
chance in history. Contrary to Voltaire, who opposes nature, governed by
laws, and history, given over to chaos, Herder holds that history is like nature,
66 Bouton
in that it obeys laws (of providence). In this sense, the category of develop-
ment allows for a naturalization of history and for its inclusion, along with
nature, in the work of creation. History has a certain coherence, an orienta-
tion with theological and teleological underpinnings.
– With the category of development, Herder intends to limit that of historical
action: history is the work of providence and not of the deliberate actions of
men. A development is not made, but lived and experienced. Thus, history,
like all things “is grand destiny, not reflected over, not hoped for, not caused
by human beings” (Herder, 2004: 47), a development, the thread of which is
“unrolled” by providence.6 Viewed from this angle, the category of develop-
ment has political stakes, which consist in replacing the idea of “Revolution”
by that of “Evolution”. Concerning this point, Wieland quotes a text from
1793 (“Briefe zur Beförderung der Humanität”, published in the Nachlass), in
which Herder writes: “Hence my motto remains: natural, rational evolution
of things. No revolution [natürliche, vernünftige Evolution der Dinge. Keine
Revolution]” (Wieland, 1975: 206). Evolution, when it is not impeded, makes
revolution unnecessary and ultimately impossible.
3 Kant
In the first part of the Ideas for a Philosophy of the History of Humanity (Herder,
1887: 2), Herder sets out his concept of development in greater detail. He dis-
misses both preformation and epigenesis in its mechanistic version, which
holds organs to be produced by external causes, instead maintaining that
organ development is a formative process (Bildung) that takes place under
the impact of internal forces. In his review of the Ideas for a Philosophy of
the History of Humanity (Kant, 2008b: 139), Kant accepts this position, while
highlighting more strongly than Herder that development is limited and
oriented by seeds or natural dispositions, of which it is the fulfilment.7 Like
Herder, Kant, too, structures his historical thought by means of the term pair
“Entwicklung”/”Naturanlage”, “Keim” (‘development’/‘natural disposition’,
‘seed’), which can be found as early as the first proposition of the Idea for a
Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim, published in 1784, which stipulates
6 See Herder, 2004: 11: “Providence carried along the thread of development—from the
Euphrates, Oxus, and Ganges down to the Nile and on toward the Phoenician coasts—great
strides!”.
7 On Kant’s critique of Herder’s epigenism, see Zammito, 1992: 203–213 and Huneman, 2008:
203–216.
that: “all natural dispositions [Naturanlagen] of a creature are determined

sometime to develop themselves completely and purposively [sich einmal voll-
ständig und zweckmäßig auszuwickeln]” (Kant, 2008a: 109). In the following
proposition, Kant defines the specificity of the category of “development” with
regard to the human race: “In the human being (as the only rational creature
on earth), those predispositions whose goal is the use of his reason were to
develop [entwickeln] completely only in the species, but not in the individual”
(Kant, 2008a: 109). Man cannot completely develop his natural faculties (in-
cluding those of his reason), if not in phylogenesis, at the level of the species,
rather than that of the individual. Hence the existence of a history of humanity,
conceived as a staged process of development of all the various natural dispo-
sitions of man. As in Herder, the category of development, with its corollaries
of disposition (Anlage) and seed (Keim), is transferred from the individual to
the collective, from the biological individual to humanity, as a species. History
is the progressive development of original (natural and rational) dispositions
of the human race. Ontogenesis can only be achieved by phylogenesis. Thus,
“an immense series of generations” is necessary “in order finally to propel its
germs in our species to that stage of development which is completely suited
at its aim” (Kant, 2008a: 110). The peculiarity of human development, by con-
trast to that of other natural creatures, is, then, that it is historical—not in
the sense that it is man-“made”, but in the sense that it requires an indefinite
number of generations to reach its conclusion, in accordance with the idea of
“perfectibility” implicitly mobilized by Kant.
On the one hand, Kant emphasizes, in his third proposition, that “nature
has willed that the human being should produce everything that goes beyond
the mechanical arrangement of animal existence entirely out of himself, and
participate in no other happiness or perfection than that which he has pro-
cured for himself free from instinct through his own reason” (Kant, 2008a: 110).
On the other, he states in the fourth proposition that the development of the
human race is not the result of the conscious will of men (much more apt
to produce violence and chaos), but rather that it occurs spontaneously, fa-
voured by their natural antagonism, i.e. thanks to “ungesellige Geselligkeit” /
“unsociable sociability” (Kant, 2008a: 111). In Kant, we again encounter the idea
that the category of development allows history to be regarded as subject to
the control of nature, rather than the free will of men, and with the same po-
litical conclusion, drawn at the end of the analysis of the French Revolution
in section II of The Conflict of the Faculties (1798): “to this end it might well
behoove the state likewise to reform itself from time to time and, attempt-
ing evolution instead of revolution, progress perpetually toward the better”
(Kant, 2001: 308).
68 Bouton
4 Hegel
Above and beyond the multiple meanings of the category of development, a

continually reemerging idea, of particular significance in the biological version
of the concept, is that it denotes a spontaneous process, taking place automati-
cally and of necessity, independently of the will of men.8 Whichever forms
it may take, development is not “feasible”; it is never a matter of individual
freedom. Its other notable characteristic, again stemming from the domain of
biology, is its progressivity, which distinguishes development, associated with
evolution, from revolution. Whichever forms it may take, development is grad-
ual; it never manifests as abrupt and radical change. What stance does Hegel
take with regard to this notion of development?
Without going into the full details of Hegel’s philosophy of history,9 I would
simply highlight that in his writings the category of development is presented
as being in some measure inappropriate for history. History falls within “die
Kategorie der Veränderung” / “the category of change” (Hegel, 1975: 31). To ex-
plain historical change, Hegel replaces the mechanistic model of causal de-
termination, frequently present in the approaches of historians of the Age of
Enlightenment, with the model of organic development, linked to the more
general category of Bildung (culture, formation, education). In other words,
history is understood as the development by which the spirit forms itself and
progressively becomes conscious of its own freedom, as it reads in §342 of the
Outlines of the Philosophy of Right:
Further, in world history it is not merely the power [Macht] of spirit that
passes judgement, i.e. the abstract and non-rational necessity of a blind
destiny. On the contrary, since spirit in and for itself is reason, and rea-
son’s being-for-self [Für-sich-Sein] in spirit is knowledge, world history is
8 This point is highlighted, in France, by Auguste Comte. Cf. vol. IV of the Cours de philoso-
phie positive: “La qualification de développement a, par sa nature, le précieux avantage de
déterminer directement en quoi consiste, de toute nécessité, le perfectionnement réel de
l’humanité; car il indique aussitôt le simple essor spontané, graduellement secondé par
une culture convenable, des facultés fondamentales toujours préexistantes qui constituent
l’ensemble de notre nature, sans aucune introduction quelconque de facultés nouvelles.” /
“The qualification of development, by its very nature, has the precious advantage of directly
determining what the actual perfecting of humanity necessarily entails; because it instantly
indicates the simple spontaneous burgeoning, progressively seconded by a suitable culture,
of the ever preexisting fundamental faculties constituting the whole of our nature, without
any introduction whatever of new faculties.” (Qtd. in Canguilhem et al., 2003: 51–52)
9 For more on this topic, I refer to Bouton, 2004.
the necessary development, out of the concept of spirit’s freedom alone,

of the moments of reason and so of the self-consciousness and freedom
of spirit. This development is the exposition [Auslegung] and actualiza-
tion of the universal spirit.
Hegel, 2008: 316
Hegel defines development as a directed process of change, an internal genera-

tion of differences occurring through the passage from a germ to its realization,
from the potential to the actual, from the “being-in-itself” to the “being-for-
itself”. Though he appears to have drawn upon the category of development
in the philosophies of history of Herder and Kant, he operates a marked con-
ceptual distinction between the historical development of the spirit and that
of organic beings belonging to the realm of nature (plants, animals). Let us
highlight the two principal differences:
1. Historical development is mediated by the work and will of men: “the
development of natural organisms takes place in an immediate, unopposed,
and unhindered fashion, for nothing can intrude between the concept and its
realisation, between the inherently determined nature of the germ and the
actual existence which corresponds to it” (Hegel, 1975: 126). The actualization
of the being-in-itself occurs without mediation; the germ naturally becomes a
plant, flower, and then fruit. The realization of power is consequently devoid of
surprises; it is the continuous process of life, which, for Hegel, is a monotonous
cycle of birth and death. The development of the spirit, by contrast, “is not just
a harmless and peaceful process of growth like that of organic life, but a hard
and obstinate struggle with itself” (Hegel, 1975: 127). The actualization of the
spirit is more complex, since “the process whereby its inner determination is
translated into reality is mediated by consciousness and will” (Hegel, 1975: 126).
In the same lecture, Hegel insists on this point: “that which exists only in itself
is a possibility or a potentiality which has not yet emerged into existence. A
second moment is necessary before it can attain reality—that of actuation or
realization; and its principle is the will, the activity of mankind in the world
at large” (Hegel, 1975: 69–70). What a spirit is, potentially, in itself, can only be
realized by a (free) will.
Emerging from the Lectures on the Philosophy of World History of 1830, these
considerations mark a decisive turning point in the history of the category of
development, as applied to the philosophy of history. For the category of de-
velopment, in its historical form, is here no longer contrasted with that of the
action and intervention of (great) men in the course of history. On the con-
trary, the role of great men and of peoples culminates in situations of crisis,
70 Bouton
distinguished by their property of engendering historical possibilities: “they

incorporate a universal of a different order from that on which the continued
existence of a nation or state is based” (Hegel, 1975: 82) In historical develop-
ment, the action of individuals is one of the conditions for the transformation
of real possibility into actuality. This means that, to be realized, possibilities
require individuals that are engaged in the historical situation:
All this takes place to some extent automatically through the inner de-
velopment of the Idea [in der innern Entwicklung der Idee]; yet, on the
other hand, the Idea is itself the product of factors outside itself, and it is
implemented and brought to its realisation by the actions of individuals.
Hegel, 1975: 82
In order to be realized, the new historical possibilities immanent in the spirit

of a people must be comprehended and accomplished by concrete individu-
als: “At the vanguard of all actions, including world-historical actions, stand
individuals as subjectivities giving actuality to what is substantial” (Hegel,
2008: 318).
2. Historical development is a form of creation and progress, by contrast to
natural development, which is associated with repetition and cyclical move-
ment. Hegel adopts Cuvier’s theory of the fixity of species and of catastroph-
ism, and thus draws a strict distinction between organic animal development,
devoid of novelty, and the creative development of the spirit, between repeti-
tive biological time and progressive historical time:
the survival of the species consists purely in a uniform repetition of one

and the same mode of existence. But with spiritual forms, it is otherwise;
for in this case, change occurs not just on the surface but within the con-
cept, and it is the concept itself which is modified. In the natural world,
the species does not progress, but in the world of the spirit, each change
is a form of progress.
Hegel, 1975: 128
The category of progress is linked with that of (political) freedom, in the sense
that global history is the progressively growing awareness of the idea of free-
dom by the peoples of the world: “only One is free” (Oriental World); “only
Some are free” (Greek and Roman Worlds); “Man as such is free” (Christian
World) (Hegel, 1975: 129–130).
As for the biological dimension of the category of “development”, Hegel
takes up Herder’s law of inverted recapitulation, according to which each
population experiences a development in three stages (infancy, bloom,

decline):
The particular history of a world-historical people contains (a) the devel-

opment of its principle from its latent embryonic [kindlich] stage until
it blossoms into the self-conscious freedom of ethical life and enters
universal history; and (b) the period of its decline and fall, since it is its
decline and fall that signals the emergence in it of a higher principle as
simply the negative of its own.
Hegel, 2008: 317–318
Hegel also compares the stages of world history to the ages of life. The Oriental
world is associated with the infancy of humanity, Greece with its adolescence,
and Rome with its manhood. In this case, however, he highlights the limits of
the analogy:
Then fourthly, there follows the Germanic age, the Christian World. If it
were possible to compare the spirit’s development to that of the indi-
vidual in this case too, this age would have to be called the old age of the
spirit. But it is the peculiarity of old age that it lives only in memories, in
the past rather than in the present, so that the comparison is no longer
applicable.
Hegel, 1975: 131
In Hegel, then, the category of development is profoundly modified by and in

competition with other categories: work, will, freedom, action, progress, cul-
ture (Bildung). Accordingly, the idea of revolution is evaluated more positively.
Though Hegel prefers reform to revolution, he believes that if reform fails to
take place, revolution becomes necessary, as was the case in France at the end
of the Ancien Régime. Hence, his fervent praise of the French revolution in the
lecture of 1830:
Never since the sun had stood in the firmament and the planets revolved
around him had it been perceived that man’s existence centers in his
head, i.e., in Thought, inspired by which he builds up the world of reality.
Anaxagoras had been the first to say that the nous governs the World; but
not until now had man advanced to the recognition of the principle that
Thought ought to govern spiritual reality. This was accordingly a glorious
mental dawn.
Hegel, 2004: 466–467
72 Bouton
Certainly, Hegel believes that a constitution is not crafted ex nihilo; he is

opposed to the Rousseauist notion of a contrat social (social contract). But
he takes a favourable view of the codification of law instituted in France by
Napoleon. From this viewpoint, he opposes the conservatism of Friedrich Carl
von Savigny (1779–1861), who defined the law as “eine ganz ungestörte einhei-
mische Entwicklung” / “an autonomous and imperturbable development”, and
the history of a people as “die Fortsetzung und die Entwicklung aller vergan-
genen Zeiten” / “the continuation and development of all past times” (quoted
by Wieland, 1975: 213–214). For Savigny, the law is like a language; it is devel-
oped and shaped in synchronization with the evolution of a people, resulting
from its past traditions. Political and social changes are conceivable, but they
are only legitimate in the long term and in the absence of human will. Here we,
again, see the political stakes associated with the application of the category
of development to history. Hegel does not reject it, but he gives it a different
meaning from the one it holds in the domain of biology, allowing him, by con-
trast to Savigny, to leave room for collective action and for revolution in all its
creative discontinuity.
5 Marx
From the 18th to the 19th century, the category of development, as it is em-
ployed in German philosophy of history, is thus revealed to be highly ambigu-
ous. Historical thinkers accentuate it more or less strongly, according to the
role they wish to attribute to human freedom in the course of history, or de-
pending on the value they accord to the idea of revolution. Herder and Kant
extend the notion of development from the individual to the collective, in
order to turn it into a central category of history. Hegel takes up this category,
to indicate its limits and reformulate it, in light of the idea of freedom, within
the framework of a philosophy of the spirit. In Marx, whom I will briefly touch
upon in conclusion, the category of development, far from standing in opposi-
tion to revolution, rather constitutes its condition. Let us specify, first of all,
that Marx employs the notion of development in two ways. On the one hand,
development denotes the unfolding of the physical and intellectual faculties
of the individual, as in the Manifesto of the Communist Party: “In place of the
old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an
association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the
free development of all” (Marx, Engels, 2007: 31). On the other hand, histori-
cal development designates the manner in which a given mode of production
is progressively subject to change (productive forces and relations of produc-

tion). As Marx explains in the famous preface to A Contribution to the Critique
of the Political Economy, this change takes place gradually and inevitably, inde-
pendently of the will of the actors involved, like a ripening process. But it ends
up creating a situation of crisis, by which the dominant class is charged with
accomplishing a task, that of revolution:
At a certain stage of their development, the material forces of produc-

tion in society come in conflict with the existing relations of production,
or—what is but a legal expression for the same thing—with the prop-
erty relations within which they had been at work before. From forms of
development of the forces of production these relations turn into their
fetters. Then comes the period of social revolution. […] No social order
ever disappears before all the productive forces, for which there is room
in it, have been developed; and new higher relations of production never
appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured
in the womb of the old society. Therefore, mankind always takes up only
such problems as it can solve.
Marx, 1904: 12
Marx also uses the metaphor of natural development in the preface to the first
edition of Capital, to emphasize the limited but very real part played by people
in history:
Even when a society has begun to track down the natural laws of its move-
ment—and it is the ultimate aim of this work to reveal the economic law
of motion of modern society—it can neither leap over the natural phases
of its development nor remove them by decree. But it can shorten and
lessen the birth-pangs.
Marx, 1976: 92
If men cannot escape the laws of economics, they can, by revolution, shorten
the phases of change, accelerate the process of history.
The category of development thus prepares the terrain for that of revolu-
tion, which leads history to transition from the status of something that takes
place to something that is made. In the course of the 20th century, there are
still many thoughts of history focused on the idea of development, as in eco-
nomic liberalism (e.g. Schumpeter or Hayek) and some conservative think-
ers like Spengler. However, the category of the “Machbarkeit”, “faisabilité” /
74 Bouton
“feasibility”10 of history, notably mobilized in the reception and interpretation

of Marxism, would gradually challenge that of development, the Darwinian
notion of “evolution” being preferred to designate long-term processes, taking
their course independently of the deliberate will of individuals. Ultimately,
the tension between “development” and “freedom”, between “evolution” and
“revolution” would reach a possible solution in the distinction of time scales
between the ungovernable long term, and short-term, event-driven history, the
realm of contingency and action.
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“O man! wilt thou never conceive that thou art but
an ephemeron?”: the Reception of Geological Deep
Time in the Late 18th Century
David Schulz
Abstract
No other science exerted as great an influence on historical thinking of the late

Enlightenment as geology. However, this importance has not yet been adequately con-
sidered. Based on the literary work of Wilhelm Heinse, I argue that the significance
of geology lies in the reorganization of the past, shifting the position of man in the
earth’s history from the centre to the outermost edge. For the historical sciences in
particular the increasing role of geology did not remain without consequences as the
geological theories were received by the early protagonists of the Göttinger-Schule, the
Heidelberger-Schule and by Herder.
1 Wilhelm Heinse and the ‘Gospel of Geology’1
If we follow the statements of famous historians, sociologists and philoso-

phers, the second half of the 18th century brought with it a change in general
perception of temporality. The writer Wilhelm Heinse allows an insight into
this phenomenon in a letter to his friend and patron Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi
written in August 1780 during his Italian journey:
Ich fühle jetzt die Zeit in ihrer ganzen Geschwindigkeit, und wie das
Leben vorbey rauscht. Nichts ist mir mehr einerley, und die Scenen
wechseln zu einem unendlichen Schauspiel.
Heinse, 1910: 21
1 For help with the translation of this essay I owe my warmest thanks to Seth Berk and to my re-
cently deceased father-in-law Michael Pattberg, to whom this essay is dedicated. Thanks are
also due to the organizer of the conference “Biologische Zeit, historische Zeit” in Tübingen,
Niklas Bender, and for helpful discussion to the audience in that conference, especially
Simona Gîrleanu, Nicolas Wanlin, Claude Blanckaert and Georges Felten, whose comments
helped to improve this essay.
78 Schulz
I have now become aware of time and its overall rapidity and how life
rushes by. Nothing seems the same to me anymore, and all scenes have
turned into a never-ending spectacle.2
Heinse suddenly conceives time as being accelerated and thus comes to a

more intense perception altogether. In doing so, he also illustrates the feel-
ings of his contemporaries in general. Around the end of the 18th century, the
collective experience of time changed, which also affected self-perceptions of
European culture. The consequences of this sweeping change in temporal per-
ception were fundamental, and this historical juncture is now considered to
be the threshold of Modern Age. As this historical consciousness arose, history
became established as a distinct academic discipline, and the idea of progress
turned the future into an imaginary sphere of constant progress.
Questions regarding the causes of this change in temporal perception lead
to varying answers. According to the historian Reinhart Koselleck, the discov-
ery of temporality is a cognitive achievement of particular individuals. It arises
through their ability to generate a conception of a linear development of time,
through the differing perceptions of their experiences and their expectations
(Koselleck, 1979). The sociologist Wolf Lepenies understands the source of this
radical historical change of the perception of time by a “strain of experience”
(i.e. “Erfahrungsdruck”), caused by the weight of a constantly growing empiri-
cal knowledge, which forces the creation of new ways of ordering this knowl-
edge (Lepenies, 1976: 16). Like Koselleck and Lepenies the philosopher Michel
Foucault sees a great discontinuity in the épistèmé between 1775 and 1825. He
describes this change as a consequence of the growing influence of history
on human thought that characterizes the beginning of Modern Age. Only a
seemingly endless study might give an explanation about the causes of this
process—or at least so he believes (Foucault, 1967: 233).
These introductory remarks outline the central issue of this essay: many
prominent scientific studies agree in their analysis that the origin of modern
historical consciousness was allegedly a very late, sudden and radical process.
This historical awareness arose in an amazingly short period of time, and it not
only influenced some, but in fact quite a number of disciplines, and the aca-
demic language of the findings is accordingly euphoric. According to Friedrich
Meinecke, it is possibly the ‘greatest revolution of the way of thinking’ in the
Western World (Meinecke, 1963: 425). Michel Foucault calls it an “événement
fondamental” and refers to it as “un des plus radicaux sans doute qui soit arrivé
2 Unless otherwise indicated the English translations of the German quotations are from the
author.
the Reception of Geological Deep Time 79
à la culture occidentale” (Foucault, 1967: 232). Also, the temporalization of

time plays a central role in the theories of the philosopher Hans Blumenberg
(Blumenberg, 1986: 240), of the sociologists Wolf Lepenies (Lepenies, 1976: 9)
and Zygmunt Bauman (Baumann, 2001: 110) and of the social systems theorist
Niklas Luhmann (Luhmann, 1980: 288). This particularly applies to the histo-
rian Reinhart Koselleck, who makes it a detailed and nuanced subject of dis-
cussion (Koselleck, 1975; Rohbeck, 2001). All of these approaches regard the
last third of the 18th century as being the era of this change in the conception
of time.
However, no attention is paid to geology, whereas this field of study was
an especially important contributor to emerging time concepts at the outset
of the modern era, and this geological blind spot in research forms the focus
of this essay. When discussing the historical process of temporalization, the
history of geology must not be neglected, because in the last decades of the
18th century geological issues were being widely discussed, not only by histori-
ographers and in the field of the philosophy of history, but also by writers and
philosophers.
The influence of geological time concepts becomes particularly evident in an
exemplary way through a detailed analysis of reflections by the poet Wilhelm
Heinse. In a manner similar to his letter to F. H. Jacobi quoted above, in an-
other letter to his patron Johann Wilhelm Ludwig Gleim, Heinse reflects on
the conditions that allow him such a deep perception of his own temporality:
Aus dem grauen Alterthume der Welt, aus den Ruinen der Schöpfung
schreibe ich Ihnen, geliebter Vater Gleim, wogegen die Ruinen von
Griechenland und Rom zerstörte Kartenhäuserchen kleiner Kinder,
und nicht einmal das sind. […] Mit einem Wort; ich bin auf der Höhe
des Alpenpatriarchen Gotthardt, und mich umgeben seine Eis- und
Felsengipfel, erhaben über Europa und über die halbe Welt.
Heinse, 1910: 35
From the grey ancient world, from the ruins of creation I write to you, my
beloved Father Gleim, compared to which the ruins of ancient Greece
and Rome seem to be collapsed houses of cards of little children, if any-
thing at all. […] In a word: I am on top of the Gotthardt—patriarch of
the Alps—surrounded by his glacial and rugged peaks, elevated above
Europe and our hemisphere.
Heinse describes his mountain experience in the light of geological theory. His
words are based on the descriptions by Thomas Burnet in his Telluris Theoria
80 Schulz
Sacra (1680). To Burnet, mountains are the remains of paradise left behind by
the downward-flowing waters of the biblical Flood. In this sense, mountains
can also be regarded as ancient monuments of sin, and, indeed, threat, terror
and destruction are Heinse’s leading metaphors when he describes the scen-
ery. With regard to the mountains that he saw on his journey, he speaks of
“the horrifying sight of death and devastation” (Heinse, 1910: 50) and compares
them to a necropolis:
Bester Freund, hier ist wirklich das Ende der Welt. Der Gotthardt ist ein
wahres Gebeinhaus der Natur. Statt der Todtenknochen liegen ungeheu-
re Reyhen von öden Steingebürgen, und in den tiefen Thälern auf einan-
der gehäufte Felsentrümmer da—[…].
Heinse, 1910: 36
My dearest friend, this really is the end of the world. The Gotthardt is
a real charnel house of nature. Instead of the bones of the dead, there
are huge rows of dead mountains, and in the deep valleys the remains of
rocks are piled up—[…].
In addition to Burnet’s imagery depicting the earth as a ruin, Heinse also takes
up geological theories. Here a German-French transfer of knowledge appears
to have been particularly influential. Heinse mainly refers to the theories of
Jean-André Deluc (1727–1817), Horace-Bénédict de Saussure (1747–1799) and
Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon (1707–1788).
Against this geological background, Heinse focuses on the issues of the his-
tory of earth and the variability of inorganic matter:
Daß der Planet, den wir bewohnen, nicht immer so war, wie er jetzt ist,
bedarf wohl keiner tiefen Untersuchung; man lese deßwegen nur flüch-
tig den Naturkündiger Saussure über den Montblanc, die höchste und
älteste Oberfläche von Europa, Asia u Africa [sic!]; daß er einmal eine
flüßige Masse war, ist hier wohl klar genug. Wie viel Jahrhunderte oder
Jahrtausende sie brauchte, bis sie zu vegetabilischem Leben fähig war:
hat die Chemie und Astronomie noch nicht ergründen können.
Heinse, 2003: 301
The fact that the planet we live on has not always been the same as it is
now does not seem to require any further investigation; all one has to
do is skim through what nature expert Saussure wrote about the Mont
Blanc, the highest and oldest region of Europe, Asia and Africa; it seems
perfectly clear that it once was a liquid mass. Chemistry and astronomy
have not yet been able to figure out how many centuries or even millen-
nia were needed to make vegetal life on it possible.
In a most impressive way, Heinse describes the incredible extension of geo-

logical deep time.3 Against this background—to him—human existence
seems almost irrelevant for the history of the earth. The ancient civilizations
of Greece and Rome, for which German Classicism had developed a strong
affinity, now seem negligible, if not insignificant. They seem to be ‘collapsed
houses of cards of little children, if anything at all’.
In this context the theories of Buffon and particularly his Époques de la na-
ture (1778) play an important role for Heinse:
Im Anfang der Dinge muß es freilich auf unsrer Erde, sie mag nun entwe-
der selbst Sonne, nach Leibnitz, oder ein Stück Sonne, nach Büffon gewe-
sen seyn, ganz anders ausgesehen haben, als jetzt. Vater Ozean mit allen
seinen Seen und Strömen war natürlicher Weise erst heißer ungeheurer
Dampf; und lange nachher senkte er sich ein im Grunde zu Wasser. In
einigen tausend Jahren vielleicht ist der Chimborasso zum Vorschein
gekommen, der nun zwanzig tausend Fuß hoch in den Himmel hinein
schaut; und noch in tausend Jahren haben unser kleine Brocken und
Fichtelberg sich sehen lassen.
Heinse, 1908: 618–619
In the beginning of all things, the face of our earth must have been com-
pletely different from what it looks now, whether or not it was—accord-
ing to Leibnitz—a sun itself, or—according to Buffon—part of a sun.
Father ocean with all his lakes and rivers, of course, was first a vast cloud
of hot steam; and only much later he sank to the ground as water. The
Chimborasso, which now towers up into the sky for twenty thousand feet,
needed some more millennia to appear, and our fairly small Brocken and
Fichtelberg needed yet another millennium.
Buffon was both famous and notorious for exploring the ‘dark abyss of time’,
as he named it. He was the first thinker to introduce detailed data on periods
of time. Experimenting with cooling-down models of the earth, he reckoned
the age of the earth to be about 168,000 years, but privately he believed in a
3 The term ‘Deep Time’ was coined by John McPhee to describe the incredible expansion of
geological periods of time (McPhee, 1982).
82 Schulz
far older age. As a consequence, his figures greatly exceeded the temporal ho-
rizon of the Bible. He thereby suspended the dominant role of man on earth:
man was not the main purpose of the history of creation anymore, but only
an unimportant ‘late arrival’ in the history of the earth.4 Paul-Henri Thiry
d’Holbach—a contemporary of Buffon—also expresses the same ideas in a
very concise way. He was acquainted with geosciences, and he wrote various
relevant articles for the Encyclopédie, such as Terre (couches de la) und Terre
(révolutions de la). His essay Système de la nature, published in 1770 under the
pseudonym Jean-Baptiste de Mirabaud, particularly deals with the question of
the importance of the history of mankind in the light of geological deep time.
Here he labels the idea of a privileged position of man as mere ‘hubris’ and
speaks of a foreseeable end to all human life on earth.
Des soleils s’éteignent & s’encroûtent; des planetes périssent & se dis-
persent dans les plaines des airs; d’autres soleils s’allument, de nouvelles
planetes se forment pour faire leurs révolutions ou pour décrire de nou-
velles routes, & l’homme, portion infiniment petite d’un globe, qui n’est
lui même qu’un point imperceptible dans l’immensité, croit que c’est
pour lui que l’univers est fait, s’imagine qu’il doit être le confident de la
nature, se flatte d’être éternel, se dit le Roi de l’univers! O homme! ne
concevra-tu jamais que tu n’es qu’un Ephemere?
d’Holbach, 1973: 86–87
Suns encrust themselves and are extinguished; planets perish and dis-
perse themselves in the vast plains of air; other suns are kindled; new
planets form themselves, either to make revolutions round these suns, or
to describe new routes; and man, an infinitely small portion of the globe,
which is itself but an imperceptible point in the immensity of space,
vainly believes it is for himself this universe is made; foolishly imagines
he ought to be the confidant of Nature; confidently flatters himself he is
eternal, and calls himself King of the universe! O man! wilt thou never
conceive that thou art but an ephemeron?
d’Holbach, 1835: 46
In another letter to Gleim, Heinse also points out this abrupt loss of impor-
tance of human civilization that d’Holbach describes. Employing a poetic dic-
tion and anthropomorphically allowing the mountain itself to speak, Heinse
4 Georg Braungart was among the first scholars to do deeper research on these developments
in the history of mentalities (Braungart, 2008; Braungart, 2009).
depicts the importance—and respectively the pettiness—of human existence

from the point of view of the mountain: at midnight—so he writes to Gleim—
he felt the presence of an overly powerful being, a ‘grey majesty’, and he heard
“a ghostly voice sacredly and softly coming from the darkness of the damp
rocks” (Heinse, 1910: 38):
Was staunst du, Schüchterner, kleines Geschöpf! Auch hier war ein-
mal ein Eden, schöner als Genf und Vevay […]. Ich stieg als einer der
ersten aus den Wassern hervor, und unter den kühlen Schatten meiner
Pommeranzenwälder pflegten die neugebohrnen Kinder der Erde der
jungen Liebe.
Heinse, 1910: 38
What is it that amazes you, you shy little creature! Also here once was the
Garden of Eden, more beautiful to look at than Geneva and Vevay […]. I
was among the first to rise from the waters, and under my cool and shady
orange-trees the new-born children of the earth were busy loving each
other.
The Gotthardt reveals itself as being a witness of the formation of the earth.
Very eloquently and clearly, he (the mountain) measures the unimportance of
man in the light of the earth’s long history:
Aber ich bin so alt, als dein Schmetterlingskopf mit seinem weichen
tagdauernden Hirn nicht auszudenken vermag. [Ich bin] […] aus einem
Element ohne Größe […] einer der gewaltigsten Körper der Erde gewor-
den […]; und wer weiß, was noch einmal aus dir wird.
Heinse, 1910: 38
But I am so old, your butterfly-like head with its one-day brain is unable
to figure out. […]. Once being an element without any volume […], I have
become the most gigantic physical body on earth […]; and who knows
what life holds in store for you.
Heinse’s apparition of the “mountain spirit” provides insight into the “dark
abyss of time”, in which the exterior and the interior, and space and time,
merge into a dizzying perceptual experience that exceeds the capacity of the
human “one-day brain” and their “butterfly-like” heads.
The speech of the mountain spirit is rhetorically staged via prosopopoe-
ia. According to Quintilian, it is particularly suitable for calling the gods to
84 Schulz
descend from heaven or to come up from the netherworld (Quintilianus, 2006:

281). However, in Heinse’s version of the incident, the speaker is not an apolo-
gist for an account of biblical creation. On the contrary, the prosopopoeia of a
divine voice is used to call into question the biblical report in a fundamental
way. This is not only a question of aesthetics, but it is even more relevant with
regard to the history of human knowledge. By using a divine voice, Heinse re-
futes the biblical narrative of Genesis and thus promotes the actuality of the
conflict between Genesis and emerging geological studies at that time.
Heinse refers here to the Book of Job, in which God warns Job because of his
late appearance on earth: “Where were you when I created the earth? Tell me,
are you that wise!” (38:4) The reference to the Bible thus becomes even clearer,
and the mountain spirit indirectly refers to the Revelation of John (22:13) when
he says:
Ich bin der Anfang und das Ende. Erkenn in mir die Natur in ihrer unver-
hüllten Gestalt, zu hehr und mächtig und heilig, um von euch Kleinen zu
euren Bedürfnissen eingerichtet und verkünstelt und verstellt zu werden.
Heinse, 1910: 38
I am the beginning and the end. In me perceive the unveiled presence of

nature, too noble, mighty and holy for you, little creatures, to be adapted,
manipulated and distorted for your needs.
He ends his speech with the words: “Nun geh hin, dir ist das Evangelium ge-
predigt.” (Heinse, 1910: 38) / “Go, you heard the ‘good news.’” This intertextual
reference to the Bible characterizes mountains as places for the revelation
of supreme wisdom. Heinse continues a religious tradition to depict moun-
tains as being the distant residences of gods and as “places of the numinous”
(Böhme, 2007: 50). Similar to Moses, who received the Ten Commandments
on Mount Sinai and Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, who descended “from the moun-
tains” (Böhme, 2007: 58), the mountain peak appears as a place of initiation
into a deeper knowledge, here into the ‘Good News (Gospel) of Geology’. As
an analogy to Jesus in the Revelation of John, the apparition of a mountain
spirit can be understood as an epiphany of a higher being, who introduces the
protagonist into some fundamental knowledge. However, the religious staging
of this scene has a paradoxical effect: the biblical version of earth’s creation
is called into question. In a most blasphemous way, the secular and scientific
description of the mountain spirit dominates the pessimistic and theological
conception of the mountains in the context of a historia sacra.
The crucial point of the text is that it clearly reveals the borderlines of meta-
physical versus scientific ways of thinking. Both with regard to the history of
science and also aesthetically, the conflict between Genesis and geology is pre-
sented and being ‘put on stage’. Heinse portrays the mountains simultaneously
as being places of wilderness and knowledge, devastation and enlightenment
(Böhme, 2007: 55–56). While Heinse describes the mountains as the ruins of
creation, the words of the mountain spirit seem to be a kind of “geology lesson”
(Böhme, 1997: 232).
2 The Reception of Geology by Historiographers and Philosophers of

History in the 18th Century
The impact of geology on cultural and historical awareness corresponds

to its popularity at the turn of the century. It was a kind of “trendy science”
(“Modewissenschaf[t]”) (Guntau, 1996: 151), and this is evidenced by a great
number of publications at that time. In an essay dating from 1792, Johann
Ehrenreich von Fichtel ironically comments on the overabundance of scien-
tific literature:
[M]an sagte mir, in dem vorletzten Decennium des itzigen Jahrhunderts,

sey über Mineralien mehr geschrieben worden, als über Theologie,
Philosophie und Jurisprudenz mitsammen in einem halben Jahrhundert,
ja es gebe mineralogische Papiere, wie Heu und Stroh im gegenwärtigen
fruchtbaren Jahre.
Guntau, 1996: 152
In the decade before last, more publications were written on minerals

than on theology, philosophy and law in half a century, moreover, again
there are a plethora of mineralogical publications in this fruitful year—
so I was told.
Fifty years later, the high esteem and importance of geology in society re-
mained unchanged. In 1840, Hermann Hauff, a brother of Wilhelm Hauff, com-
ments on this development:
Unter allen Naturwissenschaften ist Geologie die populärste, diejenige,

deren Resultate das allgemeinste Interesse erregen. Sie zählt bei weitem
am meisten dilettantische Beförderer. Unzählige, welche im vorigen
86 Schulz
Jahrhundert Wappen oder Münzen gesammelt hatten, studiren jetzt

nach den Medaillen in den Flötzen die Dynastien der Fossilien. Ja,
Geologie ist eine fashionable Liebhaberei geworden und selbst schö-
ne Hände blättern im riesigen Steincodex der Gebirge wie in einem
Modejournal […].
Hauff, 1840: 413
Among all sciences, geology is the most popular one, and its findings
arouse a particular public interest. It has the by far largest number of
amateurish supporters. Many of those who used to collect emblems or
coins in the last century, now search the seams for dynasties of fossils.
Indeed, geology has become a fashionable hobby. Now even manicured
hands skim through the vast and stony codices of the mountains, like
skimming through a fashion magazine […].
By using the comparison ‘fashion magazine’ to depict the geological layers of

stone, he emphasizes that geology is widely known, it enjoys great popularity
and its findings are widespread. Moreover, his comparison can be understood
as an ironic comment on the widespread and trendy ideas of ‘neptunism’ and
‘plutonism’, ‘catastrophism’ and ‘uniformitarianism’, which were all widely dis-
cussed geological theories at the beginning of the 18th century.
It was this popularity of geology that established the influence of its con-
cepts of time and of the development of the earth. The new time scale of a
geological ‘deep time’ was particularly significant in terms of its consequences
for the historico-philosophical time concepts, which came up at the same time
as when geology was established as an academic discipline. It is important to
note that these conceptions of the history of earth also had a substantial and
structural influence on the conception of the history of mankind. Arno Seifert
emphasizes the way in which these two academic fields of knowledge are
connected:
In der Tat antizipierte die ‘Erdtheorie’ insofern als eine Art Natur-
Geschichtsphilosophie die Verfahrensweise der Menschheits-Geschichts
philosophie […].
Seifert, 1983: 464
The theories about Earth’s history indeed anticipated the humanity-cen-

tred approaches of philosophy of history, by playing the role of a kind of
nature-centred philosophy of history […].
Discussing a number of sources shows the extent to which early protago-

nists of the ‘Göttingen School’, the ‘Heidelberg School of History’ and particu-
larly Johann Gottfried Herder paid great attention to the geological theories of
their time. For instance, Herder consistently referred to the findings of geology.
Hugh Barr Nisbet refers to his Outlines of a Philosophy of the History of Man as
one of the best examples of underlining the close correlation between natural
and cultural history. Already the first chapters of his Outlines clearly show the
influence of geological research, because “the history of earth and of its living
beings is regarded to be a continuous process” (Nisbet, 1998: 18). The structure
and the direction of development of the history of earth therefore become
increasingly important for the conception of human history, because human
history is part of a far greater and universal history of nature. In his Outlines,
Herder also reflects on the position and role of man on a far older earth, when
he says:
Nicht auf dem Boden deiner Erde wandelst du, armer Mensch, sondern
auf einem Dach deines Hauses, das durch viel Überschwemmungen
erst zu dem werden konnte, was es dir jetzt ist. Da wächst für dich ei-
niges Gras, einige Bäume, deren Mutter dir gleichsam der Zufall heran-
schwemmte und von denen du als eine Ephemere lebest.
Herder, 2002: 52
Poor mortal! thou wanderest not on the surface of thy Earth, but on a
covering of thy house, which must have experienced many deluges, ere
it could become what it is. There grow for thee a little grass, a few trees;
the parent of which has surrounded thee likewise with casualties, and on
which thou livest the day of a worm.
By referring to d’Holbach, who compares the human being to an ephémeros, a

very short-living plant—its Greek name meaning ‘existing only a short time,
temporary, quickly running out (having no lasting importance)’ or ‘existing for
just one day’—Herder lays emphasis on the abrupt and unexpected loss of the
central position of mankind.
In addition to Herder, August Ludwig Schlözer (1735–1809), a historian from
Göttingen, should be mentioned, since he also followed a geological nature-
based approach to history when he wrote his history of the world (Peters, 2003:
195). His geological knowledge obviously had a crucial impact on his concep-
tion of history. When writing about “the concept of a systematic history of the
world,” he says:
88 Schulz
Wir wollen die Revolutionen des Erdbodens, den wir bewohnen, und des
menschlichen Geschlechtes, dem wir angehören, im Ganzen übersehen,
um den heutigen Zustand von beiden aus Gründen zu erkennen.
Schlözer, 1772: 1
We want to look upon the revolutions of the earth, we live on, and of the
human race, we belong to, as a whole, to understand the reasons for the
present state of the two.
Also Christian Daniel Beck (1757–1832), a history professor in Leipzig, refers to

the relevance of earth’s history for the conception of his Universal history of the
world and its people (1787):
Nichts kann für den denkenden Bewohner der Erde lehrreicher seyn, als
die Betrachtung der wichtigern Veränderungen, welche die Erde und die
Menschen in ihrem physischen, politischen und moralischen Zustand
erlitten, und wodurch jene und diese das geworden sind, was sie sind.
Beck, 1787: 1
Nothing is more instructive for a learned inhabitant of the earth than

reflecting upon the major physical, political and ethical changes of the
world and all its human beings, and by which both have become, what
they are now.
Friedrich Christoph Schlosser (1776–1832), a historian in Heidelberg, continues

this tradition and sees cultural history in the context of earth’s history or even
in the context of the history of the universe:
Von diesem Standpunkte aus betrachtet, knüpft sich die Geschichte des
Menschen nothwendig an die Kenntnis und Geschichte des Weltsystems,
des Sonnensystems, der Planeten, und der Natur unserer Erde.
Schlosser, 1826: 2
From this point of view, a history of mankind necessarily depends on

knowledge about the history of the universe, the solar system, the planets
and about of the nature of our earth.
At the same time, Schlosser refers to scientists such as Buffon, Cuvier, Deluc,
von Humboldt and to Leibnitz’ Protogaea; he discusses geological theories
with great expertise.
On the basis of these sources, we can understand the important influence

of the history of earth on establishing history as an academic discipline. The
so called ‘founding fathers’ of German-speaking history were particularly
open to the findings of geosciences. As a result of this geosciences gave a fresh
impetus to the development of history as an academic discipline. This con-
nection between geological time concepts and the historicization of human
civilization is so important because nature and history thus became con-
nected in a new way. The German-speaking research, however, used to refer
to ‘modern’ time concepts as being basically “anti-natural” (Lepenies, 1976: 13).
Koselleck puts special emphasis on the fact that the establishment of history
as an academic discipline goes along with a process of “Denaturalisierung” /
“Denaturalization” of the old—nature-based—conception of time (Koselleck,
2000: 303).
3 Geological Time as History Preceding Human History
The objective of this essay has been to reflect on the conditions that enabled
a new conception of time around 1800. As mentioned, according to Koselleck,
this new conception of time arose through the mental vigour of the individual,
and, according to Lepenies, it was caused by the ‘strains of being confronted
with a growing empirical knowledge’.
In this essay, the main focus lies on the role of geology in the history of
knowledge, and geology’s great achievement has been its ability to document
time in the form of matter since the 17th century. Geological layers are regard-
ed as manifestations of time, and this basic method of reconstructing the his-
tory of earth may at the same time be regarded as an early and momentous
way of establishing a new conception of time. The passing of time appears
as having become a solid part of space. On the other hand, spatiality gets the
dynamic features of temporality. By giving time features of space, and at the
same time giving space features of time, two originally separate structural sys-
tems are merged together. As Kant put it in his Transcendental Aesthetics: The
two forms of perception merge into one. Space and time are not merely ‘forms
of intuition’ any more, preceding our visual perception, but even themselves
become vivid, perceivable, visible and—in a haptic sense—something that
you can understand by touching with your hands (Rahden, 2010: 45). In the
17th century,5 earth’s history was already regarded as being a secular process.
5 The studies of Nicolaus Steno could not be discussed in the context of this essay (cf.
Schmeisser, 2011).
90 Schulz
Consequently, nature cannot be seen as being a kind of ahistorical stage for

the development of mankind. Moreover, geology allows nature to have a dy-
namic and historical character. Stones and mountains that used to be regarded
as being solid and unchanged, now have their historicity. On the other hand,
human history and all cultural achievements are doomed to sink into insignifi-
cance. The biblical parameters of time become obsolete, and the position and
role of man in earth’s history clearly shifted away from a central position to a
very marginal one.
Translated by Michael Pattberg
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Part 2
Atavism and Heredity
⸪
The Law of Progress, Atavism, and Prehistory in
the Belle Époque
Arnaud Hurel
Abstract
Prehistory as a scientific discipline emerged in the second half of the 19th century.
Under the influence of evolutionism, anthropologists blended “fossil men” and “pres-
ent men” into a single biological and cultural anthropology, even if this meant that the
resurgence of the geological past in the present became possible through the principal
of atavism.
In the closing years of the 19th century, the criminologist Enrico Ferri justi-
fied the most recent evolutions in literature, the emergence of the Naturalist
or psychological novel, by referring to the absolute necessity, in approaching
human reality, of taking into account contemporary evolutions in the natural
sciences and humanities:
L’objet du roman naturaliste est l’étude des conditions déterminantes du

milieu, celui du roman psychologique l’analyse des états d’âme de l’in-
dividu. L’un et l’autre, cependant, suivent plus ou moins fidèlement les
données nouvelles de l’anthropologie qu’ils ont servi à rendre populaire.
Et c’est justice car la science leur avait fait un don précieux en renouve-
lant leur vitalité aux sources du document humain et de l’observation
positive.
Ferri, 1897: 94
The object of the Naturalist novel is the study of the determining condi-
tions of the social environment (milieu), that of the psychological novel
is the analysis of the individual’s states of mind. Yet, both more or less
faithfully follow the new data provided by anthropology, which they have
helped to popularize. And rightly so, since science had given them a pre-
cious gift, in renewing their vitality at the sources of the human docu-
ment and positive observation.
96 Hurel
In this respect, the debt owed by certain authors, such as Émile Zola, to
anthropology, especially as considered through the prism of heredity, is fairly
well known.
This movement manifests at a moment of disciplinary re-composition
within the sciences of Man, comprising one aspect of capital importance: the
emergence of a new history of Man. The construction of a narrative of ante-
historical times would come to follow the governing theme of the notion of
“progress”; a term which, in this context, recaptures the idea of an ascending,
linear, and continuous onward march of humanity.
Now, this axis, extending over millennia, would find itself reinforced and fer-
tilized by the sudden entrance onto the terrain of anthropology of the notion
of atavism. It introduces the idea that biology might defy immediate determin-
ing principles, heredity as a case in point, by effecting unforeseen exchanges,
to and fro, between the most distant past and the present. This doctrine of
a mediate transmission of characteristics is, at the time, considered perfectly
compatible with the theory of transformism (Blanckaert, 1999).
The idea of a recessive primitivism conveyed by atavism is even one of the
essential themes of the novel La Bête humaine. Sudden bouts of violence in
Zola’s characters function as so many reminders of an anterior, or even prehis-
toric state, as in the case of the mechanic Jacques Lantier and his murderous
impulses towards women:
[…] une soudaine crise de rage aveugle, une soif toujours renaissante de
venger des offenses très anciennes, dont il aurait perdu l’exacte mémoire.
Cela venait-il donc de si loin, du mal que les femmes avaient fait à sa race,
de la rancune amassée de mâle en mâle, depuis la première tromperie
au fond des cavernes? Et il sentait aussi, dans son accès, une nécessité
de bataille pour conquérir la femelle et la dompter, le besoin perverti de
la jeter morte sur son dos, ainsi qu’une proie qu’on arrache aux autres,
à jamais.
Zola, 1893: 59
[…] a sudden attack of blind rage, an ever-renewed thirst to avenge age-

old offenses, of which he had lost exact memory. Did it hail so far back,
then, back to the harm women had done to his race, back to the rancor
accumulated by man upon man, since the first betrayal in the depths of
the caverns? And, in his fit, he also felt a need to do battle, in order to
conquer the female and to tame her, the depraved urge to throw her dead
over his shoulder, like a prey wrested from others for ever.
The present article aims to explore the temporal telescope effect occasioned
by atavism, in the field of prehistoric studies, between a past buried in the
depths of time and a current reality. We shall first return to the process of elab-
oration of a chronological framework in the founding years of prehistoric stud-
ies, then broach the question of the circumstances of this encounter of two
opposite temporalities. Finally, a practical “atavistics” will allow us to revisit
cases of the practical applications of atavism in anthropology.
1 Building a Discipline: Prehistory—the Construction of a

Chronological Framework
Beginning towards the middle of the 18th century, a new geological history of
Earth is put in place. Man finds himself reduced, little by little, to the status of
a mere element of a vaster, and ever less mysterious, whole. This new frame
of reference plunges into the depths of time and focuses on a past of the Earth,
which, whether modelled according to catastrophist or actualist theory, con-
sistently displays the fundamental characteristic of being dynamic.
Animal skeletons or petrified invertebrates discovered in deep alluvial stra-
ta and in caves contribute to the writing of this history, which becomes that of
life itself. These petrified remains are recognized as belonging to an ancient
fauna, as they differ from current animal life, species extinct in our regions or
having entirely vanished from the face of the globe. The past opens up onto a
new dimension.
Palaeontological research promptly poses the question of the possibility of
discovering the remains of a fossilized human being. As early as 1760, Jean-
Étienne Guettard highlights that:
La découverte d’os humains, enfouis dans une terre qui n’aurait point en-
core été ouverte, & sur-tout mêlés avec des corps marins, serait une des
plus importantes découvertes pour l’histoire des fossiles.
Guettard, 1766: 209
The discovery of human bones, buried in a previously unexcavated por-

tion of earth, and especially if mingled with marine bodies, would consti-
tute one of the most important discoveries for the history of fossils.
Indeed, this association would have been synonymous with a contemporane-

ity, an identical antiquity of those various remains. However, the numerous
98 Hurel
items subjected to the acumen of naturalists result in forming an impressive

array of negative evidence. Georges Cuvier draws up a list of this data and
deems to find a confirmation, therein, of the impossibility of unearthing this
famed fossilized man (Cuvier, 1812: 84–85).
The first decades of the 19th century would reveal themselves to be those
of the fossil hunters. In the years from 1820 to 1830, Paul Tournal, in the caves
of the Narbonnaise, and Jules de Christol, in those of Gard, toil in vain, at-
tempting to find criteria of fossility, and struggle to obtain recognition for the
veritable revolution ushered in by their research: Man as a contemporary of
well-known extinct animal species.
In the absence of a human fossil, the contents of these caverns are, in fact,
discovered to comprise petrified remains interspersed with objects that are
manifestly man-made. The close proximity of these items within the sediment,
which implies a synchronism of deposits a priori, constitutes a new chronom-
eter, a relative dating method of artifacts by means of the bones of extinct ani-
mals. It would fall to Jacques Boucher de Perthes, in the years from 1840–1860,
to establish certainties regarding the geological antiquity of Man.
Édouard Lartet would first transform the compendium of empirical data
into a chronological system. He builds on the palaeontological history of the
great mammals characteristic of the Quaternary, their geographical distribu-
tion and their stratigraphic position in a certain number of sites, in order to
construct a classification. Lartet orders their succession in time according to
four ages, each based on a typical species:
Nous aurions ainsi, pour la période de l’humanité primitive, l’âge du

grand Ours des cavernes, l’âge de l’Éléphant et du Rhinocéros, l’âge du
Renne, et l’âge de l’Aurochs, à peu près comme les archéologues ont ré-
cemment adopté les divisions de l’âge de l’âge de la pierre, de l’âge du
bronze et de l’âge du fer.
Lartet, 1861: 231
For the period of primitive humanity, we would thus have the Age of the
great Bear of the caverns, the Age of the Elephant and of the Rhinoceros,
the Age of the Reindeer, and the Age of the Aurochs, rather like the divi-
sion into ages recently adopted by archaeologists, of the Stone Age, the
Bronze Age, and the Iron Age.
Lartet here reprises a classical principal of stratigraphic palaeontology, which

holds various geological formations to be individualized by the characteristic
fossils they contain and their order of superposition.
This system of classification is promptly criticized by the prehistorian

Gabriel de Mortillet. For his part, he proposes a chronology according to the
diachronic sequence of the manufactured products of Man. He replaces the
palaeontological classification of ages with an archaeological classification, on
the basis of periods characterized by a guiding fossil—in this case, a type of
tool—and according to an ascending level of complexity.
Mortillet’s palaeo-ethnology conceptualizes the dualism nature-culture in
a totalizing, according to his detractors even totalitarian, fashion. He attaches
a characteristic type of artefact, or rather a type of human, the distinguishing
criterion being their cerebral capacity, to each of the periods of Prehistory. Cut
stones thereby become the identity markers of cultures. In order to round off
his demonstration, Mortillet does not hesitate to go back in time to what he calls
the Anthropopithecus, or the precursor of Man (Mortillet de, 1875). Merely for
the sake of intellectual conformity with his explanatory model of human phy-
logeny, and basing himself on archaeological considerations alone, he comes
to define a “tertiary man” of which he distinguishes three types. However, he
lacks the evidence of petrified remains and justifies his demonstration solely
by means of some questionable pieces of flint. The guiding thread of this con-
struction is an essentially Lamarckian transformism, resting on the notions of
the “organizational perfecting” (of individuals and material products), heredi-
ty of characteristics, and of mesologic determinism (Bertillon, 1868)—the “sci-
ence of milieux” or of the reciprocal influences of milieu, i.e. biological, social,
and environmental surroundings, on living creatures (Blanckaert, 1997).
Mortillet constructs a system, an organizational and explanatory method
for archaeological data, applicable anywhere and in all circumstances. This
classification would impose itself almost exclusively for more than a quarter
of a century.
2 A Prehistory Placed under the Dogma of the Law of Progress
Nevertheless, it meets with criticism. Mortillet’s restrictive application of the

principles of stratigraphic palaeontology distances itself from the practice of
naturalists, for whom the geognostic value of fossils is certainly based on their
type, but just as much on their quantity and diversity within a determined
plane of a geological formation. Criticism also emerges from the quarters of
certain archaeologists (Reinach, Bertrand, Capitan): Mortillet is reproached
for having transformed the nature of his classification by turning what was
no more than an organizational tool for his data into the interpretive key for
the entire body of archaeological information. In neglecting the singularity of
100 Hurel
deposits, the variety of manufactured material objects, Mortillet is held to in-

dulge in an artificial arrangement of the ante-historical world, in the sense that
it is disengaged from the realities of the terrain.
The diffusion of this research takes place in a particular social and political
context. The productivist 19th century is then developing a sort of technologi-
cal messianism, which supports the emancipatory will of a part of the popula-
tion with regard to the Empire, even in its liberal form, and to the moral order.
The same period also witnesses the fundamental renewal of theories of evo-
lution brought about by the work of Charles Darwin. The interpretation fre-
quently given of it in France, the assimilation of evolution to progress, shows
itself to be not particularly Darwinian. Under the militant feather of Clémence
Royer, Darwin’s Origin of Species becomes an instrument of conquest, the proc-
lamation of a victory of science over metaphysics, “the rational revelation of
progress” (Royer, 1862: XXXIX). Emphasizing her bias, the first French-language
translator does not hesitate to modify the title of Darwin’s work, in order to
introduce into it the “law of progress”.
An entire current of anthropologists is not far from considering Darwin a
researcher of scarce audacity, refusing to see his doctrine through to the end.
As early as 1862, Royer denounces the reserve he is deemed to have shown in
not drawing all the logical conclusions of his theory on the plane of its “moral
consequences”. According to André Lefèvre, Darwin demonstrates that “un
Anglais décent peut être un naturaliste audacieux et rester un penseur tim-
ide” / “a decent Englishman may be a daring naturalist and remain a timid
thinker” (Lefèvre, 1881: 125).
By contrast, no timidity of this kind in Mortillet; to his view, his exhibition
on prehistory at the World Fair of 1867 in Paris represents a definitive victory,
that of prehistorical studies and of a certain philosophy of history:
On voit l’industrie débuter par des instruments de pierre, simplement

taillés à éclats, si primitifs, si rudimentaires, qu’ils sont de beaucoup infé-
rieurs à tout ce que nous trouvons de nos jours chez les peuples sauvages
les plus arriérés. […]
Pierre taillée à éclats, pierre polie, bronze, fer, sont autant de grandes
étapes qu’a traversées l’humanité tout entière, pour arriver à notre
civilisation.
Mortillet de, 1867: 193
We see industry commence with instruments of stone, simply hewn by

flakes, so primitive, so rudimentary, that they are greatly inferior to any-
thing we find nowadays amongst the most backward of savage peoples.
[…]
Flint-knapped stone, polished stone, bronze, iron, are so many

great stages traversed by all of humanity, in order to arrive at our
civilization.
For Mortillet, prehistory irrefutably demonstrates three “facts” or three laws.

The “Loi du progress de l’humanité” / “Law of the Progress of Humanity” sum-
marizes the history of Man as that of a technological progress, a “marche pro-
gressive” / “progressive march”, leading from flint-knapped stone to the ages of
the various metals, and up to current civilization. The “Loi du développement
similaire” / “Law of Similar Development” is an offshoot of comparative eth-
nography. It postulates that in all places and in all times, Man has experienced
the same processes of cultural and moral development. Finally, the “Haute an-
tiquité de l’homme” / “High Antiquity of Man” has meanwhile become indis-
putable, since it has been established as fact since 1859, with the international
recognition of the research of Boucher de Perthes, that Man was the contem-
porary of extinct animal species.
3 The Hour of Revolutions: Neanderthal, Darwin, and Atavism—

Appearance of the Neanderthal
A major event would be marked by the discovery in Neanderthal (Germany),

in August of 1856, of 16 human bones and bone fragments—essentially a skull
cap and several long bones characterized by extraordinary robustness. The
skull is marked by the pronounced development of the brow ridges, which
form veritable arches, and an absence of forehead (narrow, lowered, fleeing).
The other bones are so thick as to initially raise the question, whether they are,
in fact, human.
Researchers are at a loss, in interpreting these singular objects. They have
no knowledge of the stratigraphic context, nor are any petrified animal re-
mains found in concomitance, which might allow them to envision a chrono-
logical parallel, and on a broader scale, there are no human fossils that could
provide a comparison. For all these reasons, the analysis of the remains of
Neanderthal is slow to be published. In June of 1857, Hermann Schaaffhausen
presents his conclusions. While some voice the hypothesis that one might be
dealing with an individual affected by a deformation of pathological origin
(microcephalic idiot, rickets) or one peculiar to current Asian populations,
Schaaffhausen holds that the conformation of these remains is not due to
a disease, and that they date from a period in which “les derniers animaux
du Déluge existaient encore” / “the last animals of the Deluge still existed”
(Schaaffhausen, 1861: 155). Yet, it is not actually until 1861, that the international
102 Hurel
scientific community takes note of this extraordinary discovery, thanks to the

publication of a translation of these studies. Around the same period, another
discovery, the Neanderthalian skull of Forbe’s Quarry, unearthed in Gibraltar
in 1848, is presented to the scientific community in 1864. Its discoverer, George
Busk then establishes a very direct link with the fossil of Neanderthal, thereby
bolstering the hypothesis of a type, rather than a simple biological aberration
(Busk, 1865: 91–92).
These two concomitant events, the sudden appearance of the species Homo
neanderthalensis in human genealogy and the regeneration of transformism
in Darwinian form, would profoundly alter the horizon of prehistoric studies.
The high antiquity of Man had been established in the absence of any legiti-
mately recognized human fossil, yet the first coherent set of remains placed in
the hands of researchers are prone to throw them off course: this prehistoric
man, having his place in the most ancient geological times of the Quaternary,
displays characteristics that blend the boundaries of humanity, flirting with
animality.
The phyletic model of the human race takes shape and seems to affirm a
logic of linear progression from the Neanderthalian brute up until the Homo
sapiens of the Age of the Reindeer (Upper Palaeolithic). But the appropriation
of the concept of atavism by anthropologists and prehistorians would inter-
pose itself into this neat sequence.
4 Linear Time Disrupted by Atavism
The term atavism is not new, and exhibits long-standing usage in botany.
Franck Bourdier (Bourdier, 1960: 23) attributes the paternity of the word to
Antoine Nicolas Duchesne, in the context of his studies on the genealogy of
plant varieties, published by Lamarck in 1786. The hypothesis of atavism pro-
vides an explanation for phenomena that interfere with the efforts of horticul-
turalists regarding the creation and selection of plants.
Anthropologists rapidly adopt the notion. For instance, the physiologist
Karl Friedrich Burdach observes as early as 1838 that the succession of indi-
viduals within a species gives rise to
des dégradations, des retours vers les formes inférieures et moins par-
faites. Car l’espèce n’est pas ce qu’il y a de plus élevé; elle se perd dans
l’idée de genre, dans celle d’ordre, etc. Certains individus s’écartent de
l’espèce.
Burdach, 1838: 245
degradations, throwbacks to inferior and less perfect forms. For the spe-
cies is not the highest thing there is; it is confused with the idea of genus,
of order, etc. Certain individuals diverge from the species.
For Darwin, the persistence of “rudimentary organs”, superfluous to animals,

are like the “letters in a word, still retained in the spelling, but become useless
in the pronunciation, but which serve as a clue for its derivation.” (Darwin,
1859: 455) To qualify this phenomenon, Darwin, in The Origin of Species
(chap. V “Laws of variation”), does not employ the word atavism, but uses the
expression “reversions to long-lost characters” (Darwin, 1859: 478).
Carl Vogt, whose research would carry great authority in European anthro-
pology, in a materialist perspective, shows that manifestations of “retours vers
les ancêtres” / “throwbacks to ancestors” are likely to skip generations before
manifesting anew. According to him, this influence of the past is apparent “en
dehors des lois ordinaires de l’hérédité” / “outside the ordinary laws of hered-
ity” (Letourneau, 1867: 488) in cases of microcephaly. The disorder is held to
constitute the somatic expression of an “héritage latent” / “latent heritage” aris-
ing from the most remote past of the human race: this teratological atavism ex-
presses a development of the individual towards a simian type. “Corpore homo,
intellectu simia”. Microcephaly could thus be considered, in part, the organic
and psychological expression of a prehuman, simian stadium.
Taking these reflections further, Eugène Dailly, in his introduction to his
French translation of Thomas Huxley’s book Evidence as to Man’s Place in
Nature, would observe that through atavism an individual is made to “sortir
[…] de son espèce, et même de son genre” / “depart […] from its species and
even its genus” (Huxley, 1868: 39). In essence, the phenomenon can hence be
considered an exclusion. The French current of scientific materialism, a deter-
mined grouping made known in the past 20 years by the works published by
Claude Blanckaert, Joy Harvey, Jennifer Hecht, or Piet Desmet, would embrace
this notion, setting it forth in its individual publications or in its “œuvres de
combat” / “polemical writings” (Mottu, 1869: s.p.).
5 Practical Atavistics: Reading the Present in Terms of the Past and

Vice Versa—Not Everyone Has a Right to Progress: a Neanderthal
on the Street Corner
It is essentially with the Neanderthal that atavism would come to be associat-

ed, beginning in 1860. Over a first interval, Armand de Quatrefages, professor of
anthropology of the National Museum of Natural History, had declared himself
104 Hurel
in favour of the incorporation of Neanderthals in the common category of sa-

piens. He likened them to the “type moyen des races germaniques actuelles” /
“average type of contemporary Germanic races”, their physical particularities
deriving from simple human variability, rather than placing them in particular
proximity to the apes (Quatrefages de, 1867: 251). But when Quatrefages and
his student Ernest-Théodore Hamy review the entire array of objects of the an-
thropological register, in the preparation of their monography Crania ethnica,
the two researchers revise this first opinion. The burgeoning of discoveries has
confirmed the existence of
une race paléontologique dont le crâne du Neanderthal exagère les carac-

tères et qui, fondue avec les races postérieures, accuse son existence pas-
sée par l’empreinte qu’elle impose encore aujourd’hui à quelques rares
individus.
Quatrefages de, Hamy, 1882: 43
a palaeontological race, the traits of which are exaggerated by the skull

of the Neanderthal, and which, melded with posterior races, betrays its
past existence through the imprint it still, nowadays, imparts on a few
rare individuals.
This atavistic resurgence is observable over vast expanses of the world and
corresponds to the zones in which the most ancient prehistoric industries
were uncovered. Quatrefages and Hamy base their demonstration on a cross-
section of skulls taken from European collections, including those of famous
historical figures (Robert the Bruce, King Robert I of 14th century Scotland;
Saint Mansuetus, Bishop of Toul in the 4th century; the Irish O’Connor, last king
of Connacht in the 15th century; etc.). According to the two anthropologists,
they also present cases of resurgence, through atavism, of Neanderthaloid traits.
Atavism is, likewise, a key notion in the palaeoanthropological system of
Gabriel de Mortillet. The Chellean man, Neanderthal in his singular physical
conformation, also merely displays traits inherited from his remote ancestors.
For Mortillet, the host of simian traits in the Neanderthal places his direct kin-
ship with the ape, or rather with an “intermediate type”, his Anthropopithecus,
beyond doubt.
6 A Neanderthal Bound for the Gallows
If “L’atavisme est le retour au passé” / “Atavism is a throwback to the past”, then

it touches all past ages. Judging that the extinction of the Neanderthal was not
the result of a replacement of this “race” by another, Mortillet, on the contrary,

supposes the Neanderthal race to have intimately joined together with other
groups, then
s’est transformée sur place, peu à peu. Son sang s’est infusé dans la race
nouvelle; aussi voit-on, de temps à autre, le type de Néanderthal réappa-
raître plus ou moins parmi nous par suite d’atavisme.
Mortillet de, 1883: 249
[to] ha[ve] transformed on site, little by little. His blood infused the new
race; hence, from time to time, the Neanderthalian type will reappear to
a greater or lesser degree among us, as a result of atavism.
Whereas cases of complete atavism would seem to be exceptional—whatever

some may believe, it is rare to come across a Neanderthal on a street
corner—partial atavism, by contrast, is held to be more frequent and to mani-
fest in certain populations and especially in criminals. Regarding this point,
Mortillet employs a reasoning that toys with temporal derailment: since crimi-
nals are violent beings betraying anatomical similarities with Neanderthals,
Neanderthals must also have been aggressive.
Mortillet’s argumentation essentially draws on the research of his colleague
at the School of Anthropology, Dr. Arthur Bordier. The studies of the latter have
their, modest, place in a current developing since the 1870s around scholars
such as Cesare Lombroso, whose work L’uomo delinquente is an enormous
success—five successive editions are published in Italy beginning in 1876, two
in France.
This “anthropological and medico-legal study” arises from an archaeology
of criminality. A substantial part of Lombroso’s demonstration, indeed, rests
on the relationship with time. Atavism weighs on the criminal. It can even take
the form of “preatavism”, which would link him to small mammals such as ro-
dents, as certain anatomical elements are held to show (exaggerated progna-
thism, giant orbital capacity, etc.). In his being and by his acts, the criminal
is an expression of the past. His physical conformation, his mental universe
belongs to the universe of human fossils. He would appear to be ontologically
incompatible with modern societies. Within himself, he carries the weight of a
millenary and ill-fated stratification.
The presentation of the Section of Anthropological Science at the World
Fair of 1878 gives Dr. Bordier the opportunity to study a series of 36 skulls of
guillotined murderers, including the famous Lacenaire, and to perform direct
comparisons with the remains of historical and prehistorical periods. He ob-
serves that “les assassins semblent remonter le courant du progrès” / “criminals
106 Hurel
seem to reascend the stream of progress” (Bordier, 1879: 273). In the service
of this conclusion, he mobilizes all the morphological indices of intellectual
inferiority of murderers:
Il est bien permis de noter la coïncidence qui frappe les yeux, entre le dé-
veloppement quasi-préhistorique de la région pariétale chez les assassins
et leur brutalité sauvage. Moins de région frontale et plus de région parié-
tale; moins de réflexion et plus d’action; n’est-ce pas là la caractéristique
de l’homme préhistorique et de l’assassin moderne.
Bordier, 1879: 278
It is reasonable to note the striking coincidence between the quasi-

prehistorical development of the parietal region in murderers and their
savage brutality. Less frontal and more parietal lobe; less reflection and
more action; is not this the characteristic trait of prehistoric man and the
modern assassin.
The murderer is considered to be a sort of prehistoric element, reintroduced

into modern civilization through atavism, a violent anomaly in the civilized
social order:
Le criminel ainsi compris est un anachronisme, un sauvage en pays civili-

sé, une sorte de monstre […]. Évoquons par la pensée un de nos ancêtres
préhistoriques et introduisons-le dans les rangs serrés et hiérarchisés de
notre ordre social: ce sera un criminel. Le criminel actuel est venu trop
tard: plus d’un, à l’époque préhistorique, eut été un chef respecté de sa
tribu.
Bordier, 1879: 278
Understood in this fashion, the criminal is an anachronism, a savage in

a civilized country, a sort of monster […]. Let us call one of our prehis-
toric ancestors to mind and introduce him into the tight and hierarchical
ranks of our social order: he will be a criminal. The current criminal was
too late to arrive: more than one would, in prehistoric times, have been a
respected chief of his tribe.
When it comes to bolstering his demonstration, there is nothing like a good il-
lustration. In 1885, Paul Nicole, in L’homme il y a deux cent mille ans / Man Two
Hundred Thousand Years Ago, appeals to the talent of Émile Mas, in order to
give contour to the concept. The portrait of Martin Dumollard, a serial killer,
the famous “murderer of maids”, guillotined in 1862, is presented in direct com-
parison to that of a pseudo-Neanderthal with marked archaic traits.
7 Conclusion
One of the essential tensions of the notion of atavism, and of its success, re-
sides in the two doctrines that it serves to support: the animal origin of Man
and the unity of the human race. Thus, from a phyletic perspective, atavism
can quite easily be touted by antagonistic anthropological factions, on the
question of monogenism vs. polygenism. What is at play here manifestly tran-
scends strictly biological considerations, encroaching on the metaphysical, so-
cial, and political spheres.
Quatrefages accepts the principle of atavism because it reinforces the prin-
ciple of the unity of the species. Now, this unity pertains to a criterion, which,
according to him, fundamentally distinguishes Man: he is a moral and religious
being. At the other end of the philosophical chessboard, at the centre of the
current of scientific materialism, Mortillet, Bordier, Nicole, and others exalt
the ontological bestiality of Man. The explanation of social phenomena by
means of atavism is not limited to criminology alone.
In La Géographie médicale, Bordier highlights that atavism constitutes an
obstacle on the way towards political progress. This force
tend non seulement à maintenir le type dans le statu quo (elle prend alors
le nom d’hérédité), mais à le ramener en arrière, à rétrograder; cette force
qui, à la manière d’un sénat conservateur, s’oppose au progrès, demande
l’inamovibilité, le respect de la tradition, qui s’épouvante du nouveau et
s’accroche au passé, c’est l’atavisme.
Bordier, 1888: 568–569
tends not only to maintain the type in its status quo (taking the name of
heredity), but to carry it backwards, lead it to retrogress; this force, which,
in the manner of a conservative senate, opposes progress, demands im-
movability, respect of tradition, which is frightened by novelty and clings
to the past, that is atavism.
“Religious sentiment” itself is held to be marked by the fatality conferred

by atavism. Whereas microcephaly is constituted by arrested physiological
108 Hurel
development, religion is deemed to be an expression of arrested moral

development:
Le sentiment religieux est un legs des périodes antiques, une survivance,

un caractère infantile, un trait obstiné d’atavisme que l’ignorance ne se
lasse pas de reproduire, et la science d’effacer. La vraie marque des races
supérieures, c’est l’élimination de la religiosité.
Lefèvre, 1879: 512
Religious sentiment is a legacy of ancient times, a relic, an infantile

characteristic, an obstinate trait of atavism, untiringly reproduced by ig-
norance and effaced by science. The true mark of superior races is the
elimination of religiosity.
The religious debate is one of the contentious questions in French society in

the Belle Époque. It resurfaces and interferes all the more consistently in the
construction of the image of prehistoric men, as anthropologists and prehis-
torians are at the forefront of the battle for the secularization of minds and of
society. In these circumstances, imagining symbolic practices (funerary rites,
cave paintings) dating back to the Palaeolithic poses a problem for some schol-
ars. The entanglement of science and its social and political environment is
patently obvious.
A vast movement of re-composition, sustained by prehistorians such as
Abbé Henri Breuil or Jacques de Morgan, would deliver a fatal blow to the
original scheme of a prehistorical time elaborated in a direction-oriented per-
spective, its “progress” punctuated by atavistic resurgences, veritable reminis-
cences of the animal nature of Man. This reconfiguration is based on a return
to the terrain (reintroduction of the stratigraphic approach), the attainment of
a broad spatial perspective (correlation of data on an interregional level), and
a rupture of the link between artefacts, biology, and “civilization”. The account
of prehistorical times becomes that of a dynamic, that of exchanges and alter-
nations (climate, fauna, populations, material products).
The direction of a spotlight onto this complexity of human behaviour and of
the interactions between Man and his environment would ultimately refund
and reform any previous understanding of the link between nature and culture
in prehistoric times.

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Nietzsche, or Culture Put to the Test at the
Timescale of Heredity
Emmanuel Salanskis
Abstract
The purpose of this article is to show that Nietzsche’s Lamarckism structures his philo‑
sophical reflection on culture. By “Lamarckism”, as has become customary since the
second half of the 19th century, I mean a conception of heredity which allows for the
possibility of hereditary transmission of acquired characteristics. I examine three
crucial implications of this framework for Nietzsche’s cultural thought: first, he must
consider the cultural history of mankind at an evolutionary timescale and include pre‑
history in his field of investigation; secondly, he has to develop a genealogical method
for evaluating evolving values, since macro history reveals that everything is constantly
in flux, including man himself; and thirdly, Nietzsche is led to conceive culture as an
experiment of human breeding conducted over a very long time period.
In his second Untimely Meditation entitled “On the Uses and Disadvantages of
History for Life” (1874), Nietzsche distinguishes between three different ways
that the study of history could be put in the service of life (Nietzsche, 1997: 67).1
They are uses that Nietzsche considers legitimate insofar as they do not turn
historical knowledge into an absolute value, to be pursued in a purely objective
spirit and without regard for the practical needs of the individual. First of all,
there is monumental history, which provides great models to men of action and
creative individuals. Then, there is antiquarian or traditionalist history (“anti-
quarisch” in German), which allows the researcher to know and preserve his
origins (Nietzsche, 1997: 72). Finally, there is critical history, which is needed
when the past has to be challenged and overcome.
This third form of history comes up against a difficulty that Nietzsche would
constantly attempt to overcome through his philosophical work. Critical his‑
tory leads to a questioning of the idea of inheritance, since it is particular in‑
heritances that potentially require criticism (Nietzsche, 1997: 76–77). But in
1 Unless otherwise stated, all references to Nietzsche’s works refer to the following edition:
Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy. As for the posthumous fragments, these shall be
translated directly from the German online version Digitale Kritische Gesamtausgabe, avail‑
able at http://www.nietzschesource.org/#eKGWB.
112 Salanskis
the context of the Lamarckian notion of heredity that Nietzsche adopts, there
exists no fixed boundary between heredity and inheritance, or between na‑
ture and culture. The remains of the past do not exist simply outside of us.
Certain of them have been incorporated and are part of what Nietzsche calls in
German “[unsere] ererbte, angestammte Natur”: i.e. a nature we have inherited,
a nature that has been passed down to us. Nietzsche doesn’t specify whether he
is talking about biological or cultural inheritance, but it would be wrong to see
it as a mere ambiguity. What follows in the text shows that the difference be‑
tween the two is merely one of timeframe: a new habit is destined to become,
over the long term, a new instinct, in accordance with a principle of progres‑
sive hereditary inscription which Nietzsche doesn’t need to emphasize, since it
is widely accepted in the second half of the 19th century.2 This principle is both
an obstacle and a challenge for critical history. While critical history cannot
erase the past in an instant, it might set out, on the other hand, to transform
Man by progressively inculcating in him a second nature.
In this sense, Nietzsche’s Lamarckism combines the historical timeframe
of culture with the biological timeframe of heredity. Such an approach, how‑
ever, was not in itself particularly remarkable in the 19th century. It can be
found in Herbert Spencer as well as in many other of Nietzsche’s contem‑
poraries (Gissis, 2005). This paper will thus deal with more specific issues. I
would like to examine three crucial problems that Nietzsche had to deal with
within the Lamarckian framework of his thought: the question of the appro‑
priate timescale of a “historical philosophy”, the question of a possible method
for evaluating evolving values, and a question of practical horizon in relation
to historical reflection. I intend to deal with each of these three questions in
turn in order to demonstrate that there exists a line of investigation linking
Untimely Meditations, published in 1874, to On the Genealogy of Morals, which
appeared in 1887.
1 The Need to Think in the Long Term
Let us begin with the question of timescale in the context of historical phi‑
losophy, as defined by Nietzsche and as he wishes to practice it. On this point,
2 Certain scholars contest the idea of a Nietzschean Lamarckism, and demand clear evidence
that Nietzsche was thinking of hereditary transmission rather than merely social transmis‑
sion of cultural traits (Clark, 2013). But such a requirement would seem anachronistic, for
the very fact that Nietzsche doesn’t differentiate these two interpretations suggests that he
doesn’t recognize any difference in principle between hereditary transmission and social or
cultural transmission (which is consistent with a Lamarckian viewpoint).
Nietzsche, or Culture Put to the Test 113
he seems to have been influenced by his reading about Darwinian evolution,

which caused him to change perspective around the time of the publication
of Human, All Too Human (1878).3 Until then, Nietzsche had been a profes‑
sor of philology whose frame of reference essentially extended as far as Greek
Antiquity. Moreover, he was hostile to German historicism, or more generally
to history undertaken for its own sake and in isolation from the business of life.
Yet the first two paragraphs of Human, All Too Human make a plea, on the
contrary, in favour of a “historical philosophy” involving a change of temporal
scale. Nietzsche calls into question the primacy of the few thousand years of
world history on which, according to him, philosophers have usually focused
in their speculations on Man. We thus read in §2: “Lack of historical sense is
the family failing of all philosophers” (Nietzsche, 1996: 13). Nietzsche argues
that philosophers have treated Man as a fixed quantity, which amounted to
absolutizing “the man of a very limited period of time”. However, one merely
has to go beyond these narrow limits to discover a deep history that refutes the
illusion of an unchanging human nature. This is also shown in §2 of Human,
All Too Human:
[…] everything essential in the development of mankind (alles

Wesentliche der menschlichen Entwickelung) took place in primeval
times, long before the four thousand years we more or less know about;
during these years mankind may well not have altered very much.
Nietzsche, 1996: 13, modified translation
Nietzsche uses the term Entwickelung in German, which can be translated as

“evolution” or “development”, but which, at the time it was written, had an unmis‑
takably evolutionary connotation. It recalls the expression Entwickelungslehre,
which the German Darwinist Ernst Haeckel, for instance, used to refer to the
“theory of evolution” (Haeckel, 1868). Indeed, Nietzsche seems to be taking an
evolutionary turn in the passage of Human, All Too Human where he lays out
his “historical philosophy”.
If we can speak of a turn, it is because, in Untimely Meditations, Nietzsche
had countered the Darwinian and evolutionary view with cultural arguments.
He did not contest their scientific validity, but judged them dangerous in axi‑
ological terms. The second Untimely Meditation described as “true but deadly”
the doctrines “of sovereign becoming, of the fluidity of all concepts, types
3 Regarding Nietzsche’s reading on the topic of “Darwinism”, in the broad and ambiguous sense
that this term had in the late 19th century, I recommend Chapter 10 of Thomas Brobjer’s book
on Nietzsche and the “English” (Brobjer, 2008: 235‑271).
114 Salanskis
and species, of the lack of any cardinal distinction between man and animal”
(Nietzsche, 1997: 112): evolutionary doctrines which had been adopted by
Eduard von Hartmann, whose Philosophy of the Unconscious was Nietzsche’s
target in §9. The expression “true but deadly” is revealing of Nietzsche’s think‑
ing at this time. What mattered for him was much less the truth of a doctrine
than its cultural value. This he measured using an axiology Schopenhauerian
and Wagnerian in inspiration, which was based on a metaphysics of art, and
had supra-historical pretentions (Nietzsche, 1997: 120). The young Nietzsche
thus asserted apparently eternal values, ignoring the consequences of the the‑
ory of evolution.
But the problem is that, at the same time, he recognized that evolution was
a reality. An obvious tension, both intellectual and emotional, runs through
the texts of this period. Nietzsche was quickly aware of this tension, as wit‑
nessed by a posthumous fragment from 1872, of which I shall only quote the
beginning:
The horrible consequence of Darwinism, which by the way I hold to be

true. All our veneration is related to qualities which we consider to be
eternal: moral, artistic, religious, etc.
Instincts do not help us take a single step forward toward explaining
purposiveness (Zweckmäßigkeit). For these instincts are already the prod‑
uct of interminably long processes.4
Even if we are dealing with a complex and elliptical text, this fragment is in‑
structive in several respects. First, Nietzsche accepts the reality of evolution,
referring to Darwinism as being “true”. Secondly, he draws from this fact the con‑
clusion that there are no such things as eternal values, be they moral, artistic or
religious. We can fill in the missing element in his argument thus: Darwinism
calls into question the axiological bases of our thought, particularly because it
reveals even our instincts to be the products of an evolution. In short, if Man
is not a fixed quantity, he cannot provide a constant benchmark for values.
But this only becomes apparent if we take into account “interminably long
processes”, i.e. a timeframe that is precisely that in which the evolution of the
instincts took place. This line of reasoning foreshadows the general theory of
becoming that Nietzsche would lay out in Human, All Too Human, according to
which: “everything has become: there are no eternal facts, just as there are no
absolute truths” (Nietzsche, 1996: 13). Thirdly, and finally, Nietzsche finds his
own Darwinian conclusions “horrible”. They trigger a sort of moral crisis, for
4 Cf. http://www.nietzschesource.org/#eKGWB/NF-1872,19[132], transl. ES.

the young Nietzsche didn’t give up promoting values, while recognizing, on the
other hand, that all forms of veneration were a falsification.
Before going into the method that would allow Nietzsche to resolve this cri‑
sis, I would like to return to the question of the timescale of evolution, and to
add a few remarks about the scientific context to which Human, All too Human
is indebted as far as this question is concerned. This context goes beyond
Darwin, whom Nietzsche, in any event, had not read first hand. The evolution‑
ist theme of the “antiquity of Man”, promoted by Charles Lyell, went on to be‑
come omnipresent in the anthropology of the second half of the 19th century
(Lyell, 1863). It gave rise to a new current of research, prehistoric studies, one
of whose major contributors was John Lubbock: in 1870, he authored a work on
The Origin of Civilisation which Nietzsche read carefully in its German transla‑
tion (Lubbock, 1870; Thatcher, 1983). In an essay entitled Physics and Politics,
which Nietzsche also read, Walter Bagehot summed up in striking fashion
the lesson of this new anthropology: “Man himself has, to the eye of science,
become ‘an antiquity’” (Bagehot, 2001: 6).5 This is the conception of Man to
which Nietzsche goes along with in Human, All too Human—which goes to
show that, in this matter as in others, he is not an isolated thinker.
2 A Genealogical Method for Evaluating Values
However, it remains to be seen how Nietzsche managed, in the end, to explic‑

itly take the reality of evolution into account when making his philosophical
evaluations; which brings me to the critical method he developed in this re‑
gard during the 1880s. This method would finally come to be known as “gene‑
alogy” in 1887, only relatively late, and would be theorized in the preface to
On the Genealogy of Morality.
Let us start again from the methodological problem faced by the young
Nietzsche. There would seem to be something arbitrary, or even “Jesuitical”,
in establishing values once one has become aware of the fluidity of human
instincts. This is just what Nietzsche retrospectively accuses himself of doing
in a posthumous fragment, dated 1883: “Behind my first period grins the face
of Jesuitism”.6 It thus becomes necessary to find a way to avoid such arbitrari‑
ness. And, in the end, Nietzsche’s solution is to take the evolving life itself as
his fundamental value. Indeed, he characterizes “genealogy” as an evaluation
5 The German translation of this work, which shows signs of having been read, was found in
Nietzsche’s personal library (Campioni, D’Iorio, Fornari, Fronterotta, Orsucci, 2003: 130–131).
6 Cf. http://www.nietzschesource.org/#eKGWB/NF-1883,16[23], transl. ES.
116 Salanskis
of values in relation to their beneficial or harmful impact on human flourish‑

ing. It is thus a critique of the “value of values”. This critique is historical, since
it has to determine, in the case of each value, the conditions in which such
a value has been invented, and to what extent it has impeded or advanced
human flourishing up until the present. This is indeed the criterion of evalua‑
tion expressed in §3 of the preface to On the Genealogy of Morality (Nietzsche,
1994: 5). The genealogical method thus goes through two stages: it traces the
origins of values, in order then to be able to evaluate them. In this respect, it is
fair to say that genealogy succeeds critical history in Nietzsche’s thought, the
latter having been defined in the second Untimely Meditation.
The choice of the term “genealogy” is worthy of some attention. As already
mentioned, it was a relatively late choice. Nietzsche does not explain it explic‑
itly from a conceptual standpoint as far as I know. Just before publishing On the
Genealogy of Morality, he had entitled a section of Beyond Good and Evil “On
the Natural History of Morality”, “Zur Naturgeschichte der Moral” (Nietzsche,
2002: 75–92, modified translation). It is probable that these two expressions
were close in meaning, given the dates when they were used (1886 and 1887)
and, above all, their conceptual affinities. It is fair to assume that the image of
genealogy includes that of natural history. But Nietzsche often preferred to use
polysemic and over-determined terms: it was a recurrent aspect of his writing
style. If he finally settled on the image of genealogy, it is probably because it
had something additional that was missing in the image of natural history.
From one point of view, that of inclusiveness, it might be pointed out that
the naturalist working within an evolutionary framework is, in a certain sense,
already engaged in genealogy. In other words, he interprets the taxonomic re‑
lations between organisms as relations of filiation. In this connection, a fa‑
mous sentence from chapter XIII of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species comes
to mind: “All true classification is genealogical” (Darwin, 1859: 420). Nietzsche
was aware of this naturalist dimension of genealogy. In §12 of the second trea‑
tise of On the Genealogy of Morality, he claims to be following a historiographi‑
cal principle, which is valid, according to him, “for every sort of history”: thus,
for natural history as well as for Nietzschean genealogy. This principle involves
de-correlating cause and function in a manner that seems to owe something
to Darwin: “the origin of the emergence of a thing and its ultimate usefulness,
its practical application and incorporation into a system of ends, are toto coelo
separate” (Nietzsche, 1994: 51). It should be noted that Nietzsche applies this
principle both to the genesis of bodily organs as well as to that of social cus‑
toms, without drawing any distinction in principle between evolution and his‑
tory per se. The author of On the Genealogy of Morality is thus one of those
nineteenth-century authors who seek inspiration in the methods of natural

history.7
From another point of view, that of over-determination, Nietzschean gene‑
alogy is not reducible to natural history.8 Nietzsche is implicitly calling upon
another semantic register in using the word “genealogy”: that of aristocratic
genealogies. In that perspective, the genealogist demands that values present
their quarters of nobility to justify their prerogatives. Indeed, the positive repre‑
sentation of the aristocracy is a hallmark of Nietzsche’s philosophy. Nietzsche
believes his research shows conclusively that aristocratic values are typically
those which elevate and affirm life, while plebeian values originate from a
resentment hostile to life, originally produced by circumstances of social op‑
pression. According to §9 of the first treatise of On the Genealogy of Morality,
Judeo-Christian morality is an example of just this type of plebeian resentment
(Nietzsche, 1994: 19). Whatever one might think of Nietzsche’s critique of the
“plebeianism of the modern spirit” (Nietzsche, 1994: 13), it is important to avoid
caricaturing it by putting it down to a merely reactionary nostalgia. In truth,
Nietzsche was aware that he was no aristocrat, despite the far-fetched geneal‑
ogy he would give himself in Ecce homo in 1888.9 His elaboration of a form of
aristocratism must be related to his historico-biological approach to philoso‑
phy. He claims to adopt values that will enable the flourishing of human life
over the very long term. He also wishes to reject a morality which seems to him
“a danger, an enticement, a poison, a narcotic”, by means of which the present
lives, so to speak, “at the expense of the future” (Nietzsche, 1994: 8). We are thus
no longer dealing with an unconditional justification of values, which would
hold good sub specie aeterni.
3 History as “Great Laboratory”
These remarks bring me to the third of the questions mentioned in my intro‑

duction: that of the practical horizon of all of this historico-biological thought.
During the 1880s, this horizon begins to coincide with what Nietzsche, in
7 He is far from the only one: Taine and Renan could also be cited as other examples (Richard,
2004).
8 According to §344 in The Gay Science, written at the same period as On the Genealogy of
Morality, scientificity (as well as truth) should be questioned and criticized as a value in a
genealogical manner (Nietzsche, 2001: 200–201).
9 His ancestors would supposedly be Polish aristocrats, a claim borne out by no concrete evi‑
dence (Nietzsche, 2005: 77).
118 Salanskis
Beyond Good and Evil, calls the “breeding and education work” of the philoso‑
pher (Nietzsche, 2002: 54). In other words, a desire to engage in human breed‑
ing underpins Nietzsche’s cultural Lamarckism and consistently forms the
backdrop to his work on history. This is a vast and complex topic, and I’ll limit
myself to a few general remarks at this juncture.
Nietzsche mainly develops his ideas about breeding from Thus Spoke
Zarathustra (1883–1885) and Beyond Good and Evil (1886) on. The correspond‑
ing German term is Züchtung. As in English, the German word has a strongly
zoological connotation, one which Nietzsche himself underlines in Twilight of
the Idols (1888):
People have always wanted to ‘improve’ human beings; for the most
part, this has been called morality. But this one term has stood for vastly
different things. The project of taming the human beast (die Zähmung
der Bestie Mensch) as well as the project of breeding a certain species of
human have both been called ‘improvements’: only by using these zoo‑
logical terms can we begin to express the realities here […].
Nietzsche, 2005: 183, translation slightly altered10
In Nietzsche’s eyes, the words Zähmung and Züchtung, when applied to hu‑
mans, thus express a reality that goes deeper than the familiar vocabulary of
morals. The idea is indeed that there is little difference between the “improve‑
ment” of animals by Man and the “improvement” of Man by Man: in both
cases, this “improvement” consists either of taming a wild beast or of breeding
an animal in order to produce a certain zoological type that would be better
adapted to particular needs.
Nietzsche’s use of the words Zähmung and Züchtung in this context is no
accident. These two terms refer to an important distinction in biology: that
between taming and domestication. Domestication is a form of breeding
that transforms the hereditary characteristics of a population of animals or
plants. On the other hand, the taming of a wild beast cannot strictly speak‑
ing be termed breeding because it is not hereditary: the process must be re‑
peated with each generation.11 Dogs are an example of the first case, since
we know that they are domesticated wolves bred by mankind to serve their
needs. Nietzsche gives just this example in a posthumous fragment dating
10 The German word “Zähmung” shouldn’t be translated by “domestication”, but by “taming”,
for reasons that will be given below.
11 As stated by Clive Roots in his treatise on Domestication: “Taming an individual animal is
not domestication” (Roots, 2007: XV).
from 1883.12 On the contrary, circus elephants are just tamed animals. Since
their hereditary instincts have not been fundamentally transformed, they have
remained wild and each new generation must be trained to obey. It is essential
to note that Nietzsche was aware of this distinction, having met with it, among
other sources, in Alfred Espinas’s book on animal societies (Espinas, 1878: 175;
Campioni, D’Iorio, Fornari, Fronterotta, Orsucci, 2003: 220–221). In the quota‑
tion from Twilight of the Idols above, “breeding” thus refers to a deep transfor‑
mation of Man’s hereditary impulses, as opposed to a mere process of training
or taming. From a practical point of view, Nietzsche’s ambitions were in the
area of breeding, since we read in §207 of Beyond Good and Evil that the true
philosopher will have to be a breeder or Züchter (Nietzsche, 2002: 99).
Nevertheless, we should underline a difficulty that makes interpreting this
ambition more complicated, namely that Nietzsche thinks of breeding in the
context of the Lamarckian framework previously mentioned, which includes
inheritance of acquired characteristics. His view of breeding is not the ortho‑
dox Darwinist or Neo-Darwinist view, in which the breeder’s role is reduced to
that of merely selecting the reproducing individuals. For Nietzsche, artificial
selection is merely one breeding technique among others, perhaps the most
effective one in the short term. In my view, Nietzsche wanted it to be used in
order to breed the future leaders of Europe, as is evident in §251 of Beyond Good
and Evil, where he speaks of “‘the European problem’ as I understand it, […]
the breeding of a new caste to rule Europe” (Nietzsche, 2002: 143). This is what
allows Nietzsche to be associated with eugenics, to use the neologism coined
by Francis Galton in his Inquiries into Human Faculty and its Development,
a work which Nietzsche had indeed read (Galton, 1883; Salanskis, 2013). But
this is merely one aspect of the question. In the same way as a Lamarckian
breeder believes he can husband his animals by changing their living condi‑
tions, Nietzsche’s philosopher-breeder will have to make use of the cultural
environment of Mankind as an instrument of breeding, in order to cultivate
new tendencies. In this respect, there is no radical or definitive discrepancy in
Nietzsche’s thought between the realms of the cultural and the biological. That
is why he can constantly combine terms belonging to these two fields: in §207
of Beyond Good and Evil already mentioned above, the philosopher is not
merely presented as a breeder, but more particularly as “a Caesar-like man who
cultivates and breeds” (Nietzsche, 2002: 99). He is, therefore, a cultural breeder,
which should appear paradoxical only to a modern reader accustomed to mak‑
ing a sharp distinction between the innate and the acquired.
12 Cf. http://www.nietzschesource.org/#eKGWB/NF-1883,22[5]: “den Wolf machtet ihr zum

Hunde und den Menschen selber zu des Menschen Hausthier”.
120 Salanskis
Nietzsche uses this reflection on breeding to analyse history in a new light.

Cultural history can accordingly be reinterpreted as a series of breeding ex‑
periments, mainly unconscious, certain of which have been conducted on a
large scale by humanity. In the famous introduction to the second treatise of
On the Genealogy of Morality, Nietzsche suggests, for instance, that prehistoric
mankind bred itself over a long period by means of its “morality of custom”:
the “straitjacket” of an extremely strict set of mores had apparently produced
an animal “with the prerogative to promise”, i.e. Man (Nietzsche, 1994: 35–37).
“With the prerogative to promise” means: endowed with a memory of will,
thus capable of keeping his word. In Nietzsche’s thought, this memory seems,
up to a point, to be a legacy in the Lamarckian sense. More generally, a frag‑
ment from 1884 proposes to see history as a “great laboratory” placed under
the supervision of philosophers.13 That is what Nietzsche would attempt to do
from Beyond Good and Evil on, at his own risk, and in a more and more worry‑
ingly radical fashion in the last years of his work.
4 Conclusion
I have attempted to show that Nietzsche envisioned the two components of

his philosophy, the critique of values and his breeding scheme, in a timeframe
which combined the biological time of heredity with the historical time of cul‑
ture. This can be explained, in my view, in terms of an underlying Lamarckism,
which did not allow for any clear and definitive demarcation between what
was innate and acquired. It is not quite correct to say that this boundary was
blurred: it quite simply had not yet been drawn by Weismann and twentieth-
century genetics.
If we attempt to put ourselves in the context of the life sciences of the 19th
century, we can shed light on several of Nietzsche’s philosophical ideas, in par‑
ticular those of genealogy and breeding. In the light of subsequent events, we
can also measure the dangers of a bio-political undertaking which aspires to
breed Man as if he were an animal. But, to be fair, it should be remarked that
there is another timescale in Nietzsche’s work, which counterbalances the
historico-biological time of the project: namely the temporality of the eternal
return of the identical, which fundamentally rules out all eschatologies, even
an eschatology of breeding.
13 Cf. http://www.nietzschesource.org/#eKGWB/NF-1884,26[90].

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Zola, Hereditability of Character and Hereditability
of Deviation: after a Remark by Bergson in
L’Évolution Créatrice
Arnaud François
Abstract
The present article examines the application that Bergson, one of the most famous phi-
losophers in his time, operates by projecting his own doctrine on biological evolution.
From this application, Bergson draws a precise distinction formulated in L’Évolution
créatrice (1907): namely the distinction between the “hérédité du caractère” / “heredi-
tability of character”, which neo-Lamarckism would—wrongly, as Bergson argues—
have liked to regard as the major explication of evolution, and the “hérédité de l’écart” /
“hereditability of deviation”, that is to say the deviation in general, which only comes
into play in the so-called cases of heredity of the acquired. Now, this distinction has
a literary anticipation, which is as interesting as it is surprising: it can be seen in the
functioning of the theories on heredity in the works of Émile Zola; Gilles Deleuze,
employing Bergsonian categories in order to read the Rougon-Macquart, didn’t miss
this point.
In a passage from the first chapter of L’Évolution créatrice, which, due to its
complexity, is not widely known, yet crucial, and in which he concludes his
demonstration of the impossibility—or rather the merely exceptional possibil-
ity—of a hereditary transmission of acquired characteristics, Bergson writes:
Nous proposerions donc d’introduire une distinction entre l’hérédité de

l’écart et celle du caractère. Un individu qui acquiert un caractère nou-
veau s’écarte par là de la forme qu’il avait et qu’auraient reproduite, en
se développant, les germes […] dont il est détenteur. Si cette modifica-
tion n’entraîne pas la production de substances capables de modifier
le germen […], elle n’aura aucun effet sur la descendance de l’individu.
C’est ce qui arrive sans doute le plus souvent. Que si, au contraire, elle a
quelque effet, c’est probablement par l’intermédiaire d’un changement
chimique qu’elle aura déterminé dans le plasma germinatif: ce change-
ment chimique pourra, par exception, ramener la modification originelle
dans l’organisme que le germe va développer, mais il y a autant et plus
de chances pour qu’il fasse autre chose. Dans ce dernier cas, l’organisme
124 François
engendré peut-être s’écartera du type normal autant que l’organisme gé-

nérateur, mais il s’en écartera différemment. Il aura hérité de l’écart et
non pas du caractère. En général, donc, les habitudes contractées par un
individu n’ont probablement aucun retentissement sur sa descendance:
et, quand elles en ont, la modification survenue chez les descendants
peut n’avoir aucune ressemblance visible avec la modification originelle.
[…] En mettant les choses au mieux pour la thèse de la transmissibilité
des caractères acquis […], les faits nous montrent que la transmission
héréditaire est l’exception et non pas la règle.
Bergson, 2007: 84–85
We should propose, then, to introduce a distinction between the heredi-

tability of deviation and that of character. An individual which acquires
a new character thereby deviates from the form it previously had, which
form the germs […] it contains would have reproduced in their develop-
ment. If this modification does not involve the production of substances
capable of changing the germ-plasm […], it will have no effect on the
offspring of the individual. This is probably the case as a rule. If, on the
contrary, it has some effect, this is likely to be due to a chemical change
which it has induced in the germ-plasm. This chemical change might,
by exception, bring about the original modification again in the organ-
ism which the germ is about to develop, but there are as many and more
chances that it will do something else. In this latter case, the generated
organism will perhaps deviate from the normal type as much as the gen-
erating organism, but it will do so differently. It will have inherited de-
viation and not character. In general, therefore, the habits formed by an
individual have probably no echo in its offspring; and when they have,
the modification in the descendants may have no visible likeness to the
original one. […] Now, even if we take the most favourable view of the
theory of the transmissibility of acquired characters […], facts show us
that hereditary transmission is the exception and not the rule.
Bergson, 1911: 45–46
The distinction between “hérédité de l’écart” / “hereditability of deviation”

and “hérédité du caractère” / “hereditability of character”, at the heart of this
passage, would not be reprised in the same terms by Bergson, nor would it,
to our knowledge, have an explicit following within the life sciences. Yet, it
encapsulates an entire, both general and precise, vision of the modalities of
the workings of life, in this author and, above and beyond, an entire state
of the discipline of biology at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the
Zola, Hereditability of Character AND OF DEVIATION 125
20th centuries. In this era, the discipline had performed a decisive turn, caus-
ing it, though not definitively to refute the hypothesis of the heredity of ac-
quired traits (this refutation has yet to be produced), but, thanks to Weismann,
at least to call into question the credence that Lamarck, or Darwin himself, still
gave to this notion.
The distinction is essential for Bergson, since relegating the heredity of ac-
quired traits to a secondary role is an indispensable step in his reasoning on
the subject of evolution. By contrast to the majority of philosophers, but also
scientists of his period, which were highly favourable to Neo-Lamarckism—
in France, one may think of Félix Le Dantec, who would level harsh criticism
at L’Évolution créatrice (Le Dantec, 1907: 230–241),1 but also of the eminent
embryologist Yves Delage; in Germany, of Haeckel—, Bergson chooses, with a
great perspicacity shared by Cuénot (Cuénot, 1894: 74–79), to accord due im-
portance to the teachings of Weismann. This is the case because, according to
Bergson, the general understanding of life resulting from the theory of hered-
ity of acquired characters leads to a misapprehension of its temporal charac-
ter, i.e. of what, in his view, ultimately defines its very nature. If, as Spencer
(the designated adversary of Bergson’s text) would have it, the evolution of
species proceeded by the successive addition and conservation of supple-
mentary characteristics gleaned by biological life in its course, then nothing
would serve to distinguish it, according to Bergson at least, from a simple re-
arrangement or re-composition of a sum of discrete elements already given
at the outset—admittedly in a different order, but each immutable, if taken
by itself—so that nothing could ever really be new in a so-called evolution of
this kind. Though their arrangement might change, the elements themselves
would not. For Bergson, the evolutionary process as Spencer envisions it may
then be likened to assembling a puzzle (where the final image to be obtained
is given at the outset on the box provided by the retailer), or building a house
(the plan of which already exists in the mind of the architect); the evolutionary
process, as he, for his part, pictures it, if it is to enable the conceptualization of
a transformation of these elements, must imply that life in its entirety presents
a fundamental continuity, this being the one condition, precisely, of the radical
heterogeneity between the different stages of its deployment, which heteroge-
neity properly speaking becomes a vector of creation and of novelty.
This reallocation of positions between partisans of “préformation” / “pre-
formation” and of “épigenèse” / “epigenesis”, where preformation becomes
the theoretical precondition of an effective progress (in the sense, not only
of real process dynamics, but of an actual onward march) in evolution, is the
1 Reprised in Bergson, 1907: 589–600.

126 François
possibility that Bergson discerns in the Weismannian distinction between

soma and germen, between somatic cells (cytological elements making up
individual bodies) and germ cells (cytological elements of heredity). If, as
Weismann claims, there exists a hermetic separation, or at least, as Bergson
believes, an almost complete incommunicability between these two types of
cells, then a somatic character acquired by an ascendant would not have any
(or hardly any) repercussions on his germen, nor consequently any (or hardly
any) on the soma (much less the germen) of the descendant. So that, following
Weismann, one may contend a continuity of the germ plasm—which, since its
first formulation in 1883, remains that scientist’s most renowned theory—, apt,
according to Bergson, to guarantee what he regards as essential, i.e. the tempo-
ral continuity of life as a whole, a continuity from which, solely, unpredictable
novelty may spring forth.
However, this advance is strongly contested, in Bergson’s era, by the adher-
ents of orthodox Darwinism—Weismann, in discounting the hypothesis of the
heredity of acquired characteristics, can be said to assert a “Neo-Darwinism”—,
which, much like the Lamarckists (and the quasi-totality of biologists up to that
point), imperatively need such a hypothesis, in order to account for the trans-
mission onto descendants of the minor variations appearing in the germ cells
of ascendants. Weismann’s principal opponent is Charles-Édouard Brown-
Séquard, Claude Bernard’s successor to the chair of experimental physiology
at the Collège de France and an ardent defender of the Darwinian doctrine.
The experiments of the latter,2 their discussion by Weismann (Weismann,
1892: 376–378; 1902: 76), as well as their interpretation by various scientists in
the following years (from 1892, the starting date of the polemic launched by
Weismann against Brown-Séquard, until 1903, by which time Bergson’s prepa-
ration of L’Évolution créatrice was already well advanced),3 are what the philos-
opher is referencing in the passage cited at the beginning of the present article.
Brown-Séquard’s experiments, conducted for the first time in the 1850s and fre-
quently repeated thereafter (by himself and by others), essentially consisted in
mechanically inducing organic lesions in live individuals, such as guinea pigs,
and in examining the repercussions apt to result in their descendants. Lesions
of the spinal cord and of the sciatic nerve, in particular, lead to an epileptic
state in guinea pigs, which also re-emerged—this being the striking fact—in
their descendants.
2 Cf. Brown-Séquard, 1869: 211–220, 422–438, 496–503; 1892: 686–688.

3 Cf. Charrin, Delamare, Moussu, 1902: 191; Morgan, 1903: 257; Delage, 1903: 388; Charrin,
Delamare, 1901: 69–71; Charrin, 1896: 1–7.
The main of Bergson’s response, resting on biological literature, from

which he claims not to diverge (Bergson, 2007: 79), consists in accepting this
fact—and how well to deny it?—, but in explaining it by means of chemical,
rather than biological considerations: i.e. not relative to heredity (and thus to
Weismann’s germ plasma, called “chromosomes” since 1888), but rather to the
direct action of one substance on another substance. In this case, a toxin re-
leased by the severing of the sciatic nerve acts on the germen of the ascendant,
who ipso facto becomes the carrier of a modification, in his turn—not neces-
sarily of the same modification, however, which affected the soma. By virtue
of this substitution of considerations of a chemical nature for biological ones,
Bergson is enabled to accept the, albeit exceptional, cases in which the same
symptoms actually recur in the ascendant and the descendant, as in the exper-
iments of Brown-Séquard, whilst integrating them into a broader perspective
of Weismannian provenance; in this view, the reappearance in the descendant
of traits acquired by the ascendant is far from constituting the general rule,
since precisely, soma and germen remain distinct—the germ plasma continu-
ing to evolve on its own account, i.e. to transform in a manner that Bergson
considers to be perpetually creative.
If hence the alteration, in the general anatomical and physiological con-
figuration of the descendant, resulting from a lesion having occurred in the
ascendant, can be accounted for by a chemical, rather than biological vector—
nowadays, to designate the same phenomenon, one would say congenital,
rather than hereditary—, then what is an experimental certitude is that, in
general, the descendant will deviate from the type defined by the ascendant,
not, however, the set of precise and determined characters, which the descen-
dant will receive and in which he will differ from the ascendant. Therein lies
the significance of the distinction, made by Bergson, between “hérédité de
l’écart” and “hérédité du caractère”. It is established with certainty that, in the
case of certain lesions occasioned in the ascendant, the descendant will differ
from him, but not in what exactly—apart from rare cases, duly identified by
Bergson, in which “cytotoxines spécifiques” (Charrin, Delamare, Moussu, 1902:
191)4 are involved—, to the effect that the hereditary transmission of acquired
characteristics, while having its place amongst the rare phenomena that may
occur under certain particular circumstances, cannot, in any event, serve as
the explanatory principle for the “théorie de la descendance”, as the theory of
evolution was then termed.
4 See Bergson, 1907: 82.

128 François
Yet, to illustrate this conclusion, Bergson avails himself of a comparison,

which quite suddenly, and more so than the biological theories touched upon
heretofore, immerses us in a determined historical era and its own peculiar set
of issues and concerns—moreover, not merely of a philosophical and scien-
tific, but also of a literary nature. Indeed, at the very end of one of the preced-
ing paragraphs, he suggests that if one is willing to assume that the poisoning
of the germ cell, and not its transformation “en profondeur” by chromosomic
means, is responsible for the cases of inheritance of acquired traits document-
ed by Brown-Séquard’s experiments, then “La lésion, si bien localisée qu’elle
paraisse, se transmettrait par le même processus que la tare alcoolique.” / “The
lesion however well localized it seems, is transmitted by the same process as,
for instance, the taint of alcoholism.” (Bergson, 2007: 82; 1911: 45) To be precise,
this calls to mind the physiological theme of the Rougon-Macquart, and it is
the considerable power of reciprocal elucidation of this example for Bergson’s
theory, as well as of that theory for the composition of the series of novels,
which we aim to shed light upon in the present analysis.
Zola, like all of his century, believed in the hereditary transmission of ac-
quired characters. He believed it, because he had no reason not to—the nec-
essary epistemological and historical conditions for this idea, as the evident
fact it was at the time, to turn into a hypothesis in need of validation, then a
contentious prejudice, had not yet come together. Nevertheless, his concrete
treatment of the principle and the literary applications he provides show
glimpses of an extraordinarily keen comprehension and surprisingly far-
sighted interpretation.
Just like Gervaise, her children—Claude, Étienne, Nana, later Jacques—
deviate from the “normal” social type (but which is this norm? We need not
attempt to find out, because Zola does not say, the sole information the reader
possesses being that the characters diverge from it), but they deviate from it
in different ways, and differently from the way their mother deviated from it.
Such is the novelistic potential of the Zolian notion of the heredity of acquired
traits, such the aspect by which, inversely, this usage constitutes the most ef-
ficacious illustration of a Bergsonian theory founded on entirely different
principles. What Gervaise passes on to her descendants, in the way of a tare
alcoolique, is not alcoholism itself as a practice, but something altogether dif-
ferent, and altogether different each time, but which nonetheless arises from
the initial taint contracted by Gervaise—or by her father—in the course of her
life, and remains linked to her according to complex formulas, which precisely
are the object of the investigation conducted by Zola, an investigation, which,
since then, each reader of his novels is invited to conduct anew.
Much could, indeed, be said about Gervaise’s alcoholism, since it manifests

very late in the novel5—we are of course speaking of L’Assommoir—, and since
Gervaise initially surrenders to it against her will (Zola, 1964a: 704–705), as op-
posed to Coupeau, a victim clearly marked out for this social scourge. She is,
on the whole, quite rarely seen drunk,6 and at first must even overcome a vio-
lent distaste, acquired in her adolescence in Plassans, on an evening in which,
though accustomed to drinking anisette with her mother (Zola, 1960: 128), she
had made herself ill with it (Zola, 1964a: 410). For the “fêlure” [crack, fissure]
peculiar to Gervaise—to take up an equally captivating and famous image
from La Bête humaine, to which we shall return later—is not drunkenness, but
rather a certain manner of aspiring to happiness (and Gervaise, at the outset,
at least, and up to a quite advanced stage in the novel, is not seeking anything
but happiness), which, according to a strict idea of ambivalence that is one of
Zola’s definitive contributions to psychology, philosophy, and novelistic theory,
is identical to and inseparable from a manner of aspiring to death. Here we see
how, at the very beginning of the novel, Gervaise lays out her conception of
happiness to Coupeau, who is courting her:
Mon Dieu! je ne suis pas ambitieuse, je ne demande pas grand-chose …

Mon idéal, ce serait de travailler tranquille, de manger toujours du pain,
d’avoir un trou un peu propre pour dormir, vous savez, un lit, une table,
deux chaises, pas davantage … Ah! je voudrais aussi élever mes enfants,
en faire de bons sujets, si c’était possible … Il y a encore un idéal, ce serait
de ne pas être battue, si je me remettais jamais en ménage; non, ça ne me
plairait pas d’être battue … Et c’est tout, vous voyez, c’est tout …
Zola, 1964a: 410–411
Good heavens! I am not ambitious, I do not ask for much … My ideal

would be to work in peace, to always have bread to eat, a clean enough
place to sleep, you know, a bed, a table, two chairs, nothing more … Ah!
I would also like to bring up my children, make them good subjects, if
that were possible … There’s one more ideal, and that would be not to be
beaten, if I ever set up house with somebody again; no, I wouldn’t like to
be beaten … And that’s all, you see, that’s all …
5 In the ninth chapter out of thirteen (Zola, 1964a: 645).

6 Hardly more than two or three times (Zola, 1964a: 706–708, 727–728).
130 François
But since happiness conceived in this fashion is tantamount to a total, or at

least optimal, reduction of excitement and tension, it thus meets exactly the
same definition as death: this is why Gervaise willingly passes through all the
stages of what is described by Zola as a fatal descent, professing that letting
herself drift is an equally sure means of attaining happiness, as the industrious
life chosen by her theretofore:
N’est-ce pas? pourvu que son mari et son amant fussent contents, que la
maison marchât son petit train-train régulier, qu’on rigolât du matin au
soir, tous gras, tous satisfaits de la vie et se la coulant douce, il n’y avait
vraiment pas de quoi se plaindre.
Zola, 1964a: 636
Wasn’t it so? so long as her husband and her lover were happy, the house-
hold followed its regular little humdrum routine, everybody joked around
from morning to night, all fat, all happy with life and taking it easy, there
wasn’t really anything to complain about.
And the tempting figure of the ferrier of the dead has only to leave the under-
world for an instant, in the person of the undertaker, old father Bazouge, for
this negative death wish, aided by misery, to become a positive yearning, in
this instance a fascination, defining itself in a rigorously ambivalent manner,
in its turn, as a mixture of longing and fear:
Ce sacré soûlard était sa préoccupation, une peur sourde mêlée à une

envie de savoir. […] Ne lui avait-il pas offert deux fois de l’emballer, de
l’emmener avec lui quelque part, sur un dodo où la jouissance du som-
meil est si forte, qu’on oublie du coup toutes les misères? Peut-être était-
ce en effet bien bon. Peu à peu, une tentation plus cuisante lui venait d’y
goûter. Elle aurait voulu essayer pour quinze jours, un mois.
Zola, 1964a: 687
This damned drunkard was her constant preoccupation, a gnawing fear

mixed with a desire to know. […] Hadn’t he offered twice to carry her off,
to take her with him somewhere, to a kind of slumber where the pleasure
of sleep is so strong that, in a moment, you forget all your misery? Maybe
it was really very good. Little by little, she was overcome by a more acute
temptation to have a taste. She would have liked to try it for a fortnight,
a month.
Indeed it is as a happy slumber or a somnolent happiness, permanent this

time, that Gervaise’s death will be presented in the very last words of the novel,
where it will fittingly fall to Père Bazouge to pronounce: “Tu sais … écoute
bien … c’est moi, Bibi-la-Gaieté, dit le consolateur des dames … Va, t’es heu-
reuse. Fais dodo, ma belle!” / “You know … listen up … it’s me Bibi-la Gaieté,
known as the comforter of ladies … There you go, you’re happy now. Sleep
tight, my dear!” (Zola, 1964a: 796)
A perfectly analogous structure of desire can be found in the character of
Étienne, in Germinal. Here again, drink does play a role, but not as one might
expect, if the meaning attributed to tare alcoolique were that of a craving
passed down, as is, from the ascendant onto the descendant: it plays the role,
not of a goal, nor even, strictly speaking, of a cause, but much rather of a con-
dition, of a sort of flammable (re)agent—a Zolian interpretation of the physi-
ological notion of “terrain” (diathesis)—under the enabling influence of which
another more formidable impulse is kindled, one dreaded, in full awareness by
Étienne himself. Not yet past the first chapter, we read:
quand je bois, cela me rend fou, je me mangerais et je mangerais les

autres … Oui, je ne peux pas avaler deux petits verres, sans avoir le besoin
de manger un homme …
Zola, 1964b: 1170
when I drink, it makes me go mad, I am ready to chew myself up and to

chew up anybody else … Yeah, I can’t toss down two short glasses, with-
out getting the urge to chew up a man …
This violence, which Zola will label as “fureur homicide” (Zola, 1964b: 1426,
1459), is, however, also exactly and without need for inversion or conversion,
the same identical impulse, which drives Étienne to aspire to justice—for,
according to Zola’s profound concept of ambivalence, there is only one kind
of instinct, vice and virtue are of the same nature—to the effect that fury is
adverbialized, becomes an ever-present modality, according to which Étienne
will unleash his passion for justice. Thus, in a moment of temporary bonding
between the two characters, he confides to Chaval:
Vois-tu, moi, pour la justice je donnerais tout, la boisson et les filles. Il n’y
a qu’une chose qui me chauffe le cœur, c’est l’idée que nous allons balayer
les bourgeois.
Zola, 1964b: 1272
132 François
You see, me, for justice, I’d give up everything else, liquor and girls. There’s
just one thing that warms my heart, and that’s the idea that we’ll wipe out
the bourgeois.
And later on, when Étienne has just resolved to organize his first political
assembly:
Il était repris d’une fureur de bataille, du besoin farouche d’en finir avec
la misère, même au prix de la mort. […] Cela l’exaltait, une gaieté rouge
se dégageait de sa crise de noire tristesse.
Zola, 1964b: 1335
He was caught up again in a battle rage, a savage need to put an end to the
misery, even at the price of death. […] It exalted him, red cheer emanated
from his attack of black dejection.
But, just as in the case of Gervaise, there is a point in the narrative—here

situated towards the middle of the fourth chapter of a novel consisting of
seven in total—where the desire of the character undergoes a brusque re-
configuration, loses the precarious equilibrium conferred upon it by am-
bivalence, and sends him down the path towards a more dire fate. Étienne’s
overriding and completely univocal or unilateral passion is now, however one
would care to term it, a will to power, a will to domination, an aspiration to
domination:
Sa popularité croissante le surexcitait chaque jour davantage. Tenir une

correspondance étendue, discuter du sort des travailleurs aux quatre
coins de la province, donner des consultations aux mineurs du Voreux,
surtout devenir un centre, sentir le monde rouler autour de soi, c’était un
continuel gonflement de vanité, pour lui, l’ancien mécanicien, le haveur
aux mains grasses et noires. Il montait d’un échelon, il entrait dans cette
bourgeoisie exécrée, avec des satisfactions d’intelligence et de bien-être,
qu’il ne s’avouait pas.
Zola, 1964b: 1328
Each day, his growing popularity overexcited him further. Carrying on

an extensive correspondence, discussing the fate of workers in the four
corners of the province, giving counsel to the miners of the Voreux, espe-
cially becoming a central hub, feeling the world revolve around him, this
meant a continual inflation of vanity for him, the former mechanic, the
collier with the black and greasy hands. He took a step up, entered into
that abhorred bourgeoisie, with gratifications of intelligence and well-
being that he could not admit to himself.
This new passion, which clashes with the gentleness of Étienne’s outward
demeanor up to that point—probably even more so than Gervaise’s fascina-
tion for death clashed with her indolent aspiration to happiness—, intensifies
in the course of the novel. For instance in this very same passage, in which
Étienne’s black melancholy turns into “gaieté rouge”, at the idea of victory over
the bourgeoisie:
[…] des bouffées d’orgueil reparaissaient et l’emportaient plus haut, la

joie d’être le chef, de se voir obéi jusqu’au sacrifice, le rêve élargi de sa
puissance, le soir du triomphe. Déjà, il imaginait une scène d’une gran-
deur simple, son refus du pouvoir, l’autorité remise entre les mains du
peuple, quand il serait le maître.
Zola, 1964b: 1335
[…] puffs of pride reappeared and carried him higher, the joy of being the
boss, of being obeyed to the brink of self-sacrifice, the expanded dream
of his power, the eve of triumph. Already, he imagined a scene of simple
grandeur, his rejection of power, the authority placed back into the hands
of the people, when he was in command.
Lastly, rather like for Gervaise, it is an external inducement—of a different

nature, however, and intervening at a different point in the story of the char-
acter’s desire—which determines the truly catastrophic, that is to say circular
and self-destructive turn, which this dominant impulse finally takes. In the
face of failure, in fact, Étienne twice proclaims his relative preference for death
(a death from which he is ultimately preserved by the far-flung consequences
of the collapse of Voreux):
Ah! si un de ces cochons de soldats pouvait me loger une balle en plein

cœur, comme ce serait crâne de finir ainsi!
Ses yeux s’étaient mouillés, dans ce cri où éclatait le secret désir du
vaincu, le refuge où il aurait voulu perdre à jamais son tourment.
Zola, 1964b: 1480
Ah! if one of those filthy soldiers could plant a bullet right in my heart,
how brave it’d be to go out like that!
134 François
His eyes had become moist, in this cry in which the secret longing of
the defeated burst forth, the refuge in which he would have liked to shake
off his torment for good.
Puisqu’il n’osait tuer, c’était à lui de mourir; et cette idée de mort, qui
l’avait effleuré déjà, renaissait, s’enfonçait dans sa tête, comme une es-
pérance dernière. Mourir crânement, mourir pour la révolution, cela
terminerait tout, réglerait son compte bon ou mauvais, l’empêcherait de
penser davantage.
Zola, 1964b: 1496
Since he dared not kill, he himself had to die; and this idea of death,
which had already crossed his mind fleetingly, was reborn, took hold
in his mind, like a last hope. To die bravely, die for the revolution, that
would end everything, settle his score for better or worse, make him stop
thinking.
The same demonstration could quite certainly be performed in the cases of

Claude, Jacques and Nana; by means of the examples of Étienne and Gervaise,
we simply wished to point out to what extent the Zolian law of heredity con-
veys the transmission not of traits, but of deviation, without permitting the
reader to know in advance, with regard to a precise and determined fictional
character, in what manner he or she will deviate from the type. What is actually
passed down by Gervaise to her children, under the nosological heading of the
tare alcoolique, understood as a diathesis, is the specific indolence of a yearning
for happiness, which manifests as a furious passion in Étienne, melancholy of
genius in Claude, a homicidal impulse in Jacques, and nymphomania in Nana.
Heredity’s essential legacy passes on in the adverb or adjective, in the modality
of the impulse, and not in the nature of its aim.
This was what Deleuze perceived with admirable lucidity in his famous study
dedicated to La Bête humaine and entitled “La fêlure chez Zola” (Deleuze, 1969:
373–386). But with regard to Zola, this text would, in our view, be even more
enlightening, if the Bergsonian subtext had been more clearly brought out by
the very author who had just published a monograph entitled Le Bergsonisme
(1966).
Deleuze’s argument, as we would like to recall, in essence rests entirely on
the distinction between two concepts of heredity: a heredity consisting in the
transmission of identity—by the repetition across generations of identical
characters—, and a heredity consisting in the transmission of difference—
of difference as such, to be clear, rather than of different characters. In this
context, we should note that during the same time period, Deleuze also au-
thored Différence et répétition (1968), a work which, together with Derrida’s
La Voix et le phénomène (1967), ranks among the most advanced investiga-
tions endeavouring to broaden the philosophical notion of difference—based
on decoupling it from its traditional antithesis, identity, and pairing it with a
new, this time specifically temporal, counterweight: repetition. Difference, for
Deleuze, is not—or only secondarily—a difference between terms, but rather
difference as such, pre-existent to terms and potentially capable of engender-
ing them. At times, Deleuze capitalizes “Différence”, in order for the reader to
perceive plainly that difference is something, and not merely the abstract and
only mentally discernible distinction, division, opposition between (some-)
thing(s). It is, as one might also say, a subject of what is happening, not lim-
iting itself to the role of a predicate of subjects to whom, alone, events may
‘happen’. This is what Deleuze also articulates—and here we again encounter
Bergson—in stating that difference differs from itself: for it is left with noth-
ing, outside of it, from which it could differ. Voilà Bergson, since behind the
concept of difference conceived in this fashion, there (notably) stands the
Bergsonian notion of durée—Bergsonian time, at once continuity and hetero-
geneity—, which shines through, at least in the way Deleuze had interpreted
it in Le Bergsonisme. For durée / duration, as Deleuze stated, is not the condi-
tion, or the milieu, of differences of nature between “durantes” / “enduring”
things—between perception and memory, within consciousness; between in-
stinct and intelligence, within natural life, great Bergsonian examples of quali-
tative differences—, it is the difference of nature, but then none other than
the Difference of nature (“Différence de nature”) writ capital. Difference, here
again, is something—time; it is not a relationship (condemned to be negative)
between things.7
We are now in a position to direct our attention to the central statements of
the text on Zola, in which Deleuze designates great heredity, which transmits
differences—time itself, to Bergson—as “fêlure”, opposing it to small heredity,
tasked with transmitting characters, hence identical traits that are repeated
from one individual to another—space itself, in Bergsonian terms:
L’hérédité n’est pas ce qui passe par la fêlure, elle est la fêlure elle-même:
la cassure ou le trou, imperceptibles. En son vrai sens, la fêlure n’est pas
un passage pour une hérédité morbide; à elle seule, elle est toute l’hé-
rédité et tout le morbide. Elle ne transmet rien sauf elle-même, d’un
corps sain à un autre corps sain des Rougon-Macquart. Tout repose sur le
7 The preceding explication of difference is based on Deleuze, 2002.

136 François
paradoxe de cette hérédité confondue avec son véhicule ou son moyen,

de ce transmis confondu avec la transmission, ou de cette transmission
qui ne transmet pas autre chose qu’elle-même: la fêlure cérébrale dans un
corps vigoureux, la crevasse de la pensée.
Deleuze, 1969: 373
Heredity is not what passes through the crack, it is the crack itself: the im-
perceptible break or hole. In its true sense, the crack is not a passage for a
morbid heredity; in itself, it is all of heredity and all of the morbid. It does
not transmit anything other than itself, from one healthy body to another
healthy body of the Rougon-Macquart. Everything rests on the paradox
of this confusion of heredity with its vehicle or its means, of what is trans-
mitted with its transmission, which does not transmit anything but itself:
the cerebral crack in a vigorous body, the fissure of thought.
Here, a game of reflexive pronouns and surrounding them (“toute l’hérédité”,

“tout le morbide”, comparisons of the vehicle and the means) carries the en-
tire argument: By means of “a transmission, which does not transmit anything
but itself” (1969), one is lead to perceive a “différence qui ne diffère qu’avec
elle-même” / “difference which does not differ from anything but itself” (1968)
and a “durée qui diffère avec elle-même” / “duration which differs from itself”
(1966), three Deleuzian figures of the same deliberate transition to the second
degree, or rather of the same leap from the “ready-made” (“what is transmit-
ted”) to what is “in the making” (the “transmission”), or from the “naturé” / “na-
tured” result to the “naturant” / “naturing” process. Under these circumstances,
it is not astonishing that, immediately afterwards, in order to reunite this se-
ries of oppositions—to which one might justly add that between “heredity of
character” / “transmission of identical characters” and “heredity of deviation” /
“difference” peculiar to Bergson’s theory of life—, Deleuze avails himself of the
very distinction, introduced by Weismann, between the germen, as the vector
of great heredity, and the soma as that of small heredity:
Sauf accidents que nous allons voir, le soma est vigoureux, sain. Mais le
germen est la fêlure, rien d’autre que la fêlure.
Deleuze, 1969: 374
Barring accidents which we will see, the soma is vigorous, healthy. But
the germen is the crack, nothing but the crack.
This fundamental division between repetition and difference makes itself felt,
in an original manner each time, at every crucial step of Deleuze’s reasoning;
and in each of these cases, it is the same amazing reflexivity, the same amazing
auto-application or auto-referentiality, which constitutes the particular qual-
ity of the difference and the essential condition of its intelligibility:
La fêlure ne transmet rien d’autre que soi. […] La fêlure ne transmet rien
d’autre que la fêlure. […] Ne transmettant qu’elle-même, elle ne reproduit
pas ce qu’elle transmet, elle ne reproduit pas un “même”, elle ne reproduit
rien, [étant] perpétuellement hérédité de l’Autre.
Deleuze, 1969: 377
The crack does not transmit anything other than itself. […] The crack
does not transmit anything other than the crack. […] Not transmitting
anything but itself, it does not reproduce what it transmits, it does not
reproduce the “same”, it does not reproduce anything, [since it is] per-
petually heredity of the Other.
Finally, in seeking to substantiate this pure difference, or rather this difference-

as-subject, which is the term of the relationship and not a relationship between
terms—and in basing himself on the fate of Jacques, but also, beyond him, on
those of Gervaise, of Claude, of Étienne, and of Nana—, Deleuze believes to
find it in one of the Freudian versions of the “death drive”, that in which it is an
unbinding, in oneself and others, of that which organization had linked:
Ce que la fêlure désigne, ou plutôt ce qu’elle est, ce vide, c’est la Mort,

l’Instinct de Mort. Les instincts ont beau parler, faire du bruit, grouiller,
ils ne peuvent pas recouvrir ce silence plus profond, ni cacher ce dont ils
sortent et dans quoi ils rentrent: l’instinct de mort, qui n’est pas un ins-
tinct parmi les autres, mais la fêlure en personne, autour de laquelle tous
les instincts fourmillent.
Deleuze, 1969: 379
What the crack designates, or rather what it is, this void, is Death, the
Death Instinct. The instincts may well speak, make noise, hum with ac-
tivity; they cannot cover this more profound silence, nor hide the place
whence they emerge and to which they return: the instinct of death,
which is not one instinct among others, but none other than the crack
itself, around which all the instincts teem about.
We will only highlight that the phrase italicized by Deleuze himself—

according to which the death instinct “is not one instinct among others”, but
rather that which, in a manner of speaking, instinctivizes all of Jacques’ other
138 François
instincts, or the process in the making, of which all the other instincts are but
the stages or the results—executes the inaugural gesture of this article one last
time. It consists in situating difference in the movement of differentiation and
not in the differentiated terms, and is reiterated here, not without adding the
marker of insistence “en personne” / “none other than” (literally: “in person”),
which, in the text from 1966, had served to indicate the relationship sui generis,
between differences of nature and Bergson’s durée.
Deleuze’s article “Zola et la fêlure” is thus an extraordinarily illuminating
text, but remains insufficiently illuminated itself, as one might say, in the sense
that the rigorous Bergsonian conceptuality it enlists vanishes strangely from
sight. It is nonetheless possible, and even fruitful, newly to unearth this con-
ceptuality within it, so as to show the notion of durée to be one of the initial
models, on the basis of which Deleuze, in the 1960s, forged his own concept of
difference—which, in its turn, was engaged by the philosopher in 1969, for his
reading of La Bête humaine.
However, the gains of a rereading of Bergson, oriented by a Zolian analysis,
cannot be reduced to this, and would be rather meagre, if they could: for, above
all, the notion of durée permits the question of descent to be posed, from the
point of view of Bergson’s philosophy of life, in terms of “deviation” on the one
hand, and “character” on the other. This distinction obscurely and perhaps un-
consciously pervades Deleuze’s article; but especially, as we have attempted to
show, it suggests a sure method of unlocking the complex structure of desire in
certain characters of the Rougon-Macquart, of sorting out the tangled lines of
its hereditary transmission, and, finally, of bringing to light a Zolian theory of
heredity which, in spite of all the optical limitations imposed by its era, moves
about within them with creative ease.
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Life, Sex and Temporality in Zola’s La Faute
de l’Abbé Mouret
Rudolf Behrens
Abstract
The study analyses the conceptions of life in the novel, represented in contemporary
biology as a specific condition of matter (‘être vivant’), depending on an environ-
ment (‘milieu’) and on aggressive struggle (including mortalism). The novel, as will be
shown, represents these vital concepts in its plot by implementing them in different
milieus, understood as social environments. On the one hand, these milieus are phan-
tasmal, the famous ‘paradou’ for example. On the other hand, they are to be found on
an imaginary line of the cultural evolution of mankind. In this way, thus is our claim,
Zola is representing ‘false’ visions of life, whose ideological orientations already antici-
pate the bio-political visions of happiness which he will develop in his much-decried
late work.
1 Life and Death: Notes on the History of Science
In his novels, Émile Zola famously invokes a seemingly evident component,

‘la vie’, as the underlying source for all articulations of culture. We could sum-
marize many characteristic statements from Zola’s texts as follows: life forges
ahead and cannot, in fact, be tamed. Moreover, the apostrophization of life
resembles a mythological cliché and comes across as a reference to a numi-
nous being composed of both the biological and metaphysical. But this being
is only partially accessible through medical-experimental knowledge, which
the author has laid out in his naturalistic programme. Vitalistic elements, met-
aphors from the field of physics on the theory of energy and finally scattered
associations reminiscent of Nietzsche’s conception of the Dionysian play an
important role on the level of literary discursivation.1 Nevertheless, the ques-
tion remains: Which fundamental scientific concept of life from the era can
Zola reference in this matter?
1 Rainer Warning strongly emphasizes the transgressive and energetic circumstance in Zola’s
work (Warning, 1999: 240–268).
Life, Sex and Temporality in Zola 141
In the sciences of the 19th century, life is equated first and foremost with
being alive (Foucault, 1966: 275–292). The term life shifts from an ontological
category to a functional one, having been taken from metaphysics, where it
denoted the traditional act of living. In this way, the term is now decontextu-
alized and comes to be interpreted as a purely structural characteristic.2 But
as Cuvier demonstrates along with the biological sciences which come after
him, this being alive has two constraints. It is dependent upon an environment
with which the living thing comes into contact and on which it relies as if on a
matrix. It is also determined by time.3 Consequently, being alive comes to refer
unambiguously to something temporally and spatially limited. We can even
extrapolate and say that it is limited by other, competing forms of life and their
corresponding environments.4 Foucault would later call this agonal organiza-
tion of life ‘mortalism’ and connected it with the emergence of an ‘ontologie
sauvage’ (Foucault, 1966: 291).
On the one hand, this mortalistic conception of life from the 19th century
constitutes the particular instance of being alive. On the other hand, being
alive is also conceived of as the reversal of mortalism in the aggregation of
dead matter. From the abundance of deceased matter, life once more emerges
through a new configuration of decomposed organic matter. The principle of
decay inscribed into every organism results in the cyclical regeneration of life.
And it does not matter whether one assumes a reduction in the quality of re-
generation (i.e. dégenérescence) in this process—as Zola found to be the case
in the writings of Morel, Lombroso, Lucas and other rising degenerationist
physicians—or not (Gilman, 1985).
If we inquire into the nature of the temporality unique to this new concept
of life, then we invariably notice that two temporalities are intertwined here.
First, we have the temporality of the individual instance of living matter con-
nected with the pursuit of reproduction as a means of avoiding death. Second,
we have an evolutionary or degeneratively categorized temporality, which con-
tinues life across generations with respect to the environment’s hypostatized
state of equilibrium (Wink, 2001).
2 For further differentiation, see Cheung, 2000; Jacob, 1979; Canguilhem, 1965.
3 Cuvier writes the following: “[La vie] consiste dans la faculté qu’ont certains combinaisons
corporelles de durer pendant un certain temps et sous une forme déterminée, en attirant
sans cesse dans leur composition une partie des substances environnantes, et en rendant aux
éléments des portions de leur propre substance.” (Cuvier, 1817: 13)
4 Darwin was able to add to this when he extended the idea of transformation à la Lamarck
and conceived of an ultimately successive chain of mutations within and between the ‘spe-
cies’. He thereby precipitated the major change to a selectionist telos in evolution.
142 Behrens
With regard to the particular “liveliness” of man, another circumstance

comes into play, one which will assume a dominant role in Zola’s works. This
is sexuality as a biological agent of procreation but also as something socially
hazardous and consequently a circumstance intertwined on various fronts
with the deadliness of life.5 Strongly influenced by Michelet, Zola primarily
conceives of sexuality as marked by the female. The female is assigned the role
of being the biological basis for procreation. Through her toying with male ri-
valries, however, the female is also responsible for the most multifarious forms
of mortal danger which threaten life (Bertrand-Jennings, 1977). This is most
clearly evident in Zola’s naturalistic works in the Rougon-Macquart-series. If
we wish to inquire into the influence of biological conceptions of life on Zola’s
novel, then the shaping of sexuality will also assume an important role.
2 The Case of Abbé Mouret
We want to analyse the relationship between the extremes “Life as Liveliness

in Environments”, “Sexuality” and “Temporality” by making use of an especially
instructive novel from the Rougon-Macquart-series, La Faute de l’Abbé Mouret
from 1875. At first glance, this fifth novel in the cycle appears as a culture-
critical ‘roman de prêtre’ of secondary importance, which merely denounces
the clerical world in its social-psychological pathologies. This is how scholar-
ship has often viewed it.6 Yet the novel is conspicuously connected with the
final cornerstone of the entire cycle, Le Docteur Pascal (1893).7 The novel be-
comes less marginal and more than just a ‘novel about the church’ when we
look at it from the start in conjunction with that novel, which to a certain ex-
tent develops the naturalistic key for the entire series: in La Faute de l’Abbé
Mouret, the main protagonist from the final novel of the cycle, Pascal, already
makes an appearance and plays a decisive role. In the final novel, Pascal will
5 This is articulated theoretically much later in Freud’s concept of the interaction between
Eros and Thanatos. As is typical of the time, Zola attributes sexuality to ‘the’ woman and her
concupiscent ‘animal nature’. But in Zola’s case, we cannot draw on the psychoanalytical
treatment of the topic. He probably makes use of literary affiliations, which go from Sade via
Michelet (and his observations concerning the alliance between death and female blood),
from Barbey d’Aurevilly up to Villiers de l’Isle-Adam. Concerning Zola’s views on sexuality,
Jean Borie’s work (1971) is still helpful. The dialectic of life and death as a common theme in
Zola’s corpus is seldom so thoroughly addressed as in Haavik, 2000.
6 Concerning the role of sexuality as a part of the priest’s foundering ‘incarnation’, see a con-
trasting view in Edwards, 2005: 75–88.
7 The clearest instance of this in existing scholarship can be found in Bertrand-Jennings, 1980–
1981: 93–107.
become Zola’s alter ego and will likewise come to resemble the experimental
physiologist, Claude Bernard. As an intradiegetic creator and a positivistic ‘ob-
servateur’ of the Rougon-Macquart-family, he discovers the hereditary lineage
of his own family in hindsight.8 Interestingly, this authoritative function is al-
ready prefigured in Pascal’s entrance in the much earlier novel. However, this
authoritative function does not directly lead to the resolution and healing of
that adverse hereditary substrate of life, which the doctor will uncover for the
entire narrative life cycle. In La Faute de l’Abbé Mouret, Docteur Pascal tries in
vain to heal his young nephew, Serge Mouret, from a diffuse disorder of the
nerves. As we shall see, Pascal sends his nephew straight into a fatal trap, from
which he can no longer free himself. Moreover, the plot of La Faute is imbed-
ded in an orgastic world of burgeoning life. The plot likewise looks ahead to the
interconnection of sexuality and fertility when the final novel celebrates them
with Docteur Pascal as the telos of a possible history of humanity (as opposed
to the negative telos of the Rougon Macquart-family’s degeneration). For in
Le Docteur Pascal, the novel’s protagonist does not only uncover the order in
inheritance. As an old man, he also sires a child with his young niece, though
Pascal himself dies of sclerosis when the child is born. This child, who remains
nameless, becomes a bearer of hope who will sustain life beyond the family’s
degenerative downfall. With this background knowledge, we can more pre-
cisely define the questions which need to be answered as follows: First, how
are life and temporality imprinted with death modelled and anthropologically
valued in the early and antithetical counterpart to Le Docteur Pascal? Second,
how does this potentially compare—in a completely contradictory way—to
the majority of the other novels and Zola’s own naturalistic-positivistic prem-
ises, as they are portrayed in the final novel of the cycle?
The story related in La Faute de l’Abbé Mouret consists of three parts, each
of which has a complex narrative structure and focuses on the seduction and
the sensual experiences of Serge Mouret, a 25-year-old priest. Due to his weak
constitution, he is charged with the task of caring for a wayward community of
farmers in Provence, who live a kind of archaic existence. In their church, the
fearful priest withdraws and pays homage to an excessive Mariolatry. In con-
trast, Serge sees his fellow human beings entangled in a monstrous, libidinous
addiction to reproduction. The second part of the novel begins with a crisis,
in which Serge faints when a young girl from a neighbouring estate seduces
him in a park. His uncle, Pascal, then brings Serge into this mysterious garden
and leaves him in the care of that very same girl, Albine. Pascal does this in
8 For more on this, see the following study with additional references: Behrens, Guthmüller,
2013: 432–457.
144 Behrens
order to expose Serge to a healing nature through a radical change of environ-

ment. With his half-wild companion, Serge gradually discovers the chaotically
expanding plentitude on offer in ‘Paradou’, an erotic-lascivious world of plants.
There he accompanies Albine on her quest to find a portentous phallic tree of
life and in doing so discovers the pleasures of sexuality.9 In the third and final
part of the novel, the plot shifts back to the miserable village. Serge and Albine
stumble across a wall, which separates Paradou from the village, and Serge is
ripped from Abline’s embrace by the militant deacon, Archangias. Haunted by
his pangs of conscience, Serge flees again to the shelter of his church, which he
paints with religious images in order to perform a sort of autosuggestion. But
Albine follows him there with the intention of luring him back into her inno-
cent realm of sensuality and sexual ecstasy. When Serge once again flees to the
village after a temporary return to the now autumnal Paradou, Albine commits
floral suicide. She asphyxiates herself in her bedchamber with the fragrance
of poisonous exotic flowers. Docteur Pascal finds her there and discovers her
lethally ended pregnancy. Filled with rage, he takes his nephew to task for his
sanctimonious cowardice in life.
3 Spaces of Plot, Environments and Historicity
The novel is arranged as a triptych and has become well-known because of

its middle section. This narrative quite conspicuously combines fundamental
motifs from the biblical Garden of Eden:10 the perimeter, the blissful together-
ness, the temptation by Eve, the tree, the discovery of sexuality and banish-
ment. However, these thematic elements are aligned differently in Paradou,
where the interdicting God from the Old Testament is reduced to the cari-
catural figure of the Catholic berserk, Archangias. Upholding the dogma of a
priest’s celibacy and the limitation of sexuality to reproduction in the confines
of marriage, he guards the border to the village. But Paradou is a fairytale-like
locus unto itself and is there for the practice of ‘volupté’ and ‘procréation’ in
sin-free unity. In their growing and buzzing, flowers, plants, trees and birds
orchestrate the genesis of desire and procreation’s conflict-free unity.11
9 Concerning the literary filiations of the Tree of Life in this context, see Wolfzettel, 2007:
65–90.
10 For more on this, see Anfray, 2010: 54–73.
11 There are numerous studies on the role of Paradou as a foundering alternative to the
Garden of Eden. Only representative texts will be listed here: Cousins, 2001: 63–73; Got,
1988: 143–152; Ripoll, 1966: 11–22; Grimm, 1981: 73–96.
Generally, Paradou is treated as an allegorical parallel world which intrudes

into the real narrative world of the novel and the cycle. However, such ap-
proaches overlook the fact that the other environments (‘milieux’ in the sense
of Auguste Comte) imbedded in Serge’s story have a problematic status in real-
ity. Their location in reality is unmistakably deferred along a unique, temporal-
typological axis. Serge’s banal crisis of celibacy seems to be associated with a
schematically arranged cultural history of man, which is only intermittently
revealed. The temporal axis assembled from individual pieces forms a chro-
notopic structure. It is a particular kind of structure, in which the plot is fit-
ted through spaces—‘environments’ in the biological and social sense. In very
different ways, these spaces reference the accompanying but latent history
of man.
If we look at the spatial structure of the novel more closely,12 then we find
an interesting array of distinct ‘time’- or ‘life’-spaces. Faced with the ever-
present threat of death within these spaces, nature, or even better ‘living mat-
ter’, is evaluated in different ways. The individual locations are: (a) the village
Les Artauds, (b) the ‘basse cour’ of Serge’s mentally challenged sister, (c) the
church building, (d) Paradou and finally (e) its historical predecessor, a park
from the 18th century, which is analepticly invoked in the narrative.
This combination of spaces confuses because the spaces are, for different
reasons, to a certain degree unreal. In every instance, they form a completely
idiosyncratic environment, against which living matter catalytically collides
and in which it comes into existence and dies. In their own unique ways, these
environments sustain and validate their protagonists. They effectively do so
without explanatory narrative assistance and in such a fashion that it is as if
the protagonists were incontrovertibly connected to their environment sym-
biotically. This is why these figures are not easily accessible to the narrator’s
positivistic-empirical comprehension. The narrator could not explain these
unrealistic, oneiric worlds at all and could only denigrate them as phantasmic.
Accordingly, the authorial narrative perspective, and with it the positivistic
analyst’s power, is largely repressed. For example, the village Les Artaud is pri-
marily distinguished through choral speaking. Thus, it is likewise revealed to be
a largely imaginary construction—always seen in relation to an auctorial nar-
rator, who explains things but only emerges here from time to time. The village
reveals itself to be an archaic world, a kind of model for the earlier stages in
man’s development which were governed by violence, incest and a struggle for
life. Zola illustrates this point in his ‘dossiers préparatoires’ (Becker, 2005: 120)
12 Stimulating but unsystematic in its execution of spatial analysis is Bertrand-Jennings,

1987: 76–85.
146 Behrens
and at one point through the narrator’s voice, which goes as follows: “C’était,
au fond de cette ceinture désolée de collines, un peuple à part, une race née
du sol, une humanité de trois cents têtes qui recommençait les temps.” (Zola,
1960: 1232).
‘Recommencer les temps’—so it appears to be evident, where the novel
could have its Archimedean point. The narrative which follows at first ap-
pears to be a mirror image of the history of man in miniature. Interestingly
enough and in contrast to other novels in the cycle, the mirror image here re-
quires no historical, progressive or degenerative telos. It is entangled in its own
contradictions. First and foremost, we can say that within the fiction of the
novel, Serge is placed into a fictional experimental space, into an artificially
generated environment, which depicts an archaic stage of civilization. Here,
only two desires govern rudimentary social life: first, the sowing of one’s own
land and soil for the sake of survival; second, copulation for the purpose of
procreation.13
If we look more closely at the reigning pansexuality in the village, then it
proves to be as innocent as it is pre-oedipal. In particular, this pansexuality
causes no cultural discord, except when connected to the increase of property.
Sex here is entirely primordial. Reproduction and ephemeral lust are identical.
Under the sun of Provence as the giver of life, the farmers worship one single
goal: eternally enduring fertility, which must, however, be continually reat-
tained. Thus, their sexuality is not initially disguised as hedonistic. Quite the
opposite: it is part of the will for survival in families, whose success or failure
is ultimately dependent on the optimization of landholdings through suitable
marriages.
The world of the village does not only stand in stark contrast to Paradou.
It is also at variance with the small church, which the farmers only very sel-
dom seek out. Consequently, the church forms a highly syncretic space in spite
of its apparent ‘reality’ as a part of the village. Being cramped, dark and cold,
the church is a congenial environment for Serge. Here, the death of Christ is
preeminent. In the narration, the obscure mystery of the Son of God’s self-
sacrifice is depicted as the counterpart to a proliferating nature obsessed with
reproduction. Grasses, mosses and shrubs grow within the church and cause
13 “Les Artaud, en plein soleil, forniquaient avec la terre, selon le mot de Frère Archangias.
C‘étaient des fronts suants apparaissant derrière les buissons, des poitrines haletantes se
redressant lentement, un effort ardent de fécondation […].” (Zola, 1960: 1240)
the stone to crack. The plants threaten to engulf this space and absorb it into
themselves.14
We could interpret this spatialization of religion in the Nietzschean sense
and treat the Christian Church as a temporary, historical stronghold against
nature’s Dionysian growth. In the entire narrative, the church or the religion
embodied therein is surely connected with the finality of death. In other words:
the church is connected with an extreme, which life, in a biological sense, evi-
dently needs as a cyclical point of transition and as a boundary. In the church,
however, religion, fearing the barbarian dynamics of nature, actually negates
life by making its opposite, dying, the ultimate benchmark of its anthropology.
Thus, Serge also transforms this space into something different. In order to
protect himself from the temptation of sexuality, which could pull him into
the agonal dynamism of life, he immerses himself in excessive Mariolatry. The
‘mère immaculée’ is his only place refuge because she promises him an asexual
sexuality, a nature beyond that mortality contained in reproduction.15
The oppositional juxtaposition of these two spaces—the village and the
church—with the centrally situated Paradou is prefigured by an intermediary
space, which overlaps with these three spaces but already shows the way to the
Garden of Eden. This is the ‘basse-cour’, which Serge’s mentally handicapped
sister, Désirée, attends to in the vicarage. Not only does a rapidly growing veg-
etation dominate this space, but even more importantly there are small ani-
mals. They are always described from Désirée’s perspective, which dominates
here, and these animals constitute a child-like, affectionate cosmos of continu-
ous copulation, breeding and parturition. Yet this cosmos does not go beyond
the limits of the vegetative nature.16 Fertility and procreation are curiously
asexual. The differences between the sexes do not generate the lust of desire.
Rather, they dissolve effortlessly into the rapturous joy of procreation. In its
14 “En mai, une végétation formidable crevait ce sol de cailloux. Des lavandes colossales, des
buissons de genévriers, des nappes d’herbes rudes, montaient sur le perron, plantaient
des bouquets de verdure sombre jusque sur les tuiles. La première poussée de la sève
menaçait d’emporter l’église dans le dur taillis des plantes noueuses.” (Zola, 1960: 1230)
15 In those nights, which the narrator describes as “[h]eure[s] de volupté divine” (Zola, 1960:
1289), he gives himself over to a “ravissement dans la pureté immaculée de Marie” (Zola,
1960: 1286). He even goes so far as to beseech the Mother of God “de sécher [ses] organes,
de [le] laisser sans sexe” (Zola, 1960: 1314) so that in him she might finally castrate the
entirety of mankind in the face of the ‘végétation honteuse’ which surrounds him.
16 “On eût dit qu’elle tenait au terreau de sa basse-cour, qu’elle suçait la sève par ses fortes
jambes, blanches et solides comme de jeunes arbres. Et, dans cette plénitude, pas un désir
charnel ne monta. Elle trouva une satisfaction continue à sentir autour d’elle un pullule-
ment. Des tas de fumier, des bêtes accouplées, se dégageait un flot de génération, au mi-
lieu duquel elle goûtait les joies de la fécondité.” (Zola, 1960: 1263)
148 Behrens
blissfully flowing sexuality, this utopia, made up of the simple ‘proliferat-

ing’ continuity of life, disregards the qualities of violence and extermination
ascribed to Eros.17
We have already discussed Paradou. Its status as a fairytale-like, remytholo-
gization of the biblical Garden of Eden is just as evident as the sexualization
of a flagrantly thriving world of plants (Frömmer, 2010: 99–124, esp. 119–124).
This eroticized sexuality of the world of plants assumes a recognizable form
from the outset. On the one hand, this world begins to resemble an anthropo-
morphized version of the female sex. On the other hand, it strives towards the
legendary ‘Tree of Life’ in the extensively described hierarchy of its species.
Albine searches for and subsequently finds this tree, and Albine and Serge,
henceforth united in corporeal love, recognize the tree as the ‘phallic matrix’
of nature: “Il [the tree] semblait bon, robuste, puissant, fécond; il était le doyen
du jardin, le père de la forêt.” (Zola, 1960: 1404) However, the same sexuality,
so avidly comprehended and put into practice, has a significant twist to it. For
the amalgam of desire and agonal difference, an amalgam unique to Eros, is
extremely weakened because Albine and Serge find themselves in a childlike,
confluent and what we might call a pre-oedipal relationship. In short: this
sexuality has incestuous characteristics. But even if the two form a fraternally
compatible couple, they ultimately recognize an emblematic core of biologi-
cal reproduction in the tree of sinful recognition from the Bible. They search
for the tree, but to a certain extent they retreat from it at the same time. This
holds especially true for Serge. Thus, the advancement, which the two achieve
as a part of their endless wanderings through the abundant sea of flowers and
plants, is minimal but is also ultimately of a categorical nature: the tempta-
tion found in this world of plants originates with Albine and appears innocent
and naive. Yet the more this temptation progresses without interruption and
accentuates the child-like nature of the relationship, the more inconspicuous
(and, in a manner of speaking, the more unexpectedly transgressive) is the
smooth transition into the sphere of animalistic violence. Ultimately, Serge is
driven by the desire for the “fatalité de la génération” and finally ‘possesses’
Albine, if only for a moment (Zola, 1960: 1409).
17 This condition of death inherent in Eros can be elucidated with the aid of Georges
Batailles and his comprehensive essay, L’Érotisme, from 1957. Batailles argues that in en-
gendering a third person the act of conception implies a discontinuity in the seamless
progression of nature. It is a rupture in the ecstatic creation of a third person which met-
onymically preempts the death of those engaged in procreation.
In these passages, we can certainly recognize a deviously deceptive element.

The living ‘Albine Plant’ transforms herself into a fairytale Eve of wanton lust.
But a transgressive element also emerges, which is not only religiously affixed.
Instead, it is formulated anthropologically with the entrance into violent Eros,
particularly in regard to the carnal ‘generation’ and the inherent temporality of
life which accompanies it.
However much previous scholarship has separated these discrepancies in
many different ways, the genealogical marker of Paradou has rarely been taken
into account. In the narrative discourse, this is introduced through a sophisti-
cated, doubled distancing. To begin with, we learn that the park, whose once
clear borders are now overgrown, dates back to the 18th century. It was con-
structed by an aristocrat as a chivalrous park of love, where his lover suffered
an ominous death. There, a descendant of the park’s gardener, along with his
niece, the aforementioned Albine, has lived a solitary, fairy-tale life up until
the present. But he has remained connected to the century of Enlightenment
by delving into the materialistic theories of nature from the period. Moreover,
we learn that Docteur Pascal arranged Serge’s ‘retraite’ in the wild park, which
was intended as nothing more than a one-month cure. Serge was supposed to
be cured of his hysterical crisis through contact with pure nature. Paradou is
thus historically labelled: first, as a place of dietetic therapy in the spirit of the
medical sciences from the Enlightenment; second, as a naturalized chivalric
park from the 18th century. Through these two complimentary designations,
Paradou becomes the signature of a citation, which in turn contradicts the bib-
lical citation. When Serge and Albine mutually discover their sexuality and do
so in a completely fraternal entente, an amalgamated, oneiric parallel world de-
velops from this doubled and contradictory citation. There are literary echoes
of the idyll in Bernardin de Saint-Pierre’s Paul et Virginie, of the Robinsonades
in the wake of Daniel Defoe as well as of Linnaeus’ botany. Linnaeus’ theory
on the sexuality of plants had inspired a vast range of literary texts in the 18th
and 19th century. These texts lewdly continue the anthropomorphic compo-
nent of many plants and flowers emphasized by Linnaeus (Fara, 2003). Zola’s
novel also contains reverberations of La Mettrie’s L’Homme plante from 1748.
La Mettrie compares human sexual organs and those of plants through an-
atomical analogy. He does so with the provocative goal of revealing a single
principle of nature, with ‘plaisir’ and ‘génération’ as the determining factors in
an unproblematic, happiness-centred point of orientation for man. In short:
Paradou is revealed to be a hallucinatory world made up of wishes, which are
primarily derived from the optimistic and hedonistic visions of nature concep-
tualized in the 18th century. In this sense, Paradou is inscribed by a historicity,
150 Behrens
which from a nineteenth-century perspective, particularly that of Zola, comes

across as compelling but also naive because the garden communicates an at-
emporal ‘perpetuum mobile’ for finding happiness.
4 Narratively Staged Phantasms of a Non-agonal Stasis
The five ‘environmental spaces’ chronotopically passed through in the ‘récit’

do not really constitute a story of mankind, as it might first appear. To be sure,
they are positions on a vector of evolutionary history, which reaches from the
archaic beginnings of community up through different cultural distortions
of the natural anthropological substrate. But these deformations of civiliza-
tion are only outlined in fragments. They do not form a temporal trajectory. In
the spaces of our novel, it is also quite obvious that life’s biological barrier is
not neutralized and transformed through a generative and trans-generational
sexuality, as it is in most of the novels in the Rougon-Macquart-series. The pro-
tagonist Serge Mouret (and his immediate surroundings) avoids and attenu-
ates sexuality in order to allow a vegetative ‘pullullement’ to take the place of
sexuality. Thus, according to Zola, Serge ‘foolishly’ fails to recognize ‘true life’.18
His life remains unrealized because he fails to fulfil the mortalistic-function-
alistic concept in a naturalistic sense. This seems to be his true ‘faute’.19 As
Zola reveals in his notes, Serge and Albine’s ‘faute’ is a “faute […] sereine, sans
lutte”, and both figures ‘slide’ into it (“et ils y glissent par une pente naturelle”)
(Becker, 2005: 176). To a certain degree, Serge lives a life in which he bypasses
the agonal struggle, through which sexuality neutralizes the mortification of
the individual life by means of transgenerational procreation, regardless of the
dramatic risks and disasters.
These chosen models are a means for mitigating an agonally marked sexu-
ality. They are also phantasms. Quite significantly, these are not related by an
authorial narrator who explains things analytically. This is not Zola’s alter ego,
who naturalistically dissects things. Rather, these phantasms are told from the
perspective of the protagonists’ view of the world. Through these phantasms,
mediated so attractively in the narrative, a desire emerges for conflict-free,
18 In scholarship, the true “faute” has been a divisive topic and has been much discussed.
See, for example: Clélia Anfray, 2005: 45–58; Bal, 1986: 149–168.
19 See Becker, 2005: 108: “Par les faits, j’explique son éducation de séminaire. Il n’est plus un
homme. Il a poussé dans la bêtise et dans l’ignorance.”
biological reproduction, which is quasi plant-like and paradisiacally innocent.

Furthermore, these phantasms—Paradou, the chivalric park, the ‘basse cour’
and the church of Marian ecstasy—negate time. They depart entirely from the
temporal dimension and do so in a twofold fashion. First, in these artificially
limited environments, the protagonists (mistakenly) move towards perma-
nence in life removed from time. Second and in spite of a few instances to the
contrary, the indistinct authorial narrator avoids shifting these environments,
which tend to be static, from an external point of view into a consecutive de-
velopment of life. In short: in its imaginative dimension, the novel subverts the
classification of life, which we developed at the beginning of this essay. This
so-called ‘real life’, for so we must understand contemporary biology and its
interpretation through Zola, is always an act of human ‘survival’, interwoven
with the paradoxical mortality of its environment. This survival can only be
perpetuated—albeit problematically—for a long time through the agent of
conflict-producing sexuality.
Here, we can surely see a regressive retreat from the programme in the
Rougon-Macquart-cycle in the ‘attenuated’ dream of life shared by Serge
and his fellow protagonists from different environments. The cycle, as we
know, is conceptually oriented in its entirety around the strict, analytical
representation of the temporal line of one family’s—and one epoch’s—
degeneration, which is characterized by ‘bloody’ sexuality and the agonality
of life. But the regressive retreat found in our novel can also be read positively
because a significant transformation of Zola’s conception of life is tentatively
prefigured therein, albeit marked through negation. After the author of the
cycle has introduced the prospect of a ‘new’, vigorously celebrated life with
the highest vitalistic connotations in Le Docteur Pascal, he will aspire to a
comparable vision of life in ‘Quatre Évangiles’ and, most significantly, in his
novel, Fécondité (1899). It is a biopolitical vision, in which human sexuality is
no longer seen as under the influence of ambiguous (and ‘aggressive’) blood.
Instead, it is seen as under the influence of ever-flowing, peaceful breast milk
(Baguley, 1976; Perry, 2000: 90–99). The ‘malum’ of destructive sexuality as an
impetus of passion and desire gives way here to the clement conception of
a subdued ‘pullullement’ through family. Unproblematic reproduction shall
allow (French) society to heal itself from all degenerative tendencies. In this
way, Zola inverts his pessimistic anthropology of life’s destruction through
sex. Doing an about-face, he thus replaces sexuality with a utopia of life in the
peacefully converging ‘environments’ of a reproductive family and productive
(industrial) labor.
152 Behrens
We can certainly criticize life’s detemporalization and demortalization in

Zola’s later work for its naivety and embellishment. But it is also undeniable
that these visions, as we have seen, were already introduced as anthropological
idle wishes in the dominant naturalistic phase of Rougon-Macquart. And being
equally sensual as seductive for the emphatically addressed reader, these idle
wishes were specifically expressed as preliminary conceptual models, which
experimentally suspend the agonally ‘cruel’ anthropology of Zola’s natural-
ism. In this respect, interpreting the relationship between life, temporality and
sexuality in La Faute de l’Abbé Mouret gives us good reason, as we have shown,
to fundamentally reconsider the oft-insinuated division in Zola scholarship.
Rather than dividing Zola’s corpus into ‘good’ naturalistic works and ‘inferior’
utopian works, we might reexamine the ambivalences in his conception of life
throughout his whole oeuvre.
Translated by Charles Taggart
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Part 3
Nature and Culture
⸪
Time of History and Time of Nature in the
Historical Novels of Victor Hugo
Niklas Bender
Abstract
At first sight, Victor Hugo seems to be an author of purely historical subjects: he was
an admirer of Walter Scott, and many of his novels treat historical themes, from medi-
eval to recent times. Indeed, the reconstruction of Hugo’s poetic shows that his main
concern is the construction of a historical progress in time, participating in the larger
scheme of a realization of ideals in history. But a closer look at the representation of
Nature in some historical novels shows that she follows her own laws; this is particu-
larly true in the case of human nature. Hugo tries to make Nature and History converge
in scenes of vision, but he is, in the end, obliged to accept a subjective and physiologi-
cal foundation of these scenes.
The novelistic oeuvre of Victor Hugo seems particularly devoted to history. An

admirer of Walter Scott as early as the first half of the 1820s (Roman, 1999b:
129–167; Roman, 1999a: 131–133)1—to quote his June 1823 review of Quentin
Durward2—the author takes delight in portraying the history of France and
of Europe: Notre-Dame de Paris (1831) evokes the Middle Ages, L’Homme qui rit
(1869) England under James II (late 17th, early 18th century), Quatrevingt-Treize
1 For the review of Quentin Durward, see Roman, 1999a: 132 and 137–138.
2 “Walter Scott a su puiser aux sources de la nature et de la vérité un genre inconnu, qui est
nouveau parce qu’il se fait aussi ancien qu’il le veut. Walter Scott allie à la minutieuse exac-
titude des chroniques la majestueuse grandeur de l’histoire et l’intérêt pressant du roman;
génie puissant et curieux qui devine le passé pinceau vrai qui trace un portrait fidèle d’après
une ombre confuse, et nous force à reconnaître même ce que nous n’avons pas vu; esprit flex-
ible et solide qui s’empreint du cachet particulier de chaque siècle et de chaque pays, comme
une cire molle, et conserve cette empreinte pour la postérité comme un bronze indélébile.” /
“From the sources of nature and truth, Walter Scott succeeded in drawing a previously un-
known genre, which is new because it makes itself as ancient as it pleases. Walter Scott melds
the minute exactitude of chronicles with the majestic grandeur of history and the compel-
ling interest of the novel; a powerful and inquisitive genius divining the past, the true brush,
which traces a faithful portrait from an indistinct shadow, and forces us to recognize even
that which we have not seen; a flexible and steadfast mind which is imprinted with the seal
of each century and each country like a soft wax, and conserves this imprint for posterity like
an indelible bronze.” (Hugo, 1882: 245–258, here 246–247)
158 Bender
(1874) the aftermath of the French Revolution.3 His constant preoccupation

with evolutions in the domains of religion, society, politics, art, and even the
media draws the writer to the historical novel.4 Evidently, this genre allows
him—as much by its historical perspective as by the novelistic form—to com-
pose a panoramic overview.
Within the framework of our research topic, the following questions arise:
in what way is this interest in history transformed into a poetics of history, and
what notion of historical temporality results from it? Above all: is a temporal-
ity of Nature also present in Hugo, and, if the answer is affirmative, how does
it relate to the temporality of history? These questions, which might appear to
be quite general, are of specific interest in the present case.
Let us begin at the philosophical foundations. Hugo envisions history as
progress towards greater humanity. He articulates this in Quatrevingt-Treize,
through the voice of the narrator: “l’absolu humain” / “the human absolute”,
that is to say “l’humanité” / “humanity” (Hugo, 1985, III: 1033–1034). Or further:
“Au-dessus des révolutions la vérité et la justice demeurent comme le ciel étoilé
au-dessus des tempêtes.” / “Above and beyond revolutions, truth and justice
endure like the starry sky above the tempests.” (Hugo, 1985, III: 9075) The exact
meaning of these general notions evolves in the course of his oeuvre; notably,
one should recall the turning point of the Revolution of 1848 which marked
the author’s becoming a Republican engagé. Which historical path does this
progress follow? Here, again, Hugo’s responses vary. The famous chapter “Ceci
tuera cela” from Notre-Dame de Paris broadly outlines the advance from ar-
chitecture to printing—elsewhere one reads: from an “œuvre[…] sociale[…]”
(Hugo, 1985, I: 573) to an individual oeuvre. However, he also specifies that
within every civilization there exists a liberating movement:
Toute civilisation commence par la théocratie et finit par la démocratie.

Cette loi de la liberté succédant à l’unité est écrite dans l’architecture.
Hugo, 1985, I: 620
3 The novels will be cited from Hugo, 1985, I and III.

4 Although Hugo rejects the term (Hugo, 1970, XIV: 1254), judging it too beholden to the con-
ception of the novel according to Walter Scott, it does not seem particularly convincing to
follow him in this, as does a large part of Hugolian research. The term is here understood to
designate novels which undertake a representation of the past, combining historical recon-
stitution and a fictional or romanticized plot, often with the aid of imaginary protagonists
(the historical characters being relegated to a secondary position), while highlighting the
dynamics of temporal change.
5 In Quatrevingt-Treize, Hugo distinguishes justice, in conformity with the law, and defended
by Cimourdain, from “L’équité” (1985, III: 1057), defended by Gauvain.
Time of History and Time of Nature IN HUGO 159
All civilization begins in theocracy and ends in democracy. This law of a

liberty succeeding unity is inscribed in architecture.
A path through the civilizations and leading towards individuality is outlined

here; it is accompanied by a variable on the ascent: that of liberty.6 The un-
finished cycle of Revolution novels dating after the turn of the years 1848–1850
provides a second answer: three novels were meant to narrate the advent of
the French Revolution and, thus, of the rule of the people by relating those of
the aristocracy, the monarchy, and, finally, of the revolution. In Quatrevingt-
Treize, the third and last novel, an ultimate institution is evoked: according
to Hugo, history culminates in “la grande cime” / “the great pinnacle” of the
Convention (Hugo, 1985, III: 891). Of its members is said: “tous allaient au
même but, le progrès” / “they were all moving towards the same goal, that of
progress” (Hugo, 1985, III: 901).
Distinct phases, an onward march, a summit to attain: Hugo is devising a
philosophy of History; this is hardly surprising on the part of the author of the
preface of Cromwell. The aim of this history remains relatively vague. From a
political and social standpoint, one can hint at the emancipation of the people
and the coming of democracy; material welfare is likewise essential. What is
more, Hugo asserts that the emancipation of the underprivileged entails the
establishment of coherent values. In Quatrevingt-Treize, regarding the work of
the Convention, it reads: “Elle déclarait la morale universelle base de la société
et la conscience universelle base de la loi.” / “It declared universal morality the
basis of society, and universal conscience the basis of the law.” (Hugo, 1985,
III: 904)
Yet, the path leading there is tortuous. The date of 1793 proves this: la terreur
poses a problem for the defenders of the Revolution.7 How to justify a state of
events that appears to contradict the stated goals, how to defend oppression,
death, and suffering as results where one sought the values of the Republic?
6 Barbara Potthast considers this to be the central, and partially encrypted, political message
(2007: 118–166, here 128–134). She subsequently highlights that, for the author of the 1830s,
this development is meant to unfold in an organic fashion, that is without revolutionary rup-
ture: History prevails over Revolution (Potthast, 2007: 156–159).
7 In his notes for Quatrevingt-Treize, compiled in the Reliquat, Hugo employs this formula: “La
Terreur compromet la république et sauve la révolution. Moyen anarchique de gouverne-
ment.” / “The Terreur compromises the Republic and saves the Revolution. Anarchist means
on government.” (Hugo, 1970, XV: 538)
160 Bender
Firstly, by a Hegelian “ruse of history”.8 With regard to the aristocracy, Hugo

explains in L’Homme qui rit:
La chambre des lords aujourd’hui est un peu étonnée et triste de ce

qu’elle a fait sans le vouloir et sans le savoir. D’autant plus que c’est ir-
révocable. Que sont les concessions? des restitutions. Et les nations ne
l’ignorent point. J’octroie, dit le roi. Je récupère, dit le peuple. La chambre
des lords a cru créer le privilège des pairs, elle a produit le droit des ci-
toyens. L’aristocratie, ce vautour, a couvé cet œuf d’aigle, la liberté.
Aujourd’hui l’œuf est cassé, l’aigle plane, le vautour meurt.
L’aristocratie agonise, l’Angleterre grandit.
Hugo, 1985, III: 719
The chamber of lords, today, is somewhat amazed and saddened by

what it has done unintentionally and unwittingly. All the more as it is
irrevocable. What are concessions? restitutions. And nations are by no
means ignorant of this. I grant, says the king. I reclaim, say the people.
The chamber of lords believed it was creating the privileges of its peers, it
has produced the rights of citizens. Aristocracy, that vulture, has hatched
that eagle’s egg, liberty.
Today, the egg is broken, the eagle floats, the vulture dies.
Aristocracy agonizes, England grows.
By acting in an egotistical fashion, the aristocracy unknowingly acted on be-

half of the people and in the spirit of progress—an argument based on the
very same structure could be developed in order to excuse or at least support
the atrocities committed in 1793. Next, in a second solution to the problem,
Hugo appeals to practical wisdom, that is to say to renunciation. In his com-
ment on revolution in Quatrevingt-Treize, Hugo claims:
La révolution est une forme du phénomène immanent qui nous presse de

toutes parts et que nous appelons la Nécessité.
Devant cette mystérieuse complication de bienfaits et de souffrances
se dresse le Pourquoi? de l’histoire.
Parce que. Cette réponse de celui qui ne sait rien est aussi la réponse de
celui qui sait tout.
Hugo, 1985, III: 907
8 Apart from the (major and significant) difference that Hegel speaks of individuals in the
service of the spirit of History while Hugo, as the quote clearly demonstrates, (likewise) envi-
sions a collective actor—aristocracy.
Revolution is a form of the immanent phenomenon which presses us

from all sides and which we call Necessity.
In the face of this mysterious complexity of good deeds and suffering,
the Why? of history looms large.
Because. This response of him who knows nothing is also the response
of him who knows everything.
Here we have a response that says everything—and nothing.9 What may satis-
fy the poet or novelist, can hardly satisfy the critic: by asserting the sound order
of things via the simple fact of their existence, Hugo conflates ontology and
morality; above all, he abandons every attempt at comprehension, in favour of
an irrational affirmation of the contradictions of existence. And it is precisely
in the shadow areas escaping rational comprehension that we find the weak
points of Hugo’s portrayal of history; we will return to this point.
Like any philosophy of History, that of Hugo involves a relationship between
Man and Nature. In order to develop this idea, Hugo again lets Gauvain speak.
The mentor of the latter, the terrible Cimourdain, serves as his interlocutor:
—Société plus grande que nature. Je te le dis, ce n’est plus le possible,

c’est le rêve.
—C’est le but. Autrement, à quoi bon la société? Restez dans la nature.
Soyez les sauvages. Otaïti est un paradis. Seulement, dans ce paradis on
ne pense pas. Mieux vaudrait encore un enfer intelligent qu’un paradis
bête. Mais non, point d’enfer. Soyons la société humaine. Plus grande que
nature. Oui. Si vous n’ajoutez rien à la nature, pourquoi sortir de la
nature? Alors, contentez-vous du travail comme la fourmi, et du miel
comme l’abeille. Restez la bête ouvrière au lieu d’être l’intelligence reine.
Si vous ajoutez quelque chose à la nature, vous serez nécessairement plus
grand qu’elle; ajouter, c’est augmenter; augmenter, c’est grandir. La socié-
té, c’est la nature sublimée.
Hugo, 1985, III: 1059–1060 [emphasis added]
—Society greater than nature. I am telling you, that is not possible, that
is a dream.
—That is the aim. Else, what is the use of society? Remain in nature. Be
savages. Tahiti is a paradise. Only that, in that paradise, one does not think.
9 Dominique Aubry views the Hugolian position as a response to de Maistre: like that reaction-
ary, Hugo develops a mystic vision which gives the Revolution a connotation of chastise-
ment, but for Hugo, this “mal nécessaire” / “necessary evil” leads to “un monde de liberté et
d’humanité” / “a world of liberty and humanity” (1988: 116–125, here 125).
162 Bender
Better still an intelligent hell, than a stupid paradise. But no, not hell. Let
us be human society. Greater than nature. Yes. If you do not add anything
to nature, why depart from nature? Be content with work, then, like the
ant, or with honey, like the bee. Remain a beast of work, rather than a
sovereign intelligence. If you add something to nature, you will inevitably
be greater than it; to add, that is to augment; to augment, that is to grow.
Society is nature made sublime.
History is thus a process of emancipation from Nature: once again, we are deal-
ing with a topos of philosophies of History, also to be found in Herder, Hegel, or,
in France, in Michelet, one of Victor Hugo’s epistolary correspondents, during
his exile under the Second Empire. Considerably earlier, in his Introduction
à l’histoire universelle of 1830, that historian evokes human history in terms
of progress, here understood as a progressive emancipation from natural
determinations:
[…] dans ce long voyage de l’Asie à l’Europe, de l’Inde à la France, vous

voyez à chaque station diminuer la puissance fatale de la nature, et l’in-
fluence de race et de climat devenir moins tyrannique.
Michelet, 1972: 229
[…] in this long voyage from Asia to Europe, from India to France, you see
the fatal power of nature diminish at each station, and the influence of
race and climate become less tyrannical.
Now, Nature reaffirms its presence in the thought of Michelet, especially from
the 1840s onwards.10 Should it be absent in Hugo?
In order to elucidate the abovementioned questions and unclear points,
let us turn to an analysis of the depiction of history in Hugo’s novels11 and
of its relationship with Nature. We should note, first, that numerous studies
on the historical novel remark upon a cleavage specific to the genre. Since
Walter Scott, it has presented two aspects: a historical and a fictional side.
Proceeding with care, one may discern the established historical events which
are portrayed in the novel, and which, in most cases, form the framework of a
10 Cf. the contribution of Gisèle Séginger in the present volume.

11 As for Hugo’s properly historiographical oeuvre, which is quite scant, it rather arises from
his political and social engagement. Excepting Michelet and Lacretelle, for that matter,
Hugo did not socialize with historians; he never articulated a general overview of his
knowledge of or of his interest in historiography. Cf. the synthesis of Béatrice Jakobs
(2007: 207–217).
fictional plot or a romanticized history.12 In this manner, in Quatrevingt-Treize,

the scenes set in Paris—representing Robespierre, Marat et Danton, as well as
the Convention—may be distinguished from those set in Brittany, or, in Notre-
Dame de Paris, the two chapters depicting Louis XI from the remainder of the
novel (Raakow, 2012: 121–146, here 138). The historical side tends to highlight
the remoteness in time since it is supposed to help the reader to understand
a period differing from his own; nonetheless, in Hugo, an interest in the com-
prehension of the present almost always emerges—a completely foreign age
or civilization, as in Flaubert’s Salammbô, is hardly ever portrayed. By contrast,
the novelistic plot customarily invites identification by showcasing contempo-
rary values or characters; whence, also, a certain tension between the two sides
and the danger of anachronism.
Hugo provides a first solution to the problem by professing to shed light
on the hidden faces of history. In his view, history tends to obscure its own
development:
Montrer l’intérieur de la chambre des lords d’autrefois, c’est montrer de

l’inconnu. L’histoire, c’est la nuit. En histoire, il n’y a pas de second plan.
La décroissance et l’obscurité s’emparent immédiatement de tout ce qui
n’est plus sur le devant du théâtre. Décor enlevé, effacement, oubli. Le
Passé a un synonyme: l’Ignoré.
Hugo, 1985, III: 720
To show the interior of the lords’ chamber of old is to show the unknown.
History is night. In history, there is no background. Decline and obscurity
immediately take hold of all that is no longer on the stage. Its scenery
removed, effacement, oblivion. The past has a synonym: the Unknown.
In these lines from L’Homme qui rit Hugo claims that it is thus a matter of mak-
ing this past reemerge from obscurity:
Il y a les hommes que l’histoire constate et les hommes que l’histoire ou-
blie. Nous allons parler d’un de ces derniers, Cimourdain.13
There are men that history takes note of, and men that history forgets. We
will speak of one of the latter, Cimourdain.
12 Cf. the synopsis of the debate given in Hans Vilmar Geppert (2009: 157–167).
13 According to Bernard Leuillot, this remark appears in the Reliquat; unfortunately, he does
not give the page number. Cf. his edition of Quatrevingt-Treize, 2001: 177, note 2.
164 Bender
The advantage for the novelist is that, while claiming to complete the work
of historians, he can give free rein to his imagination. Hugo calls this manner
of proceeding “légendaire”.14
As for Nature, at first glance it appears to act in the service of history. We
encounter it at various levels. First of all, it provides the framework for the
abovementioned two sides of the historical novel—an impartial framework,
at first sight, as it is indifferent to human depravities. Thus, on the morning of
Gauvain’s execution at the end of Quatrevingt-Treize, a chasm is hewn between
Nature and Man:
La nature est impitoyable; elle ne consent pas à retirer ses fleurs, ses mu-
siques, ses parfums et ses rayons devant l’abomination humaine; elle ac-
cable l’homme du contraste de la beauté divine avec la laideur sociale;
elle ne lui fait grâce ni d’une aile de papillon, ni d’un chant d’oiseau; il faut
qu’en plein meurtre, en pleine vengeance, en pleine barbarie, il subisse le
regard des choses sacrées; il ne peut se soustraire à l’immense reproche
de la douceur universelle et à l’implacable sérénité de l’azur. Il faut que la
difformité des lois humaines se montre toute nue au milieu de l’éblouis-
sement éternel. L’homme brise et broie, l’homme stérilise, l’homme tue;
l’été reste l’été, le lys reste le lys, l’astre reste l’astre.
Hugo, 1985, III: 1062–1063
Nature is merciless; it does not consent to withdraw its flowers, its music,
its perfumes, and its rays of light, in the face of human abomination; it
14 Hugo explains thus in Quatrevingt-Treize: “L’histoire a sa vérité, la légende a la sienne. La

vérité légendaire est d’une autre nature que la vérité historique. La vérité légendaire, c’est
l’invention ayant pour résultat la réalité. Du reste l’histoire et la légende ont le même but,
peindre sous l’homme momentané l’homme éternel. La Vendée ne peut être compléte-
ment expliquée que si la légende complète l’histoire; il faut l’histoire pour l’ensemble et
la légende pour le detail.” / “History has its truth, and so has legend. Legendary truth is of
a different nature than historical truth. Legendary truth is invention resulting in reality.
Moreover, history and legend have the same goal—to depict the eternal man underly-
ing the man of the moment. The Vendée cannot be explained completely, unless legend
completes its history; history is needed for the whole, and legend for the detail.” (Hugo,
1985, III: 915) In the Reliquat, Hugo composes a possible preface for the novel and states:
“La légende est aussi incertaine/fausse et aussi réelle/vraie que l’histoire. C’est la légende
que j’écris.” / “Legend is as uncertain/false and also real/true as history. What I write is
legend.” (Hugo, 1970, XV: 542) Regarding L’Homme qui rit, Hugo rejects the label “historical
novel”, explaining his objection with the fact that his characters are invented; cf. Roman,
1999b: 135.
overwhelms man with the contrast between divine beauty and social ug-
liness; it does not spare him one butterfly wing, nor one birdsong; in the
thick of murder, of vengeance, of barbarism, he must endure the sight of
sacred things; he cannot escape the immense reproach of universal gen-
tleness and the implacable serenity of the azure. The deformity of human
laws has to show itself naked in midst of eternal dazzle. Man crushes and
grinds, man sterilizes, man kills; summer stays summer, lily stays lily, star
stays star.
Nature is personified here in order to serve as a contrast to the derailments of

history; in a chain of antitheses, it opposes social life with its landscapes, ugli-
ness with beauty, barbarism with universal tranquillity, death with life, change
with eternity.15 What might be perceived as Rousseauian nostalgia, is not that:
the contrast serves to underline a derailment, not to call into question histori-
cal progress as such.16
Three pertinent remarks are prompted by the cited passage. Firstly, its rhe-
torical character: certainly, Hugo develops a theoretical discourse, far surpass-
ing the simple description of a sunny morning, but the development of theory
actually takes on a declamatory aspect. For, secondly, the Hugolian novel re-
mains close to the drama in that it tends to construct antagonisms, arranged to
produce a dynamic action.17 Here, we have a purely abstract example, where
the opposition is generated through parallelisms; this first duel only serves to
prepare the second, a duel between men, Gauvain and Cimourdain, staged as a
“spectacle” hereafter (Hugo, 1985, III: 1063). We should, however, note its effect,
which will be important in the following: through the use of personifications,
parallelisms and tautologies, Hugo elicits the impression of a vivification, an in-
carnation of abstract values. Thirdly, by his massive recourse to rhetoric, Hugo
composes a history which aims to convince. It is partisan, and in this it dif-
fers from the endeavours of professionalization observable in historiography
15 It assumes the same function in Les Misérables; cf. Roman, Bellosta, 1995, especially
“4. Nature et Histoire” (246–250).
16 Concerning the oppositions between characters, Aubry emphasizes that “dualité” pre-
cisely does not denote “un manichéisme quel qu’il soit” / “manicheism of any kind”
(1988: 121).
17 This dramatic character of Hugo’ novels is well marked in Notre-Dame de Paris, not only
considering the temporal density of the plot and its specific tension created by antago-
nist characters, but also in the mise en scène of the central aesthetic principles of the
drama as developed in the “Préface” of Cromwell, especially the complementary use of
the grotesque and the sublime. Hugo is probably conscious of this, as might indicate the
synonymous use of the terms “roman” and “drame” in the 1832 preface of the novel (Hugo,
1985, I: 494).
166 Bender
in the course of the century, notably in Germany, with the development of the
Historische Schule (Historical School).
The theatricality of the Hugolian novel provides a second solution to the
cleavage between historical discourse and novelistic plot. Hugo tends to blend
history and fiction in scènes of great vivacity (1985, III: 116), which sweep up at
once the reader and the protagonists. Within the novelistic oeuvre, the drama
tradition is clearly perceivable in these movements. Let us cite another exam-
ple, from the beginning of Notre-Dame de Paris:
La place du Palais, encombrée de peuple, offrait aux curieux des fenêtres

l’aspect d’une mer, dans laquelle cinq ou six rues, comme autant d’embou-
chures de fleuves, dégorgeaient à chaque instant de nouveaux flots de têtes.
Les ondes de cette foule, sans cesse grossies, se heurtaient aux angles des
maisons qui s’avançaient çà et là, comme autant de promontoires, dans
le bassin irrégulier de la place. Au centre de la haute façade gothique du
Palais, le grand escalier, sans relâche remonté et descendu par un double
courant qui, après s’être brisé sous le perron intermédiaire, s’épandait à
larges vagues sur ses deux pentes latérales, le grand escalier, dis-je, ruis-
selait incessamment dans la place comme une cascade dans un lac. Les
cris, les rires, le trépignement de ces mille pieds faisaient un grand bruit
et une grande clameur. De temps en temps cette clameur et ce bruit re-
doublaient, le courant qui poussait toute cette foule vers le grand escalier
rebroussait, se troublait, tourbillonnait.
Hugo, 1985, I: 498 [emphasis added]
Place du Palais, crowded with people, to the curious onlookers at the win-
dows, offered the appearance of a sea, into which five or six streets, like so
many river mouths, at each moment discharged new streams of heads. The
waves of this crowd, swelling incessantly, broke against the corners of the
houses which jutted out, here and there, like so many promontories, into
the irregular basin of the square. At the centre of the high Gothic façade
of the Palais, the great staircase, tirelessly mounted and descended by a
double current, which, after having split beneath the intermediate land-
ing, flowed in ample waves along its lateral slopes—the great staircase, I
say, streamed incessantly into the square, like a waterfall into a lake. The
cries, the laughter, the treading of those thousands of feet, produced a
great noise and great clamour. From time to time, this clamour and noise
redoubled, the current, which jostled the crowd towards the great stair-
case, doubled back, became confused, eddied.
The scene is well-known: the crowd takes on the appearance of a sea.18 It

is not a case of likening the people to a natural state, which would condemn
them to be governed, like a kind of natural stratum within society. On the con-
trary, by the staging of the people as an elementary force, the Hugolian allegory
shows it to be an essential power of history.
Having reached this point, the critic is left with a query. Nature is, then,
neither a stadium anterior to history, nor the stock of images of a dramatic
rhetoric: on the contrary, it becomes an active participant in this history. This
reflection is confirmed by other passages. Hugo avails himself of the same
image to evoke the turbulent debates of the Convention:
Esprits en proie au vent.

Mais ce vent était un vent de prodige. Être un membre de la Convention,
c’était être une vague de l’Océan. Et ceci était vrai des plus grands. La force
d’impulsion venait d’en haut. Il y avait dans la Convention une volonté qui
était celle de tous et n’était celle de personne. Cette volonté était une idée,
idée indomptable et démesurée qui soufflait dans l’ombre du haut du ciel.
Nous appelons cela la Révolution. Quand cette idée passait, elle abattait
l’un et soulevait l’autre; elle emportait celui-ci en écume et brisait celui-là
aux écueils. Cette idée savait où elle allait, et poussait le gouffre devant
elle. Imputer la révolution aux hommes, c’est imputer la marée aux flots.
Hugo, 1985, III: 906 [emphasis added]
Spirits at the mercy of the wind.

But that wind was a wind of prodigy. To be a member of the Convention
was to be a wave of the Ocean. And this was true of the greatest. The force
of momentum came from on high. There was a will within the Convention,
which was the will of all and of none. That will was an idea, an indomi-
table and immoderate idea that blew into the shadows from the heights
of the skies. We call this Revolution. When this idea passed, it knocked
down one and lifted up another; it carried this one off in its foam and shat-
tered that one on the reefs. This idea knew where it was headed, and drove
18 One could think of other scenes in other novels: one example is to be found in Les
Misérables, where the battle of Waterloo is compared to a tempest (Hugo 1985, II: 251–
252). The imagery serves quite another purpose in this passage, since Hugo tries to illus-
trate the chaos of war. Later on in the same description, Hugo emphasises the force of the
antagonist armies by adding a geological to the meteorological metaphor: “Chaque carré
était un volcan attaqué par un nuage; la lave combattait la foudre.” / “Each square was a
volcano attacked by a cloud; lava fought lightning.” (Hugo, 1985, II: 263)
168 Bender
the chasm before it. To ascribe the revolution to men is to ascribe the tide
to the floods.
The maritime allegory illustrates a historical dynamic. It is particularly per-

tinent in the context of Quatrevingt-Treize because the opening of the novel
stages a high-speed pursuit in the Channel; its use creates an effect of symme-
try and balances the structure. What is more, Hugo succeeds in showing that
the basic laws of nature extend even to the world of debate, of ideas. Through
this parallel, and through the directions given in the passage, these tropes refer
to yet another dimension: they indicate the motor of history, the aim that tran-
scends it.
Three remarks are merited regarding this aim: firstly, that it is an idea, i.e.
that the complications of human history fade into something belonging to the
ideal order which Hugo judges to be as real as concrete objects.19 Next, that the
individual does not necessarily benefit from his good deeds: the historical dy-
namic can absolutely obliterate the destinies lying in its path—once again, the
problem of the detours of progress is raised. Finally, that the use of maritime
rhetoric is not extraneous to all this.
In this way, Nature figures prominently in passages which, precisely, en-
deavour to depict historical dynamics. In order to describe the transforma-
tions of the cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris, Hugo avails himself of several
metaphorical registers, two of which, in particular, command attention: first,
the building resembles a “vieux chêne” / “old oak”, which can receive grafts or
be attacked by caterpillars, obeying a “loi naturelle et tranquille” / “natural and
tranquil law” (Hugo, 1985, I: 572–573). Next, and in particular, the cathedral is
personified in an original fashion:
Ainsi, pour résumer les points que nous venons d’indiquer, trois sortes de
ravages défigurent aujourd’hui l’architecture gothique. Rides et verrues
à l’épiderme; c’est l’œuvre du temps. Voies de fait, brutalités, contusions,
fractures; c’est l’œuvre des révolutions depuis Luther jusqu’à Mirabeau.
Mutilations, amputations, dislocation de la membrure, restaurations;
c’est le travail grec, romain et barbare des professeurs selon Vitruve et
Vignole.
Hugo, 1985, I: 571
19 Cf. the manuscript 24790, which contains a section entitled Océan prose (Hugo, 1989:
3–28, here 3–4).
Thus, to summarize the points we have just outlined, three types of rav-
age today disfigure Gothic architecture. Wrinkles and warts on the epi-
dermis; that is the work of time. Assaults, brutality, contusions, fractures;
that is the work of revolutions, from Luther to Mirabeau. Mutilations,
amputations, dislocation of the frame-work, restaurations; that is the
Greek, Roman and barbarian work of professors, following Vitruvius and
Vignole.
The historical temporality evoked here is that of an aged and decrepit human
body: the image is organicist. This type of synthesis is frequent in Hugo: a
human creation—a building or machine20—is transformed into a person,
e.g. La Tourgue or the guillotine in Quatrevingt-Treize.21 What interests Hugo
here is human nature, the body. In this way, the novelist operates a synthesis
between Nature, History, and Individual. Just as the historical events have a
natural dynamic and obey an elementary temporality, objects develop an indi-
vidual life, undergo an evolution.
Hugo presents elements that are interchangeable as they obey the same
laws. For, the inverse of a human history subject to elemental laws is a Nature
subject to history. In fact, in certain passages, Hugo goes so far as to depict
a history peculiar to Nature. This plays out at several levels. Firstly, Nature is
20 Cf. the cannon in Quatrevingt-Treize, which appears to have “une âme de haine et de
rage” / “a soul of hate and fury” (Hugo, 1985, III: 811).
21 Hugo contrasts them in a striking scene: “Cette bâtisse difforme, c’était la guillotine. En
face, à quelques pas, dans le ravin, il y avait un autre monstre, la Tourgue. Un monstre de
pierre faisant pendant au monstre de bois. Et, disons-le, quand l’homme a touché au bois
et à la pierre, le bois et la pierre ne sont plus ni bois ni pierre, et prennent quelque chose
de l’homme. Un édifice est un dogme, une machine est une idée. La Tourgue était cette ré-
sultante fatale du passé qui s’appelait la Bastille à Paris, la Tour de Londres en Angleterre,
le Spielberg en Allemagne, l’Escurial en Espagne, le Kremlin à Moscou, le château Saint-
Ange à Rome. Dans la Tourgue étaient condensés quinze cents ans, le moyen âge, le vas-
selage, la glèbe, la féodalité; dans la guillotine une année, 93; et ces douze mois faisaient
contre-poids à ces quinze siècles. La Tourgue, c’était la monarchie; la guillotine, c’était la
revolution.” / “That misshapen structure was the guillotine. Across from it, a few steps
away, in the ravine, there was another monster, La Tourgue. A stone monster forming the
counterpart of the wooden monster. And, let us be clear, when man has meddled with
wood and with stone, the wood and stone are no longer wood nor stone, and take on some-
thing of man himself. A building is a dogma, a machine is an idea. La Tourgue was the fatal
result of a past named the Bastille in Paris, the Tower of London in England, the Spielberg
in Germany, the Escorial in Spain, the Kremlin in Moscow, the Castel Sant’Angelo in
Rome. In La Tourgue were condensed fifteen hundred years, the Middle Ages, vassalage,
glebe, feudalism; in the guillotine one year, 93; and these twelve months formed the coun-
terweight of those fifteen centuries. La Tourgue was the monarchy; the guillotine was the
revolution.” (Hugo, 1985, III: 1061 [emphasis added])
170 Bender
marked by traces of human development, like the landscape of Portland of the

late 17th century, in L’Homme qui rit, scarcely resembling that of the present
day:
L’isthme de Portland était à cette époque singulièrement âpre et rude. Il

n’a plus rien aujourd’hui de sa configuration d’alors. Depuis qu’on a eu
l’idée d’exploiter la pierre de Portland en ciment romain, toute la roche
a subi un remaniement qui a supprimé l’aspect primitif. […] Les renards,
les blaireaux, les loutres, les martres, s’en sont allés […]. Le Chess-Hill
d’aujourd’hui ne ressemble en rien au Chess-Hill d’autrefois, tant il a
été bouleversé par l’homme, et par ces furieux vents des Sorlingues qui
rongent jusqu’aux pierres.
Aujourd’hui cette langue de terre porte un rail-way qui aboutit à un joli
échiquier de maisons neuves, Chesilton, et il y a une ‘Portland-Station’.
Les wagons roulent où rampaient les phoques.
Hugo, 1985, III: 445–44622
The isthmus of Portland, in those days, was singularly harsh and rugged.
Nothing remains nowadays of its former configuration. Since the idea of
exploiting Portland stone for Roman cement had been conceived, the
entire rock had undergone an alteration that had obliterated its original
appearance. […] The foxes, badgers, otters, and martens had left […].
The Chess-Hill of today no longer resembles the Chess-Hill of old, to
such an extent has it been shaken by man and by those furious winds of
Sorlingues, which erode the very stones.
Today, that tongue of land carries a railway, which leads to a pretty
chessboard of new houses, Chesilton, and there is a ‘Portland-Station’
there. Wagons roll, where seals once slithered.
Next, the landscape is, likewise, evolving according to its own laws. In the
preceding passage, already, the action of the wind indicates this, and in
Quatrevingt-Treize we learn of the recent history of the marine landscape be-
tween Normandy and Brittany:
Les sables mouvants de la baie du Mont-Saint-Michel déplacent in-

sensiblement leurs dunes. Il y avait à cette époque entre Huisnes et
Ardevon une dune très-haute, effacée aujourd’hui. Cette dune, qu’un
22 On the role of machines in this progressive mastery of the countryside, and more gener-
ally, as an expression of progress, cf. Charles, 1997.
coup d’équinoxe a nivelée, avait cette rareté d’être ancienne et de porter

à son sommet une pierre milliaire érigée au XIIe siècle en commémora-
tion du concile tenu à Avranches contre les assassins de saint Thomas
de Cantorbéry. Du haut de cette dune on découvrait tout le pays, et l’on
pouvait s’orienter. Le vieillard marcha vers cette dune et y monta.
Hugo, 1985, III: 837
The quicksands of the Bay of Saint Michael’s Mount imperceptibly shift

its dunes. Between Huisnes and Ardevon, there was a very high dune, in
those days, which has meanwhile been effaced. This dune, flattened by an
equinoctial blow, had the rarity of being ancient and bearing on its sum-
mit a milestone erected in the 12th century to commemorate the council
held at Avranches against the assassins of Saint Thomas of Canterbury.
From atop this dune, one could make out the entire countryside and get
one’s bearings. The old man walked towards this dune and climbed it.
The evolution of the landscape explains the possibility of a historical act: to

ascend to an elevated point, allowing one to see far into the distance. Precisely
this action will save the old man, who is none other than Lantenac, the in-
stigator and mastermind of the royalists; thereby, it will indirectly enable the
Chouannerie. In this way, the evolution of the landscape, unfolding accord-
ing to a geological temporality, repeatedly explains achievements and failures
in the novel, deciding thus on human agency. It is relevant that the marine
landscape, in particular, evinces this quality. Earlier on, in Quatrevingt-Treize,
reefs bar the way of Lantenac’s ship. Nature forces the reactionaries to face the
enemy:
Les Minquiers, écueil tragique, étaient plus âpres encore en ce temps-là

qu’aujourd’hui. Plusieurs tours de cette citadelle de l’abîme ont été rasées
par l’incessant dépècement que fait la mer; la configuration des écueils
change; ce n’est pas en vain que les flots s’appellent les lames; chaque
marée est un trait de scie. À cette époque, toucher les Minquiers, c’était
périr.
Hugo, 1985, III: 816
The Minquiers, that tragic reef, was even more harsh in those times than
it is today. Several turrets of that citadel of the abyss have been razed off
by the incessant sawing of the sea; the configuration of the reef changes;
it is not for naught that the floods are called blades; each tide is a saw
stroke. In those days, to hit the Minquiers was to perish.
172 Bender
Nature is a changeable threat, its elements create multiple perils. The rhe-
torical register employed by Hugo, in this instance, is human; he derives his
images from the art of war. Nature appears to take part in human combat.
In another instance of symmetry, antithetical and complementary this time,
Hugo implicates fire at the end of the novel: “La flamme dansait; la joie de la
flamme, chose lugubre. Il semblait qu’un souffle scélérat attisait ce bûcher.” /
“The flame danced; the joy of the flame, a funereal thing. It seemed as though
a villainous breath were fanning that pyre.” (1985, III: 1024) Water and fire
complete each other in a cosmic symbolism. It should be highlighted that the
writer has a particular predilection for these two elements, and that notably
water—the sea—plays a prominent role in the Hugolian oeuvre.23 By contrast
to earth and air, these are at once perceptible and agile elements, powerful yet
fleeting. They are predestined to adapt to any situation, as well as to express an
ideal content.24
What is the aim of the Hugolian approach? The answer is, again, situated
at several levels. At the level of novelistic poetics, Hugo transcends the cleav-
age history/fiction in dramatic scenes. Powerful representation creates a sort
of verisimilitude: caught up in a comprehensive dramatic action, the reader
no longer questions the veracity of the account. If even fire and the sea are
involved … At the level of verbal representation, rhetoric enlists a game of
antagonisms, equations, and parallels. The resulting oppositions and points
of emphasis correspond to the poetics of contrast, as defined by Hugo in the
famous “Préface” of Cromwell (1827), of which I would recall the key phrase:
“Car la poésie vraie, la poésie complète, est dans l’harmonie des contraires.” /
“For true poetry, complete poetry consists in the harmony of opposites.” (Hugo,
1963: 425) The aesthetic side of the correspondences History/Nature is, hence,
their unity within one poetics.
These few remarks do not yet measure the scope of the phenomenon. The
described battle is at once human and elementary, it transcends the histori-
cal context to reach the eternal.25 Thus, historical temporality is suspended, as
23 Cf. the great exposition and its published catalogue: Prévost, 2002. For Hugo’s poetry (but
also modes of representation, in general) cf. Blain-Pinel, 2003: 141–196; it contains helpful
references (141–142). The first study on the subject dates back to the first half of the 20th
century: Ditchy, 1925.
24 Georges Piroué highlights that the sea—be it as a symbol or as a metaphor—mainly
serves to question the relationship between Man and God: acting through the sea, God is
humanized; “Victor Hugo et la mer” (Hugo, 1968, IX: I–XXVII, here XVI–XVII). Piroué also
analyses the use of the marine metaphor for human, individual and collective dynamics
(XXI–XXV).
25 Contrary to the poetics of the “Préface” of Cromwell, Hugo starts with the drama, to arrive,
later, at the epic; here, we follow Blain-Pinel, 2003: 188.
Man is able to glimpse truth. Gauvain, the heroic, exemplary man, has a quasi-
religious experience:
Un éblouissement venait de passer sur Gauvain. En pleine guerre sociale,

en pleine conflagration de toutes les inimitiés et de toutes les vengeances,
au moment le plus obscur et le plus furieux du tumulte, à l’heure où le
crime donnait toute sa flamme et la haine toutes ses ténèbres, à cet ins-
tant des luttes où tout devient projectile, où la mêlée est si funèbre qu’on
ne sait plus où est le juste, où est l’honnête, où est le vrai; brusquement,
l’Inconnu, l’avertisseur mystérieux des âmes, venait de faire resplendir,
au-dessus des clartés et des noirceurs humaines, la grande lueur éternelle.
Hugo, 1985, III: 1034
A dazzled amazement had come over Gauvain. In the midst of social war,
in the heat of the conflagration of all the enmity and vengeance, at the
darkest and most furious moment of the tumult, in the hour in which
crime delivered all of its flame and hate all of its darkness, at that instant
of battles in which everything becomes a projectile, in which the melee
is so dismal, that one no longer knows where justice, honesty, truth lie;
abruptly, the Unknown, the mysterious warning messenger of souls had
brought its great eternal light to shine, above and beyond human bright-
ness and blackness.
Echoes of the Christian faith26—Hugo speaks of “transfiguration” and “prodige”

(1985, III: 1032–1033)—and of modern Platonism merge. The characters ap-
proach an “Inconnu” / “Unknown”, an “imprévu” / “unforeseen”, an “impossible
devenu réel” / “impossible become real” (1985, III: 1033), in short: a mystery.27
A mystic vision? Late Neo-Platonism? In any case, we can observe that, in
Hugo, the world is only waiting to dissolve into its essential idea, like Michelle
Fléchard, the mother whose children are in mortal danger: “cette mère, c’était
la maternité” / “that mother was maternity itself”, because: “tout ce qui résume
l’humanité est surhumain” / “all that sums up humanity is superhuman” (Hugo,
26 On Hugo’s faith, cf. the synthesis of Pierre Albouy (1963: 429–448).
27 This can be a man who then becomes a Titan—Albouy cites the example of Gwynplaine
(1963: 260–262). Or it can be a secret of Nature—cf. Albouy: “A la vision anthropomor-
phique se mêle l’intuition du mystère de la nature, avec sa vie indépendante, secrète et
formidable.” / “The anthropological vision is melded with an intuition of the mystery of
nature, with its independent, secret, and formidable life.” (1963: 309)
174 Bender
1985, III: 1024).28 Thus, history becomes exemplary, and characters find them-
selves transcended into ideas, the metaphors into symbols.29 The poet himself
is likewise transformed, he turns visionary and demiurge, putting into practice
another precept of the “Préface” of Cromwell: “Ainsi le but de l’art est presque
divin: ressusciter, s’il fait de l’histoire; créer, s’il fait de la poésie.” / “Hence the
aim of art is almost divine: to revive, where it concerns history; to create, where
it concerns poetry.” (Hugo, 1963: 437) The two—history and poetry—converge
in a visionary act.
If everything is brought to coalesce in an idealist vision, two questions arise:
where does temporality then go? Next: History and Nature—a false dichoto-
my? As for time, while it seems abolished in moments of historical apogee,
it nevertheless remains inscribed in the manner of realization of an idea: in
order to pass into this world, the latter adopts a temporal form: progress. It is
only in the rare instants of perfection—the moment of complete realization of
the ideal—that the law of chronology is suspended.
The case of our antagonism Nature/History is less clear-cut. It is important
to realize that visions, universal as they may be, are always doubly linked to a
reality: that of a character, privileged as the point of focalization; and that of
the poet, capable of conceiving the synthetic vision. In short, visions refer back
to man, however exceptional he may be, and to his capacity of vision: Hugo
is, in this respect, an heir of romantic subjectivism. The example of Gauvain
in Quatrevingt-Treize is revelatory: it is he, who sees the “transfiguration” of
Lantenac, it is in his head, that a vision unfolds.
Gauvain n’entendait pas. Sa rêverie était de plus en plus profonde. Il sem-

blait qu’il ne respirât plus, tant il était attentif à ce qu’il voyait sous la
voûte visionnaire de son cerveau. Il avait de doux tressaillements. La clar-
té d’aurore qu’il avait dans la prunelle grandissait.
[…]
Le cachot se referma.
[…]
Le jour ne tarda pas à poindre à l’horizon.
Hugo, 1985, III: 1060
28 The character is, shortly prior, compared to a she-wolf. Its collocation between the bestial
and superhuman aptly summarizes Hugolian mythology, according to Albouy, 1963: 208.
29 This can be defined as a “rapprochement fusionnel du concret et de l’abstrait” / “fusional
merging of the concrete and the abstract” (Blain-Pinel, 2003: 154).
Gauvain did not hear. His reverie became more and more profound. He
appeared no longer to be breathing, so attentive was he to what he saw
under the visionary vault of his mind. Gentle tremors ran through him.
The brightness of dawn in his pupil grew.
[…]
The dungeon closed again.
[…]
The day did not delay in breaking on the horizon.
In this passage, Hugo takes pains to establish correspondences: the vault of

the cranium has its equivalent in the “voûte du cachot” / “vault of the dun-
geon” pointed out earlier, a vault of massive stone, which even so does not
prevent Gauvain from pointing towards “ce ciel étoilé” / “the starry sky” and
from showing it to a sceptical, but dazzled Cimourdain (1985, III: 1059).30 Hugo
clearly demonstrates what he himself intends to do as a writer: reveal a vision
to his reader. In a second correspondence, “la clarté d’aurore qu’il avait dans
la prunelle” / “the clarity of dawn he had in his pupil” (Hugo, 1985, III: 1060)
has its echo in the day breaking on the horizon.31 But these rhetorical pre-
cautions, which anchor the character and his vision in the world surrounding
him, and endeavour to give him a more general dimension, cannot stave off
the subjective character of the vision: it is precisely bound to the cranium of a
man, locked in, like the character himself, upon whom the “cachot se referma”
(Hugo, 1985, III: 1060). As soon as the head is severed—for Gauvain, this will be
the case only a few hours later—the vision ceases.
Consequently, the extra-temporal quality of a cosmic scope depends on the
(fragile) temporality of human nature. For precision’s sake, we need to point
out that the natural temporality thus evoked is not the same as before: land-
scapes and human bodies do neither evolve according to the same laws nor
within the same time frame, a geological or elementary temporality is distinct
from a biological one. Still, in trying to overcome the limitations of Nature’s
temporality, Hugo enters into the limitations of another natural temporality,
that of human existence.
30 According to Guy Rosa, the commentator of Quatrevingt-Treize in “l’édition chro-

nologique”, Hugo refers directly to Kant in this passage; though Kant would have insisted
on the impossibility of leaving our head (cf. the following); Hugo, 1970, XV: 504, note 8.
31 Regarding the light metaphor—associated with the Revolution, not the Terreur—in Les
Misérables and Quatrevingt-Treize, cf. Aubry, 1988: 118–120.
176 Bender
This statement is supported by two arguments. First, one must take the in-
fluence of contemporary physical anthropology on Hugo32 into account. This
discipline, brand new in the midst of the 19th century, is nonetheless firmly
rooted in this period. In a thorough study, Claudine Cohen has shown to what
extent anatomical and racial images, as well as reflections, were apt to influ-
ence the work of our writer (Cohen, 1986: 1008–1023). Now, if one is to assume
that man is determined by his physical constitution, and more specifically
by his cranium, then the battles of the conscience and the visions contained
therein become functions of the organism.
This assertion is linked to another. The reader is struck by the observation
that the fateful moments experienced by various characters escape their con-
trol. These instants are, instead, focused upon a bodily unconscious, and derive
from medical knowledge. To cite a few examples: the crucial moment in the
life of Gwynplaine is precisely his transformation into a living mask. Now, this
transformation is a surgical operation:
Non seulement les comprachicos ôtaient à l’enfant son visage, mais ils
lui ôtaient sa mémoire. […] L’enfant n’avait point conscience de la mu-
tilation qu’il avait subie. Cette épouvantable chirurgie laissait trace sur
sa face, non dans son esprit. Il pouvait se souvenir tout au plus qu’un
jour il avait été saisi par des hommes, puis qu’il s’était endormi […].
[…] Les comprachicos, pendant l’opération, assoupissaient le petit pa-
tient au moyen d’une poudre stupéfiante qui passait pour magique et
qui supprimait la douleur. Cette poudre a été de tout temps connue en
Chine, et y est encore employée à l’heure qu’il est. La Chine a eu avant
nous toutes nos inventions, l’imprimerie, l’artillerie, l’aérostation, le
chloroforme.
Hugo, 1985, III: 369
Not only did the comprachicos remove the child’s face, but they removed
his memory. […] The child had no consciousness of the mutilation he
had undergone. This appalling surgery left a trace on his face, not in his
spirit. He could, at most, remember that one day he had been seized by
men, then that he had fallen asleep […]. […] During the operation, the
comprachicos numbed the child by means of a narcotic powder that
32 Hugo is familiar with the various methods of anthropometry and their authors, which he
lists (Gall, Camper, Blumenbach etc.) in the manuscript 13418. He is aware of the fact that
they constitute “Manières de juger l’homme” / “manners of judging man” (Hugo, 1989:
129–145, here 136).
passed for magic and that suppressed pain. This powder has been known
from time immemorial in China, and is used there to the present day.
China possessed all our inventions before us: printing, artillery, aerosta-
tion, chloroform.
Hugo owes his inspiration to a recent invention: general anaesthesia by ether,

brought to application for the first time in the United States in 1842, then in
France (Chast, 1999: 222–224); the use of chloroform followed shortly there-
after. Now, the state of unconsciousness of the character is fundamental; it
determines his path and allows for the construction of the contrast between
Gwynplaine’s affected laughter and his sincerity.
Similarly, in Quatrevingt-Treize, characters lose grasp of their own acts. As
Lantenac returns to save the children:
Le marquis tâta sa poche et y toucha la clef de la porte de fer. Alors, se

courbant sous la voûte par laquelle il s’était évadé, il rentra dans le pas-
sage d’où il venait de sortir.
Hugo, 1985, III: 102633
The Marquis felt his pocket and touched the key to the iron door. Then,
stooping under the vault by which he had escaped, he returned to the
passage, by which he had just left.
Gauvain, in order to rescue him, yields to the same involuntary movement:

“Gauvain s’était, sans s’en apercevoir, insensiblement rapproché de l’entrée de
la brèche.” / “Gauvain, without noticing it, had imperceptibly drawn closer to
the entrance of the breach.” (Hugo, 1985, III: 1045) What is more, without think-
ing about it, he has donned the cloak which will permit Lantenac’s escape. In an
action of this kind, one might detect “un de ces effets de la préméditation mys-
térieuse qui se mêle d’en haut aux choses humaines” / “one of those effects of
mysterious premeditation that comes from on high to intermingle with human
affairs” (Hugo, 1985, III: 1038). Upon closer examination, it hardly appears to
arise from divine intervention but rather from an involuntary gesture, a sort
of lapsus. These shadow areas are to be found in a number of Hugo’s histori-
cal characters—the behaviour of Hernani, to cite just one theatrical example,
33 Later on, in prison, the marquis will repeat this gesture: “Le marquis tâta sa poche comme
s’il y cherchait sa tabatière […].” / “The Marquis felt his pocket, as though he were search-
ing for his snuffbox […].” (Hugo, 1985, III: 1045)
178 Bender
presents a comparable case. They are in keeping with the unexplained points
of human history alluded to at the beginning of the present article.
In conclusion, one can, thus, contend that Hugo seeks to surmount the op-
position Nature/History in prophetic scenes; in these, the two spheres merge.
Yet, the idealist vision which allows for this synthesis rests on a subjective
foundation that, conversely, partly takes on the anthropological ideas of the
era. This approach is supplemented by the discovery of a life peculiar to the
human body, which escapes consciousness, and rather determines it. Hence,
Hugo conceives of a historical time converging with that of Nature, so far as to
encompass it. He suspends it in a visionary act, which is, paradoxically, linked
to a decidedly material temporality: that of the human body.
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Jakobs, Béatrice, 2007. “‘Le proscrit s’est fait historien’? Victor Hugo et l’historiographie.”
L’Historiographie romantique, edited by Francis Claudon, André Encrevé and
Laurence Richer. Paris, Éditions Bière, 207–217.
Michelet, Jules, 1972. Œuvres complètes, 21 vols., vol. 2: 1828–1831, Introduction à l’histoire
universelle, edited by Paul Viallaneix. Paris, Flammarion.
Potthast, Barbara, 2007. Die Ganzheit der Geschichte. Historische Romane im
19. Jahrhundert. Göttingen, Wallstein.
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Bibliothèque nationale de France.
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Vigny, Mérimée, Hugo. Heidelberg, Winter.
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Paris, Belin Sup.
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ernes (Paris), Science et Technique, vol. 10, n° 4, 131–158.
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au “drame dans les idées”. Paris, Honoré Champion.
Historical Time, Cultural Time, and Biological Time
in Baudelaire
Thomas Klinkert
Abstract
Baudelaire’s poetics of modernity is the expression of a historical consciousness: beau-

ty is composed of “an eternal, invariable element” and of “a relative, circumstantial ele-
ment” (Le Peintre de la vie moderne). In Baudelaire’s poetic texts, the duality of beauty,
pertaining to a historical order of time, is realized by a tension between two other
orders of time, namely the order of biological time, which implies that humans are
mortal, and the order of cultural time, whose function is to transcend individual death.
This contribution analyses the interrelations between these three orders of time.
The 19th century is marked by the discovery of the historical dimension of life
and of the world.1 This historical consciousness manifests itself, amongst other
things, in the reorganization of knowledge and of the academic disciplines,
which are increasingly characterized by historicity.2 In the aesthetic domain,
one can likewise observe an acute awareness concerning the historicity of
beauty. In fact, there is a degree of parallelism between the domain of natural
sciences and art. This is true in particular of the notion of evolution, which
quite early on began to have a strong impact in the aesthetic sphere.3 Thus, the
notion of evolution was employed to characterize the logic of the artistic field:
1 This article is a contribution to the research project “Biolographes” (cf. the entry in “The
Authors” at the beginning of this volume). I am grateful to Anna Pevoski, who has helped
me with my English. A French version of this article was published online in December
2016: “L’esthétique et le vivant. Temps historique, temps culturel et temps biologique chez
Baudelaire”, Arts et Savoirs, vol. 7 [http://aes.revues.org/961, last accessed 10 May 2018].
2 Foucault, 1966, has demonstrated that the epistemological basis of 19th century thinking is
characterized by historicity, as he showed by a comparative analysis of three domains of
knowledge: biology, linguistics, and economics. The general importance of historicity mani-
fests itself also in the aesthetic domain; see, for example, Séginger, 2000; Bender, 2009.
3 See, for example, Wanlin, 2011, who points out that the relationship between scientific and
aesthetic discourses is not necessarily one of subordination, but that quite often they display
a common sensitivity to new ideas, such as evolution.
Historical, Cultural, and Biological Time IN BAUDELAIRE 181
Esprit classificateur, Brunetière introduisit tout naturellement l’évolution

dans la littérature; c’est en répartissant les œuvres dans les genres qu’il
parvint à substituer l’unité de ceux-ci à la diversité des talents individuels.
Nous avons essayé, pour notre part, de classer les différentes poésies qui
composent les Fleurs du Mal, pour substituer à l’hétérogénéité apparente
du recueil le développement d’une sensibilité unique dont nous notons
seulement les phases successives.
Maire, 1910: 234
Brunetière, with a bent for classification, quite naturally introduced evo-

lution into literature; classifying the works by genres, he succeeded in
replacing the diversity of individual talents with unity. As for us, we have
tried to classify the different poems of the Fleurs du Mal, in order to re-
place the apparent heterogeneity of the volume with the development of
one unique sensibility, of which we shall only note the successive phases.
Translation T. K.
This quotation, taken from an article published by a literary critic at the begin-
ning of the 20th century (Gilbert Maire, disciple of Bergson, was born in 1887
and died in 1958), shows the importance ascribed by contemporary thinkers to
the unifying power of the notion of evolution. This notion was regarded as ca-
pable of making visible secret analogies, which may exist between seemingly
heterogeneous elements. Furthermore, the notion of evolution allows conceiv-
ing of the resemblance between different types of phenomena, for example
literature and organic life. In the quoted article, Gilbert Maire states that “a
common imperative to create order” and “an identical way of distinguishing
between successive phases of development in a living organism or in a group
of beings or the expression of ideas” have led critics to “choose biology as a
model” (Maire, 1910: 235).
If it is true that at the end of the 19th century, the biological concept of
evolution enters the field of literary criticism, one can find traces of this way
of thinking already in the Romantic period, and even earlier, at the end of the
18th century. Maire points to authors such as Dubos, Madame de Staël, Guizot
or Cousin, who had made efforts “to make literature inseparable from the other
domains of one single civilization” (Maire, 1910: 235). Hence, in the 19th cen-
tury, a kind of short circuit between natural sciences and the humanities oc-
curs. The conceptions of historical time and of biological time converge, and
mark both the scientific domain and the domain of the humanities (literature,
history, criticism).
182 Klinkert
Against this backdrop, I would like to consider some aspects of the work of
Charles Baudelaire. It is generally acknowledged that he was the first author to
develop a theory of aesthetic modernity.4 In his Peintre de la vie moderne (The
Painter of Modern Life, 1863) he profoundly reflects on the specificity of mod-
ern art.5 He opposes “general beauty”, which is expressed by classical poets
and artists, to “particular beauty, the beauty of circumstance and the trait of
custom” (Baudelaire, 1976, II: 683; translations T. K.). As opposed to the con-
ception of general beauty, which is proper to classicism, Baudelaire conceives
of beauty as an element subject to the order of time. This is why he associates
beauty and fashion. Fashion is a phenomenon tied to the present: each pres-
ent time has its particular fashion, so that fashion always changes. By taking
into account the historicity of beauty, by opposing particular beauty to gen-
eral beauty, Baudelaire inserts himself into a tradition of aesthetic reflection,
which hails back to Romanticism, especially to Madame de Staël, and also to
Stendhal.6 However, the originality of Baudelaire’s thought lies in the fact that
he emphasizes the duality of beauty. According to him, “le beau est toujours,
inévitablement, d’une composition double” / “beauty is always, inevitably, of
double composition” (Baudelaire, 1976, II: 685):
Le beau est fait d’un élément éternel, invariable, dont la quantité est ex-
cessivement difficile à déterminer, et d’un élément relatif, circonstanciel,
qui sera, si l’on veut, tour à tour ou tout ensemble, l’époque, la mode, la
morale, la passion. Sans ce second élément, qui est comme l’enveloppe
amusante, titillante, apéritive, du divin gâteau, le premier élément serait
indigestible, inappréciable, non adapté et non approprié à la nature hu-
maine. Je défie qu’on découvre un échantillon quelconque de beauté qui
ne contienne pas ces deux éléments.
Baudelaire, 1976, II: 685
Beauty is made of an eternal and unchanging element, the quantity of

which is extremely difficult to measure, and of a relative and circum-
stantial element, constituted, as it were, successively or simultaneously,
by the period, fashion, morality, passion. Without this second element,
which is like the amusing, titillating, appetizing frosting of the divine
cake, the first element would be indigestible, could not be appreciated
4 On Baudelaire’s modernity, see, for example, Friedrich, 1985; Greiner, 1993; Ward, 2001; Asholt,
2006.
5 Baudelaire, 1976, II: 683–724. The basic elements of the theory of modernity, which he devel-
oped in The Painter of Modern Life, can already be found in Baudelaire’s earlier writings, so
that it is legitimate to take this late text, written after the Fleurs du Mal, as a starting point.
6 For a confrontation of Baudelaire and Stendhal, see Labarthe, 1992.
and would not be suited to human nature. I am willing to bet that not a
single example of beauty can be found, which does not contain these two
elements.
So, beauty, according to Baudelaire, is a hybrid phenomenon. It is composed of

trans-historical and historical elements. This double conception of beauty cor-
responds to human nature: “La dualité de l’art est une conséquence fatale de la
dualité de l’homme.” / “The duality of art is a fatal consequence of the duality
of Man.” (Baudelaire, 1976, II: 685–686)
What Baudelaire proposes, is, in fact, an anthropological theory of art.
Following this theory, one can identify an historical order of time (Man exist-
ing in history) and a biological order of time (Man as a species, which is part
of the animal kingdom). This is what clearly emerges in the following passage:
Si un homme impartial feuilletait une à une toutes les modes françaises

depuis l’origine de la France jusqu’au jour présent, il n’y trouverait rien
de choquant ni même de surprenant. Les transitions y seraient aussi
abondamment ménagées que dans l’échelle du monde animal. Point de
lacune, donc, point de surprise.
If an impartial man were successively looking through all the French

fashion plates, from the beginning of France until the present day, he
would not find anything shocking or surprising. The transitions would be
as elaborately managed as they are in the stages of the animal kingdom.
No gaps, hence no surprises.
The historical order in society, as it becomes manifest in fashion, resembles the

biological order, which is represented by the “stages of the animal kingdom”. In
these two orders, there are imperceptible transitions. Both orders are charac-
terized by “profound harmony” (Baudelaire, 1976, II: 685).
The order of historical time and the order of biological/anthropological
time converge within a third order of time, namely the order of cultural time.7
It is the artist’s vocation to integrate those elements which can be observed
in contemporary life into the order of cultural time. Therefore, the artist is an
agent of transformation. In order to be able to transform reality into a work of
art, he must, first of all, observe reality; he must possess “the faculty of vision”
(Baudelaire, 1976, II: 693). It is this faculty which allows him to discover what
7 For a general study of time in Baudelaire, see Poulet, 1952: 327–349.

184 Klinkert
he is looking for, that is to say modernity, which he wants to transform by ar-

tistic means.
Il s’agit, pour lui, de dégager de la mode ce qu’elle peut contenir de poé-

tique dans l’historique, de tirer l’éternel du transitoire.
What he has to do, is to disengage from fashion those elements which are
poetic in history, to draw the eternal from the transitory.
Between the art of the old masters and the art of the present time, there is a
distance, which is a consequence of history. In order to bridge the gap existing
between contemporary art and ancient art, the artist has, first of all, to identify
the beauty of the present within modernity.
En un mot, pour que toute modernité soit digne de devenir antiquité, il

faut que la beauté mystérieuse que la vie humaine y met involontaire-
ment en ait été extraite.
In a word, for any modernity to be worthy of becoming antiquity, it is

necessary for the mysterious beauty, which human life bestows on it in-
voluntarily, to have been extracted.
By observing life within the society that surrounds him, the artist is capable
of recognizing beauty in the transitory, and of making it visible. By this action,
he succeeds in bringing the beauty of the transitory into the order of cultural
time. In doing so, he relies on two important faculties, namely those of imagi-
nation and memory.
In Baudelaire’s poetic texts, his aesthetic conceptions are echoed in many
passages. Let us look at an example: La chambre double (The Double Bedroom,
1862), one of the prose poems.8 This text begins with the description of a
room, “qui ressemble à une rêverie, une chambre véritablement spirituelle,
où l’atmosphère stagnante est légèrement teintée de rose et de bleu” / “which
resembles a reverie, a veritably spiritual room, in which the stagnant atmo-
sphere is slightly tinted rose and blue”. This “spiritual” room is like a “dream of
voluptuousness”. The furniture in this room is “endowed with somnambulant
life, like the vegetal and the mineral”. This room is, therefore, characterized by
8 Baudelaire, 1975, I: 280–282; translations T. K.

an order differing from the natural order, that is to say that the boundaries be-
tween the kingdoms (vegetal, mineral, textile) are abolished. “Les étoffes par-
lent une langue muette, comme les fleurs, comme les ciels, comme les soleils
couchants.” / “The fabrics speak a silent language, like the flowers, the skies,
like the setting suns.” The observer of this dream chamber experiences a feel-
ing of happiness and ecstasy. He is thrilled to be able to be part of a “supreme
life”, in which time has ceased to exist. “Le temps a disparu; c’est l’Éternité qui
règne, une éternité de délices!” / “Time has disappeared. Eternity reigns, an
eternity of delights!” So, the disappearance of time seems to be a condition of
happiness. The subject is situated in an agreeable environment, his “somno-
lent spirit is cradled and has the sensation of being in a hothouse”. His contact
with the surroundings in which he finds himself is a visual and olfactory one.
He perceives colours, forms and perfumes; he sees “an Idol, the sovereign of
dreams.” He says to himself that he is “surrounded by mystery, silence, peace
and perfumes”.
In the second part of this prose poem, however, time suddenly reappears,
and it is announced by a “terrible and heavy blow”, which resounds at the door,
provoking an impression in the subject of being “struck in the stomach by the
blow of a pickaxe”. This return of time is like an act of physical aggression.
Whereas, in the first part of the prose poem, the subject had the impression
of being in a hothouse, reminding one of the situation of an embryo in the
womb of his mother, he is now exposed to the violence of a hostile environ-
ment. The “Idol” of the first part is replaced by the “Spectre” of the second part.
This Spectre is transformed into a “bailiff, coming to torture me in the name of
the law”, then into an “infamous concubine”, finally into “the messenger-boy of
a newspaper editor demanding the next part of the manuscript”. These figures,
the bailiff, the concubine and the messenger-boy, represent the suffering of
everyday life, where man is subject to the law, to carnal desire and to the neces-
sity of subsistence. The “pure dream” is thus opposed to everyday life, in which
everything seems ugly, miserable, and dreary.
This everyday life takes place in a space characterized negatively as “this
garret, this sojourn of eternal ennui”. Whereas, in the dream, the subject was
breathing the “perfume of another world”, the garret where he lives, is filled with
a “fetid stench of tobacco mixed with some kind of nauseating mildew”. Time,
which “reigns as a sovereign”, implies the finiteness of human life, it points
to the final destination of every living creature, death. Metaphorically, time is
identified with a “hideous old man”. The subject experiences time as torture.
Every second “jaillissant de la pendule, dit: —‘Je suis la Vie, l’insupportable,
l’implacable Vie!’” / “springing from the pendulum says: —‘I am Life, intoler-
able, implacable!’” Living under the rule of time is experienced as a permanent
186 Klinkert
torment, which finally and inevitably will end in death. Death however is wel-
comed as a form of redemption, “Good News”. The situation of living under the
“brutal dictatorship of time” is an animal-like state. The subject is driven by
time, “as though I were an ox”. The presence of time, as described by Baudelaire
in this prose poem, is characterized by predominantly negative features. Time
as a biological reality degrades the human existence, reducing man to the level
of a beast.
Thus, in this text, one can perceive a tension between two different orders,
one characterized by the presence of time, and another characterized by its ab-
sence. These two orders, which are opposed to one another, and even contra-
dictory, are nonetheless indissolubly linked. The absence of time, as it appears
in the dreams of the subject of the text, in the first part, can only be envisioned
as the counterpart of the existence of time. Happiness and beatitude, which
the dreamer experiences in his “veritably spiritual room” are distinct from his
daily suffering and only make sense in contrast to it. Human existence, ac-
cording to Baudelaire, takes place in the to-and-fro between these two orders,
namely chronological time, which, as it were, is identified with biological time,
and the absence of time in a spiritual world. By combining these two concep-
tions of time, Baudelaire creates a work of art, which, in turn, is situated in
another order of time, namely cultural time.
In order to better understand the relationship between the work of art and
cultural time, one must take into consideration that the work of art is an ab-
straction. It is not reality, but a means of observation, which allows the reader
to distance himself or herself from reality as it is evoked by language. When the
poem speaks of the “fetid stench of tobacco”, this smell does not exist in the
reader’s reality, but (s)he must evoke the idea of it in his/her mind. This is true
of all the content elements of a text. Suffering as well as happiness are states of
mind, purely imaginary, existing only within the words of the text. By recreat-
ing in his/her mind the situations related by the text, a reader can observe this
reality in his/her imagination. In doing so, (s)he establishes a relationship of
communication with the poetic text and is projected into a different temporal-
ity. In fact, the specific temporality of the work of art is characterized, amongst
other things, by the possibility of getting in contact with the past. When we
read a text by Baudelaire, it seems as though the voice of this author, who died
a long time ago, were still alive, as if we could witness, at this very moment, the
birth of the imaginary world invented by the poet and encoded in his writing
more than 150 years ago. This effect of imaginary presence is one of the pow-
ers of literature, and it is because of this power that literature can create and
contribute to cultural memory.9
9 For a theoretical foundation of the concept of cultural memory, see Assmann, 2013.
Baudelaire himself reflects on the importance of cultural memory in his

prose poem Le vieux saltimbanque (The Old Mountebank, 1862)10 which nar-
rates the encounter of the subject with an old mountebank on a fairgrounds.
The encounter takes place in an order of time characteristic of festivity and
carnival. This exceptional temporality of festivity is described at the beginning
of the poem:
En ces jours-là il me semble que le peuple oublie tout, la douleur et le

travail; il devient pareil aux enfants. Pour les petits c’est un jour de congé,
c’est l’horreur de l’école renvoyée à vingt-quatre heures. Pour les grands
c’est un armistice conclu avec les puissances malfaisantes de la vie, un
répit dans la contention et la lutte universelle.
On such days it seems to me that people forget everything, pain and

work; they are like children. For the little ones, it is a holiday, the horror
of school being suspended for twenty-four hours. For the grown-ups, it is
a cease-fire, concluded with the malevolent forces of life, a respite in the
universal contention and struggle.
The old mountebank perceived by the subject contrasts with the atmosphere
of festivity and joy, which dominates the fair:
Partout la joie, le gain, la débauche; partout la certitude du pain pour

les lendemains; partout l’explosion frénétique de la vitalité. Ici la misère
absolue, la misère affublée, pour comble d’horreur, de haillons comiques,
où la nécessité, bien plus que l’art, avait introduit le contraste.
Everywhere there was joy, gain, boisterous festivity; everywhere the cer-
tainty that food would not be lacking tomorrow; everywhere frenetic
outbursts of vitality. Here, absolute misery, misery dressed, as supreme
horror, in comic tatters, a contrast which was the effect of necessity, rath-
er than art.
The mountebank is subject to the influences of old age, decrepitude, and pov-
erty. He is exiled. His existence is placed at the confines between humanity
and animality: his “booth” is compared to that of a “savage”. Nevertheless, his
10 Baudelaire, 1975, I: 295–297; translations T. K.

188 Klinkert
appearance causes fascination, which results from a mixture of total abjection

and his “deep, unforgettable look”. This is an expression of ambivalence.11
At the end of the text, the narrator interprets the figure of the mountebank
as the “image of the old man of letters, who has survived the generation of
which he was the brilliant entertainer”. He is also identified with an “old poet,
without friends, without family, without children”.12 What this old poet is lack-
ing is communication with his public, that is to say, the raison d’être of poetry
itself. However, if it is true that the old mountebank, like an old poet, has lost
contact with his public, there is the narrator of the text, who feels attracted by
the mountebank and wants to “drop some money while passing his boards”.
Even if this intention is, seemingly, not realized, one can conclude that on a
metaphorical level the narrator is the one who renews the interrupted contact
between the mountebank and his public, thereby establishing a contact with
the mountebank across time. For the mountebank is already a figure of the
past. He has disappeared from the view of his audience, getting close to death
and dwelling between the spheres of humanity and animality. Nevertheless,
the narrator recognizes in him the spark of poetry, which is still alive and which
allows poetic communication to be perpetuated and to pervade cultural mem-
ory. It is Baudelaire’s poetic text itself which serves as a means of transmission
between past, present and future, creating an intense moment of cultural time.
I would like to carry my analysis of this relationship a little further, by study-
ing another of Baudelaire’s texts: Une Charogne (A Carcass, 1857).
Une Charogne
Rappelez-vous l’objet que nous vîmes, mon âme,

Ce beau matin d’été si doux:
Au détour d’un sentier une charogne infâme
Sur un lit semé de cailloux, 4
Les jambes en l’air, comme une femme lubrique,

Brûlante et suant les poisons,
Ouvrait d’une façon nonchalante et cynique
Son ventre plein d’exhalaisons. 8
11 For an interpretation of Le vieux saltimbanque which insists on the ambivalence and the
irony of this text, see Warning, 2008.
12 See Starobinski, 1970, who studies the history of the clown and his relationship with the
artist.
Le soleil rayonnait sur cette pourriture,

Comme afin de la cuire à point,
Et de rendre au centuple à la grande Nature
Tout ce qu’ensemble elle avait joint; 12
Et le ciel regardait la carcasse superbe

Comme une fleur s’épanouir.
La puanteur était si forte, que sur l’herbe
Vous crûtes vous évanouir. 16
Les mouches bourdonnaient sur ce ventre putride,

D’où sortaient de noirs bataillons
De larves, qui coulaient comme un épais liquide
Le long de ces vivants haillons. 20
Tout cela descendait, montait comme une vague

Ou s’élançait en pétillant;
On eût dit que le corps, enflé d’un souffle vague,
Vivait en se multipliant. 24
Et ce monde rendait une étrange musique,

Comme l’eau courante et le vent,
Ou le grain qu’un vanneur d’un mouvement rythmique
Agite et tourne dans son van. 28
Les formes s’effaçaient et n’étaient plus qu’un rêve,

Une ébauche lente à venir,
Sur la toile oubliée, et que l’artiste achève
Seulement par le souvenir. 32
Derrière les rochers une chienne inquiète

Nous regardait d’un œil fâché,
Épiant le moment de reprendre au squelette
Le morceau qu’elle avait lâché. 36
—Et pourtant vous serez semblable à cette ordure,

À cette horrible infection,
Étoile de mes yeux, soleil de ma nature,
Vous, mon ange et ma passion! 40
190 Klinkert
Oui! telle vous serez, ô la reine des grâces,

Après les derniers sacrements,
Quand vous irez, sous l’herbe et les floraisons grasses,
Moisir parmi les ossements. 44
Alors, ô ma beauté! dites à la vermine

Qui vous mangera de baisers,
Que j’ai gardé la forme et l’essence divine
De mes amours décomposés! 48
A Carcass
My love, do you recall the object which we saw,

That fair, sweet, summer morn!
At a turn in the path a foul carcass
On a gravel strewn bed, 4
Its legs raised in the air, like a lustful woman,

Burning and dripping with poisons,
Displayed in a shameless, nonchalant way
Its belly, swollen with gases. 8
The sun shone down upon that putrescence,

As if to roast it to a turn,
And to give back a hundredfold to great Nature
The elements she had combined; 12
And the sky was watching that superb cadaver

Blossom like a flower.
So frightful was the stench that you believed
You’d faint away upon the grass. 16
The blow-flies were buzzing round that putrid belly,

From which came forth black battalions
Of maggots, which oozed out like a heavy liquid
All along those living tatters. 20
All this was descending and rising like a wave,

Or poured out with a crackling sound;
One would have said the body, swollen with a vague breath,
Lived by multiplication. 24
And this world gave forth singular music,

Like running water or the wind,
Or the grain that winnowers with a rhythmic motion
Shake in their winnowing baskets. 28
The forms disappeared and were no more than a dream,

A sketch that slowly falls
Upon the forgotten canvas, that the artist
Completes from memory alone. 32
Crouched behind the boulders, an anxious dog

Watched us with angry eye,
Waiting for the moment to take back from the carcass
The morsel he had left. 36
—And yet you will be like this corruption,

Like this horrible infection,
Star of my eyes, sunlight of my being,
You, my angel and my passion! 40
Yes! thus will you be, queen of the Graces,

After the last sacraments,
When you go beneath grass and luxuriant flowers,
To molder among the bones of the dead. 44
Then, O my beauty! say to the worms who will

Devour you with kisses,
That I have kept the form and the divine essence
Of my decomposed love!13 48
In this poem, which is part of the section Spleen et Idéal, the subject address-
es a female interlocutor, whom he calls “my love” (v. 1) and “Star of my eyes,
sunlight of my being, / You, my angel and my passion!” (v. 39–40). Clearly,
the interlocutor is the beloved of the subject. Based on this communicative
situation, which contains an apostrophe directed towards a beloved woman,
the text opens up two different temporal horizons: on the one hand, there
is the dimension of past and memory, on the other hand, the dimension of
the future. The main part of the poem is dedicated to the past, via memory. The
text evokes “That fair, sweet, summer morn” (v. 2), which has confronted the
13 Translated by William Aggeler: Baudelaire, 1954.

192 Klinkert
subject and his beloved with the image of death. They saw a “foul carcass” (v. 3)
“[a]t a turn in the path” (v. 3). This carcass is described in great detail, from the
second to the ninth stanza.
In this description of physical decay, one can discern two different regis-
ters: on the one hand, there is the physiological register: “dripping with poi-
sons” (v. 6), “belly, swollen with gases” (v. 8), “stench” (v. 15), “blow-flies” (v. 17),
and “maggots” (v. 19). On the other hand, there is an important metaphorical
register. Thus, the carcass is compared to a “lustful woman” (v. 5), the sun is
considered as though its effects were caused by intentional action, as though
it wanted to “roast [the carcass] to a turn” (v. 10). Another metaphorical dimen-
sion is evoked by the religious sphere: “And the sky was watching that superb
cadaver” (v. 13). The metaphorical description of the carcass brings to mind
the idea of resurrection: “One would have said the body, swollen with a vague
breath, / Lived by multiplication” (v. 23–24). Furthermore, there are allusions
to the sphere of art: “And this world gave forth singular music” (v. 25); “The
forms disappeared and were no more than a dream, / A sketch that slowly
falls / Upon the forgotten canvas, that the artist / Completes from memory
alone.” (v. 29–32) Thus, the carcass is placed in the focus of different types of
description, namely physiological description and metaphorical description,
pertaining to the sphere of art and the religious sphere. In this way, the trans-
formations of the dead animal brought about by nature are doubled by the
linguistic transformations of the text. The decaying animal, which is part of
the biological order, and of a temporality determined by the laws of nature,
is transformed into an allegorical object, which allows the subject to reflect
upon religious and artistic transformation. This multiple codification of the
carcass points in an auto-reflective manner to the transformative power of po-
etic texts. As is well known, these are not simply a representation of the real
world.14 On the contrary, what takes place is a transformation of reality, based
upon the metaphorical power of language. In this way, a specific temporality is
created, which is the temporality of the work of art. Due to the transformative
power of poetic language, works of art can constitute a sphere of communica-
tion, making possible the transcendence of biological death.
This capacity of the work of art is evoked in the last stanzas of the poem,
where the subject of the text addresses his beloved, predicting her future
death:
14 For a discussion of this question in connection with Baudelaire see, for example,
Chambers, 1987.
—And yet you will be like this corruption,

Like this horrible infection,
Star of my eyes, sunlight of my being,
You, my angel and my passion! 40
Yes! thus will you be, queen of the Graces,

After the last sacraments,
When you go beneath grass and luxuriant flowers,
To molder among the bones of the dead. 44
So the beloved, who is identified with an angel, placing her in a superhuman

sphere, is at the same time compared with a carcass, which means that she is
relegated to the animal sphere. One might say that the text doesn’t hesitate to
profane the sphere of love, by insisting on the fact that Man is a part of the ani-
mal kingdom. On the other hand, however, the text evokes the transformative
power of the work of art, which, in expressing in crude terms the physiological
realities, succeeds in extracting the “divine essence” (v. 47) from the sphere of
the transitory:
Then, O my beauty! say to the worms who will

Devour you with kisses,
That I have kept the form and the divine essence
Of my decomposed love! 48
One can conclude from this, that the poetic text, which is referred to by the
polysemic “je” (“I”) of v. 47, preserves the “divine essence” of what is subject
to destruction, namely the human body and love between mortals. In other
words, the poetic text transforms the biological order into a cultural one,
whose temporality transcends the finiteness of individual life.15
As mentioned above, Baudelaire’s aesthetics has its place in a general move-
ment of the history of ideas in the 19th century. What is at stake, is the histori-
cal conception of life and the world, which pervades all domains of knowledge,
giving rise to a parallelism between biology and literature, for instance. In Le
Peintre de la vie moderne, Baudelaire emphasizes the duality of beauty, which
is composed of an “eternal, invariable element” and a “relative and circumstan-
tial element”. Beauty is, therefore, subject to the laws of time and history. In
15 For further readings of this fascinating poem, see, for example, Krause, Martin, 1998;
Mathieu, 2003; Westerwelle, 2011; Vatan, 2015.
194 Klinkert
Baudelaire’s aesthetic theory, however, two different temporal orders intersect.

One is the order of historical time (Man existing in history); the other is the
order of biological time (Man as a species, being part of the animal kingdom).
As an observer of the world and of life, the artist has to take into account these
two temporal orders, in order to discover beauty, and then to make it visible
by transforming it, that is to say by making it pervade another temporal order,
which is that of art: cultural time. The analysis of two prose poems, La cham-
bre double and Le vieux saltimbanque, and one poem of Les Fleurs du Mal, Une
charogne, has shown that Baudelaire makes use of elements of his theoretical
reflections in his poetic texts. First, he opposes two different temporal orders,
which are respectively founded on the absence of time, characteristic of the
world of dreams, and on the presence of time, characteristic of the real world,
which is under the rule of death (La chambre double). Secondly, he analyses
the logic of cultural time, by narrating the encounter of the subject with the
old mountebank, who is perceived as an allegory of the poet. Thirdly, he re-
flects upon the tension between mortality, which is an expression of biologi-
cal time, and cultural memory, which belongs to the domain of poetry (Une
charogne). In all three cases, biological time is proven to play a central role, to
the extent that it is death, as the inevitable final destination of life, which gov-
erns the aesthetic structures. Thus, in Baudelaire, biological knowledge, which
inscribes itself into his texts at the level of thought and of form, nourishes aes-
thetic reflection and poetic practice.
Author’s own translation
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Evolution and Time in the Chants de Maldoror
Frank Jäger
Abstract
The present study argues that the omnipresent use of “savage”, “violent” and animal-
like metaphors, found in Lautréamont’s Chants de Maldoror, constitutes a specific
form of literary transformation and (re-)creation of concepts and ideas found in nine-
teenth-century natural history such as evolutionary theory or metamorphosis. By ana-
lysing some of the recurrent imagery and metaphors used by Lautréamont, the study
aims to shed light on the intertwined interactions between the emerging fascination
for natural history and its impact on artistic writing.
The frequent use of animalistic elements in the Chants de Maldoror are all
too obvious for any reader to miss and thus have been the subject matter of
numerous studies.1 However, taking into account the apparent influence and
the fascination that the works of Isidore Ducasse, the self-appointed “Comte
de Lautréamont”, exerted on modern aesthetics (the surrealists in particular,
who have made Ducasse one of the aesthetical and ideological foundations of
twentieth-century avant-garde), it is still somewhat uncertain as to how and
why this bizarre collage makes use of such a distinct imagery of savage nature.
The present study wants to take a closer look at this imagery form a larger per-
spective. It claims that these elements do not only serve as a mere backdrop
for the extravagant and uninhibited figure of Maldoror but that its sources as
its peculiar transformation may be located in a soberer environment, rooted in
the ever-growing interest in the field of natural science, especially biology, or,
as it is more often referred to in the 19th century, natural history.2 The almost
encyclopaedic, zoological occurrence of animals or animal-related themes in
the Chants de Maldoror not only suggests an intrinsic fascination with the va-
riety and diversity of life, but it also goes along with the idea of the evolution
1 For the most prominent example see Bachelard, 1968. Other studies include Hillenaar, 1988,
Ichijo, 2007, and Sanz, 2006.
2 The term “natural history” goes back to antiquity and Pliny the Elder. It then succumbed to
a growing diversification from natural phenomena in general to the more specific analysis
of plants and animals. With Buffon’s multi-volume Histoire naturelle (1749–1789), the term
gradually differentiated into categories such as physiology, botany, zoology, geology, and pa-
laeontology. In the 19th century, the term is still widely used to describe what we today call
flora and fauna, i.e. biology.
of life itself. Gaston Bachelard has claimed to have found 185 different animals
and more than 400 references to animal life in the text:
J’ai fait le registre de tous les noms d’animaux différents cités […]. J’en ai
trouvé 185. Parmi ces 185 animaux, la plupart sont invoqués à plusieurs
pages et plusieurs fois par page. En ne tenant pas compte des répétitions
dans chaque page, on trouve 435 références à la vie animale […].
Bachelard, 1968: 12
In addition to that, the idea of evolution plays a major role in the text’s con-
stitution and even creates some coherence in this otherwise heterogeneous
collage. In close proximity and inherent to the idea of evolution is the role of
time in the Chants de Maldoror. As is well known, many of the “narratives” of
the Chants are pieced together by a complex tissue of rewriting and distort-
ing, involving metaphysical, scientific, religious and literary hypotexts.3 Critics,
however, have so far neglected the role of time, especially when it comes to
the meaning of evolutionistic, natural historical time which plays a big part
in the way in which Ducasse stages the events surrounding his protagonist.
Our thesis is that by borrowing and transforming existing concepts of popular
natural historic writings (for example Chenu’s Encyclopédie d’histoire naturelle
(1850–1861)), Ducasse makes use of a field of natural history and early biologi-
cal science. The emerging interest and the numerous theories surrounding
evolution and biology provide a creative margin in which Ducasse intertwines
scientific and philosophical theories and concepts which are related to the
subject of nature and life itself. The consequent mingling of different scientific
ideas such as evolutionary theory or spontaneous generation is a direct result
of this approach.4
1 Notions on Life and its Hybrid Nature
By borrowing and transforming general ideas of contemporary scientific re-

search, Ducasse creates a hybrid text, which despite its often-plagiaristic char-
acter must be accorded originality. The form of this text itself is testimony to
this transgressive hybridization. On the one hand, there is the overtly lyrical
pretension, carrying remnants of ancient epic forms with the macrostructure
3 See for example Amiot, 1989, or Winspur, 1985.

4 For a detailed analysis of the influences and interactions between theories of natural history
and the works of Lautréamont, see Bonnet, 1964, as well as Teramoto, 2003.
198 Jäger
of the text being split into songs (“chants”) and stanzas (“strophes”); on the
other hand, the text itself is clearly written in prose, containing, for the most
time, neither rime-schemes nor measure. Eugene Thacker even compares the
text to a deformed organism, calling it a “teratological anomaly composed of
bits and pieces, a corpus left unfinished or untended” (Thacker, 2013: 84). The
protagonist of the Chants is no less hybrid, he resembles a hyaena and his nu-
merous metamorphoses allow him to interact with other animals.5 The ques-
tion of his origin and nature remains very much in doubt. Keeping in mind the
poetics of citation and plagiarism, the hybrid nature of Ducasse’s protagonist
thus seems to be only consequent. Exploring his proper nature constitutes a
substantial part of his being and prompts his reflections on the nature and the
origins of human life and life in general. From the beginning, he feels a strong
affinity to the world of animals:
Je suis fils de l’homme et de la femme, d’après ce qu’on m’a dit. Ça

m’étonne … je croyais être davantage! […] j’aurais voulu être plutôt le fils
de la femelle du requin, dont la faim est amie des tempêtes, et du tigre, à
la cruauté reconnue.
Lautréamont, 2009: 49
I am the son of a man and a woman, according to what has been said
to me. That’s astonishing … I thought to be more than that! […] I would
have preferred being the son of the female shark, whose hunger is like a
tempest, and the tiger, whose cruelty is well known.6
This imagined and even wished-for animal descendance of the protagonist

proves to be one of the most constant themes of the Chants as Maldoror’s
encounters with animals of all kind by far outnumber his encounters with
human beings.
But there is more to Maldoror’s animal relationship than mere affective
affinity. Throughout the Chants, Maldoror’s animalistic bursting vitality co-
incides with a pronounced lust for destruction. The character of Maldoror
combines a sheer and unabated vital force with a high capacity of reflection.
When talking about the three protagonists of his text, “l’homme, le Créateur et
moi-même” (“man, the creator and myself”), Maldoror evokes the vital driving
force of life, thus making it another example in which the thematic and the
formal ideas are being superposed:
5 For a closer analysis of these metamorphoses, see Ichijo, 2007, and Le Clézio, 1985.
6 English translations of Lautréamont are my own.
La vitalité se répandra magnifiquement dans le torrent de leur appareil

circulatoire, et vous verrez comme vous serez étonné vous-même de ren-
contrer, là où d’abord vous n’aviez cru voir que des entités vagues apparte-
nant au domaine de la spéculation pure, d’une part, l’organisme corporel
avec ses ramifications de nerfs et ses membranes muqueuses, de l’autre,
le principe spirituel qui préside aux fonctions physiologiques de la chair.
The vitality will spread magnificently through the torrent of their blood
vessels and you will see yourself astonished to encounter, where until
then you could only perceive vague entities of pure speculation, the
body with all its ramification of nerfs and its mucous membranes on
the one hand and, on the other, the spiritual principle which presides
the functions of the flesh.
As in numerous other passages, the vital force of life is being described in a

very vivid and detailed way. It also mentions the vague intuition or specula-
tion that often precedes scientific confirmation. The feeling that what makes
human life so special and at the same time so frightening for Maldoror is its
hybrid form, constituted by sheer animalistic vitality on the one hand and ra-
tional reflection on the other. It also contains the announcement of scientific
discovery which is still but a mere presentiment but which pays tribute to the
inspiring dynamics of an emerging science that is about to reveal the secrets
of human life, often bringing about shocking realizations such as in the field
of anatomy.7
The return of the traditional dichotomy of body and soul marks a pivotal
point insofar as Maldoror’s destructive attitudes towards life spring from his
thinking and reflecting mind, a reflection which has some difficulty coping
with the brutal and ultimately pointless conditions of the ever-regenerating
circle of life. His hybrid nature can thus be considered a mirror of the human
condition, which has time and again been torn apart by the realization of its
material, animal-like nature and its ideal spiritual self-reflection.8 The text
bears several examples which seem to confirm the thesis according to which a
conscious understanding of the conditions and the nature of life must neces-
sarily lead to its loathing and destroying.
7 One just has to think about phenomena such as vivisection and anatomy lessons, which were
frequent scientific methods in the 19th century.
8 A dichotomy which is reminiscent of nineteenth-century art in general. See for example
Victor Hugo’s contrasting poetics of the sublime and the grotesque in his Préface à Cromwell.
200 Jäger
2 Poetic Transformation of Evolutionistic Concepts
As Maldoror establishes and explores all sorts of semi-relationships with the

different animals he encounters, this reflection develops into a more universal
thought as to the origins and the very nature of life itself. On numerous occa-
sions, Maldoror claims to be a witness of the history and therefore the devel-
opment of life from the dawn of humanity. There is also a passage which even
comes up with the notion of the primordial soup as the cradle of all biological
life: “[…] épargnons cette grande existence, qui n’a pas encore fini de cuver la
liqueur immonde […]” (Lautréamont, 2009: 144). The following passage trans-
fers us into the supposed primeval time of the beginnings of earthly life:
Depuis ce temps, j’ai assisté aux révolutions de notre globe; les tremble-
ments de terre, les volcans, avec leur lave embrasée, le simoun du désert
et les naufrages de la tempête ont eu ma présence pour spectateur im-
passible. Depuis ce temps, j’ai vu plusieurs générations humaines élever,
le matin, ses ailes et ses yeux, vers l’espace, avec la joie inexpériente, de
mourir, le soir, avant le coucher du soleil, la tête courbée, comme des
fleurs fanées que balance le sifflement plaintif du vent.
Lautréamont, 2009: 224–225
Since then I’ve assisted at the revolutions of our globe; the earthquakes,
the volcanos with their blaze, the Simoun of the desert and the storm-
caused shipwrecks have seen my presence as a calm observer. Since then
I’ve seen, in the morning, several generations of humans set their eyes
towards the skies, spread their wings in unseasoned joy, just to see them
die, in the evening before the sun had set, with their heads bowed to the
ground like withered flowers, swayed by the whistling of the wind.
Beside the notion of the transience of individual human life, this passage also
underlines the fact that Maldoror has existed for a very long time, having wit-
nessed the dawn of man. Another passage confirms this notion, although a
substantial change is taking place. Maldoror is no longer a passive spectator,
but an active, driving force within the history of human life:
Il n’est pas facile de faire périr entièrement les hommes, et les lois sont
là; mais, on peut, avec de la patience, exterminer, une par une, les four-
mis humanitaires. Or, depuis les jours de ma naissance, où je vivais avec
les premiers aïeuls de notre race, encore inexpérimenté dans la tension
de mes embûches; depuis les temps reculés, placés, au-delà de l’histoire,
où, dans de subtiles métamorphoses, je ravageais, à diverses époques, les

contrées du globe par les conquêtes et le carnage, n’ai-je pas déjà écrasé
sous mes talons, membre par membre ou collectivement, des généra-
tions entières, dont il ne serait pas difficile de concevoir le chiffre innom-
brable? Le passé radieux a fait de brillantes promesses à l’avenir: il les
tiendra.
Lautréamont 2009: 224
It is not easy to completely annihilate the human race and the impera-
tive exists; but it is possible, with some patience, to exterminate, one by
one, the human ants. Since the days of my birth, when I lived among the
first ancestors of our race, which were still unexperienced in my perils,
since the remote times, when I, detached from history and with subtle
metamorphoses, plagued the territories of the globe at different times
through conquest and carnage, have I not, member by member as well
as collectively crossed out entire generations, uncounted numbers which
are not difficult to conceive? The bright past has made brilliant promises
to the future which will be kept.
Thus, the closing passage of the last chant preceding the ominous Mervyn-
episode, addresses very directly the central points of our argument when it
comes to the question of the evolution of life from a historic, time point of
view. Not for the first time does Maldoror express the feeling of having lived
through the entire history of “notre race”. He indicates that he has already been
amongst the first human beings and that he has witnessed their evolution ever
since. We also get confirmation that his destructive ways have been around
just as long. More importantly, we learn that Maldoror claims responsibility for
all the destruction of previous generations of human life, thereby once again
reinforcing his recurrent role as a messenger of death. At the same time, he
underlines how difficult it is to exterminate mankind, thereby suggesting its
adaptability and resistance. Within the present context, however, we get a little
more inside into the nature of Maldoror’s destructive and life-devouring an-
tics. Not only does the passage suggest Maldoror’s longevity, if not his outward
immortality, his ability to freely move within time and history (“placés, au-delà
de l’histoire”) makes him a witness of the entire history of earthly life. The re-
lease of any spatiotemporal limits, combined with his ability to metamorphose
into any given creature, would make it difficult not to consider him as a godlike
figure.
However, if there is one consistent and recurring central theme in the
Chants, it is Maldoror’s blasphemous revolt against the entity of a creator-god.
202 Jäger
With all of Maldoror’s reproaches against the creator and, indeed, with the
inner conflicts that plague Maldoror himself, it would be completely inappro-
priate to see himself taking the role of any god. The question thus remains:
what is the role and the function of this seemingly almighty but destructive
character? Taking into account the entire text, a lot of evidence suggests that
Maldoror’s role is indeed a transcendental one and that he could be consid-
ered a personification of the abstract idea of natural selection or evolution
itself which of course includes the circle of life and death. However, one of the
central contradictions of the text and for the character of Maldoror himself is
the tension created by the fascination for life on the one hand and the will to
destroy it on the other. There is more to this than a mere variation of the old
dichotomy of life and death, although it obviously plays a role when discuss-
ing the problem of natural history and evolution. Maldoror’s untamed lust for
destruction of life suggests that he might be considered an embodiment of the
idea of evolution itself which forms, filters, and eliminates life according to the
indispensable and often cruel laws of nature.
In this way, Maldoror’s metamorphoses could be seen to embody both the
potential diversity of nature with its numerous ramifications and the decay
of weak, non-viable life at the same time. Indeed, more often than not does
Maldoror’s encounter with other living creatures resemble a testing game of
resistance, mirroring some of nature’s own methods of trial and error when
it comes to natural selection. Supportive of this thesis is the fact that Ducasse
depicts not only the encounter with sharks, lions and other animals which are
commonly associated with strength and brutal violent animality, but he also
comes up with some of the more inconspicuous, however not less resistant
and adaptable forms of life. By making Maldodor a vector of diseases like the
gangrene, Ducasse brings into play contamination, demonstrating that the re-
sistance of germs and diseases is central to both the creation and the destruc-
tion of life. The destructive methods used by Maldoror, ranging from outward
physical violence to the infection with contagious diseases, covers the whole
spectrum of natural-biological contingencies which ultimately determine the
development of life.
3 Evolutionary Concepts and Poetic Self-Reflection
The most remarkable aspect in one of the final passages of the text is, how-
ever, the fact that Ducasse establishes a direct link between the themes of the
Chants and his methods of writing, which is poetic self-reflection:
Pour le ratissage de mes phrases, j’emploierai forcément la méthode na-

turelle, en rétrogradant jusque chez les sauvages, afin qu’ils me donnent
des leçons.
In order to rake up my phrases, I’ll make use of methods that can be found
in nature, going back to the savages, so that they may teach me.
By stating that he plans to make use of “natural methods” and that he wants to
learn from the “savages”, he more directly than ever puts himself and his writ-
ing in close proximity to the science of natural history. Regardless of the self-
reflective implications, there is a distinct feeling that Maldoror incorporates
the genre (genera or “Gattung” in evolutionistic terms) of mankind more than
its individual fate. There are numerous examples which suggest that Maldoror
carries the burden of all living beings past and present and, even more impor-
tant, that he carries them since the beginning of all life for eternity. His is an
eternal combat against the never-ending and seemingly pointless struggle to
pass on the germ of life onto each and every generation. The vague intuition
according to which life is the result of a complex chain of metamorphoses
which have taken place over the course of thousands of years is associated
with a somewhat prophetic outlook into the future of scientific discoveries,
especially within the field of natural history:
D’après ce que j’appris plus tard, voici la simple vérité: la prolongation

de l’existence, dans cet élément fluide, avait insensiblement amené,
dans l’être humain qui s’était lui-même exilé des continents rocailleux,
les changements importants, mais, non pas essentiels, que j’avais remar-
qués, dans l’objet qu’un regard passablement confus m’avait fait prendre,
dès les moments primordiaux de son apparition […] pour un poisson, à
forme étrange, non encore décrit dans les classifications des naturalistes;
mais, peut-être, dans leurs ouvrages posthumes, quoique je n’eusse pas
l’excusable prétention de pencher vers cette dernière supposition, imagi-
née dans de trop hypothétiques conditions.
According to what I’ve learnt afterwards, this is the plain truth: the pro-
longation of the existence in this fluid element has inexorably led to im-
portant, however not essential changes in the human being, which has
exiled itself from rocky continents. I’ve remarked these changes whilst
204 Jäger
confusingly looking at an object which has, from its first primeval mo-
ment of appearance, made me believe to be a fish with a strange form,
a fish that has not yet been classified or described by natural scientists,
but a fish that may be discovered in their future, posthumous works, even
though I would not be inclined to believe in this last assumption which is
made in too hypothetic conditions.
This future outlook onto scientific discoveries reveals some of the typical
mechanisms underlying nineteenth-century romantic concepts such as pro-
phetic writing. It also suggests that the discovery of the origins of life and of
its evolution is imminent. It is this vague and aesthetically transcended and
distorted understanding of some of the universal conditions of life which
Maldoror incarnates through his numerous metamorphoses. His character
therefore represents a kind of general mould of life itself which symbolizes the
potential of the diversity of life whose exploration had only just begun in the
19th century.9
The fact that this knowledge of natural history is, both for epistemological
and poetic dramatic effects, being represented as a vague intuition, opens up a
room for creative speculation and borderline images (especially the notions of
monsters and of the grotesque). Ducasse’s interest in evolution-related themes
can hardly be overlooked, even though it seems impossible to determine
whether it springs from a general metaphysical fantasizing about the condi-
tions of life or whether it comes from a genuine interest in scientific concepts
such as the theories of Darwin and Spencer. Claude-Pierre Perez comes up
with a similar conclusion: “L’auteur des Chants n’était sûrement pas un ‘savant’.
Mais il était suffisamment informé pour avoir de la science contemporaine une
certaine intuition, une certaine représentation globale […].” (Perez, 2000: 50)
Either way, it seems fair to conclude that a passive or active interest in contem-
porary scientific research in the fields of natural history in the 19th century has
almost certainly contributed to the blending and mixing of facts, hypotheses,
fascination and imagination in Isidore Ducasse’s creative mind.
Much has been made of Maldoror as an individual personification of evil,
but it seems more adequate to consider him a bearer of the idea of evolution,
a figure representing the whole spectrum of earthly life, including the often-
cruel struggle for survival. This point of view sheds a different light on the en-
cyclopaedic inclusion of all sorts of animals in the text. Maldoror can be seen
9 In contemporary scientific terms, one might compare this with the discovery of the basic
bio-chemical compounds constituting all of earthly life.
to encompass the sum of the diversity of life, in which case his violent and un-
compromising antics would represent the struggle for life and the sometimes-
brutal acts that can be observed in nature. In evolutionary biology, this struggle
for life does not take into account individual sorts, it only considers life in a
general sense, aiming towards progression through adaption and selection of
genera. This realization inevitably collides with the human idea of individual
fate and the character of Maldoror incorporates this conflict both in an ab-
stract, metaphysical and philosophical way and in a concrete materialistic way.
He is aware of this conflict, knowing that any strive for individual life is barely
significant when considered in the global picture of the struggle of the race.
The fact that Ducasse so often underlines the hybrid nature of his protagonist
mirrors this conflict in his physical appearance, as do the frequent metamor-
phoses which he undergoes. The will to incorporate and to encompass life in
all its diversity consequently makes Maldoror the paradox figure that he is, full
of tense dichotomies and conflicts, which also include the dynamics of life
and death. Ecstasy of living and the will to destruct are closely intertwined
and are a direct result of this exuberant, aspiring character, which can ulti-
mately be considered as an abstract representation of the paradox principles
of life itself. The hybrid collage form of the text is a consequent result of this.
With the natural sciences still far away from a clear-cut profile in both matters
and methods, and with the ideal of an objective and positivistic approach still
being a rather theoretical one,10 the creative energy of writers and artists is ex-
tremely stimulated by this transitional phase that constitutes nineteenth-
century natural history and of which Lautréamont constitutes a prime
example.11
Author’s own translation
10 In this sense, Ducasse’s text can be considered to mirror some of the attempts and dif-
ficulties to distinguish and define the boundaries of philosophy, science and history. See
for example Émile Littré, who, in the first edition of La Philosophie positive, tries to define
positivism by distinguishing metaphysics, theology and philosophy from one another
(Littré, 1867).
11 One just has to think of other prominent examples such as Ernst Haeckel and his elabo-
rately aesthetic drawings of biological themes.
206 Jäger
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Memory of the Body in Proust: Historical Time and
Biological Time
Edward Bizub
Abstract
Marcel Proust based his conception of Truth on two principles, both linked to his per-
sonal investigation of the unconscious: on the one hand, the body’s memory, which he
put into practice during his psychotherapy in total isolation (1905–1906) with Doctor
Paul Sollier and, on the other hand, historical memory harking back to France’s roots
founded in Christianity. Seeking a regression of the personality in his patients by
stimulating their bodily sensations in order to bring to light their unconscious (which
in Proust’s vocabulary became “another self”), Sollier openly defied Freud, accus-
ing the latter of having eliminated physical associations in favour of a talking cure.
Furthermore, Proust’s impassioned resistance to the law of 1905 by which the State cut
its official ties with the Catholic Church is part and parcel of the author’s metaphorical
insistence on the religious nature of the revelation contained in the last volume of À la
recherche du temps perdu (Remembrance of Things Past) and it motivated his willing-
ness to construct his novel on the model of a cathedral.
In a draft of his essay Contre Sainte-Beuve / Against Sainte-Beuve, which was

never completed but actually became a preparatory sketch of his novel, Proust
wrote: “a book is the product of another self.” (Proust, 1971: 221). However, we
know that this other self was an instrument conceived as the expression of the
unconscious. As the author made clear, the multiple volumes of La Recherche /
Remembrance of Things Past constitute a series of “Novels of the unconscious”
(Proust, 1971: 558). But this unconscious should not be confused with that of
psychoanalysis, for it reflects nineteenth-century studies, which Proust knew
well thanks to having obtained a degree in philosophy at the Sorbonne in
1895. Moreover, these studies devoted considerable attention to a case study
of split personality observed by his own father. Indeed, Dr Adrien Proust was
an important figure in research relating to the discovery of the unconscious
at the end of the 19th century: he attended Charcot’s lessons at La Salpêtrière
(Charcot even expressed admiration for him), and his observations were also
recognized and cited, among others by the doctor who was to become Proust’s
208 Bizub
psychotherapist: Paul Sollier.1 Many of the works in the field of experimental

psychology situated the unconscious clearly within a biological framework,
examining with great precision—a characteristically positivist precision—the
role of the body in the constitution and preservation of what was also called
the other self or the deep self. The unconscious was conceived as being made
up of an aggregate of sensations caused by shock or trauma and cut off from
consciousness. This amalgam of sensations was likened to a sixth sense known
as kinaesthesia designating the ‘memory of the body’.
Bodily memory is precisely the phenomenon with which Proust’s novel
opens, and it runs through the narrative as an involuntary but mysterious force
revealing its truth value only at the novel’s climax. Indeed, the resurrection of
Venice, which is at the heart of the revelation in Time Regained, is triggered,
it shall be recalled, by a sensation in the narrator’s foot. But this kinaesthetic
event had been in preparation from the beginning of the novel in the episode
recalling the sensations experienced by the protagonist in the different bed-
rooms where he had spent the night. This is precisely the significance of the
passage that constitutes the opening of the novel in the “Combray” section:
Sa mémoire [celle du corps], la mémoire de ses côtes, de ses genoux, de

ses épaules, lui présentait successivement plusieurs des chambres où il
avait dormi […].
Proust, 1987, I: 6
Its memory [the body’s], the composite memory of its ribs, knees, and
shoulder-blades offered it a whole series of rooms in which it had at one
time or another slept […].
But this memory, which is ultimately biological, has a historical component.

Indeed, the memory of the body at the beginning of Remembrance also reflects
theories widespread in the 19th century that conflated phylogenesis and on-
togenesis or highlighted parallels between them. Darwinism was at its height.
The hero in “Combray” recounts his experience of a sudden bolt of memory
that crosses the whole of the history of civilization before returning to his cur-
rent self:
1 For an overview of Adrien Proust’s role in the research of the time, cf. Bizub, 2006, especially
chapter IV, “Le dormeur éveillé et Mr. Hyde”, 113–144.
Memory of the Body in Proust 209
je passais en une seconde par-dessus des siècles de civilisation, et l’image

confusément entrevue de lampes à pétrole, puis de chemises à col rebat-
tu, recomposaient peu à peu les traits originaux de mon moi.
Proust, 1987, I: 6
in a flash I would traverse centuries of civilization, and out of a half-

glimpsed succession of oil-lamps, followed by shirts with turned-down
collars, would put together by degrees the component parts of myself.
Human time intersects both historical and biological time. Concealed person-
al time is equated with historical time, only recovered when the conscious self
is “asleep”. There were cases of split personality that were along these lines, and
there is no doubt that Proust was inspired by one of these famous cases which
he had read about in Hippolyte Taine’s book, De l’intelligence / On Intelligence.
This was the case of the “American lady”, as reported by MacNish in Philosophy
of Sleep, published in 1830, and cited in the studies of the time, notably by
Taine. This lady, who had fallen into a “second state”, had lost all the attributes
of civilization, even the faculty of speech. MacNish recounts:
Une jeune dame américaine, au bout d’un sommeil prolongé, perdit le

souvenir de tout ce qu’elle avait appris. Sa mémoire était devenue table
rase. Elle fut obligée d’apprendre de nouveau à épeler, à lire, à écrire, à
calculer, à connaître les objets et les personnes qui l’entouraient.
Taine: 156–157
A Young American lady, after a prolonged sleep, lost all recollection of

what she knew. Her memory was tabula rasa. She was obliged to learn
again how to spell, to read, to write, to calculate, and to acquaint herself
once again with the persons and objects around her.
To borrow Proust’s words, she gradually had to recompose the “component

parts of [her] self”.
The entire content of the novel, from the very first drafts, including when
it was supposedly still an essay against Sainte-Beuve, had to converge towards
the truth that Proust wanted to highlight by means of a compelling climax, one
backed by the author’s belief: the resurrection of an “other self”, or the final, al-
beit belated discovery (because it was constantly postponed as the novel con-
tinued) of the existence of the unconscious, considered as a manifestation of
210 Bizub
a more profound reality, of “true life” (Proust, 1989, IV: 474), which Proust calls
“le réel” / “the real”.2
However, as we have already said, this unconscious would have both physi-
ological and historical components. The latter would be based on what Proust
believed to be an essential feature of his own self, grounded, according to him,
in the history of his nation. And for him, that history was inextricably linked to
Christianity. One might then be surprised at the link made by Proust between
positivism and religion. But that would be to overlook the fact that some of the
research of the time was based on just such an approach. Nevertheless, before
trying to describe this curious combination, I shall try to demonstrate that bio-
logical, or corporeal, time was indeed at the centre of the writer’s concerns.
First of all, the climax of the novel shows that the Truth to which Proust was
trying to gain access, his so-called “true life”, is intimately linked to a “sensation
in the foot”. This feeling is described in the first draft of this scene written in
early 1909 (Proust, 2002: 213). In this avant-texte, dating from about fifteen years
before the publication of Time Regained, the last volume of the work in which
this scene was to be replicated, there is a kind of illumination experienced as
a “resurrection” (Proust, 2002: 213). Moreover, this sensation is one of the first
events noted by Proust in his Notebook of 1908, which proves that his mind
had already conceived the future novel. In this hasty note, the “paving stones
trod upon with delight” (Proust, 2002: 51), recording an event in the writer’s
everyday experience and immediately interpreted by him as the perfect illus-
tration of involuntary memory, are obviously the same ones as those which, in
the final version published in the Pléiade edition, would be trod upon in the
courtyard of the Guermantes residence, and which would lead to Venice being
resurrected. What is even more surprising, as we shall see, is precisely this res-
urrection of Venice that allows us to link both biological time and historical
time in Proust’s vision of the novel.
Let us come back meanwhile to physiological time, to the biological uncon-
scious held captive in the body and which does not belong to clock time as
experienced by the everyday social self. By the time Proust graduated in phi-
losophy at the Sorbonne in 1895, philosophy was almost exclusively dominated
by the work of thinkers like Taine and Ribot who had sought to find a scientific
psychology based on physiology. Proust quotes these two authors explicitly in
the preparatory period of the writing of his novel.
However, without going further, it is also sufficient to recall what one of his
professors who was actively involved in the debate regarding the phenomenon
of an “other self” wrote in his assessment of his student’s skills—and this, of
2 The “vraie vie” could just as well be translated by “real life” (translator’s note).
course, in the discipline of psychology which he taught, and no doubt with

a certain admiration—, namely that Proust had “read everything” and had
“understood everything”.3 Finally, it is fair to say that Proust’s psychotherapy
with doctor Paul Sollier between 1905 and 1906 consolidated his knowledge
in the field, since the method so widely disseminated by him (his books had
been translated almost immediately everywhere—into Spanish, Polish and
Russian—and had been consulted by Freud) constituted a sort of summary of
the clinical and philosophical achievements of experimental psychology at the
time. Indeed, Sollier presented himself as an intermediary between medicine
and philosophy. Moreover, he knew the work of his patient’s father, whom he
quoted in one of his books, and he was also explicitly interested in the links
between psychology and literature. Given Proust’s extensive knowledge in the
medical field, Sollier could not have hoped for a more ideal patient.
This stay in the nursing home in Boulogne-sur-Seine, which is transposed
very discreetly in the novel—at least this is my hypothesis (Bizub, 20064)—
involved the application of the findings of previous clinical and philosophical
research. Therefore, Proust was able to refresh his academic knowledge in the
context of his therapy, for he got to experience it during this period … in his
body. At the heart of this treatment lay the body’s memory.
We are almost certain that Proust had followed his psychotherapist’s meth-
od to the letter, because in the middle of the treatment, on Christmas Day 1905,
Doctor Sollier offered him a signed copy of his Problème de la mémoire / The
Problem of Memory, published in 1900, which had already met with great suc-
cess (Bizub, 2015). We know, for example, that Freud had read it and even un-
derlined key passages. Without going into all the details of Sollier’s method,
let us limit ourselves to two aspects of this treatment: the notion of kinaes-
thesia (or the memory of the body) and that of repression (or the threshold of
consciousness).
The theory of kinaesthesia—a Greek word derived from koinos (common),
and esthesis (sensation)—postulated, as already stated, a kind of sixth sense
caused by a shock, physical or emotional, that settled in a part of the body and
preserved the memory of a triggering sensation that could remain cut off from
consciousness forever if another similar sensation failed to occur to resurrect
it. This theory is central to the occurrences of involuntary memory in the work
of Proust, especially in the episode of the madeleine and even more so in that
3 This was Victor Egger, author of La parole intérieure (1881). The notebook containing his
comments on Proust, which is held by the Victor Cousin library, is quoted by Henri Bonnet
(Bonnet, 1961: 77).
4 In the second part of the book entitled “Dépression spirituelle” / “Spiritual Depression”.
212 Bizub
of the irregular paving stones, which constitutes the climax of the story in Time
Regained. Need we recall again that the resurrection of Venice that triggers the
revelation of true life is caused by a mere sensation in the foot?
Sollier’s cure was based on the regression of personality, obtained by ap-
proaches focused on physiological manifestations that had been held pris-
oner in the body, and that had formed a cluster that was thus cut off from
consciousness. The work of the psychotherapist consisted in resurrecting this
cluster that had come about as a result of a shock which, because it had not
really been experienced, or rather because it had been entirely forgotten by
the conscious self, had become a source of psychological disorders. Dr Sollier
deliberately aroused in his patients the bodily sensations that might put them
in contact with this forgotten past. But these same sensations, deliberately and
artificially stimulated under clinical conditions, could be resurrected—at least
that is the basis of the theory—by the same sensations in external life, the
difference being that, in the latter situation, the only power that could induce
them was chance. In the general context of the thought of the time, the discus-
sion revolved around determinism and thus, indirectly, free will. Brunetière
had declared that the two most influential men of the late 19th century in the
field of ideas were Darwin and Schopenhauer. It goes without saying that, in
both cases, free will, at least as regards the moral motivation of human actions,
was seriously contested.
Kinaesthesia was the keystone of Sollier’s treatment, and he had even be-
come one of its most ardent defenders, but it was a theory which, as we have
pointed out, had been considerably developed by one of the philosophers
whom Proust knew well and whom he cites: Théodule Ribot. The latter was
the founder in 1876 of the Revue philosophique, which spread the theories of
experimental psychology to a broad readership, and whose influence on the
evolution of philosophy at the time should not be underestimated. We know,
for example, that Nietzsche was an avid reader of this journal. (Haaz, 2002)
Some even claim that he had found in it the source of certain ideas now con-
sidered to be his own (Gauchet, 20025). Ian Hacking goes even further by stat-
ing that in The Genealogy of Morals [Nietzsche] paraphrases almost word for
word entire passages from Ribot’s Maladies de la Mémoire / Diseases of Memory
(Hacking, 1998: 311).
This theory, extensively discussed by Ribot and adapted by Sollier (Sollier,
1901 and 1910), goes back to Griesinger in Germany. Its diffusion in France, es-
sentially due to Théodule Ribot, has recently been studied by Marcel Gauchet
5 Nietzsche’s debt to Ribot is discussed in the chapter “Nietzsche, ou la métaphysique de la

psychophysiologie”, 127–152.
(Gauchet, 1992: 93–94) as well as by Jean Starobinski (Starobinski, 1981). It is

worth noting that over the last couple of decades, research in the field of neu-
rosciences has been seeking to find legitimation for their studies in Proust’s
literary work. Proust was a neuroscientist: this is the title of a recent book that
has become a sensation in academic circles in France, the United States and
Germany (Bizub, 2014c).
The other concept that would also play a role in the climax of Proust’s
novel is almost its corollary: repression. Here we refer to a theory developed
in Germany by Herbart which is also called the threshold of consciousness.
Herbart developed the concept of Verdrängung which postulates a threshold
between consciousness and the unconscious. This threshold is the site where
two forces fight and resist one another. Sollier acknowledged the validity of
this theory originating from the “Herbart school”. And Proust in turn adapted
it. In his explanation of involuntary memory, which he presents after the ex-
perience with cobblestones, Proust uses the notion of struggle, which is a fea-
ture of the threshold of consciousness. The narrator of Remembrance explains
that it is the “repressed” events (Proust, 1989, IV: 453) of his past that explain
the resurrection of these bygone moments experienced in other places, which,
when they reappear, finally give him access to his “inner book” (Proust, 1989,
IV: 458).
Hippolyte Taine promoted a multidisciplinary approach in the field of psy-
chology before it became academically fashionable, as it is today. Indeed, Taine
viewed history as one of the “applications of psychology, much as meteorology
is an application of physics”. (Taine: 19–20) After explaining the close relation-
ship between psychology and physiological phenomena, he insists on the con-
nection between the study of psychology and that of history: he asserts that
celui qui étudie l’homme et celui qui étudie les hommes, le psychologue
et l’historien, séparés par les points de vue, ont néanmoins le même objet
en vue. […] On s’aperçoit que, pour comprendre les transformations que
subit telle molécule humaine ou tel groupe de molécules humaines, il
faut en faire la psychologie.
Taine: 20–21
those who study the human individual and those who study men, the
psychologist and the historian, who are separated by points of view, nev-
ertheless share the same subject-matter. […] We realize that in order to
understand the transformations undergone by a particular human mol-
ecule or group of human molecules, it is necessary to understand their
psychology.
214 Bizub
In a sentence that summarizes his positivist position, he states:
Tout historien perspicace et philosophe travaille à celle d’un individu,

d’un groupe, d’un siècle, d’un peuple ou d’une race; les recherches des lin-
guistes, des mythologues, des ethnographes n’ont pas d’autre but; il s’agit
toujours de décrire une âme humaine ou les traits communs à un groupe
naturel d’âmes humaines; et, ce que les historiens font sur le passé, les
grands romanciers et dramatistes le font sur le présent.
Taine: 21
Every perceptive and philosophical historian is concerned with the

psychology of an individual, a group, a century, a people or a race; the
research of linguists, mythologists, and ethnographers has no other pur-
pose; it is always a matter of describing a human being or the traits com-
mon to a natural group of human beings and, what historians do for the
past, great novelists and dramatists do for the present.
It can then be said that Proust as a novelist actually seeks to explore not only
a “human being”, but also “the features common to a natural group of human
beings”.
We have established that the “sensation in the foot” is a function of the
body’s biological time and that, in the scene of Time Regained, it provides the
key to unlocking the unconscious, to gaining access to “true life”, to a time out-
side of time. We should now like to demonstrate that this shock experienced
by the hero, which causes the resurrection of Venice (and more precisely that
of the moment when he entered the baptistery of Saint Mark’s in the company
of his mother), is also a historical component—a component not only of the
personal life of a particular man but also of an entire people. In Taine’s terms,
this would mean “the traits common to a natural group of human beings”.
It is therefore this other aspect that we are now going to explore: the histori-
cal component involved in the discovery of true life. To do this, we will make
use of another fact, one that is not visible in the text of the novel, but that must
be looked for beneath the text, in a layer of writing that Proust deliberately
kept secret. But this does not mean that this layer is any less important; on the
contrary, in a crucial passage, Proust argues that what is essential in a beautiful
text must necessarily be kept silent. In other words, most of the text, or even its
inspiration, must remain invisible or obscure. For the writer, the act of conceal-
ment constitutes the sacrifice necessary to produce a “beautiful book”: indeed,
in his translation of Sesame and Lilies, he refers to the “noble atmosphere of
silence” that goes to make up a beautiful book, “that marvellous varnish that
gleams with all that has not been said” (Ruskin, 1987: 1356).
We therefore need to track what is repressed beneath the experience of in-
voluntary memory at the end of the novel, what is repressed at the very mo-
ment when the text speaks of repression by recalling the sensation in the foot.
In one of his drafts, Proust clearly states what is “repressed” in this scene. What
prompted his experience and would trigger the resurrection of Venice was
nothing other than the reading of a page by John Ruskin, a page described as
history-related.
In order to understand the role played by this historical page which provokes
the sensation in the foot in the text, one must examine Proust’s conception
of history and, more precisely, of the relationship it could—or should—have
with art. If we first take the case of French art—we will return later to the
resurrection of Venice—Proust’s answer is clear, lucid and even impassioned.
For him, French art is nothing other than a representation of a fundamental
element of the history of his country; and in this history, its quintessence, its
cultural essence lies in its Christian heritage, and more precisely, its Catholic
heritage. This is clearly not only about faith, but also about the worship that ex-
presses it: the liturgy of the Mass. Proust detests those who see only an aesthet-
ic expression in this liturgy: they have gone astray. Only those who profess the
faith can have access to this essence, to this soul of the past. This soul, Proust
proclaims, is incarnate in the French cathedral and in the worship that takes
place there.
Proust’s position was not only compelling but was also publicly expressed
in an article published in the newspaper Le Figaro in August 1904 as the gov-
ernment was preparing the law for the Separation of Church and State. This
article officially positioned Proust as a committed activist within the clerical
camp—today we would say ‘anti-secular’ camp—and his thundering stance
would play a significant role in the public debate, his article even being cited as
a counter-argument by Aristide Briand in the dossier outlining this law, which
at the time was very controversial.
In this article, the soul of the people is linked to the Catholic Mass, to the
priest’s gestures, to the liturgy, to their faith. A “disused” church, having lost
its status as a consecrated place of worship, would be the death of this soul
and would condemn the people to forgetting their cultural identity. For Proust,
French culture and Catholic worship were one. To convince readers of this
6 Adrien Proust and Paul Sollier can be said to be part of this “silence”, because they are in a
way hidden presences in the novel. See my article on this subject (Bizub, 2014a).
216 Bizub
impending disaster resulting from the separation of the people from their
centuries-old identity, he paints a bleak picture of a soulless future in which
a few French people, having forgotten their roots, would one day discover an
abandoned church and try to visualize that precious past to which they no lon-
ger have access. A sort of paradise lost. In “La Mort des cathédrales” / “Death
Comes to the Cathedrals”, Proust looks forward centuries, like in a story, or
even a film of anticipation, to a cataclysmic future, to see the damage caused
by the government’s impending decision.
Supposons pour un instant le catholicisme éteint depuis des siècles, les

traditions de son culte perdues. Seules, monuments devenus inintelli-
gibles d’une croyance oubliée, subsistent les cathédrales, désaffectées
et muettes. Un jour, des savants arrivent à reconstituer les cérémonies
qu’on y célébrait autrefois, pour lesquelles ces cathédrales avaient été
construites et sans lesquelles on n’y trouvait plus qu’une lettre morte …
Proust, 1971: 141–142
Let us suppose for a moment that Catholicism has been extinct for cen-
turies, and the traditions of its worship lost. The only monuments that
remain are the cathedrals which, disused and silent, have become un-
intelligible due to the oblivion into which the faith has fallen. One day,
some scholars manage to reconstruct the ceremonies that were once
performed there, for which these cathedrals had been built and without
which there was nothing left but a meaningless empty space.
By mocking the government and its derisive attempt to “reconstruct the cer-
emonies that were once performed there”, he uses irony to convey the lack of
regard shown by political leaders for the safeguarding of their people’s genius:
Certes le gouvernement ne manquerait pas de subventionner une telle

tentative. Ce qu’il a fait pour des ruines romaines, il n’y faillirait pas pour
des monuments français, pour ces cathédrales qui sont la plus haute et la
plus originale expression du génie de la France.
Proust, 1971: 142
Of course, the government would not neglect to subsidize such an initia-

tive. What they have done for Roman ruins, they would not fail to do for
French monuments, for these cathedrals which are the highest and most
original expression of France’s genius.
He mocks scholars who, in this future reconstitution, should strive to “re-

cover the lost meaning of cathedrals” (Proust, 1971: 142). They would not be
able to experience a true resurrection—like the one provoked by the sensation
in the foot in Time Regained—and for lack of true officiants, they would resur-
rect the forgotten faith using actors! These scholars could at most capture the
“sense of the texts” (Proust, 1971: 143), but of a dead text, and not the authentic
experience that belongs to the “soul of yesteryear” (Proust, 1971: 142).
The article continues for pages and pages, but the meaning of this artis-
tic manifesto is clear. True French artists are officiant-artists, who allow the
people to reconnect with their core faith, with their national identity. To do
this, they must devote themselves to this art, one in which “the sculptures and
stained-glass windows regain their meaning, a mysterious scent hovers again
in the temple, a sacred drama is played out, and cathedrals once more begin to
sing” (Proust, 1971: 142).
This vision of the religious past buried in the unconscious is not an idea
specific to Proust. In an article in the newspaper L’Écho de Paris, “Les deux
maisons de Pascal, II”, Maurice Barrès links the physiological unconscious to a
historical stratum, a kind of reminiscence that reappears as a result of a sud-
den shock:
Nous sommes autorisés à comprendre que, sous l’influence d’un choc,

des parties de nous-mêmes entrent en activité, élaborent des images et
des sentiments que nous ne savions pas abriter dans non replis profonds.
qtd. in Bompaire-Evesque, 2007: 137
Evidence points to the fact that, when subjected to a shock, parts of our-
selves become active, developing images and feelings that we had no idea
we were sheltering deep within.
According to Claire Bompaire-Evesque, “Barrès was able to find in Taine an

application of the theory of fields of consciousness to religious psychology.”
(Bompaire-Evesque, 2007: 137) We find a passage in the Origines de la France
contemporaine / The Origins of contemporary France that runs along these
same lines:
Au plus profond de l’âme, bien au-dessous de la couche superficielle dont

nous avons conscience, les impressions se sont accumulées, comme des
eaux souterraines.
Bompaire-Evesque, 2007: 137
218 Bizub
Deep in the soul, well below the surface layer of which we are aware, im-
pressions have accumulated, like groundwater.
Taine also compares the hidden impressions to a body of water. He believes

that in this cultural unconscious “a living spring is formed”: “there is a tremor,
a crack and it rises up, breaks through, and gushes out on the surface”. Man “no
longer recognises himself”, he “discovers an irresistible and coherent belief”,
“a fierce conviction” (qtd. in Bompaire-Evesque, 2007: 137). For Barrès, this ir-
repressible belief is even older than the one invoked by Proust to explain the
genius of France. This belief, for Barrès, dated back to the Gauls. When the hero
of his novel La Colline inspirée / The Sacred Hill experiences a resurrection, it is
rather the old Gallic religious background that reappears.
However, for Proust the age-old religious background is definitely Christian.
Despite this difference, Barrès was nevertheless enthusiastic when read-
ing Proust’s article, and wrote a letter to him from Vézelay at the time of its
publication. The fact that Proust would later specify that the letter was sent
from Vézelay has significance, since the cathedral of this city plays a privileged
role in his article concerning the “murdered churches”. In his article, Proust
denounces the anti-clericals who would like to deconsecrate the church at
Vézelay in order to take away
le peu d’âme qui lui reste. Lorsqu’on aura éteint la petite lampe qui brille
au fond du chœur, Vézelay ne sera plus qu’une curiosité archéologique.
On y respirera l’odeur sépulcrale des musées.
Proust, 1971: 777
what little soul it has left. When the little lamp that shines at the heart
of the chancel is extinguished, Vézelay will be nothing more than an ar-
chaeological curiosity. It will exude the sepulchral smell of museums.
Now the “little lamp” that shines at the centre of the chancel is an allusion
to the flame that signals the “real presence” contained in the Eucharist,
the veneration of which in Catholic liturgy is called perpetual adoration,
the title initially chosen by Proust for the volume that was to become Time
Regained.
Right to the end, it would appear, Proust had wished to construct his
novel as a cathedral. He belatedly revealed this secret project in a letter writ-
ten in 1919 to Jean de Gaigneron to describe the way in which his work was
composed:
Et quand vous me parlez des cathédrales, je ne peux ne pas être ému

d’une intuition qui vous permet de deviner ce que je n’ai jamais dit à per-
sonne et que j’écris pour la première fois: c’est que j’avais voulu donner à
chaque partie de mon livre le titre: Porche, vitraux de l’abside, etc.
Proust, 2004: 914
And when you speak to me about cathedrals, I cannot fail to be moved by

your intuition that allows you to guess what I have never told anyone and
that I am writing for the first time: I wanted to give each part of my book
titles as follows: porch, stained-glass windows in the apse, etc.
It is thus reasonable to infer that the last volume of the novel was conceived
as the chancel of this cathedral and that, in keeping with this conception, the
light accompanying and provoking the sensation in the foot was the equivalent
of the flame of the “little lamp” indicating the presence to be found there and
the devotion to its worship: perpetual adoration.
However, Proust did not use a French cathedral to depict this climax, but a
basilica, that of St. Mark in Venice. In doing so, he sought to reveal the faith that
was the foundation of this monument. In other words, underlying the sensa-
tion in the foot is a testimony of faith, which is silent because buried within the
layers of writing in the text. To produce this invisible layer, the writer uses his
own experience—one might say that he enshrines it as if in a monstrance—of
rereading a page from Ruskin. It is a page of history that recalls the memory
of the city and above all its sacred lineage, which are incarnated in the two
columns of the Piazzetta, constituting both a gateway to and an initiation into
the city of Venice (Bizub, 1991: 135–162; Bizub, 2014b).
Bibliography
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traduction. Neuchâtel, La Baconnière.
Bizub, Edward, 2006. Proust et le moi divisé. La Recherche: creuset de la psychologie
expérimentale (1874–1914). Genève, Droz.
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der Recherche.” Translated from English by Catharina Meier. Marcel Proust und die
Medizin, edited by Cornelius Borck and Marc Föcking. Berlin, Insel Verlag, 14–32.
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Bizub, Edward, 2014b. “Ruskin et la voix traductrice: signe d’élection ou imposture?”

Proust pluriel, edited by Mireille Naturel. Paris, Presse Sorbonne Nouvelle, 171–182.
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Recherches proustiennes, 173–187.
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inspirée.” Psychologies fin de siècle, edited by Jean-Louis Cabanès, Jacqueline Carroy
and Nicole Edelman. Paris/Nanterre, Université de Paris-Ouest—Nanterre La
Défense, 129–145.
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Gallimard.
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with an introduction by Antoine Compagnon. Brussels, Éditions Complexe.
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Ribot. Paris, Alcan.
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Psychologie held in Geneva from 2–7 August 1909. Geneva, Kündig.
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psychanalyse (Paris), n° 2, 261–279.
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Part 4
Poetics of Time
⸪
The Poetics of Restored Time: Balzac, His Age and
the Figure of Cuvier
Hugues Marchal
Abstract
What poetics of restoration did Balzac have in mind when, in 1831, La Peau de chagrin
(The Wild Ass’s Skin) celebrated Georges Cuvier as the “greatest poet” of his century?
Did the naturalist’s attempts to resurrect extinct species provide an example which
Balzac emulated in his own creation? One may attempt to unfold and better under-
stand the complexity of the novelist’s tribute to the scientist, by comparing this pas-
sage and other contemporary texts, which used or rejected Cuvier’s model in order to
define how history, architecture, archaeology, literature or politics should relate to the
past.
So much has been said about the relationship between Balzac and Cuvier1 that
it may seem a little pedantic to revisit the praise given to the naturalist in La
Peau de chagrin (The Wild Ass’s Skin):
Vous êtes-vous jamais lancé dans l’immensité de l’espace et du temps, en

lisant les œuvres géologiques de Cuvier? Emporté par son génie, avez-
vous plané sur l’abîme sans bornes du passé, comme soutenu par la main
d’un enchanteur? En découvrant de tranche en tranche, de couche en
couche […] ces animaux dont les dépouilles fossilisées appartiennent à
des civilisations antédiluviennes, l’âme est effrayée d’entrevoir des mil-
liards d’années, des millions de peuples […]. Cuvier n’est-il pas le plus
grand poète de notre siècle? […] Il réveille le néant sans prononcer des
paroles grandement magiques; il fouille une parcelle de gypse, y aperçoit
une empreinte, et vous crie: Voyez! Soudain les marbres s’animalisent,
la mort se vivifie, le monde se déroule! Après d’innombrables dynasties
de créatures gigantesques, après des races de poissons et des clans de
mollusques, arrive enfin le genre humain, produit dégénéré d’un type
grandiose, brisé peut-être par le Créateur. Échauffés par son regard ré-
trospectif, ces hommes chétifs, nés d’hier, peuvent franchir le chaos, en-
tonner un hymne sans fin et se configurer le passé de l’univers dans une
1 See, among others, Ambrière, 1965; Guichardet, 1999; Massol, 2006: 269–272.
224 Marchal
sorte d’Apocalypse rétrograde. En présence de cette épouvantable résur-

rection due à la voix d’un seul homme, [n]ous nous demandons, écrasés
que nous sommes sous tant d’univers en ruines, à quoi bon nos gloires,
nos haines, nos amours; et si, pour devenir un point intangible dans l’ave-
nir, la peine de vivre doit s’accepter? Déracinés du présent, nous sommes
morts jusqu’à ce que notre valet de chambre entre et vienne nous dire:
“Madame la comtesse a répondu qu’elle attendait Monsieur.”
Balzac, 1979: 74–762
Have you ever launched into the immensity of time and space while
reading the geological writings of Cuvier? Carried along by his genius,
have you hung as if borne up by an enchanter’s hand over the illimitable
abyss of the past? When the fossil bones of animals belonging to civiliza-
tions before the Flood are turned up in bed after bed and layer upon layer
[…] the soul receives with dismay a glimpse of billions of years, millions
of peoples. […] Is Cuvier not the greatest poet of our century? He awak-
ens the void without pronouncing any pompous magic spells; he pokes
at a piece of gypsum, sees a print, and cries out: You see! All of a sudden,
marble turns into animals, death stirs into life, the world unfolds! At last,
after innumerable dynasties of gigantic creatures, after families of fish
and clans of molluscs, mankind comes along, this degenerate offspring of
a spectacular model, which had perhaps been destroyed by the Creator.
Quickened by his retrospective gaze, these puny individuals, born yes-
terday, can bridge the chaos, sing an endless anthem, and reconstruct
the history of the universe in a sort of Apocalypse in reverse. […] Faced
with the tremendous resurrection taking place at the behest of one single
man, [w]e might well ask ourselves, crushed as we are under the rubble
of so many universes, the purpose of our triumphs, our hatreds, our loves,
whether it is worthwhile accepting the pain of life only to become an in-
tangible speck in the future. Uprooted from the present, we are dead till
the valet de chambre comes in and says, “Madame la comtesse says that
she is expecting you, Sir.”
This portrait celebrates a version of the history of biology diametrically op-

posed to the very functioning of life. Death is revived in a movement that
allows the past to return in the present, and turns on its head a temporality
that early nineteenth-century palaeontology conceived of as an “agent of de-
struction, and more insidiously, of degradation” (Blanckaert, 1999: 88), since
it turned “gigantic creatures” into this “degenerate offspring” called Man. But
2 Translator’s note: Unless otherwise specified, the translations are our own.
The Poetics of Restored Time 225
Balzac associates this temporal subversion with a blurring of the boundaries

between science and literature, for the whole passage seems to be a justifica-
tion for his conferring upon Cuvier the title of “the greatest poet of [his] cen-
tury”. Defining the poetics of restoration that the novelist here elevates to the
status of aesthetic paragon, and understanding how it could have been trans-
posed onto the sphere of letters is a challenge, which is made even more dif-
ficult by the appropriation of Cuvier by other fields of knowledge.
1 Originality of The Wild Ass’s Skin
In contrast to scientists like Carnot, Cuvier did not publish any verse. On the
other hand, he wrote some of the notes with which Delille’s poem Les Trois
Règnes de la nature (1808) ended, and the polemic that this work, like scientific
poetry in general, met with, shows how powerful Balzac’s idea really was. From
the very beginning of the Empire, certain critics had accused Delille of hav-
ing deserted poetry by imitating Cuvier. Upon the publication of Trois règnes,
Dussault complained:
Que le docte et profond Cuvier recule tous les jours les bornes de l’his-
toire naturelle, qu’il dérobe sans cesse de nouveaux secrets à la nature,
qu’il découvre et recompose des races perdues, M. Delille ne doit pas le
suivre dans ses savantes recherches, sous le voûtes de nos carrières, parmi
des amas de plâtre, de gypse et de chaux. Est-ce donc le squelette de la
nature que le poète doit étudier et peindre? […] C’est la décoration, c’est
la scène du monde que le poète, comme le peintre, doit reproduire dans
ses tableaux magiques […].
1808: 4
Even if the learned and thoughtful Cuvier every day pushes back the lim-
its of natural science, turns up one new secret of nature after another,
and discovers and reassembles lost species, Mr. Delille should not follow
him in this erudite research under the vaults of our quarries and among
the piles of plaster, gypsum and limestone. Is it for the poet to study and
depict the skeleton of nature? […] It is the decor, the scenery of the world
that the poet, like the painter, should replicate in his magic tableaux […].
Dussault assigned the reconstitution of the “skeleton” and the lifting off of the
veils of nature to the naturalist, leaving for the poet “the magic tableaux” of
the visible world. But Balzac’s Cuvier disturbed this division of labour: as soon
as the naturalist could reconfer visibility and put flesh on the bones and thus
226 Marchal
play the role of “enchanter”, albeit without using “any pompous magic spells”
he combined the roles of scientist and poet, especially since the words used
by Balzac contradicted Chateaubriand’s Génie du christianisme (The Genius of
Christianity), which had accused science of disenchanting the world. Above
all, Balzac’s encomium ostentatiously adopted the position of follower which
Delille was reproached with. In Recherches sur les ossements fossiles, Cuvier
explained:
J’étais dans le cas d’un homme à qui l’on aurait donné pêle-mêle les débris
mutilés et incomplets de quelques centaines de squelettes […]; il fallait
que chaque os allât retrouver celui auquel il devait tenir; c’était presque
une résurrection en petit, et je n’avais pas à ma disposition la trompette
toute puissante; mais les lois immuables prescrites aux êtres vivants y
suppléèrent, et, à la voix de l’anatomie comparée, chaque os, chaque por-
tion d’os reprit sa place […]. Ceux qui auront la patience de me suivre
dans les mémoires qui composent de ce volume, pourront prendre une
idée des sensations que j’ai éprouvées, en restaurant ainsi par degrés ces
antiques monuments d’épouvantables révolutions.
1812, III: 3–4
I was in the position of a man to whom had been given pell-mell the
mutilated and incomplete remains of a few hundred skeletons […]; each
bone had to be put next to the one it was meant to be connected to. It was
almost a miniature resurrection, and the almighty trumpet was not at my
disposal. However, the unchanging laws governing living beings made up
for this lack, and, in response to the voice of comparative anatomy, each
bone, each piece of bone returned to its place. […]. Those patient enough
to follow me in the memoirs that make up this book will get some idea
of what I felt as I thus restored by degrees these ancient monuments of
ghastly revolutions.
Similarly, Balzac refers to the resurrection foretold in the Book of the

Apocalypse, combines the fiat of Genesis with the story of Lazarus, ends his
paragraph with a portrait of the naturalist’s readers and, revealing in the end
that his narrator is one of them, he concurs with Cuvier, who believed that his
readership would feel as he did. Imitation becomes the proof that the palae-
ontologist’s readership felt the same as he did, which reinforces his powers of
resurrection. If readers in 1831 were “uprooted from the present” and “dead” to
themselves, it is also because they felt the sublime frisson that twenty years
earlier had swept through the man of science, capable of bringing the past of
the world and his own feelings back to life. This power to provoke empathy
is akin to the lyric mode of expression, but a certain ambiguity persisted, for
making Cuvier into a poet meant there was no need to turn his ideas into verse
in order to poeticize them. Balzac was not defending the legitimacy of the sci-
entific poem: he was using the term “poet” in the wider and traditional sense of
fiction writer, as he would in the foreword to La Comédie humaine (The Human
Comedy), pointing out that “the accusation of immorality [is] the last resort
against the poet when one has nothing left to say to him” (1979: 14). It was also
the relation between his poetics and Cuvier’s approach that the novelist was
inviting the reader to think about.
Although Cuvier has already been the recipient of literary plaudits, the
trope of the scientist capable of necromancy does not appear to have been
much used before The Wild Ass’s Skin. As early as 1808, Les Trois règnes pictured
Cuvier as a man who was astonishing Death by giving him an air of vitality and
turning loss into gain – “A la mort étonnée il rend un air de vie […] Et des pertes
du monde il a fait ses richesses” (Delille, 1808, 2: 267). But in 1815, Alexandre
Soumet celebrated Cuvier without any reference to a resurrection:
D’animaux disparus, Cuvier cherchant les traces,

Compte leurs ossements, recompose leurs races;
De squelette en squelette il poursuit le passé,
Voit l’Océan sept fois de nos vallées chassé,
Et de ce globe empreint de sept vastes naufrages,
Recule le berceau dans le lointain des âges.
1864: 197
Looking for traces of extinct animals, Cuvier counts their bones, rebuilds
their species. From skeleton to skeleton, he pursues the past, sees the
ocean recede seven times from our valleys, and pushes the cradle of this
planet, which bears the scars of seven huge floods,3 back into the mists
of time.
Not until 1835 did Anne Bignan repeat in verse what Balzac had said in prose:
Des fossiles divers l’innombrable famille,

Ressuscite à ta voix, depuis l’humble coquille […].
Le temps les détruisit; tu nous les as rendus,
Et, copiste inventeur de modèles perdus,
3 This periodization is, in reality, the work of Buffon. [Translator’s note: In the case of verse,
we have not attempted to conserve the poetic form of the original, preferring a prose
paraphrase.].
228 Marchal
Sous tes puissantes mains en prodiges fécondes

Un fragile crayon a rebâti des mondes.
1835: 228–229
The family of fossils too numerous to count is resuscitated by your voice,

beginning with the lowly shellfish […]. Time destroyed them; you have
given them back to us, and copyist-inventor of lost models, in your power-
ful hands, bountiful source of miracles, a fragile pencil has rebuilt worlds.
The phrase “copyist-inventor of lost models” underscores the paradox of a mi-

mesis predicated on the disappearance of its referents. It creates an effect close
to the one achieved by Balzac when he calls Cuvier a poet. Drawing attention
to the taxonomic difficulty associated with palaeontological reconstruction,
these two formulations equate such acts of reconstruction with the “problem”
of “complete reality within total fiction”, which the author of Lélia would deem
“unheard of before” Balzac (Sand, 1862: 139), but which Balzac already attrib-
uted to Cuvier when he explained that the scientist rediscovers types despite
them being “broken”. However, the tensions linked to this fusing of historia et
poiesis went well beyond the literary realm.
2 Antiquaries and Chroniclers
From the 1830s to the 1850s, Cuvier’s resurrectionary approach was a model for
other explorations of the past. In 1833, Lamennais saluted German historiog-
raphy in these terms:
Au moment où la France, absorbée tout entière par sa révolution po-

litique, détournait ses regards du passé pour les arrêter uniquement
sur l’avenir qu’elle préparait au monde […] la laborieuse et pensive
Allemagne, occupant la place que la France quittait, laissa celle-ci re-
muer le présent [et] entreprit en quelque sorte de reconstruire, à l’aide
des faits et de la théorie philosophique, l’organisme vivant de l’humanité
dans les siècles antérieurs. […] À défaut de documents plus directs et plus
étendus, l’historien, cherchant à saisir, dans les traditions héroïques et
mythiques d’un peuple [disparu], son génie propre, et, pour ainsi dire, sa
forme particulière, se flattait de le recomposer sans autre secours, à peu
près comme Cuvier recomposait des animaux entiers de genre inconnu à
l’aide d’un seul fragment […].
1833: 328–329
At the moment when France, utterly absorbed by political revolution,

was turning away from the past to concentrate fully on the future it was
preparing for the rest of the world […] a laborious and grave Germany, oc-
cupying the place that France was abandoning, left France to its shaking
up of the present [and] embarked, as it were, on a project to reconstruct,
with the aid of facts and philosophical theory, the living organism of hu-
manity as it had existed in previous centuries. […] In the absence of more
direct and extended documentary evidence, the historian attempting to
glimpse the particular character of a people—its particular form, so to
speak—through a study of its heroic traditions and myths, was confident
of being able to do so without any other help, much like Cuvier rebuild-
ing whole animals of unknown species based on a single fragment […].
In 1836, when Valentin Parisot praised the “divinatory touch” with which the
architect and decorator William Capon “was resuscitating ancient monuments
out of a few stones, like Cuvier reconstructing whole skeletons, describing their
bodies and registering the existence of disappeared species out of stray bones”
(1836: 140–141), the adjective divinatory appears to be setting up, like in the case
of Bignan or Balzac, the final oxymoron, “registering the existence of disap-
peared species”. In the same year, Ernest Legouvé compared the work of Cuvier
and Eugène Sue’s Histoire de la marine française. According to Legouvé, this
treatise succeeded in injecting drama into “the dustiest of books” (Legouvé,
1836: 42) by means of dialogues in which historical figures “were truly brought
back to life” (Legouvé, 1836: 46). However, the reference to Cuvier to which
these elements were a prelude, is delayed by an effort to differentiate the ap-
proach exemplified by Sue and that of the novel:
la puissance de création et la puissance de reconstruction sont deux

forces tout à fait distinctes. Dans les créations de l’imagination, on a
pleine carrière: on fait, on défait, on corrige, tout cela à son gré […]; mais
dans les reproductions historiques, il n’en est pas de même: c’est je ne sais
quel mélange de patience et de force, une sorte de création prudente qui
en fait un don spécial. […] Parmi nous, je ne vois guère que M. de Vigny
qui sache ainsi, à la manière de Cuvier, recomposer tout un animal avec
une dent trouvée.
Legouvé, 1836: 45–46
the power to create and the power to reconstruct are two very different
things. In the creations of the imagination one has total freedom: one
makes, destroys, corrects as one wishes […]; but in the case of historical
230 Marchal
reproductions, things are different: an indefinable mixture of patience

and strength is required, a sort of prudent creativity, which makes it a
special skill. […] Among our number, I see few beyond Vigny that know,
in the manner of Cuvier, how to put a whole animal back together with
a single tooth.
Legouvé first restricts the words “create” and “creations” to the “imagination”,
and distinguishes them from the terms “reconstruct” and “historical reproduc-
tions”, but he concludes by referring to the latter as acts of “prudent creativity”,
common to Sue, the historian, the Vigny of Cinq-Mars and to Cuvier; which
comes down to forging a type of creator whose “manner” consists in an ability
to recreate a lost past by dint of a measured fiction that treats that past as if it
were still present. Lamartine includes in the same category philologists capable
of rediscovering the “literary treasures” of vanished civilizations (Lamartine,
1856: 95), while Paul Broca depicts Chavée, an Indo-European specialist, as a
“new Cuvier”, who “tomorrow will uncover the grammar and the dictionary
of this fossilized language” (Broca, 1862: 287). Legitimated by Cuvier, who had
referred to himself as “a new species of antiquary” (Cuvier 1812, I: 1), these
amalgams were part and parcel of one of those intellectual fashions which see
various fields (in this case, the social sciences) appropriating “ideas connected
to the conceptual tools” (Schlanger, 1995: 26) of a discipline “which is enjoying
success”, in a process of “contamination of discourses and values” (Schlanger,
1995: 256), which allowed them to aspire to the rigour of palaeontology.
Balzac, who would refer to himself as an “archaeologist of social furniture”
(1976: 11), is part of this phenomenon and uses the same strategy. But, does
he truly share Cuvier’s poetics? The comparison is valid when La Comédie hu-
maine takes the naturalist to be the archetype of the nomenclator, or of a type
of inductive logic allowing the reconstruction of a whole based on scant infor-
mation. In this sense, Sand is right to say that Balzac
peint la famille, le ménage, l’intérieur, par cette puissance d’intuition qui

lui faisait tout reconstruire, comme Cuvier, sur un fragment observé.
Sand, 1862: 149
depicted the family, the household, and its interior, thanks to this power
of intuition that made him reconstruct everything, like Cuvier, out of a
fragment he had seen.
However, Cuvier put together a past while the novelist intended to produce a
“portrait of Society moulded from nature, so to speak”, in order to compose “for
nineteenth-century France the book that, to all of our regret, Rome and Athens
[…] did not leave behind” (Balzac, 1976: 11–12). Sand glosses this undertaking,
judging that “no previous age will be known in the future as well as ours”, a time
“conveyed in all its vitality” by Balzac (Sand, 1862: 137). Such a project was not
reconstructing things that were dead. Thus conceived, realism sought to archive
the present and if this treatment of the here-and-now remained metonymic,
it was so far removed from palaeontological necromancy that it was bound to
make any future Cuvier unnecessary. In 1859, Barbey d’Aurevilly, another great
admirer of Cuvier, would state this unequivocally. The peasants of his era were:
Types de transition, auxquels la marche des choses communique sa mo-

bilité incessante; il faut se dépêcher de les fixer pour s’en rendre compte,
car bientôt ils ne seront plus là avec ce progrès qui entraîne tout, et qui
a le précipité et peut-être la chute d’une cataracte! Il n’existe point et il
n’existera jamais de Cuvier pour recomposer les nuances sociales per-
dues, qui ne laissent pas d’os après elles, comme les animaux engloutis.
[…] Il faut les arrêter au passage, et c’est là le fait des romanciers, ces his-
toriens des mœurs, bien plus profonds et bien plus éclairants, croyez-le,
que les historiens de l’histoire!
2004: 1133
Transitional forms, to which the progress of things communicates its in-

cessant mobility; we have to be quick about describing them, for soon
they will be no more, given this progress which sweeps everything away,
and which is as speedy, and perhaps as bound to fall, as a cataract! There
does not exist, nor will there ever exist a Cuvier to piece back together
lost nuances of social behaviour which, unlike buried animals, leave no
bones behind. […] They must be caught on the go, which is the business
of novelists, those historians of human manners, who are much more
thoughtful and enlightening, believe me, than professional historians!
Was it henceforth the lot of Cuvier’s poetics to be recognized merely as a tech-

nique of rigorous reconstruction, whose impact on his contemporaries Balzac
had indeed recorded, but in a work of conservation (La Comédie humaine)
whose approach to time was completely different? The answer to this question
is not so obvious.
3 Recreating and Decreating
The contemporary political climate urgently looked to Cuvier for help in think-
ing through the limits of a different Restoration. In 1852, the Liberal legitimist
232 Marchal
Louis de Carné attacked historians who deplored the fact that Louis XVIII had
accepted the Charter of 1814.
Qu’était-ce que cette constitution historique dont on lui impute à crime

de ne pas avoir rassemblé les débris à la manière de Cuvier restaurant
un mastodonte à l’aide de quelques dents arrachées au flanc des mon-
tagnes? […] Attendait-on de Louis XVIII que de sa plaine autorité il rayât
de l’histoire tout le cycle révolutionnaire qui s’ouvre au lendemain de la
séance du jeu de paume? […] De tels rêves ne comportent pas même une
discussion.
1852: 736
What was this historic constitution that is taxed with not having put
the fragments back together, as Cuvier might have rebuilt a mastodon
with a few teeth dug up on the side of a mountain? […] Was Louis XVIII
supposed to single-handedly use his authority to erase from history the
revolutionary movements that began in the wake of the Jeu de Paume as-
sembly? […] Such nonsense is not even worth discussing.
Carné rejected the use of Cuvier’s approach as a model for the political
Restoration of 1814: in that context, the analogy would have led to a denial of
the Revolution’s break with the past. To think that the king could have brought
the Old Regime back to life was, he added, “to travesty the facts to make them
fit the most frivolous caprices of [one’s] imagination” (1852: 737). Other po-
litical players had already derided as illusory the reconstructions of Cuvier,
or those of antiquaries claiming to be his followers. In 1835, Baron d’Haussez,
who had been a minister under Charles X and had signed the disastrous Saint-
Cloud orders, would consider that:
[Les] édifices renommés [des Anciens] ne sous sont connus que par des
restaurations faites à l’aide d’imaginations exaltées et disposées à voir
tout en beau. Avec un fût de colonne et un débris de frise, les faiseurs de
monuments vous recomposent un palais, un temple, un cirque, comme
Cuvier faisait un mastodonte avec un fragment de mâchoire, une vertèbre
et un fémur. Qu’ils aient foi en leur œuvre!
1835: 43
[The] famous buildings [of the Ancient World] are only known to
us thanks to restorations carried out by exalted minds disposed to see
beauty in everything. With a shaft of a column and a fragment of frieze,
the monument makers rebuild you a palace, a temple, a circus, just like
Cuvier would make a mastodon out of bits of jaw, a vertebra and a single
femur. Here’s to their faith in their work!
The italics are in the original text, so that it is not going too far to read these
lines as a mea culpa and a gibe aimed as much at antiquaries as at ultras, both
groups that Balzac was to put together and mock in 1839 in Le Cabinet des an-
tiques (The Cabinet of Antiquities). While the historian’s homage to palaeonto-
logical restoration saluted its combining of intellect and imagination and the
revitalizing force of the true-to-life tableaux this union could wrest from the
past, the reference could also be used to condemn the delusional character of
such operations and the idea that the past could become the present again, the
transposition of such a model into the political realm implying that historical
changes could be turned back.
Thus, Cuvier was less of a unanimously accepted model of how to main-
tain the delicate balance between fiction and an understanding of the past
than Legouvé would have us believe. And other texts persisted in pitting the
antiquarian’s and the poet’s vision of ruins against one another, a motif which
allowed the antagonism between poetic and positivist mind-sets to be demon-
strated. In 1836, Léon Ewig, author of a guide to the forest of Compiègne, which
was full of ruins, explained that artists came “to study its rich and powerful
natural environment”, but that the forest was neglected by “erudite archaeolo-
gists”, “for whom the present has no importance”, and who wanted “a section
of wall of unclear origin, a paving stone […] with which [they] would recreate
an old fallen-down manor, just as Cuvier had reconstructed antediluvian ani-
mals” (1836: 36–37). The same year, a review of a work on the history of Savoy
echoed this divide. Confronted by ruins, one would have to have “a dullness of
imagination not to experience the charming reverie that can be summoned by
everything that bears the traces of bygone ages”.
Mais si ces impressions romantiques peuvent suffire [aux] poètes, [l’his-

torien, l’antiquaire], espèce d’ordinaire peu sensible à l’effet de pers-
pective d’une ruine ou d’un château, les interrogent et annoncent la
prétention d’en exiger et d’en obtenir des réponses. S’adresser à la pierre,
au pan de muraille, pour […] le reconstruire par la pensée comme Cuvier,
d’après un os fossile, reconstruisait l’animal auquel il avait dû apparte-
nir; puis, quitter le rocher et la ruine sans avoir vu la forêt, la montagne,
le lac, le ciel, pour aller s’enfouir dans de poudreuses archives […]; voilà
des idées et des soins que peut inspirer ainsi l’aspect de ces monuments
qui parlent si vivement aux imaginations rêveuses, tant nos dispositions
234 Marchal
varient et déterminent les points de vue sous lesquels nous apparaissent

les objets.
Anonymous, 1836: 295–296
But, while these Romantic impressions may satisfy poets, [the historian,
antiquary], a species usually unmoved by the sight of a ruin or a castle,
scrutinizes and declares his intention to demand and obtain answers.
Turning his attention to a stone, to a section of wall […] reconstructing it
in his mind like Cuvier would do with an animal, which he re-imagined
based on one fossilized bone that must have belonged to it; then, aban-
doning the rock and the ruin, without taking in the forest, the mountain,
the lake, the sky, in order to burrow into dusty archives […]; these are
the ideas and the careful effort that can be inspired by the sight of those
monuments that speak so powerfully to the dreamy imagination, and this
just shows how our natures differ, determining our perspective on things.
Like in the case of Legouvé, the parallel with Cuvier is accompanied by the
reference to “dusty archives”, the adjective equating these sources and the
fieldwork of palaeontologists. But, historians and poets given to “Romantic
impressions” did not look at the same parts of the landscape. What he gained
by being able to turn the clock back, the antiquary lost in terms of his appre-
ciation of the surroundings of ruins, to which he paid no attention. Just like
the political advocate of restoration attacked by Carné, the antiquary blocked
out the present and the paradigmatic reference to Cuvier served to underscore
that this focus on what was missing was his modus operandi. Although Cuvier
had developed his law of organic coherence through an observation of living
beings (which linked his poiesis of the absent to a mimesis of the present), Ewig
and this anonymous author drew attention to the reductive view of the con-
temporary world necessary to the selection of a remnant of the past. However,
this blind-spot is not at all overlooked by the texts in which scientific restora-
tion was celebrated. Balzac considered that as individuals “uprooted from the
present, we are dead”, and for Lamennais, German historians had surrendered
the present and the future to France. Worse, the author who wrote about Savoy
echoes Chateaubriand in order to turn scientific resurrection into a vector of
disenchantment, which obliterated poetic depictions of the past:
Lorsque le flambeau de l’histoire vient éclairer ces sites enchantés où le

poète place dans ses rêves romanesques des scènes de chevalerie, [le “pé-
nible contraste” créé par “cette double direction des esprits”] jette sur ces
aimables tableaux un douloureux désenchantement. Ces manoirs, que
l’imagination se plaît à peupler d’images gracieuses, se transforment sou-

vent en odieux repaires qu’habitent la licence et la férocité.
Anonymous, 1836: 296
When the torch of history illuminates those enchanted places where

the poet sets his scenes of chivalry, [the “unbearable contrast” created
by “this duality of approach”] casts a painful shadow of disenchantment
upon those pleasing tableaux. The manors that the imagination takes
pleasure in filling with gracious images are thus often transformed into
horrible lairs of licentiousness and ferocity.
Both texts from 1836 thus condemned Legouvé’s “prudent creativity” as a form
of decreation, which threatened two essential elements of the present: reality
as whole and the literary imagination. In this view, there was within Cuvier
and his intellectual brethren a drive to both revive and kill off, and Balzac, who
spoke in terms of an “Apocalypse in reverse” and a meditation on “the pain of
life”, also linked palaeontological magic to the risk of destroying or undervalu-
ing the present through the creation of a past made monstrous by this reacti-
vation: like the wild ass’s skin, the naturalist was engaged in a struggle against
the tide of life.
4 Writing for Cuvier
The allusion to the figure of Cuvier occurs in a scene where his work is being
read, a scene which includes two crucial elements. The reading scene turns the
whole of Cuvier’s book back into a fragment: the departure from the present is
interrupted by the present when the valet comes in. And the narrator modifies
the learned lesson by counting in “billions of years”, a timescale absent from
Cuvier’s writings. The reception described by Balzac is thus not utterly faithful.
Balzac carefully replicates what Cuvier wrote yet, despite the fact that the text
was very much a contemporary one (Cuvier would not die until 1832), he altered
this one detail. This phenomenon of distortion would be exacerbated in 1846
by Émile Souvestre, many of whose writings were influenced by Balzac, but
whose Le Monde tel qu’il sera (The World as It Will Be) prevents us from portray-
ing Balzac and his school as naïve realists. This novel has nineteenth-century
men travel forward in time to the year 3000, where they attend a lecture by a
historian who sets about reconstructing their era based on its literature. By in-
troduction, this antiquary of the future, similar to the ones that Sand imagined
reading Balzac, inevitably returns to the palaeontological paradigm.
236 Marchal
On l’a dit bien des fois, messieurs, tant qu’il reste des traces de la littéra-
ture et des arts d’une nation, cette nation n’est point morte: l’étude peut
la reconstituer, la faire revivre comme les créations antédiluviennes de-
vinées par les inductions de la science. […] C’est cette étude que nous
avons tentée pour les Français du dix-neuvième siècle.
Souvestre, 1846: 204–205
It has been said many times, gentlemen, that as long as there remain
traces of a nation’s art and literature, that nation is not dead: it can be re-
built through study, and it can be brought back to life in the same way as
antediluvian creations can be divined through scientific induction. […]
This is the type of study we have attempted with regard to the French of
the 19th century.
But, the facts that the scholar extracts from the novels of Sue, Balzac or
Souvestre—who refers to these sources in his notes—are so unrepresentative
that his talk degenerates into a comedy.
[N]ous avons calculé d’après la lecture de leurs œuvres, que les dix-sept
vingtièmes des unions légitimes amenaient la mort de l’un des conjoints!
La conséquence normale du mariage était le suicide ou le meurtre; les
époux ne se laissaient vivre que par exception. […] Le seul secours pour
les honnêtes gens, au milieu de ce désordre, étaient […] les forçats en
fuite, qui assuraient l’avenir des jeunes gens pauvres, et découvraient,
dans un lupanar, la femme qui devait faire leur bonheur.
206–207
I have calculated that, based on a study of their works, seventeen out

of twenty legitimate unions used to bring about the death of one of the
spouses! The normal outcome of marriage was suicide or murder; it was
utterly exceptional to see spouses spare one another. […] The only hope
for honest folk, in the midst of this chaos, were […] convicts on the run,
who secured a bright future for poor young people, and discovered the
woman of their dreams in a brothel.
Which just goes to show that the documentary value of novels drawing society
from life left some of their creators sceptical. The academic of the future took
literally the proposition that nineteenth-century writers had recorded their
era and postulated that it was possible to objectively reconstruct it. Souvestre
pointed out, on the contrary, that the novelists’ archive remained fictional,
but also that the antiquary was fooling himself if he overlooked the role of
invention. Contrary to what Legouvé claimed, time, which brought the death
of every living thing, also meant that every recreation was a form of imprudent
creation, and that is also the note of hesitation that the Wild Ass’s Skin intro-
duces into La Comédie humaine. By describing the naturalist as a poet within a
mise en abîme of the act of reading, was Balzac not reminding future historians
that no authorial poetics, even one with documentary pretentions, is indepen-
dent from the approach of its interpreters, who, as erudite as they might be,
still create the text all over again?
To finally understand this, we must turn to a genre which, at that time, was
exploring the relationship between the whole and the fragment, in texts writ-
ten by and for men like Cuvier. In 1863 there was published in the town of Puy a
posthumous collection of verse by Campagnac, “ex-town librarian”. Composed
under the Empire, these odes would be of scant interest, but for the fact that
the longest of them, dating from 1813, is accompanied by a letter dating from
a quarter of a century later, around 1838, in which Campagnac humorously
writes:
Et moi aussi […] je suis géologue et géologue d’une espèce fort parti-
culière; car voici un morceau de poésie fossile, produit d’une fouille
exécutée dans mon cerveau. Il y était resté enseveli près d’un quart de
siècle, pendant lequel il avait eu le temps de passer à l’état de pétri-
fication. […] Hormis les deux extrémités, plus ou moins entières, et
quelques fragments […], les autres parties manquaient, ou ne consis-
taient qu’en un simple rudiment sans forme. Mais, nouveau Cuvier, j’ai
rempli toutes les lacunes suivant ces premières données et les règles de
l’anatomie poétique, et après avoir fait du tout un corps homogène, j’ai
prononcé que c’était là une ode monstre, une espèce de mammouth ly-
rique, bien plus fait pour effrayer par sa masse, que pour plaire par sa
beauté.
1863: 136
I too […] am a geologist, and a geologist of a particular type; for here is a

piece of fossilized poetry, the result of a dig carried out in my brain. It had
remained buried for almost a quarter of a century, time enough for it to
become petrified. […] With the exception of the two extremities, which
are more or less whole, and a few fragments […], the rest was missing, or
consisted of a formless rudiment. But, like a modern-day Cuvier, I filled
in all the gaps in keeping with this initial information and the rules of po-
etic anatomy, and having turned it into a homogenous body, I called this
thing a monster of an ode, a sort of lyrical mammoth, more apt to inspire
fear by dint of its size than pleasure because of its beauty.
238 Marchal
The parallel is used to describe the late stage at which Campagnac had to
make an effort to complete a piece of work that had become incomplete. It is
clear that for many critics, such as Marc Fumaroli, the prose poem, which was
emerging in the 1830s, can also be defined as the vestige of a missing whole:
Le propre du poème en prose, c’est de se donner pour le reflet imparfait,

allusif, d’une œuvre idéale absente. Par là, du reste, il peut prétendre à un
pouvoir de suggestion supérieur à l’œuvre close et parfaite à laquelle il
donne l’impression de renvoyer.
Guérin, 1984: Preface, 53
The essence of the prose poem is that is purports to be the imperfect,

allusive reflection of an ideal missing work. As such, it can thus boast a
power of suggestion greater than the closed and perfect work, to which
it pretends to refer.
There are many echoes in Aloysius Bertrand’s writings of the texts we have
just gone over. In Gaspard de la Nuit (Gaspar of the Night), published in 1842,
but announced as early as 1830, the eponymous character introduces himself
as an “antiquary” (2002: 53) who has “excavated the dusty ossuary of a vintage
bookseller’s store” (45), “collected petrified buccinum, and fossilized coral”
(47), and finally studied “monuments of men” and “exposed fourteenth-and
fifteenth-century Dijon” (48). This was all a prelude to the famous passage in
which Gaspard exclaims: “I had galvanized a corpse and this corpse had risen
up” (49), before going on to conjure up, through hypotyposis, the inhabitants
of the medieval city, at which point he adds: “Could there be any doubt about
this resurrection?” (50) But Gaspard concludes that art only exists “within
God” and that, at best, we can convey “the afterglow of the least of his immor-
tal works” and that “the Void cannot give life to the void” (56–57). And while
this antiquary, like Balzac, was writing for a future antiquary—the “bibliophile
[who will dare] to exhume this mouldy and worm-eaten book” a hundred years
later (61)—his collection was a mere collection of fragments.
Balzac’s homage brings these ambiguities together. Comparing it with the
writings of his contemporaries, often writing in his wake, obviously is not con-
clusive. But, it does suggest that, even if Balzac turns Cuvier into a poet-like
figure, he is less a model than a mirror extended toward the reader. The uni-
versalizing ambitions attached to La Comédie humaine should not distort our
reading of the novel of 1831, whose very plot underlines the ephemeral nature
of every life and the limits of science. The praise for Cuvier contains a warning:
an archive of its time, Balzac’s monument remains all the same a “prose poem”,
in Fumaroli’s understanding of the term, and to attempt to recreate a past life

on its basis would be to succumb to the fiction of a fictionless restoration. Time
cannot be reversed, it can only be reinvented.
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lauréats de l’Académie française, vol. 1, edited by Edmond Biré and Émile Grimaud.
Paris, Bray, 197–204.
Souvestre, Émile, 1846. Le Monde tel qu’il sera. Paris, Coquebert.
The Evolution of Social Species in Balzac’s
Comédie humaine
Sandra Collet
Abstract
In La Comédie humaine, Balzac aims to provide a complete description of the various

‘social species’, which was modelled on the animal classifications established by Buffon
and Cuvier. However, faced with the transformations that his century had undergone,
Balzac the novelist also wished to be a historian. The succession of revolutions in
France in the 19th century confronted him with two divergent time scales: the brief
and shattered one of Man in History; and the longer one of Nature. These revolutions,
which were profoundly transforming French society, raised the crucial question of the
individual’s adaptation to a rapidly changing society. The scientific models of natural-
ists, especially Geoffroy Saint Hilaire’s transformism, offered the novelist a theoretical
model for constructing a classification of social species caught up in history, and thus
for harmoniously combining historical and biological models.
Balzac’s interest in history, as well as in the life sciences (medicine, physics,

natural science), never flagged: Balzac, who regularly presented history and
natural science as his two epistemological models, gave pride of place in his
project to the hybridization of historical and biological knowledge. The novel-
ist intended not merely to create a work of poetry, but also one of science; his-
tory and natural science were meant to supply him not merely with the tools to
describe in a logical and organized manner the particularities of French society
in the first half of the 19th century, but also to analyse and understand it, thus
conferring upon his work of fiction a quasi-scientific authority. This claim was
made explicitly in L’Avant-Propos de La Comédie humaine, composed in 1842 in
order to unite in a coherent whole all the novels already written and those to
come. In this preface, Balzac set forth the nature of his undertaking: to paint
the society and mores of a period whose unique and original character had
strongly impressed itself upon him; a period utterly transformed by “three dif-
ferent systems which, in the space of fifty years, left their unmistakeable mark
on furniture and on dwellings”1 (Balzac, 1976d: 265). Faced with a dramatic and
1 All translations of Balzac’s work are our own. We have also given the English translation of
the work, except in cases where it is (virtually) identical to the original.
242 Collet
complete turnabout of values and mores, the aristocracy, in particular, found

itself forced to change and adapt—or die out; this would be a recurrent theme
in Balzac’s stories.
Almost twenty years before the emergence of the debate around Darwin,
and subsequently around Spencer’s sociological treatment of his work, Balzac
was painting a picture of a human society in constant competition and strug-
gle for survival: adaptation to one’s environment and selection of the fittest
were of vital importance. In this paper, we intend to analyse Balzac’s depiction
of society through an examination of combined influence of the natural sci-
ences and history, especially on the evolution of individuals and of social class-
es within a society in the throes of fundamental change. The aristocracy being
the class most decisively affected, we shall focus exclusively on this category
in order to see how its destiny was viewed and questioned in Balzac’s novels.
We shall see how the novelist depicted, and above all attempted to analyse and
comprehend, these social mechanisms by means of concepts and tools drawn
from history and the biological sciences.
Let us begin by reviewing the precise extent of Balzac’s scientific knowl-
edge, and by listing the fields of knowledge he exploited.
We know that the author of La Comédie humaine fancied himself a historian
even more than a novelist. Nothing if not ambitious, his intention was to revo-
lutionize—or supplement—historical methods by means of a novel method:
with a taste for little events drawn from life that revealed the atmosphere of
a period, he purported to be “writing the history overlooked by so many his-
torians, that of manners” (Balzac, 1976b: 11). This approach, revolutionary in
terms of its focus, was accompanied by a modern methodology: aware of the
transformations that were shaking up the discipline at that time, Balzac took
it upon himself to analyse and explain phenomena, to uncover the causal logic
that lay beneath events:
étudier les raisons ou la raison de ces effets sociaux, surprendre le

sens caché dans cet immense assemblage de figures, de passions et
d’événements.
Balzac, 1976b: 11
to study the reasons or the reason for these social effects, to discover the
meaning hidden among this vast array of figures, passions and events.
Hence the tripartite structure of La Comédie humaine: Études de mœurs (Studies

of Manners) described events, while Études philosophiques (Philosophical
Studies) set out causes, and Études analytiques (Analytical Studies) attempted
The Evolution of Social Species IN LA COMEDIE HUMAINE 243
to determine first principles;2 this structure was borrowed directly from the
discipline of history as formulated in the 19th century.
However, when it came to actually carrying out this self-assigned mission,
the historical method came up short in the eyes of the novelist: “vous ne pou-
vez raconter chronologiquement que l’histoire du temps passé, système inap-
plicable à un présent qui marche” / “you can only use chronology in recounting
the history of the past; it is a method inapplicable to an unfolding present,”
pointed out the author in the Preface to Une Fille d’Eve (Balzac, 1976d: 265). The
historical model is found lacking as soon as it comes to analysing the state of
a contemporary society in perpetual motion. The flaws in the historical model
perhaps explain the use of hybridization by Balzac, who turned to a different
scientific model. The natural sciences, and the new-born discipline of biol-
ogy, provided precious tools for dealing with the changes that French post-
revolutionary society was experiencing, as well as for developing a well
thought-out and analytical description of the present day.
As a great admirer of Cuvier and Geoffroy Saint Hilaire, but also of Linnaeus
and Buffon, it was under the auspices of these august models that Balzac
placed himself. La Comédie humaine would be the novelistic extension of
the nomenclatures of life created by the scientists at the Museum of Natural
History, whose methods were applied by Balzac in his study of French society:
Si Buffon a fait un magnifique ouvrage en essayant de représenter dans

un livre l’ensemble de la zoologie, n’y avait-il pas une œuvre de ce genre
à faire pour la Société?
Balzac, 1976b: 8
If Buffon could create a magnificent work by attempting to represent all

zoology in a book, surely a work of this type could be created dealing with
Society?
2 According to the explanation set out by Balzac in a letter to Mme Hanska, dated 26 October
1834: “Les Études de Mœurs représenteront tous les effets sociaux […] La seconde assise sont
les Études philosophiques, car après les effets viennent les causes. […] Puis, après les effets et
les causes, viendront les Études analytiques, dont fait partie la Physiologie du mariage, car
après les effets et les causes doivent se rechercher les principes.” / “The Études de Mœurs will
show all the social effects […] The second section is the Études philosophiques, for after the
effects come the causes. […] Then, after the effects and the causes, will come the Études ana-
lytiques, including the Physiologie du mariage, for after the causes and effects, we must seek
out the principles.” (Castex, 1980: 1714)
244 Collet
Adopting the premise that human and animal realms were analogous, Balzac
developed the concept of a society composed of “social species”, just as animal
species were the components of the natural world:
La Société ne fait-elle pas de l’homme, suivant les différents milieux où

son action se déploie, autant d’hommes différents qu’il y a de variétés
en zoologie? Les différences entre un soldat, un ouvrier, un administra-
teur, un avocat, un oisif, un savant, un homme d’État, un commerçant,
un marin, un poète, un pauvre, un prêtre, sont, quoique plus difficiles
à saisir, aussi considérables que celles qui distinguent le loup, le lion
l’âne, le corbeau, le requin, le veau marin, la brebis, etc. Il a donc existé,
il existera de tout temps des Espèces Sociales comme il y a des Espèces
Zoologiques.
Balzac, 1976b: 8
Isn’t it the case that Society, depending on the different circumstances in

which it operates, turns Man into as many different men as there exist va-
rieties of animals in zoology? The differences between a soldier, a worker,
an administrator, a lawyer, a lazy man, a scientist, a political leader, a
businessman, a sailor, a poet, a poor man, or a priest are, albeit more dif-
ficult to define, just as considerable as those which distinguish, wolves,
lions, donkeys, crows, sharks, seals, ewes, and so on. Social Species have
always and will always exist, in the same way as Zoological Species exist.
However, Balzac’s use of this epistemological model, like his use of History, was
not free of difficulties. In particular, the upheavals of recent history obliged
him to take an interest in a new phenomenon: the permeability of social class-
es, which made it possible for
l’épicier devient certainement pair de France, et le noble descend parfois

au dernier rang.
Balzac, 1976b: 9, n. 2
the grocer to have every chance of becoming a peer of the realm, and for
a member of the aristocracy to occasionally fall to the lowest rung of the
social ladder.
Thus, Balzac found himself faced, almost despite himself, with the fiery de-
bates that had raged within the natural sciences over the issue of species
evolution ever since the famous controversy of the spring of 1830, which had
pitted Cuvier, defender of fixism, against Geoffroy Saint Hilaire, a champion of

evolutionism.
How well informed was Balzac on this topic? While the evolution of social
species is a recurring literary vehicle in the novels in La Comédie humaine, it
was not in the work of Lamarck that Balzac found the theoretical bases on
which to build his ideas: the name of this scholar, who had died in almost total
obscurity in December 1829, when Balzac had yet to show any significant in-
terest in the life sciences, is never once mentioned by the novelist. It is rather
to the scholars based at the Museum of Natural History, Cuvier and Geoffroy
Saint Hilaire, that he owed his knowledge: these “two equal geniuses” (Balzac,
1977b: 317) were Balzac’s two principle references, notwithstanding their radi-
cally opposite positions on the issue of evolution.
Madeleine Fargeaud3 points out that Geoffroy Saint Hilaire seems, at first
glance, to have been the biggest influence on the novelist. Their meeting in
the spring of 1835 sparked an enthusiastic admiration in Balzac, to which the
dedication of Le Père Goriot, written a few weeks later, bears witness, addressed
as it was “au grand et illustre Geoffroy Saint Hilaire, comme un témoignage
d’admiration de ses travaux et de son génie” / “to the great and illustrious
Geoffroy Saint Hilaire, as a token of admiration for his work and his genius”
(Balzac, 1976e: 49).4 Elsewhere, Saint Hilaire is described as “a man of the ge-
nius of the first rank” and “inventor” (Balzac, 1977d: 642). His classifications of
living things prompted Balzac to undertake the description and analysis of so-
cial species: L’Avant-Propos de la Comédie humaine thus praises “l’éternel hon-
neur de Geoffroy Saint Hilaire, le vainqueur de Cuvier sur ce point de haute
science” / “the eternal honour of Geoffroy Saint Hilaire, who triumphed over
Cuvier on this major scientific issue” (Balzac, 1976b: 8), i.e. the debate between
fixism and evolutionism held by the two scholars in the spring of 1830.
But, Balzac’s declared enthusiasm for Geoffroy Saint Hilaire should be
qualified. There is not a little snobbery in Balzac’s claim in L’Avant-Propos
that he had himself been “imbued with this system long before the debates to
3 In her commentary on the Avant-propos de La Comédie humaine in the Bibliothèque de la

Pléiade edition (Balzac, 1976b: 1119).
4 The novel is full of references to the Museum of Natural History—one of the lodgers at
Madame Vauquer’s is an employee of the institution; and the author does not hesitate to
parody the “naturalist style” while drawing a portrait of one character or another. A case in
point, Goriot is classed as an invertebrate: “l’abus des plaisirs en faisait un colimaçon, un mol-
lusque anthropomorphe à classer dans les Casquettifères, disait un employé au Museum, un
des habitués à cachet.” / “over-indulgence in pleasure made him a snail, an anthromorphic
mollusc belonging to the class of Capwearers, according to an employee of the Museum, one
of the regulars who had a meal plan.” (Balzac, 1976e: 73)
246 Collet
which it gave rise” (Balzac, 1976b: 8) between Cuvier et Geoffroy in the spring
of 1830: the novelist had followed the controversy from a considerable dis-
tance.5 Moreover, Balzac’s interest was essentially due to one particular point
of Geoffroy’s doctrine: the principle of the unity of composition; in other re-
spects, he was at odds with it. At bottom, he was far from sharing the most ad-
vanced ideas of the naturalist, in particular everything that had to do with the
question of evolution; and his latest texts display principles closer to Cuvier’s
fixism than Geoffroy’s evolutionism.
Although it was a more discreet presence in the novels and essentially the
fruit of reading, Cuvier’s influence seems to have been decisive. As early as
1831, Balzac offered a veritable panegyric to him in La Peau de chagrin, turn-
ing the palaeontologist into an “Enchanter”, and even “the greatest poet of
our century”.6 More concretely, various remarks made by Balzac show how
steeped he was in the theories of fixism: thus, in Beatrix (1839), it was an anal-
ogy with the animal realm that facilitated the novelist’s depiction of the ex-
traordinary fixity of a Breton society apparently unchanged by revolutionary
5 Madeleine Fargeaud points out (Balzac, 1976b: 1119) that Balzac was not in Paris at the time
of the debates; instead he was staying at la Grenadière with his then mistress, Mme de Berny,
which prevented him from following closely the polemic.
6 “Vous êtes-vous jamais lancé dans l’immensité de l’espace et du temps, en lisant les œuvres
géologiques de Cuvier? Emporté par son génie, avez-vous plané sur l’abîme sans bornes du
passé, comme soutenu par la main d’un enchanteur? En découvrant de tranche en tranche,
de couche en couche, sous les carrières de Montmartre ou dans les schistes de l’Oural, ces
animaux dont les dépouilles fossilisées appartiennent à des civilisations antédiluviennes,
l’âme est effrayée d’entrevoir des milliards d’années, des millions de peuples que la faible mé-
moire humaine, que l’indestructible tradition divine ont oubliés et dont la cendre, poussée
à la surface de notre globe, y forme les deux pieds de terre qui nous donnent du pain et des
fleurs. Cuvier n’est-il pas le plus grand poète de notre siècle? […] Il est poète avec des chiffres,
il est sublime en posant un zéro près d’un sept. Il réveille le néant sans prononcer des paroles
grandement magiques; il fouille une parcelle de gypse, y aperçoit une empreinte, et vous crie:
Voyez! Soudain les marbres s’animalisent, la mort se vivifie, le monde se déroule!” / “Have
you ever launched into the immensity of time and space while reading the geological writ-
ings of Cuvier? Carried along by his fancy, have you hung, as if borne up by a magical hand,
over the illimitable abyss of the past? When the fossil bones of animals belonging to civiliza-
tions before the Flood are turned up in bed after bed and layer upon layer of the quarries of
Montmartre or among the schists of the Ural range, the soul receives with dismay a glimpse
of millions of peoples forgotten by feeble human memory and unrecognized by permanent
divine tradition, peoples whose ashes cover our globe with two feet of earth that yields bread
and flowers to us. Is Cuvier not the great poet of our era? […] He turns figures into poetry,
evoking the sublime merely by putting a zero next to a seven. He awakens the void without
pronouncing any pompous magic spells; he pokes at a piece of gypsum, sees a print, and cries
out: You see! All of a sudden, marble turns into animals, death stirs into life, the world files
past!” (Balzac, 1979: 74–76)
unrest: in Guérande, “le caractère d’immuabilité que la nature a donné à ses es-
pèces zoologiques se retrouve chez les hommes” / “the character of immutabil-
ity that nature has conferred on zoological species is to be found in the people”
(Balzac, 1976c: 640). This is a good example of how his reading of Cuvier gave
Balzac key tools for understanding the “social species” he endeavoured to de-
scribe in his novels.
Balzac’s theoretical position in the debate between fixism and evolutionism
was hesitant, however. The portrait of Esther, the Jewish courtesan who had
driven Rubempré wild with passion in Splendours and Miseries of Courtesans,
provoked a curious development—which caused, according to Balzac himself,
“many difficulties for its author”: the epistemological contradictions he indulg-
es in on this page perhaps explains to a great extent what occurred, even if it is
meant to “perhaps ask important scientific questions” (Balzac, 1976d: 268). In
order to explain Esther’s mental and—more importantly—moral fragility, not
to mention her beauty, which is a concentrated essence of Jewish beauty, the
portrait makes use of contradictory arguments:
Les instincts sont des faits vivants dont la cause gît dans une nécessité
subie. Les variétés animales sont le résultat de l’exercice de ces instincts.
Pour se convaincre de cette vérité tant cherchée, il suffit d’étendre aux
troupeaux d’hommes l’observation récemment faite sur les troupeaux de
moutons espagnols et anglais qui, dans les prairies de plaines où l’herbe
abonde, paissent serrés les uns contre les autres, et se dispersent sur les
montagnes où l’herbe est rare. Arrachez à leur pays ces deux espèces de
moutons, transportez-les en Suisse ou en France: le mouton de montagne
y paîtra séparé, quoique dans une prairie basse et touffue, les moutons
de plaine y paîtront l’un contre l’autre, quoique sur une Alpe. Plusieurs
générations réforment à peine les instincts acquis et transmis. A cent ans
de distance, l’esprit de la montagne reparaît dans un agneau réfractaire,
comme, après dix-huit cents ans de bannissement l’Orient brillait dans
les yeux et dans la figure d’Esther.
Balzac, 1977e: 465
Instincts are living facts, of which the cause lies in necessity that has been
undergone. Animal species are the results of the use of these instincts. To
be convinced of this truth so long sought, it suffices to extend to groups
of people the experiment recently carried out upon flocks of English and
Spanish sheep, which graze close together in valley meadows where grass
is abundant, while they scatter on the mountains, where grass is rare.
Take these two varieties of sheep away from their respective countries
248 Collet
and transport them to Switzerland or to France, and the mountain sheep

will graze apart despite the meadow being low and covered with luxuri-
ant grass; the meadow sheep will feed close together despite being on
an alpine pasture. After many generations, instincts acquired and trans-
mitted still persist virtually unaltered. After a hundred years the charac-
ter of the mountain breed reappears in an obstinate sheep, just as after
eighteen hundred years of banishment the east glowed in Esther’s eyes
and face.
The text seems to contain a logical contradiction between the principle re-
affirmed at the opening of the paragraph and its illustration. While the ini-
tial phrasing is redolent of the evolutionist idea according to which changing
needs, bringing with them changes in functions and thus in organs, allowed
species to diversify, the chosen example, which compares different breeds of
sheep, seems to revert to a fixist assumption, asserting the immutability of in-
stincts despite changes in the environment—at least over a short time frame
like that of human, or historical, time, as opposed to the long time scale of
biological, or natural, time. Even though the principle of the transmission of
acquired or modified traits via reproduction was widely accepted in the 19th
century, Balzac here seems to be reaffirming the idea that specific instincts are
fixed and extremely enduring, and thus that they may unexpectedly re-emerge
centuries later.
It is doubtless not without importance that these ideas arose in the context
of the portrait of Esther, the Jewish courtesan: for Balzac, any argument would
do, apparently, in order to explain his physical and psychological portrait and
to associate his heroine with a literary cliché then in vogue, even if that meant
falling into a type of determinism which was hardly consistent with the natu-
ralist theories that Balzac claimed to believe in. While naturalist theories pro-
vided him with tools for making sense of the social upheaval he was witnessing,
it is noteworthy that these methodological tools remained firmly in the service
of his fiction, with Balzac never shy about passing over the theory when the
requirements of a story required it … The case of Esther, with its striking resur-
gence of ancient traits, seems to stand out from the rest in Balzac’s gallery of
humans subjected to the necessity of change and adaptation.
This scientific intuition gave the novelist conceptual tools with which
to make sense of the evolution of French society, not to mention poetic re-
sources. Balzac’s depiction of a French society thrown into turmoil by suc-
cessive revolutions foreshadows Darwin’s theories on the struggle for life
and the necessity of adaptation, which Spencer would transpose from the
zoological sphere into the sociological one. Balzac describes society as a

space of relentless competition, driven by a violent and brutal struggle
for survival: “this Parisian existence is one of perpetual combat” (Balzac,
1976e: 121), for
une rapide fortune est le problème que se proposent de résoudre en ce

moment cinquante mille jeunes gens qui se trouvent tous dans votre po-
sition. Jugez des efforts que vous avez à faire et de l’acharnement du com-
bat. Il faut vous manger les uns les autres comme des araignées dans un
pot, attendu qu’il n’y a pas cinquante mille bonnes places.
Balzac, 1976e: 139
how to make a rapid fortune is the problem that fifty thousand young
people, all of them in your position, are trying, right now, to solve.
Imagine the efforts you have to make, and how tough the fight is. You’ll
have to eat one another like spiders in a jar, given that there are not fifty
thousand good positions.
This image is not unlike the most savage conclusions of the zoologists.
Elsewhere, the language would become even more stark: in order to makes
one’s way in Parisian society, one must
comme sur un champ de bataille, tuer pour ne pas être tué, tromper pour
ne pas être trompé, […] déposer à la barrière sa conscience, son cœur,
Balzac, 1976e: 151
like on a field of battle, kill so as not to be killed, deceive so as not to be

deceived, […] leave one’s conscience and one’s heart behind,
in other words, give up all notions of human dignity, in order to reduce oneself
to the level of a wild animal. The same went for the regions: the elimination of
the weakest was a recurrent theme in Balzac’s novels set there, from the Curé
de Tours to Pierrette.
The zoological model offered Balzac not only conceptual tools, but also po-
etic techniques for illustrating this reality in his work. Based on the principle
of analogy so dear to Geoffroy Saint Hilaire, animal metaphors and compar-
isons allowed him to suggest the intrinsically violent character of social life
through an evocation of the intense competition, in society as in the animal
kingdom, around the question of survival. This competition can be summed
250 Collet
up, albeit a little caricaturally, by a binary opposition: that of the felines and
the sheep.
The highest form of human existence in Balzac is given expression in the
characters of ambitious and dominant conquerors, who know how to bend so-
ciety to their desires. Almost all the members of this category—Rastignac (Le
Père Goriot), Rubempré (Lost Illusions, Splendours and Miseries of Courtesans),
de Marsay, Vandenesse, Montrivau (La Duchesse de Langeais)—are accom-
panied by the metaphor of the feline, lion or tiger. Beyond the fashionable
terminology,7 the analogy sheds light on his characters’ talents of adaptation,
and a considerable aptitude for survival in the hostile environment of polite
society, which was ruled by a fierce law of competition: the feline tradition-
ally connoted power and force, both elements allowing him to dominate the
animal kingdom. In the case of Rastignac,8 the metaphor is revealing of a
fierce ambition which would allow the hero to make his way in Parisian so-
ciety. In Lost Illusions, when four dandies enter Madame d’Espard’s box at the
opera in order to make fun of Rubempré, it is once again the image of the
tiger that is utilized to contrast the conquerors, fit for social survival, and the
poor provincial, whose fate is to be eliminated.9 But the image can acquire a
slightly disquieting dimension when it occurs in the case of more ambiguous
7 It is in the wake of a “linguistic gift” from England, notes Balzac in Albert Savarus, that the
term “lion” came to France in order to describe the dandy and his quest for elegance: imme-
diately, “le lion promena dans Paris sa crinière, sa barbe et ses moustaches, ses gilets et son
lorgnon tenu sans le secours des mains, par la contraction de la joue et de l’arcade sourcil-
ière.” / “the lion displayed all over Paris his mane, his beard and his moustache, his waistcoats
and his monocle held in, without the aid of his hands, by the contraction of his cheek and his
eyebrow.” (Balzac, 1976a: 917)
8 “C’est fatigant de désirer toujours sans jamais se satisfaire. Si vous étiez pâle et de la nature
des mollusques, vous n’auriez rien à craindre; mais nous avons le sang fiévreux des lions et un
appétit à faire vingt sottises par jour.” / “It is tiring to constantly desire without ever achiev-
ing satisfaction. If one were pallid, with the nature of a mollusc, there would be nothing to
fear; but we have the fevered blood of the lion and an appetite for indulging in all sorts of
nonsense from morning till night.” (Balzac, 1976e: 138)
9 “[…] M. de Marsay, homme fameux par les passions qu’il inspirait, remarquable surtout par
une beauté de jeune fille, beauté molle, efféminée, mais corrigée par un regard fixe, calme,
fauve et rigide comme celui d’un tigre: on l’aimait, et il effrayait. Lucien était aussi beau;
mais chez lui le regard était si doux, son œil bleu était si limpide, qu’il ne paraissait pas sus-
ceptible d’avoir cette force et cette puissance à laquelle s’attachent tant les femmes.” / “[…]
M. de Marsay, famous for the passions which he inspired, remarkable above all for was his
girlish beauty; its softness and effeminacy were counterbalanced by an unflinching, steady,
untamed gaze, as hard as a tiger’s: he was loved and he was feared. Lucien was no less hand-
some; but Lucien’s expression was so gentle, his blue eyes so limpid, that he scarcely seemed
to possess that strength and power that women found so attractive.” (Balzac, 1977b: 277)
protagonists, such as Vautrin in Le Père Goriot. With his beast-like expression,

this former convict and escapee from a penal colony, whose multiple escapes
and criminal record had so established his reputation as a survivor that he had
come to be known as “Death Defier” (Balzac, 1976e: 189).
As a natural corollary, when it came to dealing no longer with the breed
of the conquerors, but those of the defeated, those who were too weak to
adapt and incapable of fighting for survival, Balzac turned to the image of the
sheep. Take, for instance, l’abbé Birotteau, “very sheep-like in nature” (Balzac,
1976g: 198), and thus incapable of imagining the atrocious plot concocted by
l’abbé Troubert and Mlle Gamard against him; or, to take another example, old
Schmucke, a friend of cousin Pons, “a dear old sheep”, who would be pillaged,
robbed and ruined by the lodger in whom he had imprudently placed his con-
fidence: long before him, she had worked out the true natures of his protégés,
“meek as sheep, easy-going, utterly unsuspecting, total children” (Balzac, 1977f:
523). Balzac also put this uneven contest between felines and ovines to use in
order to depict the completeness of César Birotteau’s failure, and to condemn
his outsized ambitions, which had been stoked up by the illusory promises of
financial speculation: his head-to-head with the author of his ruin stirred up
“fundamentally the same feelings as that one might feel at seeing a sheep fend-
ing off a tiger” (Balzac, 1977c: 218).
Admittedly a little simplistic, these comparisons with animals allowed
Balzac to depict with vigour the reality of a society in turmoil, in which the fero-
cious laws of nature had overtaken those of the old hierarchies; a society where
every individual had to fight for his place, and was thus forced into a logic of
perpetual competition in a struggle for his social survival. For the weakest, the
future was clearly laid out in the shape of a song: “Pauvres moutons, toujours
on vous tondra.” / “Poor sheep, forever will you be sheared.” (Balzac, 1977f: 757)
The quasi-naturalist project of representing social species that we find in
Balzac’ novels was, however, to come up against the problem of time scales.
The slowness of Nature does not coincide with the tempo of history; and this
divergence became clearer after 1789, when the glaring changes in the social,
political, economic and moral realms revealed History to be accelerating. This
temporal dimension obliged Balzac to reorient his project of classification: it
could no longer be viewed as a timeless and frozen catalogue of social species
but had to contain a reflection on time and evolution.
In the Avant-Propos, Balzac emphasized the crucial importance of this tem-
poral factor, which caused the collapse of the naturalist framework he had
wished to build upon by invalidating some of its laws. What was true for ani-
mal species was not necessarily true for social ones:
252 Collet
Si quelques savants n’admettent pas encore que l’Animalité se transborde

dans l’Humanité par un immense courant de vie, l’épicier devient certai-
nement pair de France, et le noble descend parfois au dernier rang social.
Balzac, 1976b: 9
Though some scholars do not yet admit that animal nature flows into
human nature through an immense tide of life, the grocer has every
chance of becoming a peer of the realm, and a member of the aristocracy
does occasionally fall to the lowest rung of the social ladder.
The boundaries “Nature has put in place between varieties of animals” (Balzac,
1976b: 8) appeared not to be hermetic and impermeable when one looked
closely at the changes afoot in the first half of the 19th century: in those trou-
bled circumstances, social conditions were changing radically, bringing with
them an acceleration of selection. The new needs produced by this society in
the sway of money and profit, which was born in 1815, brought about a sudden
evolution—one might even say a transformation—of social species. In the
face of the social realities, is it that Balzac felt obliged to convert to evolution-
ism? That would be going a little too far; more nuance is called for.
In order to answer this question, let’s take a look at what happens with
Eugène de Rastignac’s in Le Père Goriot: his is a rather good example of how
the aristocracy adapted to the new social conditions. The eldest son of a noble
family fallen on hard times, Rastignac was the only hope for his family, which
was totally dependent on him succeeding in Paris: “the fate of five people was
in his hands” (Balzac, 1976e: 127)—“father, mother, a great aunt, two sisters
(seventeen and eighteen years old), two little brothers (fifteen and ten)” by
Vautrin’s reckoning (Balzac, 1976e: 137). Obtaining a solid position and a source
of revenue was thus of vital importance: but this would be the result of adap-
tation and transformation. Rastignac was obliged to adopt the new rules that
governed Restoration society, a society based on appearances, where people
competed on the basis of details:
un tas de cabriolets, de bottes cirées, d’agrès indispensables, des chaînes

d’or, dès le matin des gants de daim blancs qui coûtent six francs, et tou-
jours des gants jaunes le soir,
Balzac, 1976e: 102
a bunch of open-top carriages, of well-shone boots, of indispensable gear,

gold chains, six-franc white suede gloves first thing in the morning, and
always yellow gloves in the evening,
these were the weapons of the modern beast.

In order to take his place, Rastignac had to adapt: he had to recognize the
power of money and accept the upheaval in values that had occurred, as well as
the new requirements imposed by this new world. This realization was much
like the bitter observation made by Victurnien d’Esgrignon in The Cabinet of
Antiquities (Le Cabinet des Antiques):
Voilà donc, messieurs, où en sont les gentilshommes de France […] Pour eux
la grande question est d’avoir un tigre, un cheval anglais et des babioles …
Balzac, 1976f: 1013
Gentlemen, this is what noblemen in France are reduced to […] For them,
what counts is having a tiger,10 an English horse and some knick-knacks …
All these “knick-knacks” had henceforth become of crucial importance: by

creating new needs, the post-revolutionary society described by Balzac set
in motion the same mechanism observed by the naturalists in the animal
kingdom, i.e. functional adaptation. Thus was brought about an evolution of
species through a process of selection. Some individuals (the strongest: the
Rastignacs, the Vautrins) would adapt, while those who refused to abandon
the traditional values of their caste were condemned to die out. For, the fact is
that Rastignac’s social adaptation was obtained at the price of a painful sacri-
fice: the values of his family and the customs of his caste, which Eugène had
to accept to betray in order to survive and consolidate his social position. This
ordeal is mentioned at several points in the novel, which emphasizes the pro-
tagonist’s remorse whenever he contacts his family or thinks about them: the
contrast with Parisian society all around him is all too flagrant. At which point,
he feels—but resists—the temptation to reject these new values:
Quand Eugène eut achevé cette lettre, il était en pleurs, il pensait au

père Goriot tordant son vermeil et le vendant pour aller payer la lettre
de change de sa fille. “Ta mère a tordu ses bijoux! se disait-il. Ta tante a
pleuré sans doute en vendant quelques-unes de ses reliques! De quel droit
maudirais-tu Anastasie? tu viens d’imiter pour l’égoïsme de ton avenir ce
qu’elle a fait pour son amant! Qui, d’elle ou de toi, vaut mieux?” L’étudiant
se sentit les entrailles rongées par une sensation de chaleur intolérable. Il
voulait renoncer au monde, il voulait ne pas prendre cet argent.
Balzac, 1976e: 127–128
10 “a groom”.

254 Collet
When Eugène had finished this letter, he was in tears at the thought of
the père Goriot melting down his silver-gilt and selling it in order to pay
for his daughter’s bill of exchange. “Your mother has melted down her
jewels,” he thought to himself, “Your aunt probably wept while selling
some of her mementos! What gives you the right to look on Anastasie
with contempt? You have just done out of careerist ambition what she
did for her lover! Who is better, you or her?” The student felt an intoler-
able burning sensation in his gut. He felt like abandoning the world, like
not taking this money.
The need to adapt would however overwhelm the temptation to regress:

Rastignac’s Parisian education bore fruit and brought about a rapid evolution.
Depuis un mois il s’était d’ailleurs développé chez Eugène autant de qua-

lités que de défauts. Ses défauts, le monde et l’accomplissement de ses
croissants désirs les lui avaient demandés. Parmi ses qualités se trouvait
cette vivacité méridionale qui fait marcher droit à la difficulté pour la
résoudre.
Balzac, 1976e: 133
Over the previous month Eugène had developed as many good points
as bad ones. Intercourse with the world and the endeavour to satisfy his
growing desires had brought out his defects. Among the good ones were
that brand of southern vivacity that squares up to adversity in order to
overcome it.
Does this type of life story, which reoccurs again and again in La Comédie
humaine, reveal that Balzac had converted to evolutionism? Not entirely, it
seems. To be sure, Rastignac’s story, like many other ambitious characters in
Balzac’s writing, embodies and exemplifies what would appear to be the law of
the modern world: adapt or die. But this rule had a profound influence on “so-
cial species”. Only a few exceptional individuals possessed of leonine qualities
(strength, power), were capable of sacrificing their values like the characters
we have mentioned from Le Père Goriot, and of accomplishing the transforma-
tion necessary to adapt to new social conditions. However, this adaptation by a
few individuals causes the downfall of the group rather than its survival: this is
bitter lesson that must be drawn from the portrait La Comédie humaine paints
of the future of the aristocracy in the first half of the 19th century. To be sure,
it attempted to endure unchanged, preserving its values and its laws: but this
solution, more akin to a desperate survival mechanism than anything else, was
condemned to failure by the novelist.
The obstinate few who insisted upon maintaining the old aristocratic tradi-
tions in a world where their values had been discredited only served as a quasi-
archaeological reminder of a society which belonged definitively to the past
and which would die out with them: these included the princess de Blamont-
Chauvry, “a curious antique”, introduced as “the most poetic fragment of the
reign of Louis XV”, or the elderly vidame de Pamiers, “another contemporary
ruin” (Balzac, 1977a: 1010–1011). In the portrait of a society that is La Comédie
humaine, their poetic value is essential; it is akin to that of the “ruins” so dear to
the Romantics: i.e. touching, tragic reminders of the finiteness of civilizations.
Had the aristocratic species thus survived in the shape of those ambitious
individuals who, like Rastignac, had adapted to the new conditions of the mod-
ern world? Balzac prompts us to respond in the negative: the aristocratic val-
ues of these young conquering lions were so compromised that they heralded,
in another way, the death of the grand old aristocracy of the Old Regime. Their
values had been so transformed by the new social realities of the Restoration
that they had become unrecognisable.
In the tempestuous context of the first half of the 19th century, the fate of
social species could not be captured by a settled and synchronic system of
classification: the perceptible acceleration of History after 1789 obliged Balzac,
in his enterprise of natural philosophy, to account for time as a factor and to
recognize the modifications brought about in his method by the rapid pace
of social and political history, which invalidated certain natural laws. Balzac’s
awareness of these facts brought him to a murky premonition of something
that would become a major concern in the scientific thought of Darwin and
his heirs: the question of natural selection, of the survival of species and of
adaptation, indispensable corollaries of their work on evolution.
However, the relative failure of Balzac’s attempt at scientific theorization
in La Comédie humaine obviously paid off royally in novelistic terms—a fact
that Balzac himself clearly recognized: the breaking down of categories and of
social classes opened up the era of individualism and left the way wide open
for the novelist to allow his imagination free rein.
Chez nous, autrefois, le roman rencontrait aussi des éléments fort

simples et peu nombreux […] Autrefois tout était simplifié par les insti-
tutions monarchiques; les caractères étaient tranchés: un bourgeois mar-
chand, ou artisan, un noble entièrement libre, un paysan esclave, voilà
l’ancienne société de l’Europe; elle prêtait peu aux incidents du roman.
256 Collet
[…] Aujourd’hui l’Égalité produit en France des nuances infinies. Jadis,

la caste donnait à chacun une physionomie qui dominait l’individu; au-
jourd’hui, l’individu ne tient sa physionomie que de lui-même. […] Le
champ social est à tous. Il n’y a plus d’originalité que dans les professions,
de comique que dans les habitudes. […] Voilà pourquoi l’auteur a choi-
si pour sujet de son œuvre la société française; elle seule offre esprit et
spontanéité dans les situations normales où chacun peut retrouver sa
pensée et sa nature.
Preface to Une Fille d’Ève, Balzac, 1976d: 263
Once, our novels were made up of a small number of quite basic ele-
ments […] Once, the institutions of monarchy made everything simple;
the characters were distinct: a middle class merchant, or artisan, a to-
tally free nobleman, an enslaved peasant—that was the society of the
Old Europe, and it was hardly conducive to the twists and turns of the
novel. […] In the France of today, Equality gives rise to an infinity of nu-
ances. Formerly, all individuality in a character was stifled by the general
physiognomy of his caste; today, the individual’s physiognomy is utterly
his own. […] Society is open to everyone. Originality is now confined to
the professions, and comedy to the realm of habits. […] This is why the
author has chosen French society as his subject; only it offers wit and
spontaneity in the everyday situations that everyone can recognize his
own thoughts and nature.
Bibliography
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edited by Pierre-Georges Castex, 12 vols., vol. 1. Paris, Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la
Pléiade.
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Comédie humaine, 1976–1981, edited by Pierre-Georges Castex, 12 vols., vol. 1. Paris,
Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade.
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Pierre-Georges Castex, 12 vols., vol. 2. Paris, Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade.
Balzac, Honoré de, 1976d. “Une Fille d’Ève / A Daughter of Eve.” [1839] La Comédie hu-
maine, 1976–1981, edited by Pierre-Georges Castex, 12 vols., vol. 2. Paris, Gallimard,
Balzac, Honoré de, 1976e. “Le Père Goriot.” [1835] La Comédie humaine, 1976–1981,
edited by Pierre-Georges Castex, 12 vols., vol. 3. Paris, Gallimard, Bibliothèque de
la Pléiade.
Balzac, Honoré de, 1976f. “Le Cabinet des Antiques.” [1839] La Comédie humaine, 1976–
1981, edited by Pierre-Georges Castex, 12 vols., vol. 4. Paris, Gallimard, Bibliothèque
de la Pléiade.
Balzac, Honoré de, 1976g. “Le Curé de Tours.” [1832] La Comédie humaine, 1976–1981,
la Pléiade.
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1981, edited by Pierre-Georges Castex, 12 vols., vol. 5. Paris, Gallimard, Bibliothèque
de la Pléiade.
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maine, 1976–1981, edited by Pierre-Georges Castex, 12 vols., vol. 5. Paris, Gallimard,
Balzac, Honoré de, 1977c. “Histoire de la grandeur et de la décadence de César Birotteau /
Cesar Birotteau.” [1838] La Comédie humaine, 1976–1981, edited by Pierre-Georges
Castex, 12 vols., vol. 6. Paris, Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade.
Balzac, Honoré de, 1977d. “Modeste Mignon.” [1844] La Comédie humaine, 1976–1981,
la Pléiade.
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Miseries of Courtesans.” [1838–1847] La Comédie humaine, 1976–1981, edited by
Pierre-Georges Castex, 12 vols., vol. 6. Paris, Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade.
Balzac, Honoré de, 1977f. “Le Cousin Pons.” [1847] La Comédie humaine, 1976–1981,
la Pléiade.
Balzac, Honoré de, 1979. “La Peau de chagrin / The Wild Ass’s Skin.” [1831] La Comédie
humaine, 1976–81, edited by Pierre-Georges Castex, 12 vols., vol. 10. Paris, Gallimard,
Castex, Pierre-Georges, 1980. “Notice aux Études analytiques” La Comédie humaine,
la Pléiade.
Time as Imagined in the Evolutionary Epic
Nicolas Wanlin
Abstract
In the 19th century, theories of evolution lead to an upheaval in imaginary representa-

tions, especially in those concerning temporality. This change is not only one which
stems from scientific theory and influences literature: it is rather a radical transforma-
tion of the cultural imagination which underlies all domains of culture. The study of
evolutionist epics written in the 19th and at the beginning of the 20th century offers
comprehension concerning the way in which new patterns of thought and of temporal
representations appeared and which obstacles they encountered.
The development of the natural sciences in the 19th century modified the re-
lationship between historical time and biological time.1 In a religious world
view, the history of living beings—and of Humanity in particular—was syn-
onymous with the history of the Earth; they began with Genesis and were then
punctuated by natural catastrophes. However, while the Book of Genesis pro-
vided the master-text for conceiving of time, scientific theories provided com-
peting models. The immediate problem faced by geological, palaeontological
and biological conceptions of time was that neither literature nor mythology
contained any such depictions. First of all, their timescales were too long:
up until then, only spans of thousands of years had been considered. Next,
whether marked by regular catastrophes or devoid of such milestones, their
structure did not fit into traditional historical or epic narratives. Moreover, in
its evolutionist incarnations, biological time itself assumed the role of prime
mover behind the evolution of the world and mankind, depriving God of his
prerogative. Finally, these conceptions implied that mankind was one of latest
comers among the actors in this version of history. These are the main (but not
the sole) problems when it came to depicting in literary form a view of time
revolutionized by the natural sciences.
Of course, these scientific disciplines do not exist in isolation from the
rest of culture. Culture is a singular entity and the images created in one
1 This article draws on research carried out as part of the ANR Euterpe project (directed by
Hugues Marchal), the ANR HC19 project (Director Anne-Gaëlle Weber), as well as ongoing
research being conducted as part of “Biolographes” project (cf. “The Authors” at the begin-
ning of this volume).
area—whether religious, scientific, literary etc.—tend to contaminate or be

played out in others. They have a habit of becoming models that spread, lend-
ing coherence to culture as a whole. Thus, in a given cultural constellation,
literature may take on the vocation of inventing a new way of seeing things
and of making this perspective acceptable. This implies negotiating—or even
recycling and transforming—old and new models and forms.
In this paper, we shall examine how epic poetry was both challenged and
renewed by the revolution of the imagination provoked by geology, palaeon-
tology and evolutionism during the 19th century.2
1 A Problem of Imagination: Historical Time versus Natural Time
Beyond the epic per se, the problem nineteenth-century poetry had depicting
time is clearly visible in L’Homme des champs or Les Géorgiques françaises, a di-
dactic poem by Jacques Delille, in which the poet tackles all aspects of land and
its cultivation, including landscape and geology. He describes, for instance, the
sedimentation of calcareous rocks and concludes thus on the topic of marble:
Mais, sans quitter vos monts et vos vallons chéris,

Voyez d’un marbre usé le plus mince débris:
[…]
L’histoire de ce grain est l’histoire du monde.
Delille, 1800: 116–117
But, without leaving your precious mountaintops and valleys,

Take a look at the tiniest piece of weathered marble:
[…]
The history of this grain is the history of the world.3
Poetry is here attempting to conjure up a history that is not that of the known
history of humankind. In the process, Delille needed to borrow from heroic
history terms like monument, revolutions, empire, and generations in order
to dramatize the history of the most inert and the a priori least dramatic of
realms: the mineral realm.
2 On the relationship between science and poetry in the 19th century, see the anthology Muses
et Ptérodactyles (Marchal, 2013) and the collective volume, La Poésie scientifique.
3 Note on translation: All the verse cited in French has been rendered in English with a focus
on intelligibility, rather than on strict prosodic fidelity.
260 Wanlin
In another passage dedicated to geology, he presents the transformations in

the landscape that had given rise to the countryside of the day. Explaining the
phenomenon of erosion, he concludes thus:
Tout d’une cause lente annonce aux yeux l’ouvrage.

Ainsi, sans recourir à tout ce grand ravage,
Le sage ne voit plus que des effets constants,
Le cours de la nature et la marche du temps.
Delille, 1800: 110–111
Everything the eye can see speaks of a slow cause.

Thus, without resorting to great destruction,
the wise man only sees constant effects,
the course of nature and the march of time.
It would thus seem that, from as early as 1800, poets had duly noted the new
paradigm of uniformitarianism. They deduced from their observation of the
landscape that it was not necessarily the product of occasional grand disasters,
but rather of permanent and still active causes whose infinitesimally small ef-
fects accumulated over extremely long periods of time. The key word, which
would recur again and again in numerous poems, was slowness. The expres-
sion “the march of time” here stands for the regularity of phenomena within
a geological timeframe, which was no longer so much ruled by revolutions as
by an evolution.
But, we should not allow ourselves to be fooled by the scientific statements
included in a didactic poem: the content of the poem must be viewed on its
own terms. And, in this case, the content of the poem contradicts uniformitar-
ian wisdom. For, the verses cited above are immediately followed by several
long descriptions of spectacular upheavals of the landscape, due to catastro-
phes such as landslides, hurricanes and volcanic eruptions.
Mais j’aperçois d’ici les débris d’un village;

D’un désastre fameux tout annonce l’image:
Quels malheurs l’ont produit? avançons, consultons
Les lieux et les vieillards de ces tristes cantons.
Delille, 1800: 111
But here I see the remains of a village;

Everything bears the stamp of a mighty disaster:
What tragedy caused this? let’s move on and question
The scene and the old people of these sad lands.
There then follows the spectacular description of a landslide, which ends

thus:
Et l’ermite du lieu, sur un décombre assis,

Aux voyageurs encor en fait de longs récits.
Delille, 1800: 111
And the local hermit, seated on a ruin,

Still tells tales of it at length to travelers.
The old people of the region, unlike the scientist, do not explain the slow
effects of erosion, of flows and of seepage; they speak of memorable catas-
trophes. And that is just the problem faced by poetry. While it occasionally
manages to slip in a scientific aphorism, poetry is never more impressive than
when it awakens emotions with quaint tales. And the impression on the reader
is much greater than that made by the slow and discreet process of erosion. In
the same way, volcanic eruptions take on a particular importance because they
appear, by analogy, to represent human passions.
Catastrophes thus hold greater sway over the imagination, which is why it
was so difficult to introduce the new scientific paradigm of slow, uniform pro-
cesses into the collective imagination. This demanded a very different times-
cale from the one we were accustomed to when recounting human history.
It is thus necessary to keep in mind this difference between the evolution of
scientific ideas and the pace at which the cultural imagination evolves.
2 Attempts at Universal Epics
In the texts, we thus see various poetic responses to the new challenge posed
by a new scientific idea. Having emerged as a new way of understanding his-
tory, or rather having invented a properly historical guiding principle for histo-
ry, evolutionary theories made possible a new poetic genre, the universal epic.
Under this heading can be ranged long poems that borrow from both the de-
scriptive and philosophical poem, but which remain essentially narrative, and
which sometimes go as far back as the beginnings of the universe, recounting
the phases of creation and the evolution of different life forms.
It was the new scientific ideas that allowed the nature poem to free itself
from the traditional straitjacket of the rhythm of the seasons (Thomson, Saint-
Lambert, Castel). These “universal epics” reconfigured the genres of the cos-
mogony, the epic, the descriptive and philosophical poem: the narrative was no
longer merely a form given to knowledge, but had become the actual meaning
262 Wanlin
of this knowledge. Evolutionary ideas thus played a singular role in the history
of epistemology in the 19th century. Unlike the discoveries of Laplace, Carnot,
Maxwell, or even of Pasteur, they are based upon a narrative: they propose
hypothetical stories. They may thus be likened, at least in certain points, to the
essentially narrative genre of the universal epic.
3 How to Represent a Long and Uniform Timescale?
While historical time had long depicted in the writings of historians and writ-
ers, biological time was just beginning in the 19th century to find its narrative
models. One of the problems faced by the universal epic was that it no longer
covered the limited span of a particular human adventure, but was aiming to
take on an infinitely longer timescale: the long, uniform time of geology and
biology. Edmond Emerich took up this challenge and attempted to include the
notion of a time incommensurable with the periodization of human history,
and he began his poem by pointing out a problem: “Un jour dans l’univers (est-
ce un jour qu’il faut dire?)” / “One day in the universe (is it right to say one
day?)” (Emerich, 1860: 3) The phrase “one day”, which was perfectly anodyne in
literary narratives, here seemed out of place: the natural sciences did not speak
of the history of the universe in such terms. The poet went on to try some less
conventional and rather more enigmatic expressions, speaking of “billions of
days” and “phases” (4) Rather than dates or time spans, the poet was attached
to the idea of transmitting the progressive and gradual character of phenom-
ena, which distinguished this temporal frame from that of human stories, in
which there was much more emphasis on individual events. For instance, here
is the emergence of life:
La nature organique élaborait ses plans,

Assimilant l’atome aux atomes suivants.
Mystique avènement de la fibre vivante
Que la nutrition de jour en jour augmente,
Et qui de la cellule arrive par degrés
À la formation de l’arbre et des forêts!
Emerich, 1860: 5
Organic nature was making its plans,

Joining each atom to the next.
Mystical emergence of living fibre
That nutrition makes day by day grow bigger,

And, by degree, from the cell finally
Creates the trees and forests!
However, like Delille in his Géorgiques, Emerich continued interspersing with-

in this evolution cataclysms and brutal changes which transformed the plan-
et’s surface, such as the formation of the Alps in a brutal upheaval of the land,
before giving way again to the “progressive march” of the Earth (13). But, when
it came to the appearance of the human species on earth, he apparently gave
up all notion of a slow evolution:
Ce fut un beau matin, au lever de l’aurore,

Alors que dans les bois tout sommeillait encore,
Et qu’un léger zéphire, effleurant les coteaux,
Agitait mollement la surface des eaux,
Que surgit tout formé d’une souche mystique
Le couple dont sortit la race caucasique.
Les deux premiers humains parurent sous les cieux,
La lèvre souriante et le front radieux.
Emerich, 1860: 14
It was on a beautiful morning, at the break of day,

While the woods still lay sleeping,
And a light zephyr, caressing the hillsides,
Gently stirred the water’s surface,
That suddenly appeared, fully formed, of mystic origin
The couple from which the Caucasian race emerged.
The first two humans appeared beneath the heavens,
A smiling of lip and radiant of brow.
The extreme naiveté of tone gives away the poet’s irony as he dips into mytho-
logical and biblical cliché to avoid a controversial explanation of the origins
of mankind. This was also more or less what Louis Bouilhet did in Les Fossiles.
Was it out of a fear of the censor, who might have been alarmed by a negation
of the biblical narrative? More likely, it was because Emerich, like most of his
contemporaries, had not yet resolved the contradiction between the ancestral
vision of a biblical timescale and the novelty of the evolutionary vision.
Faced with the same poetic quandary as Edmond Emerich, and in the same
year, Alfred Leconte published Les Mystères de Flore and chose to thematize the
264 Wanlin
contradiction between evolution and upheavals. He thus spoke of the divine

hand presiding over Creation:
—Cette puissante main, ce pouvoir invisible

Qui te frappa d’un coup si lent ou si terrible,
C’est la loi du progrès, loi des attractions;
La loi qui régit tout, loi des perfections.
Leconte, 1860: 6
—That powerful hand, that invisible power

Which struck you with a blow so slow or so terrible,
Was the law of progress, the law of attractions;
The law that rules everything, the law of perfections.
The fine oxymoron of a “blow so slow” shows the contradiction between the
spectacular character of natural transformations and the supposed slowness of
the process. Supposed slowness, for the verse expresses an alternative: “so slow
or so terrible”. But Leconte’s imagery shows a preference for slowness:
—Au moment où la terre entr’ouvrait son abîme,

De ce pouvoir puissant elle-même victime,
Tiraillée en tous sens par des convulsions,
Elle suivait le cours de ses transitions.
—Quels animaux hardis, quels êtres invincibles
Ont affronté les chocs de ces âges terribles?
Lente dans ses efforts, sage dans ses excès,
Pas à pas la nature a réglé ses progrès.
Leconte, 1860: 7
—At the moment the earth cracked open showing its abyss,
Itself victim of this powerful force,
Racked in all directions by convulsions,
It was following its transitional path.
—What brave animals, what invincible beings
Faced the upheavals of those terrible times?
Slow in her efforts, wise in her excesses,
Step by step, nature regulated her progress.
Leconte’s poetic antitheses seem to foreshadow the on-going debates in evolu-

tionary circles between those that argue for an evolutionary process that was
totally progressive and those who advocate in favour of “punctuational equilib-

rium”, i.e. for a heterogeneous model of evolution, where stagnation alternated
with moments of sudden acceleration. Poetry was thus capable of formulating
scientific questions and making them visible. Another poet, Valéry Monbarlet,
would go on to pose a historiographical question. In his Age antéhistorique,
after mentioning the beginnings of the universe and the organization of the
cosmos and of the Earth, he included this thought:
C’est l’histoire, aujourd’hui, qui recueille et constate

Les actes merveilleux accomplis chaque jour,
Qui, sous le fait, signale et sa cause et sa date,
Et, de bien et de mal se nourrit, tour à tour.
Elle dit nos combats, nos discordes civiles;
Elle juge les rois, les peuples, les héros,
Et nous transmet les noms de ces âmes viriles,
Que l’oubli poursuivrait dans les champs du repos.
Malgré tous les trésors d’un recueil grandiose,
Qui nous montre un passé vivant et rajeuni,
Ce qu’elle sait, hélas! en somme, est peu de chose,
Ce qu’elle ignore est infini.
Monbarlet, 1867: 15
Today, it is history that gathers and observes

The marvelous deeds accomplished each day,
That points out the cause and the date of each fact,
And thrives in turn on good and bad.
It recounts our struggles, our moments of civil discord;
It judges kings, peoples, heroes,
And passes down to us the names of those manly souls,
That forgetfulness would otherwise pursue into the fields of repose.
Despite its mighty tome of treasures”,
Displaying a living and rejuvenated past,
What it knows, alas! when all is said and done, is not much,
What it leaves out is infinite.
On the one hand, positivist history established facts and their causes; on the
other, a nascent palaeontology had, instead of archives, a collection of silent
fossils, its “mighty tome of treasures”, the interpretation of which was diffi-
cult. This new branch of history was forced into modesty by the new vocation
opening up before it: history was still quite ill-informed, but poetry intended
266 Wanlin
to take on, if not the scientific aspects of history, at least its commemorative
function:
Que de morts ignorés, que de nobles victimes

Ont, errants sur la terre, au milieu des besoins,
Préparé, lentement,—travailleurs anonymes,
La couche végétale, objet de tous nos soins!
Monbarlet, 1867: 17
So many unknown dead, so many noble victims

Have, wandering the earth, fulfilling their needs,
Prepared, slowly,—anonymous labourers,
The vegetal stratum, the object of all our attention!
This was precisely the theme on which Charles Darwin held forth in his book
on earthworms:
La charrue est une des inventions les plus anciennes et les plus pré-
cieuses de l’homme, mais longtemps avant qu’elle existât, le sol était de
fait labouré régulièrement par les vers de terre et il ne cessera jamais de
l’être encore. Il est permis de douter qu’il y ait beaucoup d’autres animaux
qui aient joué dans l’histoire du globe un rôle aussi important que ces
créatures d’une organisation si inférieure.
Darwin, 1882: 256–257
The plough is one of the most ancient and most valuable of man’s inven-
tions; but long before he existed the land was in fact regularly ploughed,
and still continues to be thus ploughed by earth-worms. It may be doubt-
ed whether there are many other animals which have played so important
a part in the history of the world, as have these lowly organised creatures.
Darwin, 1881: 313
For his part, the poet thus pursued his line of thought:
Devant ces résultats, l’individu s’efface;

Ils ont été le prix d’innombrables efforts;
C’est l’œuvre du progrès; l’histoire en suit la trace,
Mais elle est impuissante à calculer ses morts.
Ces pères si vaillants, dans leur marche féconde,
Ont, par bonheur pour nous, leurs chétifs rejetons,
Affronté, les premiers, les luttes de ce monde;

Ils ont semé; nous récoltons.
Monbarlet, 1867: 17
Before these results, the individual fades into insignificance;

They were obtained at the price of innumerable efforts;
This is the work of progress; history follows its tracks,
But is incapable of calculating its dead.
Those oh so brave fathers, in their fruitful advance,
Were the first to confront the struggles of this world,
And we should count ourselves lucky, we their puny offspring;
They sowed; we harvest.
Monbarlet implicitly compared the innumerable generations of beings of all

types that came before us to heroic ancestors. It is incongruous and even a lit-
tle impertinent to celebrate the anonymous prehistoric multitudes of humans,
and even animals, as if they were soldiers who died for their country. Here,
the poet and the scientist come up against the same problem: the conserva-
tive mindset of the general public. Indeed, in his book on earthworms, Darwin
railed against the narrow-mindedness of his opponents:
In the year 1869, Mr. Fish rejected my conclusions with respect to the part
which worms have played in the formation of vegetable mould, merely
on account of their assumed incapacity to do so much work. He remarks
that “considering their weakness and their size, the work they are repre-
sented to have accomplished is stupendous.” Here we have an instance
of that inability to sum up the effects of a continually recurrent cause,
which has often retarded the progress of science, as formerly in the case
of geology, and more recently in that of the principle of evolution.
Darwin, 1881: 6
The “inability to sum up the effects of a continually recurrent cause” is what

limits the imagination: it hampered Lyell’s geology, then Darwin’s theory of
evolution. Monbarlet, the poet, also wanted to reform the imagination. He
wished to convey the fact that the silent ascension of nature was part of a great
movement his positivistic era celebrated as progress, and that scientific and
technical progress were the final touches to human evolution.
More traditionally, historical time was also perceived through the lens of
the notion of the generation. Successive generations of human beings lived
through events whose memory they perpetuated and it was by fashioning and
268 Wanlin
interpreting this memory that they gave meaning to history. It was also dif-
ficult to imagine a history without human witnesses, in other words a history
that would have to be written out of nothing. Above all, each generation was
not seen in isolation, but en masse, in huge quantities. That created a problem
as far as dates were concerned, but also the problem of a humiliating history,
which lumped a multitude of beings into vast generalizations. This was the
problem dealt with by André Joussain, author of one of the first doctorates on
Victor Hugo and whose L’Épopée terrestre can be read as the Légende des siècles
that Victor Hugo never wrote, an evolutionary Légende des siècles:
I. AVANT QUE L’HOMME FÛT
Millions, millions et millions d’années!

Par le cours incessant des siècles entraînées,
Des races que la mort allait bientôt saisir
S’évadaient de la nuit à l’appel du désir.
Sur la terre éclairée ou la boue abyssale,
Plus d’une forme ou minuscule ou colossale
Se dessinait comme une flamme et s’éteignait.
Le troupeau des vivants, décimé, résignait
Son empire éphémère à de nouvelles races
Qu’asservissaient au sol leurs appétits voraces
Et celles-ci croissaient et mouraient à leur tour.
Ainsi tous ces vivants, surgis jour après jour,

Moururent et pendant ces millions d’années,
Au labeur, à l’amour, à la faim condamnées,
Sous le calme regard des constellations
Passèrent, flots confus, les générations […]
Sans qu’aucun œil humain fût ouvert pour les voir.
Joussain, 1958: 9
I. BEFORE MAN EXISTED
Millions, and millions, and million of years!

Carried away the unending flow of centuries,
Breeds that death would soon snatch
Escaped the night beckoned by desire.
On the illuminated land or the unfathomable mud,
More than one form, whether miniscule or colossal
Shot up like a flame and was extinguished.

The herd of living beings, decimated, gave up
Its ephemeral empire to new species
Enslaved to the earth by their voracious appetites
And these, in turn, grew up and died out.
Thus, all these living things, emerging day after day,

Died and for millions of years,
Condemned to toil, love, and hunger,
Beneath the calm gaze of the constellations
The generations, in uneven streams, passed by […]
With not a single human eye open to see them.
4 Epic, Evolution and Decadence
While many saw the theory of evolution as a variant of the idea of progress,
certain of its characteristics were soon seized upon by the movement that
grew up at the end of the century around the notion of decadence. Thus,
Monbarlet, who in 1867 had already published L’Âge antéhistorique, reflected
his century’s sudden change of mood when he published 32 years later Échos
du vieux monde in which he underlined a disturbing side of the historical vi-
sion inaugurated by Darwinism, and even more so by Spencerism: the extent
of the destruction necessary for evolution to take place.
Triste loi! mais enfin c’est la loi de ce monde,

Q’un rude sentier mène à la perfection,
Et qu’ici-bas, hélas! nul progrès ne se fonde,
Si ce n’est par la lutte et la destruction.
Depuis le premier jour condamnée à la guerre,
La guerre de la vie, ardente et sans pitié,
Au fond de l’Océan, dans l’air et sur la terre,
La moitié des vivants détruit l’autre moitié.
[…]
La ruine et la mort, c’est la moisson future;
C’est pour toute existence un nouvel aliment,
Et, c’est par ses fléaux que pourvoit la nature
À l’éternel besoin de rajeunissement.
Monbarlet, 1899: 8–9
270 Wanlin
Oh sad law! yet alas it is the law of this world,

That a rough road leads to perfection,
And that in the here-and-now, alas! no progress is possible,
In the absence of struggle and destruction.
From the very first day, condemned to wage war,
The war of life, intense and pitiless,
In the Ocean’s depths, in the air and on land,
One half of the living destroy the other.
[…]
Death and destruction is what the future holds in store;
This is for every living thing a new source of nourishment,
And, it is by plagues that nature provides
For the eternal need for rebirth.
These ideas fuelled the decadent imagination and evolution even managed to
provide grist for the mill of regression at a time when the narrative regarding
the origins of humankind was taking a sharp turn away from the positivism
of the past. In an early incarnation of this theme, praise was heaped upon the
Ancients and the prestige of 19th century was downplayed. That was the tack
taken by Jean Richepin in two long poems with epic pretentions, “Les algues”
(“Seaweed”) and “La gloire de l’eau” (“The Glory of Water”). Richepin proposed
an anti-Genesis, an account of humanity that contradicted point by point the
Bible’s version. In “Les algues”, he drew on palaeontology to give to life, and
thus to humanity, a marine origin instead of a terrestrial one:
Ô cadavres saints pour les hommes,

Car c’est de vous que nous sortons!
Ô vieilles algues, nous ne sommes
Que vos suprêmes rejetons.
Dans le primordial mystère,
Quand l’eau couvrait toute la terre,
Squelette sans chair ni tétons,
C’était en vous que la Nature
De vivre risquait l’aventure,
Et notre humanité future
Germait en fleurs dans vos boutons.
[…]
Ô vieilles algues nos aînées,
Qui du fond de vos antres creux
Agitez vos mains enchaînées

Et tordez vos bras douloureux,
Algues à qui je dois mon être …
Richepin, 1886: 312–313
Oh corpses blessed for Man,

For it is from you that we stem!
Oh aged seaweed, we are merely your final offspring.
In the primordial mystery,
When water covered the whole earth,
Oh skeleton without flesh or teats,
It was in you that Nature
Undertook the adventure of life,
And our future humanity
Sprouted in your buds.
[…]
Oh aged seaweed, our elders,
Who in the depths of your hollow dens
Wave your chained hands
And twist your painful arms,
Oh seaweed, to whom I owe my being …
While the religious vision of the origins of life made man into a fallen creature
required to perpetually atone for an original sin, Richepin set out to exalt the
history of constant progress in “La gloire de l’eau”:
Racine d’où jaillit l’arbre de nos ancêtres,

Gravir tous les dégrés de l’échelle des êtres.
Ô vie, ô flot montant et grondant, je te vois
Produire l’animal, plante et bête à la fois,
Te transformer sans fin depuis ces anciens types,
Devenir l’infusoire, entrer dans les polypes,
Monter toujours, des corps multiplier l’essaim …
Ce que la science imagine,

Homme, n’en sois pas offensé!
Plus humble fut ton origine,
Plus haut ton vol s’est élancé.
Richepin, 1886: 329
272 Wanlin
Root from which sprang up the tree of our ancestors,

To climb all the rungs of the ladder of being.
Oh life, oh swelling and rumbling wave, I see you
Producing animals, plants and beasts all at once,
Transforming yourself endlessly out of ancient forms,
Becoming the protozoan, taking on the form of the polyp,
Always climbing, adding to the swarm of bodies …
At what science imagines,

Oh Mankind, do not take offense!
The more lowly your beginnings,
The higher you have soared.
What is paradoxically decadent in these texts is the recurring notion of the

animal, and even vegetal, aspects of humankind. And the second trope is that
of an imaginary regression to the origins of humanity in order to discover what
the first humans were like. Thus, in Hommes et Singes (Men and Apes), Raoul de
la Grasserie sings the praise of the primitive nobility of “anthropoids”, viewed
as being more civilized than modern man:
Si quelque soir notre engeance

Des péchés obtient pardons,
Que ce soit la récompense,
Au singe redescendons.
Les chimpanzés, les gorilles,
Le gibbon, l’orang-outang,
Toutes les vieilles familles,
Mieux que nous, gardent leur rang.
De leur aristocratie
Nous avons dégénéré;
Grasserie, 1889: 7
If some evening our mob

Is pardoned its sins,
Let the reward be,
That we return to being apes.
Chimpanzees, gorillas,
Gibbons, Ourang-Outangs,
All of these old families,
Better than we, maintain their rank.
From their aristocratic status

We have degenerated;
It was thus not merely questions of time spans and the pace at which time
passes that concerned poets, but also the question of the direction of history.
This was, in reality, a questioning of the myth of progress. While the evolution
of living beings had often been the founding condition of the continuity of
progress, Grasserie turned common wisdom on its head and denounced mod-
ern Barbary by contrasting it with the refinement of apes.
Finally, as the turn of the century brought with it a questioning of positiv-
istic conceptions of history, other models emerged, based on the image of the
cycle, the spiral, undulation, toing and froing, or even flux and reflux. As a pro-
fessional historian, Georges Renard was particularly aware of these competing
models of temporality, and writing at the beginning of the 20th century, he
could no longer accept the positivist model of continuous progress. And far
from ignoring this epistemological question when he donned his poet’s hat, he
was as rigorous in poetry as he was in prose. His poem, La Nature et l’Humanité
(Nature and Humanity), written in two stages between 1879 et 1925, includes
this passage reflecting on “The direction and rhythm of movement”:
Au bord de l’Océan qui n’a vu et revu

L’éternel va-et-vient du flux et du reflux,
Tout pareil à celui du poumon qui respire?
[…]
Ainsi dans l’existence inquiète que mène,
En quête de bonheur, la caravane humaine,
Époques de progrès et de régression,
Ères de nouveautés et de tradition
En ordre régulier se succèdent sans trêve.
Renard, 1925: 148–149
On the Ocean shore, who has not seen again and again
The eternal to and fro of flux and reflux,
Just like a breathing lung?
[…]
Thus, in the anxious existence led,
By the human caravan in search of happiness,
Epochs of progress and of regression,
Eras of novelty and of tradition
Regularly and endlessly follow one another.
274 Wanlin
The historical model was getting more complicated, but Renard still firmly
believed that “The centuries, and like them, the generations, / Follow the law
of rhythm and its fluctuations …”, thus that there really did exist laws govern-
ing historical evolution. For, it was very hard to allow for the role of chance in
these new representations.
5 Teleology, Chance, and Optimism: How to Make Sense of

This History?
The role of chance in history was not only a challenge to philosophy and reli-
gion, it was also a challenge for literature. Abandoning a creative intentionality,
an intelligent design that plans the course of history, presupposed a material-
ist and atheistic conception of life and also required a radically new type of
narrative.
Thus appeared in poetry an alternative between finalist history and a non-
teleological history. For, while the history of humanity had always been inter-
preted in a finalist manner, conferring a retrospective meaning and orientation
to all historical facts, palaeontology in its infancy struggled to identify the
Creator’s goals and the Darwinian evolutionary paradigm spread the notion
that chance played a crucial role in evolution.
In Antediluviana, Ernest Cotty preferred to believe that “only God knows
the purpose”, but that the vicissitudes of Creation did have a purpose. But for
Jean-Étienne Chamard, the purpose was nothing less than perfection, which
meant interpreting evolution as a process of constant improvement. His poem,
written between 1874 and 1879, but published much later, thus prophesied, in
accordance with “the law of progress”, the destiny of primitive Man:
Et, sache-le, suivant l’infaillible dessein

Qui règle et définit l’ordre de la Nature,
Ô Terre, tu verras, dans une ère future,
Après bien d’autres temps et bien d’autres essais,
Après que, lentement, des êtres plus parfaits
Seront venus bannir ou rejeter dans l’ombre
Les races, les tribus, les espèces sans nombre
Qui peuplent à présent tes eaux et tes forêts,
Tu verras, ô mystère, ô merveilleux secrets,
De l’avenir! passer parmi tes paysages
Les hommes, trop grossiers encore et trop peu sages,

Mais le front haut déjà, le regard vers les cieux,
Songeurs, et caressant ce rêve audacieux
D’asservir à leur gré tes grandes énergies,
Et d’aller—reculant les bornes élargies
De leur pouvoir—toujours plus loin, toujours plus haut,
Vers la perfection sans tache et sans défaut,
Qui rayonne au sommet sacré de la montagne.
Chamard, 1947: 104
And, let there be no mistake, in accordance with the infallible plan

That governs and defines the order of Nature,
Oh Earth, you will see, in a future era,
After many other epochs and many other attempts,
After more perfect beings slowly
Will come and banish the innumerable races, tribes, and species
That now populate the waters and the forests,
You will see, oh mystery, oh marvelous secrets,
Of the future! Crossing your landscapes
Men, still too uncouth and lacking in wisdom,
But with an already raised brow, their eyes lifted toward the heavens,
Lost in thought, and entertaining the audacious dream
Of bending your great energies to their will,
And of going—pushing back the extended limits
Of their abilities—ever further, ever higher,
Toward the blemish-free and faultless perfection,
That radiates from the sacred mountaintop.
René Ghil, on the other hand, took up the challenge of creating a narrative free
of a teleological principle. Confusing, once again, like many others, Darwinism
and Lamarckism, Ghil attempted to describe the blind efforts of energy, or
even of a sort of animal will, which produced what he called a “better becom-
ing”. For instance, in Le Dire du mieux. Le meilleur devenir, Man is getting up on
his hind legs to become homo erectus:
Mieux quadrupédant-haut par des géométries

longipèdes et ongulées …
[…]
276 Wanlin
Et, grands!
tandis qu’épeurant loin de longs passages, longs
d’envergure allante, un départ oiselant, (ceux
qui de pieds et de mains vont saltants, et de poings—
alors qu’ils se levaient Humains! sur leur osseux
thorax sonnent la mort sourde!) voilà que […]
à temps d’émois
s’en venaient à demi pliants sur le genou
et à la nuque le poids des mains,—les plus-Droits!
qtd. in Ghil, 2004: 96, 98
Better suited to going along high up on all fours

Thanks to their long-legged, nailed limb design …
[…]
And, big!
While foraying frightfully far and wide, long-limbed
swift of body, birdlike as they get up and going, (those
who all legs and hands jump along, with fists—
while they were rising up Humans! on their boney
thorax pound out death in dull thumps!) right then […]
passions all stirred up
they moved along knees flexed
and on the nape of their necks the weight of their hands,—the
most-Erect!
In the poetics of René Ghil, time—first biological, then historical—was no

longer linked to the accomplishment of a transcendental plan, but to the de-
ployment in the here-and-now of a self-organizing energy, according to the
success of its efforts, a little bit like Bergson’s “vital impulse”. However, for Ghil,
who began writing his epic summa in 1889 and finished it in 1926, the problem
of the link between historical and biological time was stated in a very con-
crete fashion: How could one square a history of the harmonious expressions
of vital energy with the catastrophe of the First World War? It was necessary
to recognize that this was an example of a case of vital energy being wasted,
used unproductively, or even counter-productively. But a resolutely optimistic
conception of history was bound to maintain confidence in the evolution of
humanity (see Ghil, 2012).

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Evolutionism and Successivity in Antediluviana,
Poème géologique by Ernest Cotty (1876)
Yohann Ringuedé
Abstract
Ernest Cotty is a French minores poet and entomologist who composed a “geologic
poem” in 1876, Antediluviana. Within the framework of this article, I attempt to char-
acterize the diachronic way antediluvian beings appear. Indeed, the palaeontological
science tends to represent the history of life by stratification, as a pure succession lack-
ing in logic and biologic ties. That parataxis seems to match with the successiveness of
Cuvier’s theory of history. The poetological signs of that view are numerous and mul-
tiple in the poem, which intends to prove that whereas Cuvier has been compromised
by transformism, French poetry goes on considering him as an alternative which rec-
onciles the biblical genesis and Creation as seen in a long diachrony.
Ernest Cotty (1818–1877) was an amateur naturalist, with a particularly impas-

sioned interest in entomology. A review of various articles submitted by him
to the Société Linnéenne du Nord de la France [Linnéan Society of Northern
France] reveals that he spent a large part of the 1850s in Algeria (and in Crimea,
during the war against Russia) serving in the armed forces (as an “officier
d’administration comptable des subsistances militaires” / “administrative subsis-
tence supply officer”; Société Linnénenne du Nord de la France, 1866: 215), years
in which he does not publish his research, but multiplies his entomological
observations. Upon his return to France, beginning in 1860, he submits several
texts recording his observations to the annals of the Société Linnéenne, and
composes two poems, published in Bourg: L’Entomologie. Ode sur les coléop-
tères, in 1874; and Antediluviana, poème géologique, completed on 10 June 1875,
in Tours, and published the following year. The history of the composition of
Antediluviana is somewhat complicated. In 1871, in the Description du Musée
d’histoire naturelle et du Jardin botanique et zoologique de Tours, Cotty claims to
have accompanied geologists on their expeditions in his youth. Enthusiastic in
the face of the discoveries made there, he asserts, in his “juvénile audace qui ne
manquait pas cependant d’une certaine grandeur originale” / “juvenile audaci-
ty, nevertheless not lacking a certain original grandeur” to have planned a poem
entitled Antédiluviana, poème géologique, a “projet passionnel et chimérique
qui, heureusement sans doute, n’a jamais été mis à execution” / “impassioned
280 Ringuedé
and chimerical project, which, no doubt fortunately, was never brought to real-
ization” (Cotty, 1871: 53–54). It thus appears very likely, that Antediluviana, dat-
ing to four years subsequent to this visit, was envisaged anew at the moment in
which Cotty regains awareness of the fact that:
[…] cette attrayante et merveilleuse science de la Géologie agrandit les

pensées non-seulement du naturaliste qui la cultive avec amour, mais en-
core du philosophe et même du poëte.
Cotty, 1871: 53
[…] this intriguing and marvellous science of Geology expands the scope
of ideas, not only of the naturalist who lovingly cultivates it, but also of
the philosopher, and even of the poet.
It is this rather unique discourse of an amateur vulgarizer of science and neo-

phyte scientist, as well as aspiring poet, which appears to me to justify the rele-
vance of a study dedicated to this minor author, whose stance appears singular
in a period marked by specialization.
Antediluviana is dedicated to “M. Louis Figuier, author of La Terre avant le
Déluge [World Before the Deluge]” (Cotty, 1876: 1), of which Cotty virtually gives
a translation in verse, and the title of which he would seem to have translated
into Latin (Antediluviana, literally meaning “before the deluge”). Moreover, he
cites the name of the vulgarizer within the verse text itself.
The chronological description arranged by the entomologist-poet would
appear to be subject to succession (i.e. without causal links between events),
rather than consecutiveness, its evolution being conditioned by ellipses.
Despite the popularization of uniformitarianism since 1830 by Charles Lyell,
through his Principles of Geology translated in France by Tullia Meulien in the
1840s, Cotty gives the impression of siding resolutely with Cuvier’s catastro-
phism, which he studies second-hand, by the intermediary of Figuier’s work
of popular science. This indirect, second-hand access to scientific knowledge
poses the problem of a biased reading of Cuvier, warped by his vulgarizers.
Indeed, in the 1860s–1870s, the palaeontologist’s reception is character-
ized by a hyper-reaction in the face of the advance of evolutionist theories,
a hyper-reaction marked by the ascription of a final cause to catastrophist
assumptions.
I will, therefore, attempt to characterize Cotty’s vision of the history of earth
and of its inhabitants, by means of a stylistic and poetic analysis. In a first step,
I aim to show that, at the level of the eras, he lays out an elliptical succes-
sivity clearly deriving from catastrophism. Next, at the level of living beings,
Evolutionism and Successivity in Antediluviana 281
he appears to make use of paratactic paradigms, tending to indicate that liv-

ing creatures supplant each other without following from one another, that is
without filiation between them. All the same, the evolutionary model as it is
conceived by the entomologist-poet appears to contain a design (a history),
and thus to distance itself from Cuvier’s thought which, unlike his vulgarizers,1
guards against all finalism.
1 A Stratification of Layers: Elliptical Successivity and Catastrophism
In a first phase, I therefore intend to show that the poetics deployed by Cotty
endeavours to respect the Cuvierian view of the concatenation of the ages.
1.1 Space-Time of a Plunge into the Depths

The representation of antediluvian eras, as Ernest Cotty arranges it, claims to
be purely palaeontological: it rests solely on the observation of the successive
layers of the globe, through which the scientist-poet invites us to travel. The
earth becomes an immense terrain, conducive to the method of hermeneutics,
a great book, held to be inscribed, in its depths, with the history of life and of
humanity. In fact, on the occasion of the description of the tertiary age, the
poem stages a movement back through geological layers which correlates with
a movement back in time: “Pénétrons maintenant dans les Temps pliocènes” /
“Let us now plunge into the Pliocene” (Cotty, 1876: 6). The verb of motion, in-
deed, reflects a spatial vision of time, in which one can “remont[er]” / “go back,
literally: reascend”, in accordance with the model of spatiotemporal voyage.
This motif is in the air of the times. As a case in point, eleven years earlier, in
1864, Jules Verne had presented his Voyage au centre de la terre (Journey to the
Centre of the Earth), which advances the same metaphor of space-time: just
as palaeontology permits the recomposition of bygone eras, so do Axel and
his uncle find themselves in the presence of antediluvian plants and animals,
when they direct their path into the depths of the earth. Hence, the periods of
Antediluviana can “s’ouvrir” / “open up” (“Mais nous voyons s’ouvrir une autre
période” / “But we witness the opening of a new period”; Cotty, 1876: 4), the
poet invites us to “pénétr[er]” / “plunge into” it, and to evoke spatial distance
is to evoke temporal distance (“Plus loin, on voit ramper un autre Saurien” /
“Further ahead, we see another Saurian crawl”; Cotty, 1876: 4).
1 On this question, see the article of Gisèle Séginger, “La réécriture de Cuvier: la création du
monde entre savoir et féérie” (Séginger, 2014).
282 Ringuedé
Nonetheless, the phases of this voyage file by in an overtly discontinuous

manner.
1.2 Elliptical Succession of Palaeontological Ages

Cuvier’s catastrophism is lexically omnipresent, such that the poem multiplies
its references to “cataclysmes”, “catastrophes” and other “commotions”, thereby
taking advantage of alliterations in [k]. The episode of the first deluge (Cotty,
1876: 10–11) is thus the point of deployment of an entire poetics of catastrophe.
Cotty would seem to reprise the plan evoked by Figuier in La Terre avant le
déluge:2 primitive age, transitional age, secondary age, tertiary age, quaternary
age, ice age, creation of man, biblical deluge. Further, in each of these ages,
Cotty posits a succession of periods (indeed, each age comprises several pe-
riods), in accordance with Figuier’s plan, and within each period he frequent-
ly reproduces the emergence of various animal species in the same order of
appearance.
But just as the work of the vulgarizer limits itself to a superposition of the
ages and periods in successive chapters, Cotty lays them out in distinct stan-
zas, in a mode of paratactic succession, rather than consecutiveness, thereby
conforming to the lesson of catastrophism. Accordingly, the first canto opens
onto the primitive age. Earth is here described in a state of chaos. Cotty lists
the stages of its modification, without however accounting for its evolutions.
At the time, a progressive cooling of the globe is commonly evoked to justify
the condensation of gases into water.3 Cotty allows for and confirms a change
of state, but he does not provide a justification for it, though it is available at
the time.
Next, he declares his aim to “pass[er] vite, de même, avec intention, / Sur les
autres Terrains, dits de Transition” / “rapidly pass, likewise, with intent, / Onto
other Terrains, known as those of Transition” (Cotty, 1876: 2), thus leading into
the secondary age:
2 Op. cit., Figuier, who himself reprises the plan of Cuvier.

3 We find this theory in Cotty’s primary source, La Terre avant le déluge, by Louis Figuier (1866:
39 and 48), but also in other poems, such as La Création du globe terrestre, poème géologique,
by Edmond Emerich, 1860, which relates the gaseous state (“[…] ce globe, / Que d’épaisses
vapeurs couvraient comme une robe” “this globe, / Which dense vapours covered like a robe”;
Emerich, 1860: 3), then the cooling phase (“Cependant la vapeur rayonnant dans l’espace, /
A l’air froid se changeait en pluie et même en glace, / Revenait vers le centre et tempérait
l’ardeur / Du sol en fusion par l’extrême chaleur” / “Yet the vapour radiating into space, / In the
cold air, turned into rain, and even into ice, / Returned towards the center and tempered the
ardour / Of the sun, molten by extreme heat.”; Emerich, 1860: 5), the poem from which Ernest
Cotty presumably drew the subhead of his own. Finally, this theoretical assumption is found
again in Jean Richepin’s piece “Béni soit le gouffre amer” (Richepin, [1886], 1980: 321–326).
Après un temps fort long de siècles révolus,

L’aspect se modifie … Alors on ne voit plus
Que Reptiles hargneux […]
Cotty, 1876: 3
After quite a long time of bygone centuries,

Its appearance alters … Then no longer is anything to be seen,
But snarling Reptiles […]
An ellipsis is interposed in the succession of the two ages, which are appended
like strata, and, in the manner of strata, they are placed in direct contact. Time
is thereby condensed in the manner of a line of demarcation separating two
geological layers. The temporal actualization indicating the dawn of a new pe-
riod is, then, marked by the reiteration, at the caesura, of temporal adverbs:
“Remontons maintenant+” / “Let us go back now+”, “Pénétrons maintenant+” /
“Let us plunge now+”, “Nous dirigeons enfin+nos pas imaginaires” / “We direct
at last+our imaginary step(s)” (Cotty, 1876: 5, 6, 9).
We are thus presented with tableaux of sorts, which the poet opens and
closes consecutively at will:
Après avoir percé la longue Nuit des Ages,

Nous allons retracer les sinistres images
Des Temps diluviens […] …
Cotty, 1876: 10
After having pierced the long Night of Ages,

We will retrace the sinister images
Of the diluvian Times […] …
Accordingly, the secondary age tellingly closes with the motif of the tableau:
Mollusques folâtrant aux profondeurs des eaux,

Dans leurs maisons de nacre, adorables tableaux!
Cotty, 1876: 5
Mollusks frollicking in the depths of the floods,

In their houses of mother-of-pearl, delightful tableaux!
Then the tableau fittingly slides shut, as symbolized by the vertical line of the
exclamation point, and the poet passes on to the tertiary age. Hence, there is
284 Ringuedé
a both chronological and typographical blank space between the close of one
tableau and the opening of the following one.4 It may also be noted that the
tabular aesthetic is traditional of didactic and descriptive poetry of the 19th
century, to a large part inspired by the works of Jacques Delille. The latter poet-
abbot, indeed, set forth a description of the ages in tableaux—not only in Les
Trois Règnes de la nature (The Three Kingdoms of Nature, 1809), but also in the
third canto of L’Homme des champs, ou Les Géorgiques françaises (The Rural
Philosopher, or French Georgics, 1805), of which Cotty clearly appears to have
read the following two verses: “Ensemble remontons aux lieux de leurs ber-
ceaux […]. Quels sublimes aspects! Quels tableaux romantiques!” / “Together
let us go back to their places of birth […]. What sublime views! What romantic
tableaux!” (Delille, 1805: 107) Another proof of this Delillean influence is the re-
writing of the following verse from Les Trois Règnes de la nature: “Nous voyons
les effets, Dieu seul connaît les causes” / “We see the effects, God alone knows
the causes” (Delille, 1809: 269), which Cotty reprises almost literally in: “Si nous
voyons l’effet, LUI seul en sait la cause!” / “Whereas we see the effect, He alone
knows its cause!” (Cotty, 1876: 11) In light of the fact that Delille worked close-
ly with Cuvier, who annotated Les Trois Règnes de la nature, the consistency
on the part of Cotty is exemplary, insofar as he illustrates ideas susceptible,
on the whole, to decline,5 by means of aesthetics then judged retrograde.
Indeed, the name Delille had, at that point of the century, become an insult,
bestowed upon anyone venturing into the field of descriptive and didactic
poetry.
2 Catalogue, Collection, List, and Procession: Paratactic Paradigms

and the Aesthetics of Rupture
This vision of time entails consequences for the sphere of living things. In
order to describe the beings of another time, rather than studying the links of
correspondence, one must resolutely change venue. The animals inhabiting a
time period are not the fruit of the evolution of other animals, but endemic (to
spin further the analogy between time and space), as it were, to a given time. A
temporal endemicity is held to exist, which negates all filiation, and therefore,
any possibility of evolution.
4 This portrayal in tableaux, or in diorama, also reflects the illustrations by Riou for La Terre
avant le déluge, which are “Vues idéales” / “Ideal Views” of each time period, where, in a con-
fined square, all the living creatures (fauna and flora) of a particular era are depicted and
juxtaposed.
5 Catastrophism, that is, but also its teleological character, which will be discussed further on.
2.1 Catalogue, List, and Procession: a Museum-Like Order

Besides La Terre avant le déluge, it would seem that another privileged source
for the composition of Antediluviana was Cotty’s own other aforementioned
text, the Description du Musée d’histoire naturelle et du Jardin botanique et
zoologique de Tours (Description of the Museum of Natural History and of the
Botanical and Zoological Gardens of Tours), and in particular its chapter en-
titled “Paléontologie” (Cotty, 1871: 51–54). A comparative analysis of the two
texts reveals numerous, occasionally word-for-word, reprisals, but also con-
densations, translations into versified language (for instance, the teeth of
the Dinotherium are compared to those of the “walrus” in the Description du
Musée, a comparison which is maintained by the poem, which places “morse” /
“walrus” in rhymed position; the Plésiosaure [Plesiosaurus], for its part, retains
the same characterization in both texts, “Au long cou de serpent” / “With a long
snake-neck”; finally, “Le vaste et insondable aquarium des mers” / “The vast
and unfathomable aquarium of the seas” is condensed to “les vastes mers” /
“the vast seas”, in its transposition from prose to verse text). The poem is, more-
over, punctuated by references to museum exhibits.6 Hence, at the origin of the
composition of Antediluviana, we can identify a museum-inspired (dioramic)
arrangement of various genuinely observed fragments and fossils, that is to say,
a co-presence of heteroclite elements.
The use of the very term “Catalogue” in the age of transition clearly reveals
the thoroughly paratactic juxtaposition typical of the expositional mode of
a list:7
Où l’on ne voit, hélas! dans les Mers apparaître

Qu’ébauches, qu’embryons d’existences à naître:
Trilobites hideux, parents des Crustacées,
Zoophytes, Poissons, à grand’peine classés,
Encrines, entr’ouvrant ou fermant leurs calices,
Et font des collecteurs les plus chères délices!
Cotty, 1876: 2
6 “Du Proboscidien la forme colossale / Se voit à Pétersbourg, dans une vaste sale / Du
Muséum …” / “A Proboscidean’s colossal form / Can be seen at Petersburg, in a vast hall /
Of the Museum …” (Cotty, 1876: 9); “Un fort Rhinocéros […]; Il orne aussi le beau Cabinet
moscovite …” / “A mighty Rhinoceros […]; It also graces the fine muscovite Cabinet …” (Cotty,
1876: 10); “—Hélas! merveilles exposées / Avec soin, aujourd’hui, dans nos riches musées!..” /
“—Alas! marvels exhibited / With care, today, in our rich museums!..” (Cotty, 1876: 12)
7 The catalogue affords a view of organisms, as though springing forth ex nihilo, unrelatedly;
but contrary to the list, it gives a definition of its items (though a summary one), as Robert
Belknap states in: “The literary list” (Belknap, 2004: 1–35). Hence, the catalogue features a
manner of functioning comparable to the purely paratactical organization of a dictionary or
encyclopaedia.
286 Ringuedé
Where one does not see, alas! appear in the Seas

But outlines, but embryos of existences, yet to be born:
Hideous Trilobites, parents of the Crustaceans,
Zoophytes, Fish, painstakingly classed,
Crinoids, cracking open or shutting their calyces,
And forming the collectors’ most treasured delights!
Cotty evokes these fossilized objects like a collection, the kinship of which is
mainly aesthetic. They are, in a manner of speaking, assembled on a shelf. This
organization in the form of an exhibition is fundamentally juxtapositional. The
botanical list, which follows immediately afterwards, derives from the same
logic (these plants “Ont déjà mille attraits pour leurs proportions” / “Yet have a
thousand charms for their proportions”). The parataxis is moreover especially
highlighted by their versified arrangement. In the case of fossilized animals,
each object is named at the beginning of the verse, and hence tantamount to
a change of topic; the versified arrangement in a succession of typographically
distinct lines is most apt to suggest this progression by ellipsis. In the blank
inevitably following the verse, events occur, which lead to a succession of het-
eroclite creatures.
Juxtaposition likewise re-emerges in the model of the procession, the opera-
tive mode of which is evoked outright by Cotty:
[…] Ici nous allons voir

Défiler, devant nous, comme dans un miroir,
Auprès de vrais Palmiers, à la tige élégante,
D’autres monstres, pour nous, de forme extravagante:
Cotty, 1876: 4
[…] Here we will see

File in procession, before us, as in a mirror,
Beside true Palmae, with their elegant stalks,
Other monsters, to our eye, of extravagant form:
And indeed, the presentation of these animals is associated with the practice
of exhibition, as a comment concerning the eggs of the Aepyornis demon-
strates: “[…] qui, sans peur dans le faux de tomber, / Pour la taille, ont pour-
tant le droit de s’exhiber!” / “[…] which, without fear of falling into error, / For
their size, yet deserve to be exhibited!” (Cotty, 1876: 10) This last verb, taken in
the sense it held in the 19th century, “présenter au public” / “to present to the
public”, is a quasi-synonym of exposer (display, exhibit). In the 19th century,
“exhibition” certainly denotes exhibition, but also signifies the spectacle, in

which objects (beings or animals) with remarkable characteristics are dis-
played—and indeed, in this case, the eggs of the Aepyornis warrant (“ont
pourtant le droit”) exhibition, due to their exceptional size. Grammatically,
we observe a multiplication of adverbs designating pure successivity or accu-
mulation (“Faut-il dépeindre aussi le vif Téléosaure” / “Ought we also to depict
the lively Teleosaurus”, “L’Hyléosaure enfin” / “The Hylaeosaurus, finally”; Cotty,
1876: 4) and animals may also be placed in the position of subject controlling
verbs of motion (“Puis vient un Crocodile, appelé Nothosaure” / “Next comes a
Crocodile, known as Nothosaurus”; Cotty, 1876: 3), and in the quaternary age,
“Ici donc, vient l’Oiseau, de grandeur gigantesque” / “Here then comes the Bird,
of gigantic size” (Cotty, 1876: 10), giving off the veritable impression of watch-
ing them file by in procession.
Finally, the parade of animals is metaphorized by the motif of the “ava-
lanche” (“de tant d’Etres divers” / “of so many different Beings”; Cotty, 1876: 5).
Accordingly, the succession of species is plainly accidental, circumstantial,
concomitant, but never genealogical.
2.2 Irruption, Novelty, Creation ex Nihilo
Après un temps fort long de siècles révolus,

L’aspect se modifie … Alors, on ne voit plus
Que Reptiles hargneux, puissants Maîtres du Globe,
Dont plus d’un, dans la brume, aux savants se dérobe …
C’est alors que surgit du sol, en abandon,
Un monstre étrange et lourd, le Labyrinthodon;
Cotty, 1876: 3
After quite a long time of bygone centuries,

Its appearance alters … Then no longer is anything to be seen,
But snarling Reptiles, powerful Masters of the Globe,
Of which more than one, in the mists, conceals itself from scholars …
It is then, that there surges from the deserted ground,
A strange and weighty monster, the Labyrinthodont;
The “reptiles hargneux” / “snarling reptiles” appear in the gaping blank opened
by the aposiopesis. There is hence a succession, a modification of “aspect” /
“appearance”, which provokes the appearance of an animal species, but the
nature of this sequence is not explicit, containing an evident ellipsis: accord-
ingly, the Labyrinthodont “surgit du sol” / “surges from the ground”. It springs
288 Ringuedé
to view like a jack-in-the-box, emerging as suddenly as the palaeontological

discovery.
In this stanza (as in the remainder of the text, for that matter), each in-
troduction of a new animal is announced by a typographical signal: a dash at
the beginning of the verse. As a discursive decoupling device, the dash marks
that we are passing to another voice: it is a graphical sign that appears to pro-
vide quite an apt transposition of paratactic accumulation, since the change
of voice permits detachment from the previous utterance. It is as though the
animals were following each other, without impacting their successors by their
existence or the description given thereof. As in a carnival procession, where as
soon as one wagon has gone by, the following one succeeds it unrelatedly, and
draws the entire attention of the spectators onto itself alone, the last animal
in this stanza compels us to “détourner nos yeux de tant d’horribles Bêtes” /
“avert our eyes from so many horrible Beasts” (Cotty, 1876: 4) The first bird,
the Archaeopteryx, is seemingly born ex abrupto, though a connection could
have been drawn to the other winged creatures, mentioned just previously. It
is called “the first”, as though its appearance were a creation ex nihilo and as
though its species were not the product of the evolution of any other. Indeed,
etymologically, its name makes it out to be the oldest bird, and its creation de-
riving from spontaneous generation accounts for the epithet “Phoenix-Bird”: it
is that which is born from the ashes, that is to say, out of nothing.
These appearances, in the form of surges into being, justify a character-
ization of life forms as new creatures. The trait of novelty is the indubitable
sign of a successivity without logical links. Biological catastrophism is, here,
clearly evident, insofar as, following cataclysms, nature seems to be reborn in
a perfectly altered state: “La Nature nouvelle, aux sols venant d’éclore” / “New
Nature, with freshly blooming grounds” (Cotty, 1876: 7). The same is true of the
animals:
—Des Animaux nouveaux, d’un type hétérogène,

Caractérisent bien la Coupe pliocène:
Cotty, 1876: 7
—New Animals, of heterogeneous types,

Suitably characterize the Pliocene Sector:
A l’ombre des forêts, des Animaux nouveaux:

Cotty, 1876: 9
In the shadow of the forests, new Animals:

The repetition of the adjective “new”, at key metrical positions (at the cae-
sura or in the rhyme) is a clear indicator that the sequence of beings is marked
by discontinuity. And indeed, succession is clearly the mode of evolution ac-
cording to Cotty. He employs the corresponding verb in the second section of
the tertiary age: “Au Reptile succède en grand le Mammifère;” / “The Reptile is
succeeded by the giant Mammal;” (Cotty, 1876: 6). Giant reptiles are, as it were,
merely supplanted by giant mammals. The deinotherium, for instance, yields
its place to the mastodon, by virtue of an aposiopesis, a typographical dash,
and a direct interrogative, which stage the surprising emergence of this enor-
mous animal (“—Quel est ce Proboscide, aux abords de l’Ohio?” / “—Which is
this Proboscidean, on the banks of the Ohio River?”; Cotty, 1876: 6). For surprise
is the natural reaction in the face of the paratactic emergence of new animals.
It is highlighted by discursive decoupling, and by interrogative and exclama-
tory modes:
—Mais, qu’entends-je? que vois-je, au sein des vastes mers?

De terribles combats à mes yeux sont offerts:
Cotty, 1876: 3
—But what do I hear? what do I see, in the bosom of the vast seas?
Terrible battles are offered to my eyes:
—Mais que vois-je?… un colosse impossible, équivoque,

Velu, lourd et massif, d’un aspect fort baroque,
Sa taille presque atteint celle d’un Elephant …
Cotty, 1876: 7
—But what do I see?… an impossible, equivocal colossus,

Shaggy, heavy and massive, of positively baroque appearance,
Its height almost matching that of an Elephant …
If there is a surprise effect in this, this is because logic is absent from the bio-
logical sequence; its connections are unknown, even inexistent. Surprise is en-
acted by the motifs of novelty, of sudden irruption and of creation ex nihilo, as
so many signs providing a poetic illustration of catastrophism.8
8 Furthermore, Cotty reproduces Cuvier’s argument of animals conserved intact in ice, in

order to support his theory of major and sudden upheavals.
290 Ringuedé
3 The Meaning of History: Teleological Successivity
Nonetheless, the poem is punctuated by signs revealing that the paratactic bio-
logical succession derives from a historical theory: its discontinuity is shown to
serve a determined meaning of history.
3.1 “Sketched” “Tableaux”

The poet gives another explanatory lead concerning this appearance of rup-
tured succession:
Car je désire, en hâte, à grands traits retracer

Cette Faune d’alors, qu’il ne faut qu’esquisser.
Cotty, 1876: 5
Because I wish, with haste, in broad strokes to retrace

That Fauna of yore, that must only be sketched.
And indeed, the poem plainly mobilizes a poetics of description by “sketches”.

Each animal is rapidly outlined “in broad strokes”, then quickly passes into
oblivion. In fact, the opening of the poem presents a self-portrait of the poet,
who treats his subject “lightly” and “without preliminary study”.
There is, however, a reason for this cursory treatment:
[…] on ne voit, hélas! dans les Mers, apparaître

Qu’ébauches, qu’embryons d’existences à naître:
Cotty, 1876: 2
[…] one does not see, alas! appear in the Sea

But outlines, but embryos of existences, yet to be born:
It is not, in fact, a matter of giving a “sketched” description of finished and

complete beings, but rather to show the animals as they really are: as simple
rough drafts. Now, rough drafts have a preparatory character. Hence, a prede-
termined plan exists: the order of the revolutions of the globe is that of the
“filière” / “[production] channel”:
Mais il nous faut encor des Révolutions

Du Globe, élucider d’autres solutions:
—Essayons de dépeindre, en suivant sa filière,
Aux régions du nord, l’Epoque glaciaire […]!..
Cotty, 1876: 12
But we require further Revolutions

Of the Globe, to elucidate other solutions:
—Let us endeavour to depict, in following its channel,
In the regions of the North, the Ice Age […]!..
The filière is a succession of distinct stages, which must be completed, before

obtaining a result: the word alone gives a good indication of the teleological
character of the succession of revolutions, according to Cotty. The purpose of
this work is not unveiled before the end of the text.
3.2 From “Sketch” to Culminating “Oeuvre”

The quaternary age begins in the following manner:
Sur le sol moins ancien des Terrains quaternaires,

Nous dirigeons enfin nos pas imaginaires;
Cotty, 1876: 9
Onto the least ancient ground of the quaternary Terrains,

We direct at last our imaginary path;
The adverb “enfin” clearly marks that we are dealing with an enumeration, but
above all, it reveals this evolution in successive steps to be oriented towards
one era in particular: that in which man will appear (“Cette Epoque où le Roi de
la Création / Sur la Terre fera son apparition; …” / “That Age in which the King
of Creation / On Earth will make his appearance; …”). After its “sketch[es]”, the
time of the “culminating oeuvre” has come. And indeed, this age will be long,
in order to prepare his coming:
Bien des siècles encor pourtant s’écouleront,

Avant que l’Homme, ceint d’un diadème au front,
Prenne, majestueux, le sceptre de ce Monde! …
Avant de l’y créer, ô sagesse profonde!
DIEU veut de ce séjour adoucir les rigueurs,
L’expurger des Tyrans des Temps antérieurs,
De ces Etres à fuir, dont les Faunes éteintes
Portent fidèlement les terribles empreintes!
Cotty, 1876: 9
A number of centuries, yet, however, will elapse,

Before Man, a diadem encircling his brow,
Majestically seizes the scepter of this World!…
292 Ringuedé
Before creating him, here, o profound wisdom!

GOD intends to temper the rigors of this abode,
To purge it of the Tyrants of anterior Times,
Of those Beings to fly from, of which the extinct Fauna
Faithfully carries the terrible imprints!
There is no kinship between the abovementioned terrible beings and man, but
merely a simple successivity arranged by the providential plan. Man also thus
appears in accordance with the motif of sudden “hatching”, i.e. of creation ex
nihilo, or, to put it in scientific terms, of spontaneous generation. The key to
these verses is provided by the verb “créer” / “to create”: God, the “legitimate
King of Creation”, prepares the earth, purges it of its antediluvian monsters,
before creating man in a pacified world.
4 Conclusion: Continuous Creation
The notion of evolution by replacement, according to a teleological plan, is

presumably reprised from Figuier:
Il venait [le genre humain] d’où était venu le premier brin d’herbe qui
apparut sur les roches brûlantes des mers siluriennes; d’où étaient venues
les différentes races d’animaux qui se sont remplacées sur le globe, en
s’élevant sans cesse dans l’échelle de la perfection. Il émanait de la volon-
té suprême de l’Auteur des mondes qui composent l’univers.
Figuier, 1866: 421
It came [the human race] whence the first blade of grass had come, ap-
pearing on the scorching rocks of the Silurian seas; whence had come the
various animal species, which replaced each other on the globe, cease-
lessly ascending the scale of perfection. It emanated from the supreme
will of the Author of the worlds which compose the universe.
Antediluvian animals are hence considered preparatory studies for human be-
ings. This notion at once contains catastrophism (succession without evolu-
tion, à la Cuvier) and, at the same time, a sort of teleological evolution (which
marks the reception of Cuvier by vulgarizers of the period). In any case, a po-
etics of the sketch accounts for descriptions in the form of discrete tableaux,
which allow similarities to be recognized, but do not explain them through

genealogy: they are deemed advances by trial and error, the fruits of a kind of
continuous creation.
Bibliography
Belknap, Robert, 2004. The List. New Haven, Yale University Press.
Cotty, Ernest, 1871. Description du Musée d’histoire naturelle et du Jardin botanique et
zoologique de Tours. Amiens, Lenoel-Herouart.
Cotty, Ernest, 1876. Antediluviana, poème géologique. Bourg, Comte-Milliet.
Delille, Jacques, 1805. L’Homme des champs ou Les Géorgiques françaises. Paris, new ed.
at Levrault, Schoell and Co.
Delille, Jacques, 1809. Les Trois Règnes de la nature. Paris, Giguet and Michaud.
Emerich, Edmond, 1860. La Création du globe terrestre, poème géologique. Strasbourg,
Veuve Berger-Levrault.
Figuier, Louis, 1866. La Terre avant le déluge. Paris, Hachette.
Richepin, Jean, 1980, original 1866. La Mer. Paris, Gallimard, Les maritimes.
Séginger, Gisèle, 2014. “La réécriture de Cuvier: la création du monde entre savoir et
féérie.” Revue Flaubert, no 13, Les dossiers documentaires de Bouvard et Pécuchet,
l’édition numérique du creuset flaubertien, Actes du colloque de Lyon des 7–9 mars
2012, edited by Stéphanie Dord-Crouslé. URL: https://hal-upec-upem.archives-ou-
vertes.fr/hal-01304903/document
Société linnéenne du Nord de la France, 1866. Mémoires de la Société Linnéenne du Nord
de la France, année 1866. Amiens, Lemer Aîné.
End of the World, End of Time: the Theory of
Evolution and Its Fate in the Novel of Anticipation
Claire Barel-Moisan
Abstract
At the turn of the 19th century, writers such as Camille Flammarion or Rosny aîné use
the novel to draw a picture of the future of mankind: Earth will have reached the end of
its natural cycle, due to the cooling of the sun, the collision with a comet (Flammarion,
La Fin du monde, 1894), or because of the changes in the ecosystem induced by human
activity (Rosny aîné, La Mort de la Terre, 1910). For these authors, futuristic novels are
a means to transpose scientific theories in the field of fiction. The genre of the novel
thus allows them to explore most remote times and to render theoretical abstractions
incarnate. Evolutionary theory, for example, is made visible in Rosny’s novel by the
description of a desert universe where mankind is supplanted by a new species. This
paper aims to address both the poetic and ideological issues brought to light by this
use of futuristic novels. It also studies the conception of time implied in these novels
depicting the end of the world.
In the second half of the 19th century, a series of factors, among which the
theory of evolution played a decisive role, brought about a profound upheaval
in contemporary conceptions of time and natural history.1 As the turn of the
century approached, there emerged a particular fascination with the issue of
the end of time and the disappearance of humanity. The turbulent reception of
evolutionary thinking, combined with the great influence of Schopenhauer’s
philosophy at the end of the century, gave rise to a climate of crisis and turmoil
around temporal reference points, which Jean-Marie Guyau analysed in 1887
in his essay L’Irréligion de l’avenir. Étude sociologique (The Non-religion of the
Future. Sociological study):
1 There is no exact equivalent for the French expression ‘roman d’anticipation’ in English.
Another possible translation would be ‘futuristic novel’. The phrase ‘anticipation novel’ ap-
plies specifically to French publications starting with Jules Verne and ending in the 1950s,
when science fiction developed in France, under the influence of British and American
fiction.
End of the World, End of Time 295
La seconde cause du pessimisme contemporain est le progrès rapide de

la science positive avec les révélations que, coup sur coup, elle nous a
apportées sur la nature. […] Nous ne sommes pas encore faits aux ho-
rizons infinis du monde nouveau qui nous est révélé et nous nous trou-
vons perdus: de là la mélancolie de l’époque […] sérieuse et réfléchie avec
Leopardi, Schopenhauer et les pessimistes d’aujourd’hui.
1887: 404
The second cause of contemporary pessimism is the rapid progress of

positive science with the successive revelations that it has brought us
about nature. […] We are not yet accustomed to the infinite horizons
of the new world that has been revealed to us and we feel lost: hence
the melancholy of the times […] serious and thoughtful with Leopardi,
Schopenhauer and today’s pessimists.
In this collection, Nicolas Wanlin investigates how literature appropriated

large temporal scales by examining the genre of evolutionary epics. The analy-
sis offered here involves the other end of the temporal scale—not the genesis
and development of Earth’s natural history, but its culmination. Focusing spe-
cifically on the genre of the novel of anticipation, my intention is to examine
how the particular resources of fiction are used at the turn of the century to
flesh out thoughts about the end of time.
An interval of about 20 years separates the two examples under examina-
tion here. The first is a long novel by Camille Flammarion entitled La Fin du
monde (The End of the World), which was partially published in 1893 in the pe-
riodical La Revue illustrée,2 then in La Science illustrée,3 and finally reprinted in
full the following year by Ernest Flammarion (Flammarion, 1894). The second
is a shorter work by Rosny aîné, which he himself described as a ‘little novel’
(1912: II):4 La Mort de la Terre (The Death of the Earth). It was published in 1910
2 Flammarion, Camille, 1 July 1893–15 October 1893. “La Fin du monde.” La Revue illustrée, n°s.
182 to 189.
3 This publication in La Science illustrée includes the first part of the novel, entitled “Au
vingt-cinquième siècle. Les théories” (“In the 25th century. Theories”), no 314 to 339, from
2 December 1893 to 26 May 1894.
4 “La Mort de la Terre est un petit roman que j’aurais pu sans peine délayer en trois cents pages.
Je ne l’ai pas fait, parce que, à mon avis, le merveilleux scientifique est un genre de littérature
qui exige la concision : ceux qui le pratiquent sont trop souvent enclins au bavardage.” / “La
Mort de la Terre is a little novel that I could easily have padded out to three hundred pages. I
didn’t do it because, in my opinion, the ‘scientific marvellous’ is a genre that requires concise-
ness: those who practice it are too often prone to chatter.” (Rosny aîné, 1912: II–III)
296 Barel-Moisan
as an illustrated serial novel in the weekly Les Annales politiques et littéraires,5

then as a book by Plon-Nourrit6 in 1912, and it went on to be reprinted with new
illustrations in 1924 by G. Crès.7 The titles and themes of the two works appear
close, but their aesthetic and ideological choices are profoundly divergent. An
important initial presupposition, however, unites them. Both works are based
on the principle of a secular understanding of the end of time, independent
of any religious reference. There is no divine judgement at the two ends of the
world presented by Flammarion and Rosny. For that matter, the term ‘apoca-
lypse’, with its strong overtones, does not appear in their texts. Admittedly, a
symbolic illustration does appear on the second page of La Fin du monde: it
shows the angel of judgement holding his trumpet and waiting for the divine
order to sound the final judgement. But if the angel is at the opening of the
book, it is precisely to dispel this type of eschatological reading from the very
outset. In fact, the narrator explicitly rejects a theological approach, linking his
refusal to the evolution of the scientific context:
l’aspect mystique et légendaire qui frappait l’imagination de nos pères

et dont on retrouve encore tant de curieuses représentations aux por-
tails de nos belles cathédrales comme dans les sculptures et les peintures
inspirées par la tradition chrétienne, cet aspect théologique du dernier
jour de la Terre a fait place à l’étude scientifique de la durée du système
solaire auquel notre patrie appartient. La conception géocentrique et an-
thropocentrique de l’univers qui considérait l’homme comme le centre
et le but de la création, s’est graduellement transformée et a fini par
disparaître.
Flammarion, 1894: 198
the mystical and legendary dimension that struck the imagination of

our fathers—and whose curious representations can still be found in
5 This first complete edition of the novel was published without illustrations, and was accom-
panied by several tales. J.-H. Rosny aîné, La Mort de la Terre. Roman suivi de contes, Plon-
Nourrit, 1912.
6 J.-H. Rosny aîné, La Mort de la Terre, Les Annales politiques et littéraires. This is a partial ver-
sion of the novel, published from issue no. 1405 to 1411, from 29 May 1910 to 10 July 1910.
7 The text appeared in 1924 in a collection, along with other short works by Rosny, under the
title Les Autres Vies et les autres mondes. Paris, Georges Crès and Co., collection “Les maîtres
du livre”. Subsequent editions of La Mort de la Terre always included short stories by Rosny
aîné. Only one edition (put out by Flammarion, GF, in 1997) published the novel alone in the
collection “Étonnants classiques”.
the portals of our beautiful cathedrals as well as in the sculptures and

paintings inspired by Christian tradition—this theological dimension of
the last day of the Earth has given way to the scientific study of the du-
ration of the solar system to which our homeland belongs. The geocen-
tric and anthropocentric conception of the universe, which considered
man as the centre and goal of creation, gradually changed and eventually
disappeared.
Thus, in the case of Flammarion and Rosny aîné, the key issues in these novels
are not religious, but rather scientific and philosophical.
A first choice that the authors make is inextricably scientific and poetic:
they blend modes of speech in the novel, hence the frequent tension between
narration and didactism, which also appears in the illustrations accompanying
the texts. A second major issue in these works is the way they elaborate a spe-
cial conception of time, which is conveyed both by the philosophical discourse
of the narrator and by the very structuring of the narrative.
1 The Rhetoric of Evolution: Dramatization and Hybridization of

Discourses
When he gathered together his prolific work for an edition to be released by

his brother’s publishing house, Camille Flammarion divided it into four cat-
egories: ‘Philosophical Works’, ‘Practical Astronomy’, ‘Teachings in Astronomy’,
‘General Science’ and ‘Various Literary Works’. Yet, his four great novels, La Fin
du monde, Lumen, Uranie and Stella, significantly did not appear among the
‘various literary works’, but in the ‘philosophical works’. Indeed, Flammarion
was clearly aware of the generic hybridity of these novels, which combine nar-
ration and long digressive pauses, allowing the inclusion of scientific or philo-
sophical discourse.
In the case of The End of the world, the difficulty is increased as a result of
the very subject of the narrative. How, in a novel, is one to deal with a timespan
of millions of years? Literary fiction presupposes the construction of a system
of characters in which the reader may take an interest. How can the novel en-
sure this identifiable and stable human focal point when it aims to describe a
period which, seen from the vantage point of the reader, seems infinite?
Flammarion’s solution is revealed in the way he structured his novel. The
work is indeed divided into two parts, one taking place in the 25th century and
the other at the end of time, ten million years later. If the first part is entitled
298 Barel-Moisan
‘In the 25th century. Theories’, it is because the narrative, as such, is extremely
reduced in this part, limited to the first and last chapters. A comet is set to
cross the path of the Earth, and this seems to announce the end of the world.
Chapters II, III, IV, IV, V and VI then present a series of speeches in which sev-
eral scientists analyse the multiple catastrophic situations that may be await-
ing the planet, both in the short and long term: incineration, asphyxiation,
submersion, widespread drought, glaciation, etc. Each of these possible out-
comes is then compared with the various versions, from throughout the ages,
of how time will end. The impact of the comet colliding with the Earth, which
is described in the last chapter of this part of the book, in the end produces
only a limited cataclysm and humanity thus continues its journey through
history.
The first four chapters of the second part also escape the traditional frame-
work of the form of the novels: they do not present characters, but a summary
of the Earth’s evolution over ten million years. Unlike in the first part of the
book, the discourse is no longer in the voice of different scientific figures,
each introducing the knowledge pertaining to their specialist field. The point
of view is now that of an omniscient narrator who argues, describes, praises
or laments, and alternates pages of descriptive lyricism with passages of as-
tronomical calculations, judgements on wars or perspectives on religion.
Actually, it is only in the last three chapters that the main characters of the
novel appear for the first time: Omégar, the last man, and Eva, the last woman.
Significantly, the epilogue marks a return to a more discursive mode, after this
brief incursion of the work into a more classically novelistic frame. It reca-
pitulates the arguments that have been put forward in the many discourses
that form the core of the novel, thereby delivering the author’s ultimate
views on time. This argumentative and didactic posture is fully acknowl-
edged by Flammarion, since the epilogue is subtitled ‘Final philosophical
Dissertation’.
The dramatic tension between narrative and didactic strands—as evi-
denced by the complex structure of Flammarion’s work—, and this alternation
between radically different modes of enunciation is not unique to The End of
the world. It is effectively a constitutive part of Flammarion’s aesthetics and of
the strategies of persuasion that he makes use of in all his works. The juxtapo-
sition of seemingly incompatible registers is one of the resources commonly
used by Flammarion, as a popularizer, to build a rapport with his readers. The
idea is to appeal to readers’ emotions and imagination before delivering the
scientific explanation of the observed phenomenon. Thus, we find an elegiac
discourse on the themes of the book of Ecclesiastes, designed to make the read-
er experience dismay and dread before the passage of time.
Des innombrables corps humains qui ont vécu, il ne reste rien. Tout est
retourné aux éléments pour reformer d’autres êtres. Le ciel sourit, le
champ fleurit: la Mort moissonne. À mesure que les jours passent, ce qui
a existé pendant ces jours tombe dans le néant. Travaux, plaisirs, cha-
grins, bonheurs: le temps a fui et le jour passé n’existe plus. Les gloires
d’autrefois ont fait place à des ruines. Dans le gouffre de l’éternité, ce qui
fut a disparu. Le monde visible s’évanouit à chaque moment. Le seul réel,
le seul durable, c’est l’invisible.
1894: 302
Of the countless human bodies that have lived, nothing remains.

Everything has returned to its elements in order to re-form other be-
ings. The sky smiles, the field blossoms; Death reaps. As the days go by,
what existed during those days falls into naught. Works, pleasures, sor-
rows, happiness: time has fled and the day, once past, exists no more.
The glories of yesteryear have given way to ruins. That which was has
disappeared into the pit of eternity. With every passing moment,
the visible world vanishes. The only thing that is real, that lasts, is the
invisible.
The dramatic effect produced in this passage is meant to make the reader even
more sensitive to the seemingly infinitesimal cause of the cooling of the Earth
and the progressive death of mankind: hence, there follows—conspicuously
out of step with the elegiac discourse of the preceding Ubi sunt—a detailed
scientific demonstration of the percentage of water vapour compared to the
proportions of oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide and ammonia in the atmo-
sphere (Flammarion, 1894: 303–304).
The poetic choices Flammarion makes in order to engage his reader in a
meditation on the end times in The End of the World do not differ radically from
those he adopts in his works of popularization, such as the famous Astronomie
populaire (Popular Astronomy), one of the best-sellers of nineteenth-century
popularization. In both cases, the narrator switches back-and-forth between
a stripped-down, scientific style and a metaphorical style to describe human
evolution:
Notre planète arriva ainsi à former une seule patrie, illuminée d’une
éclatante lumière intellectuelle, voguant dans ses hautes destinées
comme un chœur qui se déroule à travers les accords d’une immense
harmonie.
1894: 291
300 Barel-Moisan
Our planet thus managed to form a single homeland, illuminated by

a brilliant intellectual light, navigating its elevated destiny like a choir
working its way through the chords of an immense harmony.8
Several examples—both in the text and in the illustrations—show that it is

sometimes the same engravings or the same lines of development that are re-
peated, thus making their way from the scientific work to the novel. These are
sometimes scientific illustrations, such as a diagram showing the transforma-
tions observed in the head of the 1861 comet (1894: 39; 1880: 640), or a plate
depicting the 1811 comet in the form of a diagram (1880: 608; 1894: 36). Other
illustrations show the same elements with minute variations; for example, to
illustrate the effects of the planet’s cooling, Flammarion shows the image of
the skeletons of the last couple caught in the ice. The legend of The End of the
World states soberly “It will be the end” (1894: 120), while Popular Astronomy
provides a commentary of a striking image: “Surprised by the cold, the last
human family has been touched by the finger of Death, and soon its bones will
be buried under the shroud of eternal ice” (1880: 101). These illustrations play
a strategic role in the didactic economy of the two books, since the aim is to
make the reader perceive the passage of an infinite time, in a more emotion-
ally immediate way than through language. The same is true when the illustra-
tor uses the romantic figure of the traveller, a melancholic witness meditating
before the ruins of Paris.9 Both texts—the novel and the volume of scientific
popularization—present the outcome of the same developments on the end
of time, the sole difference being that they appear as a hypothetical future in
Popular Astronomy: “In the future, the historian of nature may write: here lies
the whole human population of a world that once lived! […] Here lie all the
beauties of the earth. But no gravestone will mark the place where the poor
planet shall have breathed its last” (1880: 103), while The End of the World re-
counts these events in the past tense, as things that have already occurred:
Toute l’histoire humaine s’était évanouie comme une vaine fumée. Et

dans l’abîme céleste pas une pierre mortuaire, pas un souvenir ne marqua
la place où notre pauvre planète avait rendu son dernier soupir.
1894: 361
8 Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent emphasizes how deliberate Flammarion was in his use

of rhetoric: “In order to impress upon his readers the mobility and immensity of the uni-
verse, Flammarion favours two rhetorical resources in particular: metaphor and hyperbole.”
(1989: 98)
9 It is thus possible to superimpose the two illustrations of the travellers, whose silhouettes
stand out on the banks of the Seine, facing the Parisian monuments destroyed by time, in
Flammarion, 1880: 49 and in Flammarion, 1894: 265.
The whole of human history had vanished like futile smoke. And in the
celestial abyss not a single gravestone, not a single memory marked the
place where our poor planet had breathed its last.
Flammarion’s approach in his writing is therefore apparently the same, wheth-

er it be his work as a novelist or his publications as a popularizer: we come
across identical textual and iconographic elements in Flammarion’s succes-
sive works, whatever their enunciative register. The coexistence of very var-
ied writing modes within Popular Astronomy as well as The End of the World
thus smooths out the differences between the texts in terms of their genre. But
the clashes of register and tone are more accentuated in The End of the World,
greatly complicating the ideological stakes of the work.
A romantic aesthetic of fascination for ruins10 and an obsession with the
passage of time are expressed through epigraphs, such as those taken from
Lamartine’s Méditations, and especially the famous poem “Le Lac” (“The Lake”):
Éternité, néant, passé, sombres abîmes,

Que faites-vous des jours que vous engloutissez
Parlez: nous rendrez-vous ces extases sublimes
Que vous nous ravissez?
Epigraph to Chapter IV, ‘Vanitas vanitatum’; Flammarion, 1894: 299
Eternity, nothingness, past, dark abysses,

What do you do with the days that you swallow down
Speak: will you return to us these sublime ecstasies
That you steal from us?
This tone is in direct conflict with the positivist affirmation of the law of prog-
ress, regularly repeated throughout the work:
le Progrès, loi suprême, avait conquis le monde malgré les freins, les
obstacles, les enrayements que les hommes ne cessent d’opposer à sa
marche; et l’humanité avait lentement grandi dans la science et dans le
bonheur.
Flammarion, 1894: 230
10 ‘A poetics of ruins is consubstantial with the study of astronomy as conceived by
Flammarion’, emphasizes Danielle Chaperon (1997: 100).
302 Barel-Moisan
The supreme law—Progress—had conquered the world despite the im-

pediments, obstacles, and restraints that mankind had continuously put
in its way; and humanity had slowly grown in science and happiness.
The narrative and ideological project of The End of the World thus appears
strongly contradictory. On the one hand, dramatic effects underline the van-
ity of all human experience in the face of death, as evidenced by numerous
allegorical illustrations,11 accompanied by statements from the narrator such
as: “Tout devait disparaître, et la Mort devait rester la dernière souveraine
du monde.” / “Everything was bound to disappear, and Death would remain
the final sovereign of the world.” (Flammarion, 1894: 300) On the other hand,
Flammarion concludes his novel with the ultimate proclamation of the eter-
nity of all things, addressed by the shade of Pharaoh Cheops to the last human
couple:
Vous ne mourrez point. Personne n’est jamais mort. Le temps tombe dans
l’éternité. L’éternité demeure. […] Les mondes se succèdent dans le temps
comme dans l’espace. Tout est éternel.
1894: 356
You shall not die. Nobody has ever died. Time falls into eternity. Eternity
abides. […] Worlds come one after another, in time as in space. Everything
is eternal.
In contrast to these numerous aesthetic and ideological discordances, which

are products of the hybridity of texts and types of discourse in Flammarion’s
work, Rosny l’aîné’s novel La Mort de la Terre (The Death of the Earth) is remark-
able by its unity of tone and its simplicity. In Flammarion’s work, the narrator
is fundamentally unstable, sometimes addressing directly the issues of scien-
tific concern in the 1890s, while at other times speaking as if he belonged to
a universe ten million years later. Conversely, the narrator of The Death of the
Earth is clearly defined as a member of the community of last humans, using
the pronoun ‘we’ to refer to his city and delivering to the reader only the partial
information that has reached him about the history of mankind’s evolution
since its origins:
11 See, for example, the representation of Death as a gigantic reaper dressed in a vast shroud,
looming over the whole planet (Flammarion, 1894: 321).
On rapporte que, au début de ces révolutions sidérales, la population hu-

maine avait atteint le chiffre de vingt-trois milliards d’individus.
Rosny l’aîné, 1997: 42 [emphasis added]
It is reported that, at the beginning of these cosmic revolutions, the

human population had reached twenty-three billion in number.
The narrator of The End of the World revels in tonal breaks, the spectacular, and
the use of hyperbole for dramatic effects. The narrator of The Death of the Earth
offers instead a plangent, nostalgic monody in a linear and stripped-down
work of fiction that refuses the picturesque. The illustrations of the novel in
Les Annales politiques et littéraires (Political and Literary Annals) reflect this
aesthetics of concentration, which is focused on a few characters and eschews
the spectacular. The futuristic context is cancelled out by the tightly framed
characters, emphasizing an individual and family tragedy.
Rosny’s project is not one of popularization, and the narrator therefore re-
frains from any openly didactic commentary. The evolutionary theories under-
lying fiction are therefore not discussed in their own right. They simply emerge
here or there, either as allusions, or as part of the dialogue, via the use of specif-
ic terms. In the course of the novel, terms such as “fit” (1997: 28), “evolutionary
leap” (1997: 47) and “selection” (1997: 47) thus appear. The society of the final
human beings, living in a few oases somewhere on a planet that has become
uninhabitable, practices Malthusianism and eugenics, as revealed by scattered
remarks, none of which gives rise to commentary or further development by
the narrator: “although marriage was a privilege reserved for the fittest” (1997:
28), “their authority was great because they had produced a flawless progeny”
(1997: 35). Rosny’s choice is thus that of a narrator whose tone is less didactic
than it is lyrical, evoking nostalgia for the distant times when the planet, still
young, was overflowing with vital energy. Rather than explain or theorize, the
author wishes to make the reader experience the effects of evolution on this
last human community.
2 The Experience of Time
A major challenge of these novels of anticipation is the need to deal with ex-
tremely long periods of time. How are the authors to make the reader experi-
ence periods that are beyond comprehension? In The End of the World, as in
his other novels, Flammarion strives to denature time. The aim is to convince
304 Barel-Moisan
the reader of the relativity of time and its inherently illusory character. This is
what Urania, the muse of astronomy, reveals by taking her disciple so far from
the Earth that the time it takes for the light rays to reach the observer allows
him to contemplate Gaul in the time of Caesar. Thus, the reader discovers that
because of the speed of light, contemplating the sky does not give access to
the present, but to a more or less distant past depending on the distance of the
stars in question. Different temporal dimensions are therefore co-present in
the same space.12 As Uranie explains to the young astronomer:
L’histoire de tous les mondes voyage actuellement dans l’espace sans

jamais disparaître absolument, et […] tous les événements passés sont
présents.
Flammarion, 1891: 60–61
The history of all worlds is currently travelling through space without

ever disappearing completely, and […] all past events are present.
Time, then, becomes a paradoxical and elusive experience. The defamiliariza-

tion of the reader’s intimate knowledge of time is an experience comparable
to the transformation of scales of distance in space, which is a characteristic
feature of astronomy.
This thought experiment gives us a glimpse of the complexity of the way
temporality is elaborated in the anticipation novel. Each text builds a complex,
sometimes contradictory, temporal model of time, and one should therefore
be careful not to caricature these conceptions by reducing them to a dichoto-
my between, on the one hand, a fixist, spiritualist and teleological conception
based on the principle of providence and, on the other, an evolutionary, mate-
rialistic, liberal conception, which presupposes struggle and selection.
To understand the modelling of time and history in Rosny’s and Flammarion’s
fiction, we can focus on two decisive criteria: the role attributed to chance and
the concept of progress.
Throughout his career, in each of his books, Flammarion affirmed his belief
in Progress. Here is the positivist credo with which Popular Astronomy ends:
le soleil se lève sur l’humanité éveillée; tenons-nous tous debout devant

le ciel et n’ayons désormais qu’une seule et même devise: LE PROGRÈS
PAR LA SCIENCE!
1880: 836
12 I have analysed the stakes of this experience of the relativity characteristic of astronomy
in Barel-Moisan, 2017.
The sun is rising on an enlightened humanity; let us all stand before the
sky sharing a single motto from this day forth: PROGRESS THROUGH
SCIENCE!
Flammarion reformulates this motto in The End of the World:
Le Progrès est la loi suprême imposée à tous les êtres par le Créateur.
Chaque être cherche le meilleur. […] tout être créé évolue constamment
vers un degré supérieur. Chacun veut monter. Nul ne veut descendre.
1894: 275–276
Progress is the supreme law imposed on all beings by the Creator. Every
being seeks the best. […] every creature constantly evolves to a higher
degree. Everyone wishes to go higher. No one wishes to go down.
Contrary to an imagery of the Fall, the view of history in Flammarion is that

of a progressive ascension.13 Time has a direction, and the notion of chance is
erased. Far from the failures and errors that Darwin’s theory of evolution takes
into account, the conception of an evolution necessarily oriented towards
progress that Flammarion defends is more reminiscent of the positions of an
Ernst Haeckel.
But can we still speak of selection in Flammarion’s work? As it happens,
the author of The End of the World ignores the principle of competition and
the struggle between species. His vision is actually not that of a naturalist, but
of an astronomer. His scientific and philosophical system does not deal with
the relationships between species. Evolution, for Flammarion, does not stem
from the selection of the most suitable species, but from transformations due
to changes in astronomical and climatic conditions. Humans, animals and all
living species are therefore viewed as parts of an integral whole that is neces-
sarily caught up together in an ascending or descending phase of the planet. In
her study of Flammarion, Danielle Chaperon speaks of “mystical Darwinism”
(1997: 147) to refer to the astronomer’s astonishing conception of evolution.
In the system built by Flammarion, beings who during their earthly existence
13 The study of Flammarion’s case leads to the same conclusions as were reached by Nicolas
Wanlin regarding Jean Richepin’s La Mer (The Sea), published seven years before The
End of the World: “‘Higher, ever higher’ was the motto that Richepin deduced from this
epic history of humanity’s origins. And he contrasted it, of course, with the religious con-
ception of the original Fall of humanity. Ascension versus decay: the poet thus pits, one
against the other, two fundamental and structuring metaphors for thinking about his-
tory.” (Wanlin, 2011: 189)
306 Barel-Moisan
have cultivated the passion for knowledge and comprehension of the world
are indeed selected to continue their life on other planets, and they develop
new senses and a richer understanding of the universe. In such a theoretical
framework, is it still relevant to speak of Darwinism? This clearly spiritualist
vision of the human future and the evolution of the universe was developed by
Flammarion from his youth: as early as 1860, at the age of eighteen, he started
writing his first book, La Pluralité des mondes habités (The Plurality of inhabited
Worlds), which he published two years later (Flammarion, 1862). His cosmolog-
ical and philosophical system was therefore in place very early, independently
of any reading of Darwin, and it would not change significantly thereafter.14
For that matter, it is revealing to note that this form of ‘selection’ for life
on other planets is conceived by Flammarion only on an individual level
and not on the scale of the entire human species.15 The logic of ‘individual-
ized evolutionism’ lends itself even more to transposition into the form of the
novel, since it allows the author to call on the figure of an exceptional hero like
Omegar, the last man.
Nevertheless, Flammarion’s modelling of time remains problematic and
contradictory; and these tensions are particularly exacerbated in The End of
the World. By asserting the law of progress, the novel is indeed situated in an
ascendant logic that produces a temporal framework which belongs to myth.
L’arbre de la vie terrestre, inauguré au temps des protozoaires rudi-

mentaires, acéphales, aveugles, sourds, muets, presque entièrement
dépourvus de sensibilité, s’était élevé dans la lumière, avait acquis suc-
cessivement les merveilleux organes des sens, et avait abouti à l’homme,
qui, perfectionné lui-même de siècle en siècle, s’était lentement transfor-
mé, depuis le sauvage primitif, esclave de la nature, jusqu’au souverain
intellectuel qui avait dominé le monde et avait fait de la Terre un paradis
de bonheur, d’esthétique jouissance, de science et de volupté.
1894: 276
The tree of earthly life, which began in the time of the rudimentary pro-
tozoa (acephalous, deaf, dumb, blind, and almost entirely devoid of sen-
sibility), had risen in the light, acquiring one after another the marvellous
14 “If one wished to attempt a history of Flammarion’s works, one would have to insist on the
constancy with which he returns to the same themes. Almost all the ‘philosophical ideas’
are already expressed in one of his first books, La Pluralité des mondes habités”, points out
Michel Nathan (1976: 75–76).
15 “His system is based on the evolution of the individual and not on the posterity of race or
class”, notes Danielle Chaperon (1997: 151).
organs of the senses, and had culminated in man, who, perfecting himself
from century to century, slowly transformed himself from primitive sav-
age, slave of nature, into the intellectual ruler who had dominated the
world, making the Earth a paradise of happiness, aesthetic pleasure, sci-
ence and delight.
The illustration of this passage underlines the fact that Flammarion is rewrit-
ing the ancient myth of the golden age, situating it in the future. People in
antique costume occupy a pleasant space, where they give themselves in otium
over to the pursuit of the arts, sciences and pleasure (1894: 289).
But this irenic imaginary of continuous progress is constantly contradicted
throughout the novel by an obsession with the inevitability of decadence and
death. Flammarion gave the title ‘the apogee’ to the chapter in which he evokes
the golden age of the Earth, ten million years from the present. This astronomi-
cal metaphor suggests an orbital movement: the apogee is not a place where
one remains, but the extreme point of an orbit that one merely traverses be-
fore returning to the perigee, and then back to the apogee, and so on. Far from
signifying a time characterized by uniform progress, the metaphor of the apo-
gee thus signals an infinite succession of ascents and falls, in a cyclical time
frame. Flammarion thus explicitly states that, for humanity, the law of progress
turned, on the contrary, into the law of decadence:
La loi du progrès l’avait autrefois fait sortir des limbes de l’animalité; cette
même loi du progrès avait continué d’agir sur elle et l’avait graduellement
perfectionnée, transformée, affinée. Mais l’époque arriva où, les condi-
tions de la vie terrestre commençant à décroître, l’humanité devait cesser
de progresser et entrer elle-même dans la voie de la décadence.
1894: 292
The law of progress had previously freed mankind from the limbo of ani-
mality; this same law of progress had continued to act on man, gradually
perfecting, transforming and refining him. But the time came when, as
the conditions of earthly life began to diminish, humanity would stop
progressing and would itself enter the path of decadence.
The contradiction between the two models of directional time and cyclical
time is finally overcome, at the novel’s conclusion, through a final change of
scale. The hierarchy of worlds that is tied to the principle of evolution, from
planet to planet, is abolished in the perpetual birth and death of galaxies that
leads to a negation of time.
308 Barel-Moisan
The book’s ultimate illustration is an allegorical summary of the novel’s last

sentence:
Et toujours l’espace infini resta peuplé de mondes et d’étoiles, d’âmes et

de soleils; et toujours l’éternité dura. CAR IL NE PEUT Y AVOIR NI FIN
NI COMMENCEMENT.
1894: 385
And the infinite space remained forever populated with worlds and stars,
souls and suns; and eternity endured forever, FOR THERE CAN BE NEI-
THER END NOR BEGINNING.
In the image with which the book closes, a sphinx, its paw resting on a human
skull, reveals the answer to its riddle. The sphinx lies on a pedestal bearing
three engraved signs: the two Greek letters—alpha and omega—linked by an
equals sign. By asserting the identity between the beginning and the end, this
inscription offers, in three characters, a sort of synopsis of the work as a whole,
dismissing the title of the novel, The End of the World, as an illusion.
The Death of the Earth offers a less complex conception of time. In this
novel, the reader is also confronted with a directional time, this time pointed
not towards progress, but towards disappearance. In Rosny aîné’s work, like in
Flammarion’s, the essential evolutionary principle of chance is ruled out. Far
from being a novel of chance, the construction of the novel is based on the pa-
thos of a tragedy announced at the outset, on the sensation of the inescapable
inevitability of a destiny. A form of determinism is substituted for chance. The
narrator thus evokes a “volonté” / “will” of nature, conferring its favour on one
kingdom after another.
Les Derniers Hommes attribuent à la planète une volonté lente et irrésist-

ible. D’abord favorable aux règnes qui naissent d’elle, la Terre leur laisse
prendre une grande puissance. L’heure mystérieuse où elle les condamne
est aussi celle où elle favorise des règnes nouveaux. Actuellement, ses én-
ergies obscures favorisent le règne ferromagnétique.
1997: 47
The Last Men attribute to the planet a slow and irresistible will. Initially
favourable to the kingdoms that she gives birth to, the Earth allows them
to become mighty. The mysterious hour when she condemns them is also
the hour when she favours new kingdoms. At present, her dark energies
confer their favour on the ferromagnetic kingdom.
The novel is therefore punctuated by the announcement of the inevitable dis-

appearance of humans, and by the countdown of the years that remain for
them to live on Earth, which has become almost entirely mineral.16
Against this destiny of annihilation, the main character refers to a scientific
theory that functions as a narrative twist. In the scenario he imagines, evolu-
tion could take place not through the selection and elimination of the least
fit—in this case the human—but through cooperation, a symbiosis between
the two rival kingdoms: between humans and ferromagnetic beings, mysteri-
ous invisible beings born of the corroded irons. He thus asks himself:
pourquoi ne trouverait-on pas une méthode qui permette aux deux

règnes de coexister, de s’entraider même? Oui, pourquoi pas? … puisque
le monde ferromagnétique tire son origine de notre industrie? N’y a-t-il
pas là l’indice d’une compatibilité profonde?
1997: 53
Why couldn’t we find a method that allows the two kingdoms to coexist,
to help each other even? Yes, why not?… since the ferromagnetic world
has its origins in our industry? Isn’t that a sign of deep compatibility?
But this solution, barely sketched out, is finally rejected by the narrative. The
time of Death of the Earth remains the time of tragedy and fate, not the open
time of evolution.
The strictures of a truly novelistic poetics, combined with the ideological
choices of Flammarion and Rosny aîné, led to the invention of alternative
models of a hybrid evolutionary time, which was neither that of Darwin nor of
Haeckel. These anticipation fictions, widely disseminated in popular periodi-
cals, offered their readers original thought experiences: they propelled them
into distant futures that allowed the effects of evolution to be embodied in
detailed portraits of characters and comprehensive social transformations.
Meditation on the end of time, a phenomenon that affected all levels of society
at the turn of the century, thus found in the anticipatory novel a laboratory in
which new experiments could be performed. This genre shaped contemporary
representations by raising the philosophical and social issues of evolutionary
theory. It coincided with other formulations of the same questions, as can be
16 “[…] si nous ne retrouvons pas les sources, ou si nous ne découvrons aucune eau nouvelle,
dans dix ans les Derniers Hommes auront disparu de la planète.” / “[…] if we don’t find the
springs, or if we don’t discover any new water, in ten years’ time the Last Men will have
disappeared from the planet.” (Flammarion, 1894: 94)
310 Barel-Moisan
seen from these lines from Jules Laforgue, written in 1880—the year in which
Flammarion’s Popular Astronomy was published—which also describe the
death of the Earth, an icy planet adrift in space.
Marche funèbre pour la mort de la Terre

Les temps sont épuisés; morte à jamais, la Terre,
Après son dernier râle et son dernier sanglot
Dans le silence noir du calme sans écho,
Flotte ainsi qu’une épave énorme et solitaire.
C’est donc vrai? Tout est dit! Dans l’espace emporté,
Tu n’es plus qu’un cercueil, bloc inerte et tragique! …
Oh! quel drame pourtant ! quelle épopée unique! …
—Mais dors, c’est bien fini, dors pour l’Éternité.
Laforgue, 1986: 341–342
Funeral march for the death of Earth

The times are spent; dead forever, the Earth,
After her final death rattle and her final whimper
In the black silence of the echoless calm,
Floats like a huge, lonely wreck.
Can it be true? The last word has been said! Adrift in space,
You’re now no more than a coffin, an inert and tragic rock!….
Oh, but what a tragedy! what a singular epic!
—But sleep now, for it is over, sleep for all eternity.
Translated by Colin Keaveney and Claire Barel-Moisan
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Hélène Boblet. Grenoble, ELLUG, 301–312.
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(1860–1883), 3 vols., vol. 1: Le Sanglot de la Terre, texts established by Jean-Louis
Debauve, Daniel Grojnowski, Pascal Pia and Pierre-Olivier Walzer. Lausanne, L’Âge
d’Homme, 341–342.
Nathan, Michel, 1976. “Le Rêve cosmique de Camille Flammarion.” Romantisme (Paris),
no 11, 75–85.
Rosny aîné, J.-H., 1912. Foreword. La Mort de la Terre. Roman suivi de contes. Paris, Plon-
Nourrit, I–III.
Rosny aîné, J.-H., 1997. La Mort de la Terre. Paris, Flammarion, Étonnants classiques.
Wanlin, Nicolas, 2011. “La Poésie darwinienne et anti-darwinienne de 1860 à 1938: de
nouvelles images de l’humanité.” L’Héritage de Charles Darwin dans les cultures
européennes, edited by Georges Letissier and Michel Prum. Paris, L’Harmattan,
185–195.
A Biologist Literary History: August Wilhelm
Schlegel and the Franco-German Natural Sciences
Stefan Knödler
Abstract
The contribution analyses the history of literature as conceived by August Wilhelm

Schlegel (1767–1845), which is modelled on contemporary science, especially the com-
parative anatomy of George Cuvier and Johann Friedrich Blumenbach. Like these sci-
entists, Schlegel proceeds by comparison and systematization as well as by historical
classification. Following romanticist philosophy of Nature, Schlegel presumes a uni-
fying principle, which is likewise at work in nature, in language(s), and in literature.
Retracing its path, the philologist starts off from the language and literature of his pres-
ent time to go back to Antiquity and even to Sanskrit.
Both as a poet and as a thinker, August Wilhelm Schlegel is a major expo-

nent of German Romanticism and, if one takes into account his Vorlesungen
über dramatische Kunst und Litteratur / Course of Lectures on Dramatic Art
and Literature, even of the European Romantic Movement. He never distin-
guished himself in the domain of the empirical sciences, and but rarely saw fit
to express himself on the subject of natural history, biology, or other scientific
disciplines. Schlegel is thus a marginal figure with respect to the scientific dis-
course around 1800. Nevertheless, we maintain that our contribution to this
volume shall not be altogether out of place. For, on the one hand, Schlegel took
a profound interest in scientific questions and techniques; and on the other,
his philological methods—pertaining both to diachronic linguistics and the
history of literature—are clearly marked by the scientific advances of his day.1
In the following, we will present the links between the natural sciences and the
works of August Wilhelm Schlegel, links that develop over the span of about
half a century: from his Romantic beginnings, marked by the collaboration
with his brother Friedrich, up to his late works, dating to the years in which
August Wilhelm held a Chair at the University of Bonn.
Schlegel’s interest in Nature can be traced back to the time of his stud-
ies in Göttingen: over the winter of 1790/91, he attended Georg Christoph
Lichtenberg’s courses on experimental physics, as well as on “Astronomie,
1 Cf. Neubauer, 2004: 221–223; Paulin, 2011; Eggers, 2009.

A Biologist Literary History 313
physischer Geographie, Meteorologie” / “astronomy, physical geography and

meteorology” (Heerde, 2006: 547–548); he likewise attended the courses of the
anatomist-physician Johann Friedrich Blumenbach. Nonetheless, Schlegel did
not pursue these scientific studies in a more than accessory fashion. The pre-
ponderance of his efforts was dedicated to classical studies, with the German
authority in this field, the philologist Christian Gottlob Heyne.
Philology is an ancient discipline: it was founded in ancient Greece as
a comparative science. Its starting point was the fact that ancient texts—
notably Homer’s epic poems—had become incomprehensible, and that the
public needed explanations, regarding certain words or facts. Philology had
always availed itself of other disciplines: history, grammar, the history of lan-
guages, archaeology or geography; Schlegel, for instance, authored a thesis on
geography in Homer (A. W. Schlegel, 1788).
Until late in the 18th century, the study of Nature was not a historical dis-
cipline. However, precisely the period of years elapsing between Schlegel’s
studies and the lectures that he himself held at Berlin corresponded with a
historical moment in which the general understanding of the concept “natural
history” widened considerably. Since Aristotle, the term had encompassed any
description or taxonomy of natural phenomena—a discipline, which reached
its apogee in the 18th century with Linné, Buffon and the Encyclopédie. In
this context, Nature was defined as anhistoric: an eminent example may still
be found in Voltaire’s article “Histoire” from 1765. It is only with Buffon’s Les
Époques de la nature (1756) and especially the German debates of the 1780s and
1790s—notably in Kant, Fichte or Schelling—that the term “natural history”
began to be conceived in the sense that we attribute to it nowadays: hereafter
it signifies the description of all of the evolutions of the earth and of its living
creatures (cf. Foucault, 1994: 125–165; Lepenies, 1976).
In Germany, in the course of the 1790s, and parallel to the aforementioned
semantic transformation, we witness the birth of a speculative philosophy of
Nature (Naturphilosophie), which sought to understand the totality of liv-
ing beings as an organic whole, endowed with a soul. The brothers August
Wilhelm and Friedrich Schlegel belonged to this amicable circle of philoso-
phers, poets, and scholars. They hence endeavoured to make prolific, at once
the experiments and methods of natural history—in its two-fold, ancient
and modern, sense—and the philosophical speculations of their friends, by
transposing them onto their preferred domain, that is the history of literature
and linguistics. First evidence of this transposition can be found in Friedrich
Schlegel’s 1796 essay, Über das Studium der griechischen Poesie / On the Study
of Greek Poetry. In this essay, Schlegel envisions an “ewige Naturgeschichte des
Geschmacks und der Kunst” / “eternal natural history of taste and art”, by the
314 Knödler
aid of which one might describe not only the “System aller möglichen reinen
Dichtarten” / “system of all possible pure types of poetry” (F. Schlegel, 1979:
308), but also their historical development:
im vollendeten Kreislaufe der allmählichen Entwicklung auch die

Unvollkommenheit der frühern, und die Entartung der spätern Stufen,
in deren steten und notwendigen Kette kein Glied übersprungen werden
kann.
F. Schlegel, 1979: 308
in a consummate cyclical course of progressive development, [which

comprises] […] the imperfections of the early, as well as the degenera-
tion of the later stages, […] of which no link can be skipped.
Friedrich Schlegel does not grant us the pleasure of learning more on the
subject, thus leaving to his older brother August Wilhelm the task of de-
veloping the ingenious first outline of this “natural history of Art”. Indeed,
August Wilhelm sets about doing so in his Vorlesungen über schöne Kunst und
Literatur / Lectures on Fine Art and Literature, held in Berlin between 1801 and
1804, and in the Vorlesungen über Encyklopädie / Lectures on Encyclopedia from
the summer of 1803: here, he elaborates, systematizes, and expands upon the
intuitions of his younger brother. The first part of the Vorlesungen über schöne
Kunst und Literatur is devoted to aesthetics and the conceptualization of a
doctrine specific to this domain of research (A. W. Schlegel, 1989), the second
and third parts, more pertinent to our contextual framework, are dedicated to
antique and modern ‘Romantic’ literature.
Schlegel here combines the historical and detailed presentation of individu-
al poetic genres with a general history of poetry. By proceeding in this fashion,
Schlegel fuses, at the level of method, the various influences received in the
course of his own studies in Göttingen: the classical philology of Heyne and
the comparative anatomy of Blumenbach. Schlegel’s Berlin lectures are devel-
oped at the same moment in time as the first volumes of the Homer edition
directed by Heyne (from 1802 to 1822), but also at the same moment as the prin-
cipal works of comparative anatomy: Leçons d’anatomie comparée (1798–1805)
by Cuvier—Schlegel was most likely familiar with its first two volumes—and
Lamarck’s Système des animaux sans vertêbres (1801). Schlegel’s Vorlesungen
contribute to the incipient discipline of German studies, but also that of com-
parative literature, since he devotes his research to the evolution of forms and
phenomena between countries (synchronic perspective) and between eras
(diachronic perspective). In the domain of linguistics, which August Wilhelm
merely broaches, he would, in his turn, find a successor in the person of his
brother Friedrich: in 1808, the latter would publish his famous treatise Über die
Sprache und Weisheit der Indier / On the Language and Wisdom of India, which
is a founding work, not only of indology, but also of comparative linguistics
(cf. Eggers, 2009).
Where is one to situate the difference between the research of the
German Romantics and those of their predecessors, the men of the French
Enlightenment? It is to be found precisely in the postulate of a spirit, a soul,
which unifies the whole and confers meaning to it. For August Wilhelm
Schlegel, “Naturgeschichte [ist] das letzte und höchste in der Physik” / “natural
history is the final and culminating point of physics”, which makes possible
the “Darstellung von den Entwicklungen des Naturgeistes” / “representation of
the developments of the spirit of Nature” (A. W. Schlegel, 1989: 515). For him,
and for the Romantics in general, poetry is the most apt means of making this
spirit manifest. He thereby places himself in the line of Johann Georg Hamann
and Johann Gottfried Herder, authors of the famous formula “Poesie ist die
Muttersprache des menschlichen Geschlechts” / “Poetry is the mother-tongue
of the human race” (Hamann, 1762: 163).2 For Schlegel, Poetry is not merely “die
umfassendste aller Künste, und gleichsam der in ihnen überall gegenwärtige
Universal-Geist” / “the most global art of all, the omnipresent universal spirit
in the others” (A. W. Schlegel, 1989: 387), but also “der Gipfel der Wissenschaft,
die Deuterin, Dollmetscherin jener himmlischen Offenbarung, wie die Alten
sie mit Recht genannt haben, eine Sprache der Götter” / “the pinnacle of sci-
ence, the prophet, the interpreter of that divine revelation, as the Ancients
justly called it, a language of the Gods” (A. W. Schlegel, 1989: 388). This explains
Schlegel’s predilection for didactic poetry, for Lucretius’ De rerum natura, as
well as for Goethe’s Metamorphose der Pflanzen / Metamorphosis of Plants; he
himself intended to compose a “lehrende Elegie über die Gestirne” / “didactic
elegy on the stars” (A. W. Schlegel, Tieck, 1972: 51).
Concerning the historiography of poetry, he calls for the introduction
of a “vollkommenste Empirie” / “perfect empiricism”; for, the “Beziehung” /
“relation” with the guiding idea only manifests “im Ganzen” / “in the whole”
(A. W. Schlegel, 1989: 189). The spirit of Nature, omnipresent in representation,
yet remains an inaccessible ideal; all experience, even of a poetic nature, is
condemned to remain approximate. Friedrich Schlegel speaks of a “progres-
sive Universalpoesie” / “progressive and universal poetry” (cf. F. Schlegel, 1967:
182ff.)—“universal”, in the sense of all-encompassing, even of the sciences, and
2 Cf. the title of Johann Gottfried Herder’s Älteste Urkunde des Menschengeschlechts, 2 vols.
Riga, Hartknoch, 1774–1776.
316 Knödler
“progressive”, in the sense that every approximation of the ideal must proceed
gradually, by stages. The two brothers reach an identical assessment: the pres-
ent is deficient, the ideal inaccessible. Nevertheless, they differ, with regard
to the localization of the latter: while Friedrich places the ideal in the future,
August Wilhelm, on the contrary, perceives it as lying in the past. In his works,
one often encounters the figure of a ‘Davor’ / ‘Before’: the truly great time pe-
riods are always said to lie before the known and canonized eras. To cite a few
examples: situated before the Baroque Age, the German Middle Ages mark the
beginning of German literature; Provençal poetry is the apex placed before
French poetry; Etruscan culture precedes and surpasses that of the Romans.
In this fashion, Schlegel arrives at Sanskrit, and he would accordingly come to
found Indology as an academic discipline in Germany. All these reflections are
guided by the nostalgia for a Golden Age, which Schlegel did not picture as a
barbaric and uncultivated era, but, on the contrary, as that of a superior level of
civilization, the source of the greatest of human inventions (cf. A.W. Schlegel,
1846a; Paulin, 2011: 20–21). The link between this idea and that of poetry as the
original language of humanity is evident, since Schlegel says of poetry that it
was “zugleich mit der Welt erschaffen” / “created at the same instant as the
world” (A.W. Schlegel, 1989: 392).
A discipline concerned with an inaccessible ideal requires an own, original
methodology. The natural history of the 17th and 18th centuries, limiting itself
to the “Aufzählung und Beschreibung von Naturobjekten” / “enumeration and
description of natural objects” and to the “Zurückführung von Naturerfolgen
auf Gesetze” / “tracing back of phenomena to natural laws” (A.W. Schlegel,
1989: 515), cannot be of use to it: in France, this applies with respect to the ency-
clopédistes, as well as to Boileau; in Germany, to Johann Georg Sulzer’s influen-
tial Allgemeine Theorie der schönen Künste / General Theory of Fine Arts, as well
as for the Literarische Zusätze / Literary Supplement added to it by Friedrich
von Blankenburg (Sulzer, 1792–1798; Blankenburg, 1796–1798). Buffon is ex-
cepted by Schlegel from the exponents of this ‘mechanist’ strain of science. In
a short article relating a visit to Buffon’s birth house in Montbard in Burgundy,
Schlegel pays homage to his tableaux portraying Nature: Buffon is deemed
to surpass the “geistlosen Classificationen” / “soulless classifications” of his
contemporaries, evidencing a “Blick für die geheimen Beziehungen” / “eye
for secret connections” and “idealistische Ahndungen” / “idealist divinations”
(A. W. Schlegel, 1846c: 173–176; cf. A. W. Schlegel, 1989: 515); this gift likens him
to the “Alten” / “Ancients” venerated by Schlegel, that is to Aristotle or Pliny.
Even so, Schlegel’s opinion concerning Buffon manifests a certain ambigu-
ity: though expressing veneration for him as a naturalist, he criticizes him as
a child of his century. Thus, Schlegel makes it a point to describe in minute
detail the nude and voluptuous female statues in Buffon’s garden, judged to be
at odds with the “Kunstsinn” / “artistic sensibility” displayed by Buffon in his
works (A. W. Schlegel, 1989: 18).
How does the spirit of Nature become active in history? In what measure
can parallels be drawn between the history of Nature and the history of lan-
guages and literatures? On the one hand, for the brothers Schlegel, the evolu-
tion of poetry is not the story of a decline, like that of natural history according
to Buffon. This may seem surprising, given the idea of a Golden Age in August
Wilhelm Schlegel, which might appear to imply a progressive decline, the fur-
ther one moves away from this ideal origin. On the other hand, the Schlegel
brothers do not envision the history of poetry as a continual progress either,
though they subscribe to the idea of progress ahead. The approach evidenced
in the Berlin lectures of August Wilhelm—to show modern Romantic litera-
ture to be on equal footing with the literature of the Ancients, whilst giving
prominence to a ‘Davor’ / ‘Before’—proves that he did not conceive of one,
unique, linear evolution (cf. A. W. Schlegel, 1989: 189).3 As a philologist and dis-
ciple of Aristotle, Schlegel believed in epigenesis, and did not subscribe to the
idea, prevalent in the first half of the 18th century, of an initial divine concep-
tion determining the entire subsequent course of natural evolution. In taking
up this concept, Schlegel shows himself to be at the forefront of the contem-
porary scientific debate: for epigenesis would only effect its breakthrough in
the second half of the 18th century—Buffon, Caspar Friedrich Wolff, Herder,
and Wilhelm von Humboldt attest this fact (Müller-Sievers, 1993). Epigenesis
stipulated that each individual organism comprises a formative idea, which is
peculiar to it (cf. Neubauer, 2004: 213–215). In 1780, Schlegel’s professor, Johann
Friedrich Blumenbach called this formative principle “Bildungstrieb” / “forma-
tive impulse” (Blumenbach, 1780; Blumenbach, 1781). He defined it in the fol-
lowing manner:
Daß in allen belebten Geschöpfen vom Menschen bis zur Made und von
der Ceder zum Schimmel herab, ein besondrer, eingebohrner, Lebenslang
thätiger würksamer Trieb liegt, ihre bestimmte Gestalt anfangs anzuneh-
men, dann zu erhalten, und wenn sie ja zerstört worden, wo möglich wie-
der herzustellen.
Blumenbach, 1781: 12
3 Here, Schlegel refers to Frans Hemsterhuis, who had described “die Zu-. und Abnahme der
Cultur als einen elliptischen Kreislauf” / “the growth and decline of culture according to the
principle of an elliptical circuit” (A. W. Schlegel, 1989: 189).
318 Knödler
That in all living beings, from man to the maggot, and from the cedar
down to mildew, there lies a peculiar formative impulse, innate and ac-
tive throughout their existence [inducing them], initially, to take a deter-
mined shape, then to maintain it, and, where it may have been destroyed,
to restore it, insofar as this is possible.
In 1825, in a congratulatory letter on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of

Blumenbach’s thesis, Schlegel expressly mentions the discovery of the forma-
tive impulse. Evidently, Schlegel regarded Blumenbach’s method as an exem-
plary model:
Tu, haud contentus, innumerabiles animalium greges, quos Oceanus,

quos Daedala Tellus, quos Aether denique fovet atque pascit, in ordines
suos rite digessisse, interiorem corporum structuram perscrutando et
comparando, primus nostris temporibus, similitudinem aliquam et uni-
cam quasi imaginem eruisti, quae infinitam illam diversitatem pervadit,
et communem omnium terrestrium e Coeli Terraeque amplexibus origi-
nem arguit.
A. W. Schlegel, 1825: 4
You did not content yourself with meticulously classifying the innu-
merable living creatures which the Ocean, the artistic Earth and finally
the Ether cuddle and nourish, by analysing and comparing the internal
structure of their bodies. In our times you have been the first to discern
a certain analogy, and so to speak a unique matrix, spanning the infinite
differences, thereby proving a common origin of all earthly creatures
stemming from the union of Earth and Sky.
The process is familiar by now: above and beyond the singular phenom-
ena, a unifying idea emerges. In its application to poetry, epigenesis brings
about a rupture with classical doctrine (the doctrine classique), which lays
down universal principles: Romantic poetry grants each work its own form
and set of rules. In his Vorlesungen über dramatische Kunst und Litteratur,
Schlegel defines them in the same way as Blumenbach describes relations
within Nature:
Die romantische hingegen ist der Ausdruck des geheimen Zuges zu dem
immerfort nach neuen und wundervollen Geburten ringenden Chaos,
welches unter der geordneten Schöpfung, ja in ihrem Schooße sich
verbirgt: der beseelende Geist der ursprünglichen Liebe schwebt hier von
neuem über den Wassern.
A. W. Schlegel, 1811: 14
Romantic poetry, by contrast, is the expression of a secret attraction to

the chaos concealed beneath a well-ordered creation, and even within its
bosom, constantly striving after new miraculous births: here, the animat-
ing spirit of original love is, once again, hovering over the waters.
Just as the trunk unites the branches of a tree, the spirit of Nature—which is
also that of Poetry—unites all its evolutions (F. Schlegel, 1979: 226). Hence, epi-
genesis helps to explain the formation of various cultural efflorescences: in the
eyes of Schlegel, language and poetry develop in different fashions, according
to the respective climactic, geographical, political, and social conditions. Here,
Schlegel adopts a similar direction as Winckelmann’s Geschichte der Kunst des
Alterthums / History of Ancient Art (1764), Herder’s Ideen zur Philosophie der
Geschichte der Menschheit / Ideas on the Philosophy of the History of Mankind
(1784–1791), but also Madame de Staël’s De la littérature (1800).
It is nevertheless noteworthy that the brothers Schlegel do not perceive
one aspect, which plainly appears in their theory on the evolution of poetry,
not however in natural history. When Friedrich reflects on the “Evolutionen
des Bildungstriebs” / “evolutions of the formative impulse” (F. Schlegel, 1979:
308), or August Wilhelm on the “orbe mutationum quae tempus affert, in re
redeunte, identidem” / “circuit of modifications, given by time, which doubles
back on itself” (A. W. Schlegel, 1825: 5), both envision the development of po-
etry as a form of evolution. Indeed, due to its successive development, from
one work to the next, due to its respective and multiple cross-references, and
due to the changing experiences of poets themselves, poetry does appear to be
subject to evolution. However, this idea is less convincing in the case of a lan-
guage, since modifications take place rather more slowly here, and cannot gen-
erally be perceived in the course of a human life. And in fact, in the linguistic
domain, the Schlegel brothers seem to think only of genealogies and descent,
rather than of evolution or metamorphoses, much as Cuvier or Blumenbach in
their analysis of skeletons (cf. Timpanaro, 1977: XXXV–XXXVII).
Several years later, in a text, which seems exclusively dedicated to the natu-
ral sciences, Schlegel would attempt, for a last time, to link up his research to
the impressive evolutions in science. Unfortunately, this text, entitled “Ueber
historische und geographische Bestimmungen der Zoologie” / “On Historical
and Geographical Determinations of Zoology” remained fragmentary, ending
320 Knödler
after only three pages; and regrettably, the circumstances of its composition
are unknown. It would appear to be the beginning of a presentation intended
for an “zahlreichen und durch die mannichfaltigsten Verdienste ausgezeichne-
ten Versammlung” / “assembly of numerous and various merits”, presumably
the Academy of Sciences in Berlin. In all likelihood, the text dates from the
second half of the 1830s, since Schlegel mentions having occasionally attended
Cuvier’s lecture in the winter of 1831/32 with Alexander von Humboldt, and
he mentions “häufige Unterredungen über wissenschaftliche Gegenstände” /
“numerous conversations on scientific topics” with Cuvier (A. W. Schlegel,
1846d: 334–336).4 At the time of its composition, Cuvier’s death, having taken
place in 1832, lies “wenige Jahre” / “a few years” in the past (A. W. Schlegel,
1846d: 334). The text ends before Schlegel arrives at the heart of his subject
matter; we can only guess at its intended focus.
Since his Berlin lectures, thirty years earlier, Schlegel has evolved and his
environment has changed. In 1804, he had accompanied Madame de Staël, as
the tutor of her children: this gave him the occasion to broaden his horizon in
the midst of the Coppet circle, to broaden the scope of his interests, to apply
himself to etymology, ancient history, politics and Sanskrit. In the 1830s, he is
proud, and with good reason, to be read “von Cadiz bis Edinburg, Stockholm
und Sct. Petersburg” / “from Cadiz to Edinburgh, Stockholm, and St. Petersburg”,
and even “jenseits des atlantischen Meeres” / “beyond the Atlantic ocean”
(A. W. Schlegel, 1846b: 285). He is in contact with German, French, English, and
Italian scholars of all disciplines; he keeps abreast concerning the advances of
research, including the natural sciences. Meanwhile, Cuvier has taken note of
the parallels between his method and the comparative approach in linguistics:
he has recognized the merit of the endeavours of the brothers Schlegel and
their peers (cf. Schwab, 1984: 303ff.).
In the abovementioned brief text, the starting point of Schlegel’s reflec-
tions is Cuvier’s commented edition of Pliny’s works on zoology, presented to
Schlegel by the editor during his stay in Paris.5 According to Schlegel, Pliny
holds a poor reputation in contemporary science, and to prove this he refers to
a “berühmten deutschen Anatomen” / “well-known German anatomist”—in all
4 Cf. Georges Cuvier to August Wilhelm Schlegel, Paris, 31 October 1831: “M. et Mme. Cuvier
prieurent Monieur Schlegel de leur faire l’honneur de venir diner chez eux Samedi prochain 5
novembre a 6 heures.” / “Mr. and Mrs. Cuvier pray Mr. Schlegel to do them the honor of dining
with them next Saturday, the 5th of November at 6 o’clock.” (Sächsische Landesbibliothek—
Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Dresden, Mscr. Dresd. e. 90, XIX, vol. 5, no 75)
5 It is the edition of books 7 to 11 of the Historia naturalis: Caii Plinii Secundi libri de animalibus
cum notes variorem, curante Jo. B. Fr. Steph. Ajasson de Grandsagne, notes et excursus zoologici
argumenti adjecit G. Cuvier […], 2 vols. Paris, Didot, 1827–1828.
likelihood not Blumenbach—, who maintains the idea that “Plinius sei wegen
der Unbestimmtheit seiner Angaben, und seiner endlosen Verworrenheit
wissenschaftlich gar nicht zu benutzen” / “Pliny is of no scientific value,
given the indeterminacy of his indications and his permanent confusions”
(A. W. Schlegel, 1846d: 335). Cuvier, by contrast, is said to give a more equitable
appraisal of Pliny’s merits, insofar as, though criticizing fables and “volksmäßi-
gem Aberglauben” / “popular superstitions”, he confirms numerous observa-
tions. On the basis of this esteem voiced by Cuvier for the Ancient scholars, for
Pliny as well as for Aristotle, Schlegel seeks to “die Aufmerksamkeit der Forscher
auf eine Bahn zu lenken, wo vielleicht für unsre Kenntniß der Thierwelt noch
eine Nachlese zu erwarten ist” / “direct the attention of researchers to a path,
by which one may perhaps expect to reap late fruit for our knowledge of the
fauna” (A. W. Schlegel, 1846d: 334); thus, he advises scientists to engage in “die
Prüfung alter Zeugnisse über die Thierwelt” / “research on Ancient accounts of
the animal world” (A. W. Schlegel, 1846d: 335).
In this context, Schlegel distinguishes two types of zoology: “die der
Gegenwart und die der Urwelt” / “that of the present, and that of the primi-
tive world”. The latter is characterized as a “ganz neue Wissenschaft” / “entirely
novel science”, “ein Triumph des menschlichen Scharfsinns” / “a triumph of
human discernment”, in which “die restaurierende Kritik Wunder geleistet
hat” / “restorative critique has done miracles”. (To engage in “restaurierende
Kritik” / “restorative critique”—this is precisely the task of philology!) With
regard to humanity’s primitive times, Man can have only limited knowledge,
since his existence represents merely a minute part of the entire development
of the human race. Our “historische Kenntniß” / “historical knowledge” must
be even more limited, since “auf uns gekommen schriftlichen Zeugnisse” /
“written records which have come down to us” are at the most 3,000 years
old (A. W. Schlegel, 1846d: 335–336). This explains why Schlegel recommends
that researchers consider the admittedly short, but well-documented period
of time, which he himself analyses, as a historian and philologist. The disci-
pline that he calls for is a “historische und geographische Zoologie” / “historical
and geographical zoology” (A. W. Schlegel, 1846d: 336). A brief outline, situ-
ated near the end of the text, demonstrates that this discipline would proceed
in the same fashion as Schlegel himself does: in his erudite writings, he fol-
lows the migrations of populations, of languages, and of literary forms and
subjects across the map and through time. New zoology, for him, entails un-
derstanding the driving back of animal species, due to the extension of the
living space of humans, the possibilities and consequences of attempts at
domestication, as well as their capacity of adaptation to different climactic
zones.
322 Knödler
The application of philological methods to zoology is not as new as Schlegel

would have wished:6 in Germany, notably his own master, Johann Friedrich
Blumenbach, had undertaken a similar attempt (Blumenbach, 1808a;
Blumenbach 1808b: 4). In the magazine Indische Bibliothek / Indian Library, of
which he was the editor, Schlegel himself had published a long article “Zur
Geschichte des Elephanten” / “On the History of the Elephant”, in which he
puts into practice as a philologist the approach recommended by him to natu-
ral scientists: he recounts, not only the “natürliche” / “natural” history of the
elephant, but also its “politische und militärische” / “political and military”, as
well as its “mythologische, artistische und litterarische Geschichte” / “mytho-
logical, artistic, and literary” history (A. W. Schlegel, 1820: 129). In doing so, he
does not fail to reference Cuvier, the first to have described the differences be-
tween African and Indian elephants—further, Schlegel’s article presents the
history of the elephant altogether in the sense of a “historischen und geog-
raphischen Zoologie” / “historical and geographical zoology”, recurring to
Ancient (Homer, Aristotle, Pliny), biblical, and Indian sources; he is equally
interested in the domestication and in the adaptive capabilities of the animal.
Considering this backdrop, one easily understands that Schlegel’s demands
mainly hail back to his own approach, derived from classical philology (Heyne),
and expanded thanks to experiences with natural history and comparative
anatomy (Blumenbach and Cuvier). Since his thesis on geography in Homer, he
had applied it to numerous domains: his research concerning the migrations of
the sonnet in Europe, the historical foundations of the Nibelungenlied / Song
of the Nibelungs, Etruscan etymology and its connections with Latin, Sanskrit
language and literature, the historical role of Provencal; but likewise, his anal-
ysis of the French classical tragedy, the Group of Niobids in Florence or the
Horses of Saint Mark in Venice. True to his epigenetic ideas, Schlegel sees the
soul of Nature at work at every turn; the proposal of adaptation he addresses
to natural scientists only goes to highlight the universalist scope of his ideas.
Schlegel’s initiative is situated in an era in which, to the mind of the pub-
lic, the natural sciences have largely overtaken philology. While the latter had
marked the beginning of the 19th century, the 1830s witness the breakthrough
of the empirical and experimental sciences. The simple fact that Schlegel
expresses himself on the subject of the natural sciences can be explained
by the circumstance that he must have perceived the challenge to articulate
the exigencies of philology once more—admittedly, his attempt does not
make a very convincing impression. The sciences no longer have to recur to
6
Cf. the relatively short enumeration concerning “historisch-philologischen Zoologie” /
“historical and philological zoology” (Heusinger, 1839: 171).
philology, and it has been putting Schlegel’s proposals into practice for a fairly
long while. Schlegel’s academic oeuvre is of enormous importance for the his-
tory of literature, philology, historiography, linguistics, the history of art and
aesthetics—the same is not true of natural history, to which he himself owes
such important creative stimuli.
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allgemeiner Theorie der schönen Künste […], 3 vols. Leipzig, Weidmann.
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en Einfluß auf die Generation und Reproduction.” Göttingisches Magazin der
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sertim poetis illustratae eosque vicissim illustrantis. Göttingen, Dieterich.
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illustratae eaque vicissim illustrantis. Göttingen, Dieterich.
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im Kontext der frühen Biologie.” Die Lesbarkeit der Romantik. Material, Medium,
Diskurs, edited by Erich Kleinschmidt. Berlin, de Gruyter, 159–183.
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(Potsdam), vol. 1.1, 129–231.
Schlegel, August W., 1825. Viro clarissimo Ioanni Friderico Blumenbach […]. Bonn,
Universität Bonn.
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et la décadence des religions.” Œuvres, 16 vols., vol. 1, edited by Eduard Böcking.
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Part 5
Biology and Ideology
⸪
Evolutionary Time and Revolutionary Time
(Michelet, Flaubert, Zola)
Juliette Azoulai
Abstract
The contribution analyses the works of three outstanding authors, Michelet, Flaubert,
and Zola, in order to point out the interaction of two rivalling conceptions of time in
nineteenth-century literature: evolutionist temporality, presupposing a continual, pro-
gressive representation of time, and revolutionary temporality, which, on the contrary,
presupposes an asyndetic, halting conception of it. Although the first temporality rests
on concepts from the biological realm, and the second one on the historical and politi-
cal, there are fields of blending in nineteenth-century thought: socio-biology proposes
an evolutionist vision of social development, and the catastrophist theory of Cuvier
proclaims a history of the earth modelled on revolutionary jolt. The complicated rela-
tions between evolution and revolution that are to be found in nineteenth-century
authors are tributary to this delicate linking between nature and culture, which is indi-
vidually recreated in each literary universe.
First used in an astronomical context to refer to the return of a star after its
completion of an orbit, the word “revolution” has gradually shifted from its
spatial meaning to a chronological meaning—signifying the end of an era
(which is past)—, and then to a historical one, to express the idea of changes
in governments and societies. From the sky to land, from space to time, from
peace to violence, the term “revolution” has been through many incarnations.1
The turbulent path taken by this concept since the 18th century also con-
nects history and natural history, human time and geological time. Even before
Cuvier, Buffon used the term in his Histoire et théorie de la Terre (The History
and Theory of the Earth, 1749) to refer to the alterations of the Earth’s surface re-
sponsible for the formation of fossils and sediments (Rey, 1989: 79–81). The 18th
century was thus the moment when a worrying realization was reached: There
was no longer any reason to contrast divine constancy with the inconstancy of
human societies; God’s work, the Earth, had also had its revolutions.
It was with the advent of Cuvier’s palaeontology that the concept of “the
revolution of the globe” would come to be formulated; the existence of fossils
1 For a detailed history of this word, see Rey, 1989.

328 Azoulai
of extinct species proved, wrote Cuvier, the existence of a “world anterior to our
own, destroyed by some catastrophe” (Cuvier, 1796: 444); and the succession of
species matched a pattern of serial cataclysms. Catastrophism thus introduced
a paradigm of discontinuity in order to describe geological and biological time.
Through their use of the term “revolution”, the early nineteenth-century theo-
reticians of catastrophism thus reactivated a very recent view of history: that
of the revolutionary period, veritable historical jolt, sudden traumatic transfor-
mation, temporal rupture between a before and an after.
But the 19th century also saw the development in the natural sciences of
a paradigm of continuity, which, from Lamarck to Haeckel, via Darwin and
Spencer, would go on to become accepted wisdom under the label of evolu-
tionism, and then to spread to the field of history.
It is this interaction between two competing conceptions of time—the evo-
lutionary timescale and the revolutionary one, which were operative in both
historical and biological arenas—that I intend to study here. In order to do so,
I shall examine texts from the second half of the 19th century, including works
by Michelet, Flaubert and Zola. These texts share an interest in the hybrid
character of the concepts of evolution and revolution and in the intersection
they suppose between nature and culture.
1 Michelet
In La Montagne (The Mountain), published in 1868, Michelet identified a con-

cordance between geological theories and the historical context in which they
appeared. He thus retraced the genealogy of catastrophism through the chaot-
ic history of French society; as for uniformitarianism, which rejected the idea
of sudden, general upheavals, and explained the history of the Earth using the
notion of the continuous and constant workings of unchanging natural forces,
Michelet saw its origins lying in the stable and peaceful climate of England.
When it came to studying natural forces, the scientific intellect was rooted first
and foremost, according to Michelet, in the soil of a shared history. The natural
sciences were also cultural artefacts:
Ceux qui avaient assisté à l’éruption terrible du volcan révolutionnaire,

aux catastrophes des grandes guerres, aux soulèvements nationaux
de 1815, à l’immense tremblement de terre où l’Empire fut abîmé,—
ceux-là ne virent nulle autre chose dans les origines du globe. Ils obser-
vaient avec les yeux, les mêmes yeux qui voyaient ces événements poli-
tiques. […] Voilà la géologie qu’on faisait sur le continent, sur la terre des
Evolutionary Time and Revolutionary Time 329
révolutions. Mais l’immobile Angleterre qui n’avait pas eu chez elle nos
grandes secousses sociales, jugeait le globe autrement. Qu’avait-elle vu
dans son sein? Une constitution progressive qui s’est faite peu à peu sans
grand changement—un gouvernement d’équilibre qui change infini-
ment peu—une nouveauté, il est vrai, l’Angleterre industrielle qui assez
rapidement, mais sans crise, sans combat, s’est peu à peu élevée. […]
Au fort de nos soulèvements, à peu près vers 1830, quand Buch, Elie de
Beaumont semblaient régner, s’éleva une voix grave, la géologie de Lyell.
Livre puissant, ingénieux, où pour la première fois la terre figure comme
une ouvrière qui, d’un labeur pacifique, incessant, et sans secousse, se
manufacture elle-même.
Michelet, 1868: 123–125
Those who lived through the terrible eruption of the revolutionary vol-
cano, the catastrophes of the great wars, the national uprising of 1815, the
enormous earthquake in which the Empire was ruined—those people
saw nothing else in the origins of the globe. They observed with these
eyes, these same eyes that observed political events. […] That was the
sort of geology that was practiced on the continent, in the land of revo-
lutions. But immobile England, which had not lived through the same
seismic changes as we, viewed the planet differently. What had she seen
at home? A constitution born progressively, little by little and without
major change, a balanced government which changed only minutely; it
is true that something novel did emerge—an industrial England—but its
rise was gradual, free of combat and crisis. […] At the height of our strife,
in and around 1830, when Buch and Elie de Beaumont enjoyed apparent
dominance, a grave voice spoke out loudly: the geology of Lyell. It was a
powerful, ingenious book, in which, for the first time, the earth appeared
as a female worker who, labouring peacefully, incessantly, and without
disturbance, manufactured herself.
Referring thus to the theories of Élie de Beaumont about the upheaval of

mountains, which owed much to Cuvier’s system of revolutions, Michelet saw
in these theories the reflection of the events of the early 19th century: these
events were referred to by means of geological metaphors (“revolutionary
volcano”, “earthquake in which the Empire was ruined”), or syllepses, i.e. the
use of terms so that they have two different meanings: “catastrophes of the
great wars” (recalling geological catastrophism), “national upheavals of 1815”
(recalling Beaumont’s theory of the upheaval of mountains), “upheavals of
1830”. Likewise, to describe Lyell’s theory Michelet used a political terminology
330 Azoulai
(a “balanced government”) and an economic metaphor, which again referred

to the English industrial context (the Earth was compared to a female worker
manufacturing herself). Elsewhere in the same book, Michelet would refer to
a certain French geologist’s ability to auscultate the “93 of the earth” (Michelet,
1868: 370), a striking historical metaphor with which to speak of geological
time.
Michelet thus went as far as to sketch out a phenomenology of knowledge:
natural sciences were rooted in everyday life and, more precisely, in a common
way of life that fashioned scientists’ Weltanschauung. The immediacy of the
present resulted in a certain vision of the beginnings of time; everything was
a matter of point of view and thus of incarnation in the here and now: “They
saw with their eyes, the same eyes with which they looked at political events”
(Michelet, 1868: 123).
This does not mean that there were no exceptions to this double refraction
of geological theories in history and of history in geological theories; Michelet
thus pointed to Constant Prévost, an actualist geologist, or even Lamarck,
as examples of French natural scientists who apparently were closer to the
British way of seeing things, and, all things told, to the stolidity of the English:
Lamarck avait, dès 1800, dit que la lente douceur des procédés de la Nature,
que l’influence des milieux, surtout l’infini du temps, suffirait à tout expli-
quer, sans violence, sans coup d’État pour créer ou pour détruire.
Michelet, 1868: 125
Lamarck had said, as early as 1800, that the slow gentleness of Nature, the
influence of the environment, and above all the infinity of time, sufficed
to explain everything, without need for violence, without coup d’état to
create or destroy.
Above all, Michelet saw in this “geology of peaceful transformations” the

signs of the influence of zoological transformist theories; Lyell’s geological
uniformitarianism was the beneficiary of a “fraternal helping hand” from the
works of the “great masters of metamorphosis, our own Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire,
Goethe, Oken, Owen, Darwin”. Thus, the depiction of a uniform and continu-
ous geological time was linked to the recent discoveries in biology, so that this
“new geology” was, according to him, “the study of the movements and self-
transformations carried out by this fine animal, Earth” (Michelet, 1868: 126–
127). Lyell’s geological time not only corresponded to the peaceful and con-
tinuous time of English politics, but also and more broadly to the evolutionary
timeframe of living things and animals.
At the conclusion of his demonstration, Michelet called for a synthesis of

catastrophism and of uniformitarianism, i.e. of French and English outlooks,
via an alliance of evolutionary and revolutionary geological frameworks.
Moreover, when Michelet had published La Mer (The Sea) seven years earlier,
taking inspiration from pre-Darwinian theories of evolution,2 he had already
depicted biological evolution as not totally homogeneous, temporally speak-
ing, in that it too was subject to revolutions. Thus, he described the appearance
of fish as a “courageous revolution” (Michelet, 1983: 192) with regard to their
predecessors, the crustaceans:
Le crustacé s’entourait comme d’un squelette extérieur. Le poisson se le

fait au centre, en son intime intérieur, sur l’axe où les nerfs, les muscles,
tout organe viendra s’attacher.
Michelet, 1983: 191
The crustacean surrounded itself in something like an external skeleton.

The fish put its skeleton at its centre, its core, along the axis to which
nerves, muscles, and every organ would attach themselves.
This transition from exoskeleton to endoskeleton was described as a veritable

metamorphosis. Now, the idea of metamorphosis here is contradictory to the
transformist outlook, insofar as transformism excluded “in the history of a
surviving [life] form […] breaks or sudden revisions of any kind in its design
[…], any radical innovations.” (Tort, 1989: 455–456) Michelet’s metamorphism
made the fish unrecognizable when compared to its ancestor, the crustacean,
and this fracturing of the genealogical chain, this fundamental alterity, was
conveyed in Michelet’s text by an outburst of laughter:
Le crustacé dut en rire, quand il vit la première fois un être mou, gros,
trapu (les poissons de la mer des Indes), qui, s’essayant, glissait, coulait,
sans coquille, armure, ni défense; n’ayant sa force qu’au dedans, protégé
uniquement par sa fluidité gluante, par le mucus exubérant qui l’entoure,
et qui, peu à peu, se fixe en écailles élastiques.
Michelet, 1983: 191
2 On the question of the evolutionism of Michelet, see Kaplan, 1975, and more particularly
regarding the Michelet’s relationship to Darwin, see the Jean Borie’s notes in Michelet, 1983:
393–394.
332 Azoulai
The crustacean must have laughed when he first saw a soft being, big,
heavy-set (the sea fish of the Indies), which, in its first manifestations,
slid and sank, shell-less, armourless, without means of defense; all its
strength within, protected only by its slimy fluidity, by the copious mucus
surrounding it, which, little by little, formed elastic scales.
Thus, backward beings, as incarnated by the crustacean, laughed at the

revolutionaries—in this case, the fish—who were capable of resolutely tak-
ing their place in a transformed future. But the fish, a “profoundly audacious
being”, a being of “movement”, disdained the crustaceans, which he considered
to be “tardigrades”—zoological terminology for animals that walk slowly, and
which also expresses, in a figurative and political context, a retrograde mental-
ity. The progress of Nature (let us remember that Michelet held a teleological
view of the chain of being) was analogous to historical progress and proceeded
by sudden transformative changes (revolutions), preceded and followed by
slow change: thus, fish were first of all naked and vulnerable mollusks before
developing scales “little by little”. Michelet combined with evolutionist thought
what one might call a form of revolutionism, if we understood this term as re-
ferring to the application to biology of the historical concept of revolution.
2 Flaubert
On the contrary, Flaubert in his correspondence would attempt, in the late

1870s, to deconstruct the political notion of revolution by proposing a biolog-
ical interpretation of history, that is to say an evolutionary take on political
events. Thus, he wrote in 1879: “La théorie de l’évolution nous a rendu un fier
service! Appliquée à l’Histoire elle met à néant les rêves sociaux.” / “The theory
of evolution has done us great favour! Applied to history, it has quashed social-
ist dreams.” (Flaubert, 2007, V: 347)
This viewpoint went against what Flaubert lambasted as an unthinkingly
held common belief of the time: i.e. that the defenders of evolution in the
natural sciences were dreadful materialists and, as such, threats to the social
order. In Bouvard et Pécuchet, for instance, the two heroes are admired by the
notables in Chavignolles, particularly by the priest, as long as they uphold the
geological catastrophism of Cuvier, because it supports the idea of the Flood.3
3 “Un après-midi, comme ils retournaient des silex au milieu de la grande route, M. le curé
passa, et les abordant d’une voix pateline:—‘Ces messieurs s’occupent de géologie? Fort
bien!’ Car il estimait cette science. Elle confirme l’autorité des Écritures, en prouvant le
But, when they read Lamarck and Geoffroy Saint Hilaire, and then undertake
to question the authority of Scripture in the name of evolutionism, Captain
Heurtaux shouts at them: “You are revolutionaries!” (Flaubert, 2008: 148)
Flaubert was shedding light on the inextricable ties linking the natural sci-
ences with political and religious ideology. Cuvier’s revolutions of the globe
were compatible with ideas of a divine transcendence, which was both cre-
ative and destructive, since universal cataclysms were, in the end, such ex-
traordinary events that they seem almost supernatural; catastrophism thus
corresponded to a conservative political outlook. On the contrary, to take a
stand against Cuvier in the name of scientific evolutionism was to contest the
religious representation of time, and to attack religion was to be revolutionary.
In his Dictionnaire des idées reçues (Dictionary of Received Ideas), Flaubert
revealed the same type of politico-scientific concretion on the topic of spon-
taneous generation: “Spontaneous Generation: Socialist idea.” (Flaubert, 2008:
435) The thesis of spontaneous generation set out by Félix-Archimède Pouchet
was contradicted at the beginning of the 1860s by Pasteur, who took on the
mantle of defender of religious orthodoxy against all types of materialists who
held that only matter could create life. Thus, spontaneous generation, which
postulated that life on Earth has emerged out of inert matter, became the cor-
nerstone of an overarching evolutionary edifice, combining geology and biolo-
gy together in a history of Nature independent of God. Since it entailed a form
of atheism, this radical emancipation from the idea of a Creator God would
be the preserve of dissenting socialists. Here again, in the common wisdom of
the period, hard-line evolutionism was linked to revolutionary subversiveness.
But Flaubert threw scorn upon this amalgamation precisely because the re-
lation between evolution and revolution was, according to him, one of antago-
nism and because a proper understanding of evolution nullified revolutionary
idealism. This was the crux of the debate Flaubert conducted with Maxime du
Camp on the subject of the ideology of the Commune. Upon the appearance
of the final tome of Convulsions de Paris (The Convulsions of Paris), Flaubert
wrote to his friend to offer his compliments, but also (and especially?) to con-
test certain passages, in particular du Camp’s analysis of the negative impact of
Darwinism upon the Commune’s insurgents:
Déluge.” / “One afternoon, while they were digging up pieces of flint in the road, the local
curate came along, and addressed them in a unctuous tones:—‘Doing some geology, gentle-
men? Jolly good!’ For he respected that science. It confirmed the authority of Scripture by
proving that the Flood had occurred.” (Flaubert, 2008: 134)
334 Azoulai
Il y a une page que je voudrais effacer de ton volume, la page 244: Les
côtés dangereux de la théorie de Darwin! Est-ce sérieux? Et tu avoues
toi-même qu’elle a agi sur les communeux un peu à leur insu. Je crois
même qu’ils l’ignoraient complètement […]. C’est l’Économie poli-
tique (ou mieux “l’infâme” Malthus) qui a inspiré Darwin. Il serait
temps que la sociologie s’inspirât de lui. C’est d’ailleurs ce qu’elle fait en
Angleterre. Quand ces idées-là seront descendues dans les masses, il n’y
aura plus de révolutions parce qu’on sera convaincu que “Natura non
facit saltus!”
Flaubert, 2007, V: 739–740
There is a page that I would like to remove from your book, page 244:
The dangerous aspects of Darwin’s theory! Can you be serious? You admit
yourself that it influenced the Communards a little unbeknownst to
them. I believe they were completely unaware of it […]. It was political
economics (or rather the “odious” Malthus) that inspired Darwin. It is
about time that sociology looked to him. That is indeed what has hap-
pened in England. When those ideas have been absorbed by the masses,
there will be no more revolutions because people will accept that “Natura
non facit saltus!”
As the psychiatric image of convulsions in the title indicate, history for Du

Camp experiences jolts, what he refers to as “bouts of social epilepsy” (Du
Camp, 1880: 459), such as the insurrection of the Paris Commune, for instance.
Du Camp thus biologizes history by using this image of a social pathology pro-
ducing a spasmodic and jerky temporality. But for Du Camp, the Darwinian
law of evolution, due to its “dangerous aspects”, fuelled the madness of so-
cial revolts: at bottom, the cause of the Commune had thus apparently been
Darwinian thought, which had introduced into society a law of the jungle.4
Flaubert violently rejected this conflation of evolutionism with the seditious
mind-set. For him, Darwin’s law of selection had emerged from Malthusian
principles; it was thus economics that had passed on its rules to evolutionary
biology, and if biology in return was to give rise to policies, they would never be
egalitarian in character. Thanks to this debate between Flaubert and Du Camp
4 “Si l’on ajoute à cela la théorie de Darwin, dont ils n’ont retenu que les côtés dangereux, on
arrive fatalement au combat pour l’existence qui est l’insurrection permanente, et à la sélec-
tion, qui aboutit tout droit au despotisme. Quia nominor leo!” / “If we add to this Darwin’s
theory, from which they have taken only the dangerous parts, we inevitably end up with
the struggle for existence, i.e. permanent insurrection, and selection, which leads directly to
despotism. Quia nominor leo!” (Du Camp, 1880: 244)
we can glimpse the particularities of how Darwin’s thought was received in

the 19th century: the principles of evolution were, in reality, filtered through
Spencerian sociology. As Yvette Conry has emphasized, the Darwinism that
gained acceptance in France was a mixture of transformism and various so-
cial and political ideologies (Conry, 1974). Darwin’s thought was reduced to
its Malthusian nucleus of competition between individuals; and, applied to
human societies, it served an ultraliberal ideology.
Flaubert’s interpretation was thus in this Social Darwinian vein, advocat-
ing an “ideology of radical immanence” (Conry, 1987: 87), in which societies
are conceived of as organisms naturally capable of self-regulation. As a con-
sequence, any effort to modify or transgress the social order is bound to fail-
ure. The history of societies, like that of Nature, progresses step by step in
accordance with a gradualist principle: Natura non facit saltus. Nature does
not jump ahead. This Linnaean axiom, taken up by Darwin, implied a form of
immobilism and a wait-and-see attitude in politics: there is nothing we can do,
since everything happens progressively. No revolution is possible, since every-
thing is a matter of evolution.
This debate between Flaubert and Du Camp on the socio-political signifi-
cance of Darwinism had already been engaged in by Virchow and Haeckel at the
Congress of Munich in 1877. While Virchow had accused Darwinism of being a
Trojan horse for socialism, Haeckel retorted in his Proofs of Transformism that
evolution was an “antidote against the socialists’ absurd egalitarian utopias”
(Haeckel, 1879: 111). Flaubert was thus on the same side as Haeckel, whom he
had read with great interest in the 1870s: the latter’s History of Creation seemed
to him a book “full of facts and ideas”, “that are quite inspirational”, and in
which Darwinism was “even more clearly explained than in Darwin’s own
books” (Flaubert, 1998, IV: 814, 835, 824).
Flaubert found in the Social Darwinism of Haeckel and Spencer a justifica-
tion for his elitist social attitudes and of his reactionary politics but, more im-
portantly, he also found a continuist vision of historical time, which appeared
to him as a salutary corrective to the idea of revolution. What Flaubert held
against revolutionary socialists was not merely the content of their utopia, i.e.
egalitarianism, but also the way in which it was to be brought about: revolution,
which was meant to abruptly and violently change the course of history. For
Flaubert, the revolutionary ideal was akin to mystical or messianic delusion:
La Magie croit aux transformations immédiates par la vertu des formules,

absolument comme le Socialisme. Ni l’une ni l’autre ne tiennent compte
du temps et de l’évolution fatale des choses.
Flaubert, 2007, V: 740
336 Azoulai
Magic believes in immediate transformations by virtue of spells, just like

socialism. Neither one takes account of time and the fatal evolution of
things.
In its belief in the ideal of an ability to create ex nihilo, the revolutionary idea
was a return to Christian transcendentalism, and was akin to a belief in mir-
acles. We can thus read the entry “SPONTANEOUS GENERATION” in the
Dictionnaire des idées reçues in a totally different light, no longer hearing in it
the voice of the bourgeois adversary, but rather the voice of the author himself.
To understand how spontaneous generation could be a socialist idea, perhaps
we need to transpose it from the field of biology, from which it originally came,
to that of history: to allow the possibility of a form of life “without parents” to
transmit it (for this is the biological definition of spontaneous generation) was
to allow the possibility of an event with no precursors, which meant believing
that Nature and History could jump ahead. Socialists, according to Flaubert,
believed in the spontaneous generation of an egalitarian society.
3 Zola
Zola also threw light on the close links between socialist convictions and reli-
gious unreason in Les Rougon-Macquart: in Germinal the enthusiastic speech-
es of Étienne Lantier and the exaltation they stir up among the miners recall
the fervour and idealism of early Christianity, and are presented as mystifica-
tions: what Étienne believes to perceive, and what he allows his audience to
glimpse, is the illusion “of a new society sprouting in a single day, just like in
dreams” (Zola, 2000: 206). However, this critique of revolutionary idealism, un-
like in Flaubert, was not based on evolutionary sociobiology. In Germinal, Zola
emphasized instead the tensions and complementarities between the ideas of
revolution and evolution, and between historical and biological forces.
It is, first of all, in discussions between characters in Germinal that the
confrontation between evolutionary and revolutionary time occurs. Étienne
Lantier, better educated that the other miners, is the first character of whom
the spirit of revolt takes hold and his preference is for historico-scientific so-
cialism, which provokes the jibes of his anarchist friend, Souvarine:
—Des bêtises! répéta Souvarine. Votre Karl Marx en est encore à vouloir
laisser agir les forces naturelles. […] Fichez-moi donc la paix, avec votre
évolution! Allumez le feu aux quatre coins des villes, fauchez les peuples,
rasez tout, et quand il ne restera plus rien de ce monde pourri, peut-être

en repoussera-t-il un meilleur.
Zola, 2000: 178
—Nonsense! repeated Souvarine. Your Karl Marx still believes in letting

natural forces play out. […] Leave off with your talk of evolution! Set
alight every corner of the cities, mow down the populations, and when
nothing remains of this rotten world, perhaps a better one will grow up
in its place.
For Souvarine, the radical revolutionary thinker, Marxism is much too evo-
lutionary, and not revolutionary enough. Souvarine goes on to pour scorn on
Marx’s historical determinism: “your scientists with their evolution are cow-
ards” (Zola, 2000: 281). It is true that Marxism replaced idealist depictions of
history with a critical understanding of the movement of history, which can
resemble “a theory of the evolution of political systems based on the changes
within the system of production” (Tort, 2011: 67). Zola was thus drawing on
parts of Émile de Laveleye’s book on contemporary socialism. Laveleye depict-
ed Marxism as a “fatalism” (Laveleye, 1883: 26) and quoted, in support of his
view, a sentence from Capital in which Marx naturalizes the historical process
in a series of biological metaphors:
Lors même qu’une société est arrivée à découvrir la voie de la loi naturelle
qui préside à son mouvement, elle ne peut ni dépasser d’un saut, ni abo-
lir par décrets les phases de son développement naturel, mais elle peut
abréger la période de gestation et adoucir les maux de leur enfantement.
Laveleye, 1883: 25–26
Even if a society has reached an understanding of the workings of the

natural law that governs its development, it can neither jump over, nor
abolish by decree the phases of its natural development, but it can short-
en the period of gestation and moderate the labour pains.
In other words, History for Marx, like Nature for Darwin, does not jump ahead.
Souvarine, the anarchist, thus denounces the collusion between Marxism
and evolutionism that Laveleye had himself criticized to different ends: i.e. in
the name of Christian socialism. In his preface, Laveleye described the strange
blindness of socialists who adopted “Darwinian theories that went against
their demands for equality” (Laveleye, 1883: XI). In the same way, Souvarine
338 Azoulai
would rail against “the stupidity of the socialists who accepted Darwin, the
apostle of scientific inequality, whose famous idea of selection only suited aris-
tocratic philosophers” (Zola, 2000: 493). Darwin’s theory of natural selection
merely served to justify the liberal economics of “laissez-faire, laissez-passer”
and free competition, and could not form the basis of any truly socialist proj-
ect: Darwinism ended up merely naturalizing social inequality. Étienne, de-
spite being a reader of Darwin, would oppose a form of socialism that he too
would find too evolutionary, i.e. Rasseneur’s possibilism, which proclaimed
“the need to allow the time for social evolution to occur” (Zola, 2000: 327).
Key to the ideological positioning of these characters was the question of
the link between biological evolutionism and revolutionary socialist history.
Germinal indeed repeatedly points out the ambiguity and the complexity
of the relations between the two great thought systems of the 19th century:
Marxism and Darwinism. We know that shortly after the publication of On
the Origin of the Species, Marx stated in a letter to Lassalle (16 January 1861)
that Darwin’s book could be conceived as the “basis of the historical struggle
between the classes” (Marx, 1974: 21), the biological struggle for life providing a
natural basis for class struggle. Marx and Darwin converged in the same man-
ner in the mind of Étienne Lantier, who conceived of “the fight for existence as
a revolutionary one, the skinny eating the fat, a strong people devouring a pal-
lid bourgeoisie” (Zola, 2000: 493). But in 1862, Marx would denounce Darwin’s
application of bourgeois economic theories and Malthusianism to biology;
and Lafargue, Karl Marx’s son-in-law, would write that “Darwinians are merely
rehashing in naturalist form the lessons of the economists” (Lafargue, 1884: 14).
Marxist doctrine had an ambiguous relationship with Darwin’s law of evolu-
tion, celebrated on the one hand as a weapon of revolution, lambasted on the
other as an instrument of legitimization of an iniquitous status quo; and Zola’s
novel reflected this ambivalence.
Furthermore, the anarchist conception of revolution, insofar as it entailed
the destruction pure and simple of present-day society, appeared unnatural to
the hero because it definitively severed the link between past and future:
Et puis, il ne comprenait toujours pas, sa race se refusait au rêve sombre

de cette extermination du monde, fauché comme un champ de seigle, à
ras de terre. Ensuite, que ferait-on, comment repousseraient les peuples?
Zola, 2000: 282–283
Anyway, he still could not comprehend, his type could not envisage this
dark dream in which everyone was to be exterminated, cut down like a
field of rye, cut off right down at the ground. Then what was to be done,
how were peoples to grow up again?
The agricultural metaphor shows the extent to which Étienne refused to dis-
sociate history and nature, the rhythms of societies from those of life. And, in
a sense, this is the central problem around which Zola’s novel is constructed:
how to find a practical reconciliation between evolution and revolution, be-
tween biological and historical time?
While it would seem difficult on a purely ideological level, Étienne’s experi-
ence shows us that, strictly in novelistic terms, a reconciliation is possible:
Maintenant, en plein ciel, le soleil d’avril rayonnait dans sa gloire, échauf-

fant la terre qui enfantait. Du flanc nourricier jaillissait la vie, les bour-
geons crevaient en feuilles vertes, les champs tressaillaient de la poussée
des herbes. De toutes parts, des graines se gonflaient, s’allongeaient, ger-
çaient la plaine, travaillées d’un besoin de chaleur et de lumière. […] Des
hommes poussaient, une armée noire, vengeresse, qui germait lentement
dans les sillons, grandissant pour les récoltes du siècle futur, et dont la
germination allait faire bientôt éclater la terre.
Zola, 2000: 568
Now, high in the sky, the April sun was radiating in all its glory, warm-
ing the pregnant earth. From its nourishing flank life was springing, buds
were exploding into green leaves, the fields were trembling as the grass
thrust upwards. On all sides, seeds were swelling, lengthening, cracking
open the plain, driven by their need for heat and light. […] Men were ris-
ing up, a dark avenging army sprouting slowly in the furrows, emerging to
be harvested in the century to come, and their germination would soon
shatter the earth.
The biological metaphor of germination allows social transformation to be

conceived of in two ways at once: firstly, as a form of continuity or progressiv-
ity (the swelling of seeds, their slow growth, the labour of childbirth), and at
the same time as sudden upheaval: once mature, life bursts out, buds explode,
human seed would shatter the earth. The novel’s final words (“shatter the
earth”) display a belief in the need for revolution, a belief shared by Souvarine,
as well as Rasseneur and Étienne, and which is expressed at several moments
in the novel via the expression: “This whole thing is going to blow sky high”
(Zola, 2000: 179–180, 279).
340 Azoulai
Indeed, what happens to the main character, Étienne Lantier, depicts the
genesis of a true revolutionary. At the end of the novel, wrote Zola in his
preparatory notes, Étienne departs, “his socialist education complete” (Zola,
2011: 458, f°394), and the final text shows him “ripened” (Zola, 2000: 564),
having realized that “violence perhaps did not make things go any faster”
(Zola, 2000: 567).
The genre of the educational novel, or Bildungsroman, to which Germinal
belongs, thus depicts a natural and gradual process from which emerges a “rea-
soning soldier of revolution” (Zola, 2000: 565). Despite the failure of the strike
and the portrait of a society in paralysis (the miners go back to work in the
same conditions as before), through his character, Zola shows us revolution
at work, as a work in progress. By adopting Goethe’s model of Bildungsroman,
Zola was using an evolutionary paradigm in order to depict an inevitable social
revolution. Indeed, the Bildungsroman as conceived of by Goethe was not un-
related to the theory of the metamorphosis of plants; in both cases, the plant
or the individual developed progressively and in a unified manner. Thus, Zola’s
version of the novel of education, by marrying biography and social chronicle,
illustrates the organic development (Bildung) of a revolutionary, Étienne, and
of a revolution (meant to happen in the 20th century).
It would thus be reductive to consider that the natural metaphors in Zola
served to uphold an unchanging social order.5 Zola represented a nature in
movement, evolving, and whose temporality was likely compatible with the
revolutionary project. But this natural evolution, as it appears in the text, com-
bined a Darwinian model (Étienne dreams at the end of the novel of the elimi-
nation, in the struggle for existence, of the decadent bourgeoisie by a more
numerous and better armed proletariat) and a model of metamorphosis à la
Goethe, one which was not merely scientific but which also structured the
work in literary terms. The antagonism between the biological paradigm of
evolution and the historical paradigm of revolution was thus neutralized by
the literary logic of the Bildungsroman.
In conclusion, the relation between the concepts of evolution and revolu-
tion in Michelet, Flaubert and Zola illustrate well how depictions of histori-
cal time and biological time intersect and combine in the 19th century. But
5 Mitterand asserts that “the historical and social content [of Germinal] is overwhelmed by
biological and cosmic imagery. Contemporary social crises are compared to natural cata-
clysms that periodically affect the state of the world without modifying its deep structures.”
(Mitterrand, 1980: 156.) On this process of naturalizing the historical, as well as on its political
and ideological ambiguity, see Petrey, 1985 and Bender, 2010: 301–359.
it would also appear that these authors explore in depth the relationship be-
tween evolution and revolution, not merely on a philosophical and theoreti-
cal level, but also from the artistic point of view, so that this exploration can
function to reveal the creative specificities of each writer. In Michelet, it is via a
poetics of the “ascendant metamorphosis” (Michelet, 1983: 332), that evolution
and revolution, as well as the history of species and humans are reconciled.
In the work of Flaubert, it is via an ironic use of cliché that the conceptual
concretions clustered around historical revolution and biological evolution are
constructed and deconstructed. And finally, in Zola, it is through the process
of novelistic composition and the elaboration of metaphor that the sustained
pace of evolution and the asyndetic pace of revolution are combined within a
single living temporality.
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Du Camp, Maxime, 1880. Les Convulsions de Paris, 4 vols., vol. 4. Paris, Hachette.
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cent ans après”, 111–128.
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naturel: théorie darwinienne. Paris, Oriol.
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toires. 7 vols., vol. 5, edited by Colette Becker and Véronique Lavielle. Paris, Honoré
Champion.
Michelet and La Mer: Biology and the Philosophy of
History
Gisèle Séginger
Abstract
At the beginning of the 19th century, at the same moment as Lamarck and Geoffroy
Saint-Hilaire contribute to a historicization of natural sciences, moral sciences are
searching in natural history for a model of thought and a positivity. Michelet, in interior
exile during the Second Empire, publishes several books on Nature: he is searching for
a logic of the living which would allow to rethink historical evolution and progress on
a large timescale. Situated in between science and literature, La Mer develops a vital-
ist thought which mingles archaic beliefs and modern biological knowledge. Michelet
cites Lamarck, Félix Pouchet (the defender of spontaneous generation), Darwin and
his corral studies. He imagines a historical transformism, founding democratic or so-
cialist ideas on biological and geological knowledge: evolution supplants revolution.
The strangeness of La Mer results from the blend of political and scientific ideas, the
intertextual encounter between Darwin and Leroux, the scientific and the socialist. It
results, as well, from a curious form of materialism, developing an idea of transcen-
dency internal to time and matter.
While Lamarck and Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire were contributing at the beginning

of the 19th century to the historicization of the natural sciences, a process al-
ready underway at the end of the 18th century, the moral sciences were looking
to natural history for models and for its positivism. Natural beings, humankind
included, were henceforth seen as subject to the effects of time—a phenom-
enon Michel Foucault referred to in Les mots et les choses as the a priori of a
new episteme—, and the notion of transformation could thus be combined
with that of progress. The philosophy of history and the natural sciences had
been exchanging metaphors and models since the end of the 18th century,
with Herder, then Quinet, exploring the borders between natural history and
the historical sciences.1
Very early on, Michelet, who was friends with Quinet, the two Geoffroy
Saint-Hilaires (Petitier, 2006), and Félix and Georges Pouchet, both natural-
ists, was drawn to these borders. He was thus well informed about the new
1 See the Introduction of this volume: 2–3.

344 Séginger
epistemological conditions which had made possible the supplanting of the

old Linnaean classification and the replacement of an account featuring an
eternal nature by a genuine history of nature. As early as 1823, writing in his
Journal (his personal diary), he reflected upon the “ressemblances” / “resem-
blances” between disciplines, and in 1825, in Journal des idées, he muses about
writing an “Religious study of the natural sciences in terms of their most ac-
cessible notions” (1959b: 235). Only be in the 1850s would he truly take on the
borderland between the disciplines:
L’histoire et l’histoire naturelle vont maintenant de front dans mes pen-

sées, frappé surtout que je suis de ce qu’il y a d’éternel dans l’histoire
mobile de l’homme et de progressif dans celle du globe et de la nature,
immuable en apparence.
Letter to Eugène Noël, 9 August 1855
History and natural history are now at the forefront of my preoccupa-

tions, since I am especially struck by what is eternal in the changing his-
tory of mankind and what is progressive in that [history] of the planet
and of nature, so apparently unchanging.
The 1851 coup d’état turned Michelet into an internal exile deprived of public
office. Nevertheless, the disappointment did not put him off his historiograph-
ical project: he completed the Histoire de la révolution française and pursued
the writing of his Histoire de France. But he also produced a string of unusual
works: Légendes démocratiques du Nord (1854), La Sorcière (1861), La Bible de
l’humanité (1864), and above all four books on nature mixing more or less mod-
ern knowledge with poetic flights of fancy: L’Oiseau (1856), L’Insecte (1857), La
Mer (1861), La Montagne (1868). In the space between science and literature, he
sought a conception of time that would allow him to re-enchant the process
of historical change2 by means of a vitalism which was equal parts ancient
belief and recent biological science.
2 Edward Kaplan points to more personal matters—the death of Mme Dumesnil in 1842—and
a spiritual outlook (1975: 111–128). See Michelet’s Journal: “Au milieu de cette mort, lente et
sans horreur, je m’obstinais à chercher de nouvelles causes de vivre […]. Je fouillais la source
de toute vie, la nature; je lus les articles Animal, Cétacés [publiés dans L’Encyclopédie nouvelle
de Pierre Leroux and Jean Reynaud]. Le dernier me toucha fort. Il y a un poème à faire sur
ces pauvres créatures […].” / “In the midst of this slow, undramatic death, I made a point
of seeking out new reasons to live […]. I delved into the source of all life: nature. I read the
articles Animal and Cetacean [published in L’Encyclopédie nouvelle by Pierre Leroux and Jean
Michelet and La Mer 345
Thinking about 1789 and what he lived through in 1848 led Michelet to ques-
tion the notion of revolution. He came to believe that the most effective type
of revolution, one which would definitively modify the political and social
situation, would have to be religious and cultural. The end of Histoire de la
révolution, written during the Second Empire, analyses the aborted revolution
of 1789 from this perspective: the Terror was a paradoxical return of the re-
pressed Christian impulse in the Revolutionaries in the Comité de salut pub-
lic (Committee of Public Safety). They left the structures of the imagination
intact: the role of the arbitrary within the Terror was an avatar of Christian
Grace. It was all about working toward a revolution of the imagination in order
to create modern democratic myths—founded on science—and to bring
about a renewal of political values.
I have chosen the example of La Mer from the works dating from the 1850s
because of the abundance of biological knowledge it involves. Michelet meant
it as a work of resistance: in a part lyrical, part scientific reverie—a paradoxi-
cal form for historiographical thought to take in a time of repression—, the
historian invented a unitary conception of both historical and biological time,
which allowed him to rethink where history was headed.
…
Michelet’s interest for works of natural history emerged early, in the 1820s, a
period when he had not yet become the republican we have come to know.
He was at the time very close to moderate liberals such as Guizot and Victor
Cousin, but he was already establishing scientific friendships, which would be-
come more numerous from the 1830s on: at his period, he met Geoffroy Saint-
Hilaire, then Broussais at the Académie des Sciences Politiques et Morales,
where the latter was surrounded by a group of doctors who believed in the
importance of physiology. In 1842, he made the acquaintance of the embryolo-
gist Étienne Serres, whose importance for the development of his thinking he
acknowledged: “Il me souleva le voile d’Isis, me fit entrevoir l’énorme portée
morale de ce qu’on croit physique.” / “He lifted the veil of Isis for me, caused me
to see the enormous moral significance of what we think of as being physical.”3
He also spent time in the company of Félix Pouchet, the late theoretician of
spontaneous generation, a cause that was virtually lost at this time, but to
Reynaud]. The latter really touched me. There is a poem to be written about these poor crea-
tures […].” (1959a, I: 405–406)
3 Unpublished document conserved at the Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris, and
quoted by Paule Petitier, 1997: 105.
346 Séginger
which he devotes considerable attention in La Mer, so much so that Pasteur,

who was a defender of the pre-existence of germs, would quote a whole page
of this book in his dispute with Pouchet4 in order to show how disastrous was
the effect of poetry on scientific debates.
His scientific reading and friendships are not unrelated to the link
Michelet established between Nature and History. This link is very different in
l’Introduction à l’histoire universelle (1831) when compared with the texts writ-
ten in the 1850s and 1860s. In 1831, Michelet, who had already read Geoffroy
Saint-Hilaire, took inspiration from the structural unity of living beings5 and
applied it to history, which allowed him to conceive of history as a totality
moving toward progress. The guiding principle was the “heroic principle of
the world, of freedom” (1831: 26). However, while the natural sciences provided
him with an epistemological model in 1831, nature played a negative role in
his interpretation of history. Nature had an “absorbent effect”, bogging Man
down in matter and shackling his freedom: the “toute-puissance d’Isis” / “abso-
lute power of Isis” (Michelet, 1831: 10), fertility was mankind’s initial obsession.
History was thus a ‘war’ against nature and progress followed a geographical
path from India, where nature was dominant, to the West, where little by little
Man freed himself from the sensuality of nature and became master of his
destiny by achieving consciousness, liberty and civilization. Historical time
was constructed dialectically in opposition to the ahistoricity of absorbent na-
ture: as in Vico’s adage in la Scienza nuova, which Michelet had just translated
(1827), Man was his own Prometheus.
In the 1831 text, thanks to war and humanity’s Prometheanism, Michelet
rejected the neo-Hegelian fatalism of Victor Cousin in the philosophy of his-
tory, but he remained beholden to Cousin from whom he took the Cartesian
idea of a clear dichotomy between mind and nature. It was also still in terms
of the views of the monarchist historians, and particularly the liberal histo-
rian and politician Guizot that Michelet thought about civilization (1828 and
1830), which he turned into a synonym for liberty: historical time acquired its
rationality in opposition to natural life. The perspective was more moral than
historical or political, which would no longer be the case later.
From the 1840s on, Michelet broke decisively with Cousin and Guizot. He
began to move in different circles, more those of scientists, of socialists like
4 See Pasteur, 1864: 257–265.

5 Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire sketched out this idea in several essays published in 1807
in the Annales du Muséum d’histoire naturelle, then in Philosophie anatomique in 1818, and
above all in 1830, which sparked off a public dispute with Cuvier (Principes de philosophie
zoologique discutés en mars 1830 au sein de l’Académie royale des Sciences).
Leroux, and of the Indian specialist Burnouf, who would disabuse him of his
prejudices regarding this country. India, in La Bible de l’humanité (1864), would
remain, like in 1831, at the source of humanity, but it would now be as a lu-
minous origin, a life-giving source. This is because nature—and certain other
life sciences in poetically, morally and politically sublimated form—were pro-
moted in the works of the 1850s and 1860s to the status of founding values, both
in historical and moral terms.
This change does not date exactly from the period right after Napoléon III’s
coup d’état, even if it did become more obvious at that point. As early as 1845,
it was emerging in Le Peuple: Michelet praised Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire
whose work on embryology had allowed us, he says, to follow the formation of
the foetus and to consider the formation of a child as “the faithful reproduc-
tion of metamorphoses in animals”: “L’animal, ce serf des serfs, se retrouve le
parent du roi du monde.” / “Animals, those serfs of serfs turn out to be related
to the king of the world.”6 As for India, it was henceforth the guardian of “the
tradition of universal fraternity, because it is closer than we are to Creation”
(Michelet, 1974: 176). On the one hand, the rehabilitation of animals in Le
Peuple, is part of a general tendency to defend the small and the ‘simple’, which
paved to the way for La Mer: here Michelet would study—unlike Balzac—
animal species as if they were social species; on the other, the comparison of
child and animal, as well as the rehabilitation of India calls into question the
opposition he had set up in 1831 between Man and nature. From this relaxing
of distinctions, a new conception of historical time would emerge, a biologized
version of time that was amenable to progress.
In La Mer, the dialectic of the struggle between man and nature is supplant-
ed by the idea of effort and by the general aspiration of nature to attain more
complex forms. A different idea of historical change thus emerged from an
exploration of the dynamism of nature. Drawing on the work of natural scien-
tists, Michelet rethought historical rationality in order to place Law and Justice
on a more solid footing and to be rid of the idea of Grace in all its forms. His
idea was to put an end to a temporality governed by arbitrariness (of which
the coup d’état was also an example) and to highlight a rationale of time and a
continuity of progress.
In the 1850s and 1860s, Michelet redefined historical work along the lines
of the biological model in which the formation and modification of all organ-
isms took place according to an internal logic, a conception which would go on
6 Michelet, 1974, 2nd part, chap. VI, “Digression. Instinct des animaux. Réclamation pour eux”,
181.
348 Séginger
to inflect his historical narrative. He would set out his new perspective in the
preface to his Histoire de France:
je dégagerai de l’histoire elle-même un fait moral, énorme et trop peu

remarqué. C’est le puissant travail de soi sur soi, où la France, par son
progrès propre, va transformant tous ses éléments bruts.
2008, I: 11
I shall draw from history itself a moral fact, which is enormous and too
often overlooked: the powerful work undertaken by and on ourselves,
in the process of which France, through its own progress continuously
transforms all its raw materials.
He makes use of knowledge borrowed from embryology and from a paradigm

that would later be described as evolutionist,7 while developing ideas that
would differ from Darwinism: the “work of the self on the self” invokes effort
and will. The term ‘effort’ had already often been used by Lamarck in the con-
text of nature.8 However, in Lamarck’s work, the word had a less of a moral
meaning. To be sure, this effort implied an “sentiment intérieur” / “inner feel-
ing” (Lamarck, 1994: 58), but this feeling was more like a need, an instinct pro-
voking a tendency, than an act of the will, contrary to the meaning Michelet lent
to the word when he used it later when talking about nature. Effort—which he
first used in 1831 in the context of history to designate something distinctive to
Promethean man struggling against nature—henceforth was a vital force char-
acteristic of nature as a whole. Michelet anthropomorphized the sea, which
was driven by an “aspiration” (77) and imagined an eternal creative force:
la mer, dans son aspiration constante à l’existence organisée, est la forme

la plus énergique de l’éternel Désir qui jadis évoqua ce globe et toujours
enfante en lui.
77
the sea, in its constant aspiration to have an organized existence, is the

most energetic form of eternal Desire, which once conjured up the earth
and continues to bring forth life within it.
7 The initially scattered components of this paradigm developed gradually in France and
England even before the publication of On the Origin of Species in 1859 by Darwin, who would
only use the word ‘evolution’ for the first time in the 6xt ed., published in 1872.
8 It is important in his Philosophie zoologique (1808). It was, for instance, an adaptive effort that
drove the snake to grow longer in order to crawl and get through narrow spaces.
While in the transformist or evolutionist view, adaptation to the environment,

selection within species and the struggle for life create a new form of fatality,
Michelet found within nature, and even in within matter, an impetus, and a de-
sire for elevation—in La Mer he talks about the more or less conscious forms of
this desire. In the watery depths, he shows us this:
Vous voyez à perte de vue des fleurs, des plantes et des arbustes; vous les
jugez tels aux formes, aux couleurs. Et ces plantes ont des mouvements,
ces arbustes sont irritables, ces fleurs frémissent d’une sensibilité nais-
sante, où va poindre la volonté.
1983: IV, “Fleur de sang”, 133
There are flowers, plants and bushes as far as the eye can see; you can
identify them as such thanks to their shape and colours. And these plants
move, these bushes are irritable, these flowers quiver with nascent sensi-
tivity, which will give birth to will.
Will would have different degrees of consciousness and individuality depend-

ing on the complexity of the living organism. For, even before reading Darwin’s
On the Origin of Species (which he would read in translation in 1862) and
Spencer’s First Principles, whose impact in France took place later,9 Michelet
was thinking in terms of an evolution (even if he did not use the term, prefer-
ring metamorphosis10 like Lamarck and Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire) which referred
less to an adaptation (even though this idea was not absent) than to a process
of complexification11 and individuation. He showed a chain of living organisms
at the bottom of the oceans, as well as beings emerging from a sort of viscous
and totally undifferentiated living milk, made up of everything from micro-
organisms to marine mammals capable of forming couples and families, and
of mutual love. For, the desire, on the one hand, for self-improvement and, on
the other, the need for love and happiness (more than for adaptation or the
9 See Bender, 2014.

10 Edward Kaplan considers that this term had at that period a meaning equivalent to evo-
lution today (Michelet’s poetic vision, a romantic philosophy of nature: 24). However, it
should be pointed out what would always mark out as different Michelet’s transformism,
which was closer to Lamarck’s theses than to Darwinian evolutionism: the question of
freedom and the desire for improvement, as well as the idea of spontaneous generation.
11 The idea of complexification was fundamental to Lamarck’s understanding of how
the living world operated (Philosophie zoologique), and it would also prove important
to Spencerian evolutionism, which applied it both to nature and human society (First
Principles, 1862).
350 Séginger
struggle for life) was the driving force and the energy behind the life impulse.
What is more, love displayed a transformative power—“L’amour est l’effort de
la vie pour être au-delà de son être et pouvoir plus que sa puissance.” / “Love is
the life’s attempt to go beyond its being and to achieve more than what is with-
in its power” (120)—, to such an extent that Michelet used the word to refer
to the capacity for “living ferment” within the infinitely small. Love—creative
force—“was born before the individual being” (132), before life became visible
in forms more individuated less subject to the “communism” of impersonal
life, which was characteristic of micro-organisms (131)!12
Michelet conflates biological and psychological ideas: he even speaks in
terms of the sea’s melancholy, which he calls “héroïque” / “heroic” (58), a term
he had used in 1831 to describe freedom, and which he reused in 1861 because
the sea pushes living beings toward something better. Through its marine
mammals, it aspires to the land, which is the realm of superior forms. Love,
which is everywhere in La Mer, is both a vital force of reproduction and a moral
impulse characteristic of superior animals. Significantly, while Lamarck’s fa-
mous giraffe adapted to its environment, its long neck being explained in his
Philosophie zoologique by its need to feed off tree branches, Michelet imagines
the formation of the manatee’s “webbed polyp” hands not as the result of an
adaptation to its environment and an effort entirely governed by the life in-
stinct, but as the result of a moral sentiment: the affection that provokes the
desire to caress its offspring (214). For Darwin, evolution would be all about
selection and adaptation; for Michelet it was governed by feelings—a need for
love and reciprocity that was greater than even that for food. Thus, Michelet
managed to introduce into biological time a form of freedom, which brought
natural beings closer to mankind. With its marriage of materialism and ideal-
ism, Michelet’s transformism did not subscribe to a Darwinian struggle for life
and to evolutionary determinism.
Michelet invented transformist legends (in reality, the manatee has two
very short fins at the front which hardly bear any resemblance to hands at all
but are more like paws). Alternatively, he used them, for example when he
was stressing continuity and assigning a place in the chain of being to ma-
rine animals. For Michelet was never shy of resorting to the ancient model
of the ladder or chain of being, which placed more emphasis on hierarchical
classification and less on transformations. This was the conceptual model that
12 Michelet was fascinated by the idea of life originating in the infinitely small. In May 1856,
Doctor Robin (founder in 1849 of the Société de Biologie along with Claude Bernard)
helped him to acquire a microscope, and in La Mer, he describes his observation of drops
of sea water.
underpinned the idea of there being a nostalgia for the sea: its creatures as-
pired to the land because it could support higher forms of life. Michelet dreamt
of a chain of being that would connect land-based animals to more primitive
forms of marine life. However, he nuanced this transition out of caution and,
in the end, he seemed to admit that the most complex marine animals had too
definite a form, which was not malleable enough to allow for such transforma-
tion. He thus settled on the following hypothesis: beings with less fixed forms
were doubtless necessary to allow for a new series to emerge, one which would
culminate in mankind. But these forms were no longer to be seen. While there
was a link missing that would allow us to connect all forms of animal life and
to demonstrate that all life came from the sea, Michelet nevertheless did not
come to the conclusion that it did not exist, but rather that for the time being
there was a gap in our knowledge. He thus based his arguments on mythology:
he looked to the legends and myths about sirens and tritons for arguments to
support the existence of intermediary beings that might have acted as a transi-
tion between marine animals and a series of animals that led to Man. Myths
perhaps revealed ancient vestiges in human memory of the existence of inter-
mediary beings. What is clear is Michelet’s commitment to continuity within a
natural history where jumps and revolutions were out of the question. Natural
time brought about transformations, not revolutions.
Using biological knowledge, Michelet constructed an energy-based philoso-
phy of life, which reconciled a sort of idealism and materialist biologism. The
words “esprit” / “spirit”, “âme” / “soul”, “amour” / “love” are used to refer to an
impulse characteristic of the realm of the living. “The spirit always emerges
victorious”, writes Michelet (143), allying teleology and transformism thanks
to the notion of “upward metamorphosis” (332). This spirit which becomes
apparent over time was not revealed by a prophet, but by science: Lamarck
“reconstructs the circulation of spirit as it moves from one form to the next”,
writes Michelet, “and he forced to go where we never would have. We have
embarked on a quest, asking everything, whether in history or natural history:
‘Who are you?—I am life.’” (143). Michelet produced a biological philosophy
of time which extended the notion of unitary scheme and composition to the
domain of history, and which avoided going down the track of philosophical
idealism. Lamarck “reconstructs the circulation of spirit as it moves from one
form to the next”, writes Michelet (143). The spirit was thus not that of Hegel’s
philosophy, and the soul was not that of Stahl’s metaphysics. The “loving soul
of the world” was a driving force within the realm of the living:
Plus on montre partout la vie, plus on fait sentir la grande Âme, adorable
unité des êtres par qui ils engendrent et se créent.
77
352 Séginger
The more life we show all around us, the more we make palpable the
great Soul, an adorable unity among beings through which they engender
and multiply.
Fecundity was thus fundamental, and in the text of 1861 we witness an amazing
sexualization of the sea, the great matrix of life,13 while in his Journal Michelet
describes in emotional terms his morning embraces with his wife Athénaïs,
and the bodily emotion that he derives from them, which seems to flow into
his writing (1962, II: 535).
Above all else, this phantasmatic sexualization of the sea reveals something
of the deep desire on Michelet’s part to change conceptions of time and to put
an end to a certain conception of revolution by means of a form of vitalism
(both scientific and teleological), which combined the theory of spontaneous
generation (Pouchet) and the Lamarckian theory of metamorphoses; for, in
both of these views, matter is endowed with a fundamental transformative
capacity, which governs nature as a whole, and which Michelet would place
at the heart of human history. In June 1860, as he was writing La Mer, he read
Hétérogénie by Félix Pouchet whom he visited in his laboratory at the Muséum
d’histoire naturelle in Rouen, and his Journal preserves a trace of their dis-
cussions about infusoria, and spontaneous generation, in which participated
Athénaïs, to whom Pouchet would soon after send a letter on heterogeny.14 A
few days later, on an excursion to the English Channel, Michelet noted in his
Journal that the sight of the sea confirmed the “sens de la vie mobile et de la mé-
tamorphose” / “notion that life was dynamic and all about metamorphosis” (II,
533). In La Mer, Michelet paid enthusiastic homage to Lamarck, the “Homer
of the museum” (142), “the genius of metamorphoses” (143), “full of faith in
the unity of life” (143), victor over death through a great “revolutionary effort
against inert matter” (143) and he declared his faith in spontaneous generation,
Pouchet’s thesis, which “will win out in the end” (332). He wanted in this book
to develop the idea which occurred clearly to him in June 1860 and which he
made note of in his Journal: “j’écrivis fortement une pensée enfin éclaircie et
formulée de la chaîne de la vie ascendante.” / “I got down on paper a thought
that I had finally managed to clarify and formulate about the upward chain of
13 In his Journal, in an entry dated “15 juin 1860”, he notes: “Tout le programme de L’eau de
mer assimilé au mucus du vagin.” / “The whole scheme of L’eau de mer, comparison with
the mucus of the vagina.” (1962, II: 529–530) In La Mer, the mucus, is an “élément vis-
queux, blanchâtre” / “whitish, viscous substance”, “gluant gélatineux” / “sticky and gelati-
nous”, at the limit between the organic and the inorganic, seems to “un liquide vivant” /
“‘a living liquid” (1983: 330), “une matière à demi organisée et déjà tout organisable” / “a
semi-organized and already eminently organisable form of matter” (116).
14 Included in a footnote by Paul Viallaneix (Michelet, 1962, II: 829).
life.” (531) The sea offered the spectacle of continuous transformation “sans
violence et sans catastrophe, par un progrès naturel: il y a une paix sereine, un
attrait singulier de douceur” / “free of violence and catastrophe, through natu-
ral progress: it has a serene peace about it, a uniquely gentle attraction” (137).
Vitalism and the natural improvement of species endowed with a momentum
of the will were more powerful than struggle and dialectic.
Michelet cobbled together heterogeneous thought systems: Lamarck’s
“metamorphoses”,15 Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire’s unity of design and composi-
tion, embryogeny and reflections on the simplification of organs from Serres
(1959b: 7);16 the thesis of spontaneous generation, but also the poetic idea of
metamorphoses, borrowed from Ovid, as well as the materialist idea of ex-
change between the dead and the living from Lucretius and Sade, mixed in
with a Heraclitean notion of opposites:
La vie impérieusement réclame ici l’assistance, l’indispensable secours

de sa sœur, la mort. Elles se livrent un combat, une lutte immense qui
n’est qu’harmonie et fait le salut.
109
Life here imperiously demands the assistance, the indispensable help of

her sister, death. They fight one against the other in an immense struggle
which is nothing more than harmony and which brings salvation.
Even the notion of struggle was henceforth transformed into something less
dialectic than dynamic: struggle contributed to balance and helped bring
about the ultimate triumph of fecundity! Life is affirmation. In La Mer Michelet
wrote a lyrical hymn to life, to the “eternal metamorphosis” (316), to “immortal-
ity”. The now triumphant “Harmony” receives a capital letter and, along with
it, a social connotation: solidarity. It is the voice of the Ocean that pronounces
this political word:
Solidarité. Acceptons le rapide échange, qui, dans l’individu, existe entre

ses éléments divers. Acceptons la loi supérieure qui unit les membres vi-
vants d’un même corps: humanité. Et, au-dessus, la loi suprême qui nous
fait coopérer, créer, avec la grande Ame, associés (dans notre mesure) à
l’aimante Harmonie du monde, solidaires dans la vie de Dieu.
316
15 The term is also used by Étienne Serres.

16 On Michelet and Étienne Serres, see Paule Petitier, “Les origines de l’intérêt de Michelet
pour les sciences naturelles” (Petitier, 1997: 105–121).
354 Séginger
Solidarity. Let us accept rapid exchange, which in the individual takes

place between his different constituent parts. Let us accept the higher
law that unites the living members of one body: humanity; and, above,
the supreme law that causes us to cooperate and create with the great
Soul, as associates (according to our abilities) of the loving Harmony of
the world, united in the life of God.
Solidarity, Harmony: these were recurring ideas in the writings of the utopi-
an socialists of the time, above all in work of Leroux,17 a friend of Geoffroy
Saint-Hilaire and of Michelet. The word “solidarity” is already to be found in
Le Peuple where Michelet made explicit reference to Pierre Leroux and to his
Encyclopédie nouvelle (1834–1841).
An embodiment of destructive tyranny in La Mer, the shark could only be
condemned from the standpoint of a progressist vitalism. Indeed, he was too
solitary an animal (at best, he loves a female shark), and relatively unfecund
to boot: he could only have a “single feudal heir, who is born fearful and fully
armed” (111), but in vain because he would never attain dominance, for he had
fecundity against him. Such was this fecundity that the sea was curiously in
danger of smothering in a profusion of fish. The shark—this feudal lord of the
sea—was merely the instrument of an equilibrium that escaped him. He was
not the central figure of natural history. It was the humbler species that did
lasting work: i.e. “the modest people” of “working molluscs” (60): they contrib-
uted to the construction of the coastlines, they were “the poor little workers
whose working life is the source of the mysterious charm, the moral fibre of
the sea” (60).
Ce peuple infini est muet. […] Ces petits êtres ne parlent pas au monde,
mais ils travaillent pour lui.
60
This innumerable mass of the people is silent. […] These small individu-
als do not speak to the world, but they do work for it.
17 “J’ai le premier utilisé le terme de solidarité pour l’introduire dans la philosophie, c’est-à-
dire suivant moi, dans la religion de l’avenir. J’ai voulu remplacer la charité du christian-
isme par la solidarité humaine.” / “I was the first to use the term ‘solidarity’ in order to
introduce it into philosophy, that is to say, from my point of view, into the religion of the
future. I wanted to replace Christian charity with human solidarity.” (Leroux, 1863: 254)
He developed the idea of a political solidarity in De l’humanité (1840), and it went on to
influence the socialism of 1848.
Thanks to the sea, Michelet thus found a more rational image of the People:
it was no longer that mass manipulated by Louis Napoléon Bonaparte, which
had produced so many occasions of disenchantment. Michelet found renewed
political hope in a vitalism that foregrounded the power of equality, of col-
lective life, and of the masses that, despite everything, had an influence on
the course of affairs by dint of the very fact that they were so numerous. In
a regime born of a coup d’état, which silenced republican voices, La Mer had
powerful political resonance. It was a text that reconstructed the heroic image
of the People, albeit in the absence of heroes, since the silent masses of the sea
laboured without fanfare.
In his Journal, in 1854, Michelet expressed satisfaction at having given “a
scientific basis for revolution” in Le Peuple in 1845 by founding it on “the rights
of simple folk” (1962, II: 253). La Mer was the quiet epic of simple folk, those
“world makers” (141) who patiently built reefs and mountains, while neither
the shark nor storms could do anything about it.
While “révolution” was still a focus, the word was used to refer to the “work
of the self on the self”,18 a willed evolution—for instance the crustacean that
freed itself from its casing to become a fish. Once again, Michelet limits the de-
terminist role of the environment and anchors the idea of freedom in nature in
order to safeguard some measure of political hope in the context of a time, in
which it had taken something of a battering. La Mer also showed that the true
dimension of progress was the long term, not the short term of the here and
now, and that it was often punctuated by sudden convulsions and blockages.
Hope could spring anew from a fresh conception of how history operated and
over what spans of time it worked. More attention had to be paid to anony-
mous works and to large scale transformations—rather than to events—, for
this was the dimension in which laboured the simple beings.
…
In La Mer, Michelet quotes Darwin, not the Darwin of On the Origin of Species,
but the traveller on the Beagle who studied coral reefs, the man who thought
in terms of the long term, of the obscure and collective history of nature.19
This first Darwin helped Michelet invent a historical transformism, which
built democratic, and even socialist, ideas on new biological and geological
foundations. The strangeness of La Mer comes from the startling combination
18 “C’est le puissant travail de soi sur soi, où la France, par son progrès propre, va transfor-
mant tous ses éléments bruts.” (“Préface de 1869”, Michelet, 2008, I: 11)
19 See Darwin, 1839–1843, Darwin, 1840, and Darwin, 1846.
356 Séginger
of political and scientific ideas, of the unexpected intertextual encounter be-

tween Darwin and Leroux, the scientist and the socialist. It also comes from a
curious form of materialism, which explores the idea that there is an internal
transcendence at work in time and matter. Thanks to a moral reinterpretation
of the Lamarckian idea of effort, Michelet tempered his materialism with the
concept of aspiration, which led him to personify both nature and historical
entities. The sea, like France elsewhere, became an organized being, a person:
[…] la mer dans son aspiration constante à l’existence organisée est la

forme la plus énergique de l’éternel Désir qui jadis évoqua ce globe et
toujours enfante en lui.
“Le pouls de la mer”, Michelet, 1983: 77
[…] the sea, in its constant aspiration toward an organized form of exis-
tence, is the most dynamic form of eternal Desire, which long ago gave
rise to this globe and continues to produce life within it.
Drawing on a current of organicism influential in the 19th century (Schlanger,

1971), Michelet clearly asserted the existence of a temporal scheme free of God
and of any destiny beyond the world. Organization was an intellectual model
that allowed him to conceive of an internal logic of time, and of the inevitable
victory of life; for death—no more than the moments of stoppage in history—
could do nothing to halt the general momentum of nature. Sometimes death
even contributed to this momentum, putting a brake on fecundity run amok.
The word “God” was no longer anything more than the metaphorical name
given to a hoped-for regeneration, for which Michelet expressed strongly the
need by imagining the triumph of the “world makers” in history after having
described their brothers at the bottoms of the ocean:
Qui me donnera de voir cette élite de la terre, cette foule du peuple in-
venteur, créateur et fabricateur, qui sue et s’use pour le monde, reprendre
incessamment ses forces à la grande piscine de Dieu!
Michelet, 1983: 328
Who will show me this earthly elite, these inventive, creative and con-
structive masses of the people, who sweat and wear themselves out for
the world, reinvigorating themselves in the God’s great pool!
In the final chapter, “Vita nuova des nations” (“The New Life of Nations”), the
lessons from the Ocean and the natural sciences rebuild political hope on the
foundations of a long-term vision and on the upward movement of life, which

always wins out. The same logic found in the living world is also found in his-
tory. The time of nature works by transforming, not by revolutionizing. What
started out in 1831 as a dialectic of historical time had thus been reconsidered
thanks to the lessons learned from nature.
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“Il faut manger et être mangé pour que le
monde vive”: the Zolian Belly amidst Evolution,
Revolution, and Convolutions
Carine Goutaland
Abstract
Following Hippolyte Taine, Émile Zola envisions a “physiological man” closely linked
to a philosophy of history. Between a biological temporality of heredity—marked by
degeneration—and an historical temporality of progress—where time is assigned a
productive role—the space-time of the Rougon-Macquart is crisscrossed by lines of
force that seem difficult to reconcile. Whilst the position of the novelist with respect to
the scientific models he invokes is at times ambivalent, the stylistic and narratological
fecundity of images of devouring and digestion confers an almost organic unity to his
novelistic universe.
In “Le Paradis des chats”, one of the Nouveaux contes à Ninon, Zola relates
the illustrative adventure of a cat, well-nourished, but vexed by its “stupide
graisse” / “stupid bulk”: the animal escapes, comes to the realization that the
street is a world in which “[o]n ne mange pas, et l’on est mangé” / “one does not
eat and one is eaten”, and upon its return, formulates the following moral: “[…]
le véritable bonheur, le paradis, mon cher maître, c’est d’être enfermé et battu
dans une pièce où il y a de la viande. Je parle pour les chats.” / “true happiness,
paradise, my dear master, is to be locked up and beaten in a room, where there
is meat. I speak for cats.” (Zola, 1968: 382–384)1
By means of the ironic moral of this fable, published a year after Le Ventre de
Paris (The Belly of Paris), the author feigns to render more acceptable a truth,
which he exposes in a much harsher fashion in his portrayal of the “ventre bou-
tiquier” / “shopkeeper’s belly”: revolutionary leanings are soluble in fat (Besse,
1996). As Niklas Bender has shown in La Lutte des paradigmes (Bender, 2010),
the Zolian individual is determined by his body, rather than driven by a his-
torical consciousness. Following Taine, who—in Zola’s eyes (“M. H. Taine, ar-
tiste”)—embodies “la nouvelle science, faite de physiologie et de psychologie,
1 “One must eat and be eaten, so that the world may live”. Émile Zola, “Sedan”, Le Figaro,
1 September 1891, a text included in the critical apparatus of La Débâcle (Zola, 2002d: 1662).
360 Goutaland
d’histoire et de philosophie” / “new science, made up of physiology and psy-

chology, history, and philosophy” (Zola, 1879: 231), the writer envisions a “physi-
ological man” closely linked to a philosophy of history. Loan terms from these
two fields of knowledge verily permeate his novelistic oeuvre, notably through
a particularly rich and meaningful web of metaphors. We intend, here, to ex-
amine the manner in which the image of the “belly” reveals the ambivalence
of several of Zola’s biological and historical notions, whilst giving his aesthetic
approach a literally organic coherence.
1 On the Fat and the Thin, the Wolves and the Rats: “Tout un chapitre
d’histoire naturelle”
The “struggle for life” is a structural theme of Zola’s novelistic oeuvre. In Le

Ventre de Paris, the artistic and folkloristic motif of the battle of Carnival and of
Lent is thus vested with a distinctly physiological dimension, in order to theo-
rize social relations. In the words of Claude Lantier, “tout un chapitre d’histoire
naturelle” / “an entire chapter of natural history” (Zola, 2002i: 736) is, here, re-
written. The text plainly exhibits its own elaborative process, in the sense that,
as early as the first draft, Zola had envisaged its basic dichotomy, allowing him
to classify the characters of the novel:
Il voyait là tout le drame humain; il finit par classer les hommes en

Maigres et en Gras, en deux groupes hostiles dont l’un dévore l’autre,
s’arrondit le ventre et jouit.
Zola, 2002i: 736
There he saw the entire drama of human life; he ended up dividing the
people into the Thin and the Fat, two hostile groups, one of which de-
vours the other, rounds out its belly and revels.
In Germinal, Étienne Lantier takes up the idea of a perpetual struggle between

two irreconcilable categories of people: “ceux qui mangent n’ont rien à faire
avec ceux qui ont faim” / “those that eat have nothing to do with those that
are hungry” (Zola, 2002f: 240). Incidentally, it is on an “ill-digested” reading of
Darwin, so to speak, that the character bases his idea of revolution as an inver-
sion of power relations between the fat and the thin:
Il en avait lu des fragments, résumés et vulgarisés dans un volume à cinq

sous; et, de cette lecture mal comprise, il se faisait une idée révolutionnaire
the Zolian Belly amidst Evolution, Revolution, and Convolutions 361
du combat pour l’existence, les maigres mangeant les gras, le peuple fort
dévorant la blême bourgeoisie.
Zola, 2002f: 350
He had read fragments, summarized and popularized in a five-sous vol-

ume; and out of this ill-understood reading he had gained for himself a
revolutionary idea of the struggle for existence, the thin eating the fat,
the strong populace devouring the pallid middle class.
In Le Roman expérimental, where Zola expounds his would-be scientific meth-

od, the reference to Darwin is present, but remains rather discrete:
Sans me risquer à formuler des lois, j’estime que la question d’hérédité

a une grande influence dans les manifestations intellectuelles et passi-
onnelles de l’homme. Je donne aussi une importance considérable au
milieu. Il faudrait aborder les théories de Darwin; mais ceci n’est qu’une
étude générale sur la méthode expérimentale appliquée au roman, et je
me perdrais, si je voulais entrer dans les détails.
Zola, 1881a: 18
Without venturing to formulate laws, I hold that the question of heredity

has a great influence on the intellectual and passionate manifestations
of man. I also give considerable importance to milieu. One should take
up the theories of Darwin; but this is only a general study on the experi-
mental method, as applied to the novel, and I would lose myself, were I
to go into detail.
In reality, it is rather from the Social Darwinian theories of Spencer, for in-
stance, that Zola draws his idea of a link between biology and politics, in order
to explain the immense struggle for existence governing relations between
beings (Niess, 1980; Pichot, 1993: 770). Subject to the double determinism of
heredity and milieu, the Zolian individual inhabits a world in which the only
alternative frequently consists in eating or being eaten, as in the case of the cat
of the abovementioned tale. This naturalization of the social conflict is plainly
the basis of Claude’s narrative in Le Ventre de Paris, which proposes a rewriting
of the history of humanity, by means of the evolutionist paradigm:
Pour sûr, […] Caïn était un Gras et Abel un Maigre. Depuis le premier
meurtre, ce sont toujours les grosses faims qui ont sucé le sang des pe-
tits mangeurs … C’est une continuelle ripaille, du plus faible au plus fort,
362 Goutaland
chacun avalant son voisin et se trouvant avalé à son tour … Voyez-vous,

mon brave, défiez-vous des Gras. […] En principe, vous entendez, un Gras
a l’horreur d’un Maigre, si bien qu’il éprouve le besoin de l’ôter de sa vue,
à coups de dents, ou à coups de pied.
Zola, 2002i: 736
For sure, Cain […] was one of the Fat, and Abel one of the Thin. Ever
since the first murder, it has always been the big appetites, which have
sucked the blood of small eaters … It’s a continual feast, from the weak-
est to the strongest, each swallowing his neighbour and finding himself
being swallowed in turn. You see, my good fellow, be wary of the Fat. […]
On principle, you see, a Fat abhors a Thin to the point that he feels the
need to remove him from his sight, with tooth and nail.
Claude here alludes to a gigantic food chain, which has the appearance of a
linear and inevitable process, clearly prefiguring the tragic conclusion of the
story of Florent.
Now, giving attention to the detail of the utilized image, we note that it
stems from the superposition of two isotopies: cannibalism and vampirism.
The predictable motif of the devouring of the lean by the fat is here replaced
by that of the sucking of blood, associated with a much more insidious form of
ingestion, which may give rise to an inversion of power relations. These differ-
ent modalities of devouring refer to distinct forms of predation, portrayed in
an extraordinarily complex and diverse metaphorical hunting bestiary in Les
Rougon-Macquart. Indeed, the Zolian system articulates the dichotomy fat/
thin with a naturalist classification of animals of prey: carnivores such as the
wolf (a particularly frequent image), wildcat, or the hound are contrasted with
slyer predators, such as rodents, insects, or also snakes (Buuren (van), 1986:
chap. III). For instance, the domestic takeover, duplicating the political sei-
zure of power in La Conquête de Plassans, is the deed of an “armée de rats” /
“army of rats” (Zola, 2002b: 1066), made up of the Abbé Faujas and his family,
ready, besides, to devour each other at the earliest opportunity. In the Dossier
préparatoire of the novel, several corrections concerning the verbs “dévorer” /
“to devour” and “ronger” / “to gnaw”2 suggest that Zola is particularly atten-
tive to the crafting of this image, and wavers between two modalities of so-
cial cannibalism (the Faujas are, elsewhere, also likened to wolves). Be that as
it may, in Les Rougon-Macquart, images of insidious devouring carry an even
2 Dossier préparatoire of La Conquête de Plassans, BnF, N.a.f., Ms 10280, fo 21 in Zola, 2005, II: 40.
more negative connotation than those of the brutal devouring of carnivores

(Goutaland, 2017: 249–253).
Finally, we can hardly overlook the category of “charognards” / “scaven-
gers”—perhaps the most abject predators in Zolian imagery—its archetype
being the character of La Méchain in L’Argent: trading in depreciated titles on
the stock market, she is a “crow” (“corbeau”):
[Elle] part avec l’armée en marche, la suit jusqu’au soir du carnage, plane
et s’abat, sachant qu’il y aura des morts à manger.
Zola, 2002a: 4193
[She] sets out with the army on its march, follows it until the night of car-
nage, then hovers and swoops down, knowing there will be dead to eat.
The image of the scavenger can be grouped with the metaphor of the curée or
spoils, central to the naturalist aesthetics of Zola, which precisely evokes an in-
direct, mediated and often ritualized form of predation. The Rougon family are
those most frequently associated with the spoils, most often being compared
to wolves, while the Macquart are likened rather to would-be wild beasts,
victims of the true wolves of the legitimate branch of the family. Within it,
Aristide appears as the most famished and impudent predator: he is portrayed
simultaneously with the features of a hunter, a hunting dog, and of a wolf, lying
in wait for his “gibier” / “game”. It should be highlighted that the “chapter of
natural history”, related by each novel in the cycle articulates at once individ-
ual and collective history: the figures of predators embody the violence of the
Second Empire, denounced by Zola in his chronic through the recurring images
of spoils, orgy, or also rape,4 of which he provides metaphorical equivalents.
Meanwhile, Saccard, an emanation of the “grande chasse impériale, la
chasse aux aventures, aux femmes, aux millions” / “the great imperial hunt, the
hunt for adventure, for women, for millions” (Zola, 2002c: 334) is an ambiva-
lent figure. Omnipresent in the universe of the Rougon-Macquart, he presents
the curious peculiarity of not aging (Zola, 2002a: 316): the “rage d’appétits” /
“frenzy of appetites”, of various types, to which he is continually subject, ap-
pears to preserve him from the effects of time. More precisely, Saccard seems
destined perpetually to devour himself, whilst generating life. We are apt to
3 See also pp. 324, 540, 572 and 618.

4 Zola equates the Coup d’État to the “viol brutal de la France” / “brutal rape of France” (open
letter to the editor of La Cloche, 6 November 1871, in Zola, 2003, V: 974), and situates the initial
rape of young Renée, in La Curée, precisely in this time period (Zola, 2002c: 351).
364 Goutaland
recall the wild plans of this “poète des affaires” / “poet of commerce”, who in
the guise of a veritable demiurge, dreams of “mettre Paris sous une immense
cloche, pour le changer en serre chaude, et y cultiver les ananas et la canne à
sucre” / “put[ting] Paris under an immense dome, to turn it into a hothouse
and grow pineapples and cane-sugar there” (Zola, 2002c: 387).
This naturalization of social conflicts, through a re-appropriation of the
evolutionist paradigm, merges with the aim of translating physiological deter-
minism into a “fable matérialiste” / “materialist fable” (Scarpa, 2000: 42), and
contributes to the elaboration of a veritable grid for the reading of history, in
accordance with biological, economic, social, or also political perspectives.5
Moreover, the attempt at classifying the “animaux-chasseurs” / “hunter-
animals” is interesting, since it lays the foundations for a hierarchical ordering
of the bestial kingdom in Zola. Indeed, eating death—as scavengers do—is
often a sign of dysfunction in the Zolian metaphorical system (on the contrary,
it exists a form of devouring that consists in perpetuating life). More broadly,
the complexity of the organization of the novelistic personnel into the “fat”
and the “lean”, but also into predators and prey, opens the way to multiple sce-
narios based on a series of possible relations—of an essentially conflictual
nature—the rich complexity of which prevails over the exactitude of taxono-
my, and which relate to a dynamic imagery of nature.
2 “L’éternelle moisson des êtres”:6 Dynamic Temporality
The ambivalent representations of social devouring are related to a fundamen-

tally dynamic temporality orchestrating Les Rougon-Macquart. This translates
into the central image of the “flow of life”, strongly articulated in the leitmotif of
“l’humanité en marche” / “mankind on the march”, in a line of force embodied
by the recurring figures of the nourishing mother and of the sower of seed—
her male counterpart.
The image of harvest-time, extending that of germination, is one of the focal
motifs of Zola’s novelistic universe. The circle of nature, or life, is nourished
by death, constituting a structural model for the poetics of Zola, both at the
metaphorical and at the referential level. Indeed, such images frequently recur
5 We should note that a number of these metaphorical paradigms are present in the work of
Taine (notably the hunting metaphor is employed in Les Origines de la France contempo-
raine), which lets us presume that Zola may have been influenced not only by the determin-
ist concept of the homme physiologique, but also by the stylistic means utilized by Taine in
his demonstration.
6 “The Eternal Harvest of Beings”. Fécondité (1899) in Zola, 2008, XVIII: 143.
in liminal positions. The explicit of Germinal, in which the main metaphorical

webs of the novel converge, leading to a relationship of equivalency between
the mine, the belly, and nourishing mother earth, can be contrasted with the
end of the Ventre de Paris: while the latter closes on a return to an identical
state after the expulsion of Florent, who plays the role of the sacrificial victim,
the end of Germinal seems to articulate the promise of a future revolt, which
will succeed in overcoming the violence of the struggle between Labor and
Capital; the seeded womb of the renascent populace prevails over the vora-
cious stomach of the Voreux-Minotaure.
The “atroce lutte vitale” / “atrocious vital struggle” (Zola, 2002d: 906) of war
may thus be regarded as a necessary evil in the course of the onward march of
mankind. It is in this spirit, that Maurice, in La Débâcle, appropriates evolu-
tionist ideas:
Maurice était pour la guerre, la croyait inévitable, nécessaire à l’existence

même des nations. Cela s’imposait à lui, depuis qu’il se donnait aux idées
évolutives, à toute cette théorie de l’évolution qui passionnait dès lors la
jeunesse lettrée. Est-ce que la vie n’est pas une guerre de chaque seconde?
est-ce que la fondation même de la nature n’est pas le combat continu,
la victoire du plus digne, la force entretenue et renouvelée par l’action, la
vie renaissant toujours jeune de la mort?
Zola, 2002d: 655
Maurice was in favour of war […]; he considered it inevitable, necessary

to the very existence of nations. This notion had impressed itself on him,
ever since he had started dedicating himself to progressive ideas, to that
whole theory of evolution, which had then begun to enthral the lettered
youth. Is not life itself a war, at every second? Is not the very founda-
tion of nature an unending battle, the survival of the most worthy, a force
maintained and renewed by action, life being reborn, ever young, from
death?
The character is here relaying an idea held dear by Zola, and which the latter
also expressed in an article published on 1 September 1891, on the occasion of
the 21st anniversary of the battle of Sedan: “Il faut manger et être mangé pour
que le monde vive.” / “One must eat and be eaten, so that the world may live.”
(Zola, 2002d: 1662) At the end of La Débâcle, Maurice agonizingly confides to
Jean: “C’est peut-être nécessaire, cette saignée. La guerre, c’est la vie qui ne peut
pas être sans la mort.” / “It may be necessary, this blood-letting. War—that’s
life, which cannot exist without death.” (Zola, 2002d: 1070)
366 Goutaland
In fact, the image of a bloodletting necessary for the healing of France, recur-
ring in the novel, and referring, indiscriminately, to the war or to the Commune,
hails back to an archaic notion of illness. Maurice’s theory, specified in the
course of the text, superimposes two biological models that are difficult to rec-
oncile (Cabanès, 1993: 85): on the one hand, that of a competition between
individuals, groups, and nations—a competition deriving its purpose from the
idea of progress, with reference to Spencer or also to Haeckel—; on the other
hand, that of organic solidarity between the parts of the social body—an idea
based on the notion of the vital circulus (Bernard, 2008: 165–1677), and which
Zola presents in the following manner, in Le Roman expérimental:
Le circulus social est identique au circulus vital: dans la société comme

dans le corps humain, il existe une solidarité qui lie les différents
membres, les différents organes entre eux, de telle sorte que, si un organe
se pourrit, beaucoup d’autres sont atteints, et qu’une maladie très com-
plexe se déclare.
Zola, 1880: 26
The social circulus is identical with the vital circulus: in society, as in the
human body, there exists a solidarity linking the various limbs and the
various organs with one another, in such a way that if one organ decays,
many others are affected, and a very complex illness breaks out.
Meanwhile, the image of the “bloodbath” is itself as though cleansed, in fine, by

that of the departure of Jean Macquart, the sower of La Terre, who “march[e]
à l’avenir, à la grande et rude besogne de toute une France à refaire” / “marches
into the future, towards the great and hard task of an entire France to be re-
made” (Zola, 2002d: 1077)—justifying the violence of the war by means of this
necessary gesture. The image of the nourishing earth, represented metonymi-
cally by the wheat fields, constitutes an element, at once, of permanence, and
7 It is interesting to note that, whereas Zola bases himself on the Bernardian description of
the circulus vital, in order to define the circulus social, Claude Bernard, conversely, explains
organic life by means of an analogy with social life. One is reminded also of the idea of the
dependence of parts, central to Taine’s thought, which explores the analogy between human
history and natural history: “Si l’on décompose un personnage, une littérature, un siècle, une
civilisation, bref, un groupe naturel quelconque d’événements humains, on trouvera que
toutes ses parties dépendent les unes des autres comme les organes d’une plante ou d’un
animal.” / “If one breaks down a character, a literature, a century, a civilization, in short, any
natural group of human events, one will find that all its parts depend on one another like the
organs of a plant or of an animal.” (Taine, 1858, “Preface”: I)
of eternal renewal. Thus, the explicit of Germinal directly announces that of La

Terre: Étienne is also a “sower”, who, in spite of the failure of the strike, has irre-
mediably planted the seed of revolt. For André Vial, the end of Germinal sym-
bolically marks the structuring of the individual and of the collective spheres:
L’homme est un fragment passagèrement individué de la vie universelle,

et de la vie de son espèce, ici de sa classe. Cette œuvre requiert le temps,
et le temps dans la vie, c’est le triomphe des germinations alternées avec
la mort saisonnière, dont elles se nourrissent, c’est le progrès même de la
justice sur le corps des hommes morts contre l’injustice.
Vial, 1975: 106
Man is a temporarily individualized fragment of universal life, and of the

life of his kind, here of his class. This oeuvre demands time, and time, in
life, is the triumph of germinations alternating with seasonal death, from
which they draw nourishment; it is the very progress of justice, over the
bodies of the men who have died in the battle against injustice.
The end of the novel is all the more meaningful, since Zola, who initially had
envisaged the return to an identical state, modified it in favour of greater open-
ness. Considering that, beginning with Au Bonheur des dames, the novels of
the series more frequently conclude with an appeal to life, we note that the
apparently circular structure of certain previous novels masks the promise of
real evolution. For instance, the “singulière sensation de recommencement” /
“the singular sensation of beginning anew” (Zola, 2002h: 660), that Octave
perceives at the end of Pot-Bouille is contrasted, at the collective level, by the
descending movement of “la décomposition et [de] l’écroulement de la bour-
geoisie, dont les étais pourris craqu[ent] d’eux-mêmes” / “disintegration and
collapse of the middle class, the rotten props of which give way of their own
accord” (Zola, 2002h: 646).
Taking into account the entire vast fresco of the Rougon-Macquart, its pre-
dominant movement is clearly the forward momentum of life in motion, tran-
scending, as it were, the temptation of eternal recurrence. Therefore, it would
seem that the structural model, towards which the composition tends as a
whole, is not that of the circle, but rather a form of spiral, a cyclical element,
which, by its very motion, is headed progressively towards a continually evolv-
ing goal. Significantly, the cycle of novels opens and closes with a kind of found-
ing meal: the “enfant inconnu” / “unknown child” at the breast of its mother at
the end of Le Docteur Pascal appears to echo the scene of children giving each
other pears from the tree at the cemetery of Saint-Mittre, at the beginning of
368 Goutaland
La Fortune des Rougon. In fact, upon a more detailed observation of Zola’s sys-
tem of metaphors, it would appear that the great “flow of life” running through
the series is essentially milky or vegetal: a symbol of immaculate fertility, milk
actualizes a kind of synthesis between the blood of human beings and the sap
of mother earth. In Zola’s symbolic nutritional universe, éros and thanatos are
as though subsumed in the élan vital which characterizes agapé, and which
endows the temporality of the novel with a veritably dynamic dimension.
3 The Belly Matrix—an Aesthetics of Digestion and Recycling
For Zola, naturalism “vient des entrailles même de l’humanité” / “comes from
the very bowels of humanity” (Zola, 1881: 11), and this expression should be
taken in its properly physiological sense. In the oeuvre of Zola, the belly/stom-
ach appears not only as a recurring motive, but also as a veritable aesthetic
matrix. While situating the roots of naturalism in the very reality that he in-
tends to explore, the food metaphor also allows him to depict the novelist at
work: “[u]n grand producteur, un créateur n’a pas d’autre fonction, manger son
siècle pour le recréer et en faire de la vie.” / “a great producer, a creator has no
other function, [than] to consume his century, in order to recreate it, and turn
it into life.”8 Clearly, what is described here is a process of digestion in its suc-
cessive phases, recalling the following mechanist definition of life by Docteur
Pascal: “recevoir les sensations, les rendre en idées et en mouvements, nourrir
la machine humaine par le jeu régulier des organes” / “to receive sensations,
turn them into ideas and movements, nourish the human machine through
the regular interplay of organs” (Zola, 2002e: 1313).
To be sure, analogies drawn between a work of art, or also society—on
the one hand—and an organism—on the other—are not new in Zola’s day,
but the imagery of the author feeds on models elaborated by the advances in
emergent sciences such as biology or also sociology (Schlanger, 1995: 133–138;
Blanckaert, 2004). Zolian organicism brings irreconcilable notions, such as
mechanism and vitalism (Cabanès, 1993: 87–88) to commingle, in the name of
poetic coherence: “Invoquer un modèle biologique revient […] à affirmer que
dans une œuvre romanesque tout doit se tenir, faire corps.” / “Invoking a bio-
logical model amounts […] to affirming that in a novelistic oeuvre everything
must fit together, form a coherent whole.” (Cabanès, 1993: 84)
The symbolic importance accorded by Zola to enormous monster-machines
in Les Rougon-Macquart, at the crossroads of Romantic legacies and the recent
8 “Les droits du romancier”, Le Figaro, 6 June 1896, reprised in Zola, 1897: 260.
history of the life sciences, is well established (Noiray, 1981; Basilio, 1993). In
the 19th century, digestion, like other metabolic processes, is rethought on
the basis of the model of thermodynamics, and conceived in terms of ingesta,
digesta, and excreta (Csergo, 2001: 42–47). If, in Le Ventre de Paris, Les Halles
function as a “chronotype circulaire” (Scarpa, 2000: 36), in which petit-bour-
geois “entripaillement” / “flabbiness, paunchiness” reigns, it would seem that
the central image of the belly, in its very proliferation, reveals a dynamic di-
mension transcending the immobility of the world of the Fat. Thus, the true
antagonism cutting through the cast of Zolian eaters, is arguably not to be dis-
cerned between the thin and the fat, nor even between eaters and the eaten,
but much rather between the satiated and the famished. A character of insa-
tiate leanness, such as Saccard, is more apt to produce life—indirectly at least,
than a fat one, no longer having a hunger for life. In Zola, his aesthetics of the
stomach is by nature one of conquest, and the space-time of digestion is that
of an engenderment.
Consequently, one may comprehend that recycling might appear as a privi-
leged modality of creation in the oeuvre of Zola: the motif of refuse is, here,
rarely dissociated from the promise of life that it contains, as shown by the
omnipresence of the ambivalent figures of the ragman and the sewer man.
The naturalist novelist embodies an aesthetics of salvage; he appears as that
ragman:
[grâce à lui,] rien de ce qui se ramasse au coin des bornes n’est perdu pour
l’industrie; les vils débris retirés de la fange sont comme autant de chry-
salides auxquelles la science donnera des formes élégantes et des ailes
diaphanes.
Larousse, 2002, article “Chiffonnier”
[thanks to him,] none of that which is gathered up on street corners is

lost to industry; vile pieces of debris scooped out of the muck are like so
many chrysalides, to which science will give elegant forms and diapha-
nous wings.
For, in the 19th century, the figure of the ragman is associated with an ambigu-
ous imagery, which tends to represent him as a kind of magician: “Les chiffon-
niers? Mais ce sont de véritables créateurs, et leur hotte est certainement une
corne d’abondance d’où s’échappent des trésors de toute nature.” / “The rag-
men? Why, they are veritable creators, and their sack is surely a horn of plenty.”
(Paulian, 1885: 4) One may think of the emblematic sequence of the recycling
of cabbages, in Le Ventre de Paris, which is also portrayed as a form of creative
370 Goutaland
digestion. Thus, the belly appears not only as the symbolic frame of the vast
poem on food constituted by Le Ventre de Paris, but also as the fertile matrix of
the textual material of the entire cycle. It is the role of the artist, which finds
itself reaffirmed by means of this focal image of Zolian poetics—the embod-
ied synthesis of a collective temporality of history, a universal temporality of
nature, and a personal temporality of temperament.
From its hunting bestiary to the classification of characters into the fat and
the lean, Zola’s lexicon of devouring and of digestion readily refers to the evo-
lutionist paradigm and takes part in the elaboration of a dynamic temporality
of the novel. While the position of the novelist with respect to the scientific
models he invokes is at times ambivalent, the stylistic and narratological fe-
cundity of images of food and eating confers an almost organic unity to his
novelistic universe. The belly appears as the physiological equivalent of the
fatum of tragedies:
[Le ventre est le] lieu organique de tous les appétits vitaux, celui de la
nourriture comme celui du sexe, réceptacle de tous les engloutissements
et de tous les écoulements, première source de la vie et premier désastre
de la mort.
Mitterand in Zola, 1999: 102–103
[the belly is] the organic site of all vital appetites, that of sustenance as
well as that of the sex, the receptacle of all that is swallowed and dis-
charged, the primary source of life and the primary disaster of death.
For Zola, the digesting belly is, first and foremost, a creative belly. Thus,
Claude Lantier, who, through his gaze, contributes to the perpetual rebirth
of the cabbages of Les Halles, is led by this to express his notion of aesthetic
modernity:
Est-ce que, en art, il y avait autre chose que de donner ce qu’on avait dans
le ventre? est-ce que tout ne se réduisait pas à planter une bonne femme
devant soi, puis à la rendre comme on la sentait? est-ce qu’une botte de
carottes, oui, une botte de carottes! étudiée directement, peinte naïve-
ment, dans la note personnelle où on la voit, ne valait pas les éternelles
tartines de l’École, cette peinture au jus de chique, honteusement cuisi-
née d’après les recettes? Le jour venait où une seule carotte serait grosse
d’une revolution.
Zola, 2002g: 455
Was there anything to art, besides giving what you felt in your gut? did
not everything ultimately come down to setting a random woman in
front of you, then rendering her as you felt her to be? was not a bunch
of carrots, yes, a bunch of carrots! studied directly, painted naively, in the
personal note, in which you saw it, worth the ever-same smatterings of
the art academy, the kind of tobacco juice-flavoured painting, cooked up
according to recipes? The day was coming, when a single carrot would be
pregnant with revolution.
How better to depict the Zolian synthesis of historical time and biological
time, than by means of this “carrot pregnant with revolution”?
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Gobineau’s Heroes Are Ageless
Pierre-Louis Rey
Abstract
In the eyes of Gobineau our species is bound, due to a mix of races fatal to the purest
of them, to decline until it reaches its final extinction. Nevertheless, an unwavering
faith in his own person incites Gobineau, as shown by his posthumous Mémoire sur
diverses manifestations de la vie individuelle, to save some rare exceptional beings from
the general shipwreck, a concern further illustrated in his novel Les Pléiades (1874).
Escaping from materialism, which seemed the fatal law of all mankind in the Essai sur
l’inégalité des races humaines, these exceptional individuals are promised, due to their
ability to love or to work scientifically, not only a longevity comparable to those of me-
dieval heroes, but even immortality, distinguishing themselves thus from the ordinary
human herd.
In the Essai sur l’inégalité des races humaines / Essay on the Inequality of the
Human Races (Firmin-Didot, 4 vols., 1853–1855), Joseph-Arthur de Gobineau
(1816–1882) drew up a report on the degenerescence of humanity which, in
his view, was the result of the mixing of the Aryan race with the other races.
Like the creationists, he put the origin of our species at around 6,000 BC, and
he estimated that it had just about as long again to go. As for when this de-
generescence had begun, he appeared hesitant. In his “General Conclusion”
to the Essay, one reads that “the Aryan family, and more particularly the rest
of the family of whites, had ceased to be absolutely pure at the time of the
birth of Christ” (Gobineau, 1983a: 1165).1 His History of Ottar Jarl (Histoire
d’Ottar Jarl), an impeccable genealogy that ran from the god Odin to Joseph-
Arthur de Gobineau, depicted as authentic Aryans, however, the conquering
Scandinavians, who regenerated Normandy in and about the 11th century.
At last, an unexplained flowing of pure blood during the 16th century would
have caused blossoming of what Gobineau calls the “fleurs d’or” of the Italian
1 Gobineau refers to as “Arians” (Fr.) what are more commonly called Aryans (Fr. “Aryens”)
or, at his time, Arya (Fr. “Aryas”). It goes without saying that Christ, absent from the rest of
the Essay, did not belong to the Arian, i.e. superior, branch of the family of white peoples.
[Translator’s note: All translations are ours, and the references are to French editions unless
specified otherwise. The English equivalents of French titles have usually been given so as to
facilitate comprehension, as well as the reader’s ability to locate English translations of the
works under discussion.].
Gobineau ’ s Heroes Are Ageless 375
Renaissance.2 Most of the time, however, he suggested that this mixing had
taken place in the initial phases of the human species; destined by their ap-
petite for conquest to mix with inferior races, the Aryans had apparently lost,
because of their sensual attraction to the Melanian races, the “instinct” which
was meant to restrain them from mixing their blood. On the dubious grounds
that he had situated the existence of pure races in an enigmatic golden age,
Gobineau has often been absolved of the accusation of racism,3 despite the
fact that, in his eyes, mixing had taken place in uneven spurts, attenuating
without ever eliminating the inequality of the earth’s peoples.
1 The Human Race Destined for Extinction
Gobineau devised his theory in a spirit of scientific inquiry. To Tocqueville,

alarmed by the conclusion of the Essay, he responded: “Je ne dis pas aux
gens vous êtes excusables ou condamnables, je leur dis: vous mourez.” / “I’m
not telling people they are faultless or guilty, I’m telling them: you are dying.”
(Tocqueville, Gobineau, 1959: 259) The scholar who tells humankind that it is
degenerating and dying is no more responsible than the doctor with regard to
his patient. He would avoid any pious lying: the only grandeur left to humanity
was to advance toward its end with eyes open. The sad prospect was not death,
but the certitude that we would die in a diminished state (Gobineau, 1983a:
1166). Following in the steps of Buffon, Balzac and so many others, Gobineau’s
intention was “bring history into the family of the natural sciences” (Gobineau,
1983a: 1152; see Smith 1984). Designating the racial factor—to the exclusion of
climate, religion or institutions—as the sole engine of history, he further as-
similated race with blood, thus distinguishing himself from contemporary
scholars, who ranked races based on brain volume or facial angle. While he
distinguished groups based on skin colour, it was, he warned, merely for con-
venience’s sake. Blood accounted for the fact that the white race was the most
beautiful (Gobineau, 1983a: 285) or that Mongols were “such unarguably ugly
and repulsive creatures” (Gobineau, 1983a: 264). In the words of Jean Gaulmier,
“Gobineau’s ethnography boils down to a pathetic hematology of the planet”
(Gaulmier, 1981: 203). He has been criticized for mixing up his terminology
2 La Renaissance. Scènes historiques, Plon, 1877 (in Gobineau, 1987: 579–926).
3 The Introduction to Jean Gaulmier’s edition of Œuvres in the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade edi-
tion (3 vols.) is a case in point. This edition does not include L’Ethnographie de la France /
The Ethnography of France (Bibliothèque Nationale et Universitaire de Strasbourg, Fonds
Gobineau, ms. 3504), in which his anti-Semitism is unbridled.
376 Rey
when he confuses “race” and “species” (Jean Boissel, in Gobineau, 1983a: notes
on 242, 573…); but, six years after the appearance of the Essay, Armand de
Quatrefages showed how polygenism’s logical conclusion was the conflation
of the two terms.4
More harmful for the superior race than beneficial for the inferior races,
mixing had brought about the degeneration of humanity on three levels.
1) The earth’s population was falling. “Quand on jette les yeux sur les époques
antiques, on s’aperçoit que la terre était alors bien autrement couverte par
notre espèce qu’elle ne l’est aujourd’hui.” / “When we look at Antiquity, we can
see that the earth was covered by our species in a way it no longer is today.”
(Gobineau, 1983a: 1164) 2) Diminished longevity. 3) The size, strength and beau-
ty of people was in decline. In an age when the planet’s population is soaring
toward eight billion, when centenarians are less and less exceptional and when
thirteen-year-olds are as big as basketballers, these predictions seem risible.
But, relatively stagnant demographics, longevity and physical size throughout
the 19th century lent them credibility. Whether our species was progressing
or declining in moral terms was of little interest to Gobineau. Convinced that
“men are, and always have been, pretty ignoble beasts” (Histoire d’Ottar Jarl,
Gobineau, 1879: 22), the Aryan race stood out for him by its energy rather than
by its influence on the mores of societies.
The different varieties of humans were “organic” (Gobineau, 1983a: 1155).
Once the Essay has been published, Gobineau dealt in the Memoir on Diverse
Manifestations of Individual Life (Mémoire sur diverses manifestations de la
vie individuelle)5 with “the chain of organic productions” (Gobineau, 1935:
54), which had also caused languages to lose their primitive virtues because
of mixing. Designating human types as organic meant they could only lose
their essential characteristics by venturing into another sphere. As far as
Gobineau’s scientific pretentions go, the reader is bound to be disappointed.
The names of Lamarck and Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire are missing from the index,
and Cuvier’s inclusion was an afterthought. Gobineau would however take
an interest in Darwin’s theories, which appeared after the publication of the
Essay. “That fierce Darwin, with whom I agree on little, contains however some
very true and undeniable things”, wrote Gobineau to his sister Caroline (Mère
4 See Quatrefages, 1861: chap. XVI. Quatrefages, whose book makes no mention of the Essay,
had written in La Revue des Deux Mondes (1 March 1857) that Gobineau, “because he was not
a naturalist, had been almost bound to lose his way”.
5 Written in French and German, finished in an around 1868 and unpublished during his life-
time, the Mémoire would be published in 1935 by the publisher Desclée de Brouwer.
Bénédicte) on 23 December 1873 (Gobineau, Gobineau, 1968, I: 94–95). “Very

true” was his theory of natural selection in humans; false, the idea that it al-
lowed the strong to win out over the weak. Announcing on 4 May 1874 that he
intended to give Darwin a good “hiding”, he conceded that he saw “nothing
incredible in the idea that the Jacobines and their mates had descended from
monkeys. They are proud of it. It’s their blood talking” (Gobineau, Gobineau,
1968, I: 127). Finally, in a preface written in 1877 with a view to a new edition of
the Essay, he wrote that
Darwin et Buckle ont créé […] les dérivations principales du ruisseau que
j’ai ouvert. Beaucoup d’autres ont simplement donné comme des vérités
trouvées par eux-mêmes ce qu’ils copiaient chez moi en y mêlant tant
bien que mal les idées aujourd’hui de mode.
Gobineau, 1983a: 1170
Darwin and Buckle have created […] the main branches of the stream I
opened up. Many others have merely passed off as truths found by them-
selves things they had copied from me, merely adding here and there
ideas that are now in vogue.6
“I shall tackle head on this Darwinism which has emerged from my book”,
wrote Gobineau to Albert Sorel on 1 May 1874 (quoted in Gobineau, 1983a:
1279). Less culpable than the plagiarists of the Essay, Darwin was, in short, a
disciple turned bad.
Mocked as a haematologist by Jean Gaulmier, Gobineau’s expertise went no
further than ethnology or anthropology. Paradoxically, Gobineau waited until
his novel Pléiades (1874) to commit to a specific vocabulary:
Jean-Théodore, de race héroïque, avait dans le sang autant de virilité na-

tive que le barattage des siècles, à travers tant de générations, en a pu
laisser de molécules.7
Jean-Théodore, of heroic race, had only as many molecules of native vi-

rility in his blood as the churning of the centuries, over so many genera-
tions, had left him with.
6 Henry Thomas Buckle (1821–1862) was one of Darwin’s followers.

7 This remark was omitted from the final version. See Gobineau 1997: 465 (variant of p. 149).
378 Rey
As a criterion invisible to the naked eye, blood had the advantage of dis-
tancing his theories from the stereotypes of his age, but also from its scien-
tific controversies. The Orient, where he was sent as a diplomat, after having
dreamed of such a posting since his youth, offered him models after 1855 that
had little in common with the red-headed or blond Aryan made popular by
legend. Among the nomadic Arabs he found “handsome men” with an “en-
ergetic and determined” physiognomy; he then turned his admiring gaze to
the black Somali inhabitants of the Horn of Africa: “I have to say that I have
never in my life seen such beautiful and perfect creatures” (Trois ans en Asie,
Gobineau, 1983b: 50 and 80). He would later write of Mohsèn, the hero of the
“Lovers of Kandahar” in Tales of Asia (Nouvelles asiatiques):
Il était chaudement basané comme un fruit mûri au soleil. Ses cheveux

noirs bouclaient, en profusion d’anneaux, sur les plis serrés de son turban
bleu rayé de rouge […]. À personne ne serait venu l’idée de s’enquérir de
sa race; il était clair que le sang afghan le plus pur animait son essence
[…].
Gobineau, 1987: 488
He had the deep tan of a fruit ripened in the sun. His black hair cascaded
in a profusion of tight curls onto the tight folds of his blue and red-striped
turban […]. It would have occurred to no one to inquire about his race; it
was evident that his blood was pure Afghan […].
Accepted on grounds of its simplicity by the author of the Essay, skin colour
was revealed as being a fragile criterion. Made sacred by the Grail (which
Gobineau did not attempt to Christianize), celebrated as a virtue by feudalism
(one was noble if one’s ancestors had sacrificed their lives in battle), a mark
of heredity (the voice of blood was louder than physical resemblance), blood
spoke to the “inner feeling” with which Gobineau, as a last resort, always used
to counter his adversaries. When the specialists criticized his hasty conclu-
sions regarding the origins of Indo-European languages, he summed up the
disagreement thus: “The scholars are idiotic” (to Prokesch-Osten; 7 September
1856, Gobineau, 1933: 104).
His view of science is set out at the beginning of the History of Ottar Jarl.
Il importe peu [au sujet d’Odin] de savoir si sous ce nom se dresse un

dieu, un éponyme ou la personnification d’une race entière. Suivant l’es-
prit des différentes époques, ces interprétations sont également valables.
Les intelligences modernes aiment à détailler les choses; celles de l’anti-

quité les prenaient en bloc, sans nuances, leur maintenant ainsi un carac-
tère de grandeur que l’analyse fait disparaître, sans le remplacer jamais
par une certitude absolue, ni même par cette précision vraie dont il n’est
pas au pouvoir de l’homme de déterminer les contours.
Gobineau, 1879: 3
It matters little [regarding Odin] whether this name refers to a god, was
an eponym, or the personification of a whole race. Depending on the
spirit of different eras, each of these interpretations is equally valid. The
modern mind likes to go into detail; the Ancients viewed things as an un-
nuanced whole, thus preserving a grandeur that analysis dispels without
ever replacing it with absolute certainty, or with that absolute precision
which is anyway beyond man’s conceptual abilities.
In the Orient, he was seduced by the indifference among Orientals to the dis-
tinction between what was true and false; he opened the Memoir on Diverse
Manifestations of Individual Life with a refutation of Descartes’s philosophy on
the pretext that no Oriental system of thought could possibly accept it; the
heroes of Tales of Asia were excused for their lying, for “it was a direct result of
the particular laws governing the point of view in Oriental tales” (“Histoire de
Gambèr-Aly”, Gobineau, 1987: 211).
One would need to apply an “Oriental” logic in order to reconcile his saga
Ottar Jarl with the history of mankind retraced in the Essay. Otherwise, how
could he credibly explain that the lineage from which he stemmed was almost
the only one to have been saved from the collapse? He had, at least, to admit to
being a victim of the decadence of languages. As for the idiom in which Odin’s
offspring expressed themselves, he confessed ignorance:
Nous ne connaissons pas du tout les langues qu’on pourrait appeler di-
vines ou héroïques. Si beaux que soient le sanscrit ou le grec, comparés à
ce que nous possédons, des mutilations très apparentes y donnent assez
à reconnaître que la pureté n’y est que relative.
Mémoire, Gobineau, 1935: 122
We know nothing of the languages that might be considered divine or

heroic. Whatever the beauty of Sanskrit and Greek compared to what we
possess, some very obvious mutilations mean that when have to allow
that their purity is merely relative.
380 Rey
His speculating about the language spoken by the gods was less absurd
than it would appear since, like Flaubert in search of purity in art, Gobineau
dreamed of those “mythic times when human speech could capture something
of the divine Verb” (Séginger, 2000: 141).
For him, pure art could only emerge from a pure race. At the time of the
Vikings, about whom only a few accounts had survived,8 heroes were content
to merely list their exploits. As soon as humanity began to degenerate, poets
resorted to their personal sensibilities.9 To his daughter Diane, Gobineau rec-
ommended The Iliad, not The Odyssey, and Aeschylus rather than Sophocles or
Euripides (5 July 1863, Gobineau, 1988: 108). According to the Essay, the injec-
tion of Negro blood had contributed to Western Art, but its effect had been
to boost the latter’s lyrical tendencies. In the time of the gods and heroes, the
nobility of the subjects had sufficed to make the form noble.
Gobineau attempted to resuscitate the purity of Aryan poetry in Amadis
(published posthumously). This 22-canto-long epic poem began in a medieval
period at once heroic and magical; but, with a view to illustrating the deca-
dence of humanity, Gobineau concluded in pamphleteering style, with animal
metaphor upon animal metaphor conjuring up the vermin that were eating
away at his hero’s descendants. Such was the dismal fate that awaited those
who had escaped disaster: however elevated their ideals, they could not be un-
aware of the fact that they were surrounded by midgets who, according to the
law of number and violence which had replaced the strength of yore, were
driving humankind to its downfall. Likewise, in the introduction to Pleiads, de-
spite going up onto a balcony in order to get closer to the stars and inveighing
against those whom others dared to call their peers, the “sons of kings” would
encounter one another again later in the story in a principality which, despite
its Hoffmannesque aspects, would not be spared the flaws of democracy. The
aesthetic failure of his epic and the success of his novel were symptomatic of
the century in which Gobineau wrote them.
2 For a Selective Immortality
In the eyes of an aristocrat, lineage counts more than the individual. Gobineau
legitimately put his age at 800 years when, on 1 January 1880, he sent his
8 Gobineau refers in Ottar Jarl to the Edda and to the work of the Norwegian philologist Peter
Andreas Munch, Det norske Folks Historie.
9 In his introduction to Icelandic Sagas (Sagas islandaises), Régis Boyer explains that heroism
in the sagas is not the result of “the way they are put together”, but “emerges from the deeds
themselves” (Gobineau, 1987: XLVIII).
best wishes to his sister Caroline “as has been my duty and my custom since
about 1060” (Gobineau, Gobineau, 1968, II: 113). In 1060 his ancestor Hugh I de
Gournay, after a life rich in exploits, “reached an age so advanced as to prompt
his contemporaries to comment on it” (Histoire d’Ottar Jarl, Gobineau, 1879: 63).
Through his blood ties, Hugh I remained alive in the person of Joseph-Arthur.
The longevity of Odin’s descendants can also be measured case by case. The
same goes for them, albeit to a lesser degree, as for the first men in the Bible.
Adam died at the age of 930. The resistance to time then declined over subse-
quent generations. Bucking the trend, Methuselah, who having waited until
the age of 187 to sire his first son, went on to live until the age of 969; his grand-
son, Noah could only manage 950. Gobineau, who accepts as true, in the Essay,
that Abraham was 75 when his father cut him loose (Gobineau, 1983a: 376),
was sufficiently influenced by the science of his time to doubt that Sarah had
given birth “in her advanced old age” (Gobineau, 1983a: 258). It must have been
painful for him to accord to the Semitic branch of the white race the same
advantages as those of his superior bough. More prolix when it came to the
Old Testament than to the New, he seems to use his knowledge of the Judeo-
Christian tradition to elevate the pagan saga of the Aryans, going as far as to
make the “predestined family”, identified as the “white race” (Gobineau, 1983a:
354), an exact copy of the “chosen people”. In addition to beauty and muscular
strength, he attributes to this race a “resilience” (Gobineau, 1983a: 286)10 typi-
cally associated with the heroes of the Book of Genesis. Thus, Ottar Jarl would
have reached a respectable age if he had not died prematurely in battle in 911,
at the age of 86. “He is not the sole member of his race that were active and
fighting fit at an age when most were afflicted” (Gobineau, 1879: 16).11 If the
average age of Scandinavian conquerors was relatively low, perhaps it was be-
cause they exposed themselves to more danger than the livestock breeders and
farmers who, according to the Bible, peopled the earth after the Creation.
With a puny constitution, which would only allow him to live 66 years,
Gobineau nevertheless had confidence in his personal vigour. “[I am] of
the race of incorruptible and immortal gods”, he wrote to his sister upon
turning 50.12 “As you know I’m immortal […]”, he wrote to her at 62 (7 August
1878, Gobineau, Gobineau, 1968, II: 31). “When I’m 200 years old […]”, he
ventured more cautiously the following year (30 October 1879, Gobineau,
10 “Life is a series of functions that resist death.” (Bichat, 1800: 1)

11 Age is not mentioned very frequently in Nordic legends. Gurnemanz, at the end of
Parsifal, is “very old”, just like a few exceptional heroes in the Icelandic Sagas. In the Epic
of Dietrich de Berne (18th century), there are heroes between 500 and 600 years of age.
12 Letter unedited, dated 5 August 1866, BNU Strasbourg, Fonds Gobineau, ms. 3520.
382 Rey
Gobineau, 1968, II: 95). More faithful than her brother to the conclusions of
the Essay, Caroline tempered his enthusiasm, without dampening it utterly:
Je sais bien que tu es du sang des héros, mais il ne faut pas oublier que
“tu en es le reste”, et si Ottar, Ragnvald et tant d’autres sont arrivés à la
vieillesse la plus reculée dans une vigueur héroïque, il faut calculer que,
depuis tant de siècles, il s’est fait un peu diminution,—pas beaucoup
cependant, car tu es assez bien organisé, et il y a peu d’hommes de ton
âge à être plus actifs intellectuellement et corporellement que toi.
1 April 1880, Gobineau, Gobineau, 1968, II: 132
I’m well aware that the blood of heroes courses within you, but you must
not forget that “you are a vestige”, and while Ottar, Ragnvald, and so many
others reached the ripest of old age in heroic fettle, one must reckon that,
over the centuries, there has been some decline,—not a lot, however, for
you are rather well organized, and there are few men of your age more
active intellectually and physically than you.
Less than two years before his death, Gobineau insisted: “I am eternal as the
gods” (12 November 1880, Gobineau, Gobineau, 1968, II: 183).
As he grew older, he conferred on elite beings an immortality that had not
figured in the Essay, where his concern had been not for the “isolated cases of
individual intellectual superiority” but for “the overall power, material as well
as moral, present among the masses” (Gobineau, 1983a: 218). Switching per-
spective, the Memoir On Diverse Manifestations of Individual Life established
that individuals, developing in accordance with a principle stemming from
both their specific nature and their environment, could, by dint of their in-
herent qualities, create that environment. After the publication of the Essay,
Tocqueville had criticized him for his materialism:
Je ne vous ai jamais caché du reste, que j’avais un grand préjugé contre

ce qui me paraît être votre idée-mère, […] puisque c’est la fatalité de la
constitution appliquée, non plus à l’individu seulement, mais à ces col-
lections d’individus qu’on nomme des races et qui vivent toujours.
11 October 1853, Tocqueville, Gobineau, 1959: 199
I have never hidden from you, moreover, that I had a strong repugnance
for what appears to me to be your main idea, […] since it is the inevi-
table predominance of nature applied not merely to the individual, but
beyond to those collections of men we call races, which live on.
Does he get around the criticism by conferring immortality upon some rare
individuals, who inhabited “a starry realm” (the “Pleiads”), while the multi-
tude, composed of “anthropoids” (to Mère Bénédicte; 2 June 1874, Gobineau,
Gobineau, 1968, I: 129), to his mind devoid of a “soul” (Les Pléiades, Gobineau,
1997: 46), would continue to crawl around at their feet? The Pleiads were
spared the “you die” which had served as the conclusion to the Essay. While
true for the masses, materialism did not apply when explaining a faith in the
ideal which, in Gobineau’s case, was mixed up with a faith in himself. Beings
moved, in a term that he liked to return to, in different “spheres”. According to
the Memoir, “there is not ‘a Space’ and ‘a Time’, but rather ‘Spaces’ and ‘Times’,
which emanate directly from each and every entity […]” (Gobineau, 1935: 226).
He thus adapted Kant’s transcendental categories to fit in with his experience
and his preferences. If we might be permitted to go out on a philosophical
limb, he could be categorized as either materialist or spiritualist, depending on
whether he is dealing with the masses or the elite.
That he expressed the hope of reaching 200 years of age one day, and of be-
coming immortal one another, could be put down to epistolary humour were
these two forms of optimism not to be found in his work. Just as bothersome
as the juxtaposition of materialism and spiritualism is his conception of (spiri-
tual) immortality as an extension of the (biological) longevity conferred upon
certain individuals. To this apparent defect in his thinking, which seems to il-
lustrate Woody Allen’s aphorism that “Eternity is a very long time, especially
toward the end”, he provides an explanation. According to the Essay,
les blancs se distinguent […] par un amour singulier de la vie. Il paraît

que, sachant mieux en user, ils lui attribuent plus de prix, ils la ménagent
davantage, en eux-mêmes et dans les autres.
Gobineau, 1983a: 34113
whites are distinguished by […] their particular love for life. It seems that,
since they are better able to make use of it, they value it more, take care of
it better, both in themselves and others.
13 While avoiding the shortland “Gobineau, precursor of National Socialism” used by the
dictionaries of the first half of the 20th century, it has to be admitted that his belief, ac-
cording to which the strong have more of a right to life than the weak because they are
more attached to it, has a sinister ring to it.
384 Rey
While they occasionally chose the destiny of Achilles, it was due to a nobil-
ity akin to that of the Aryan conquerors, who had taken the risk of mixing their
blood. Gobineau hence wrote to his sister:
Je trouve les religions primitives de l’Ayriana-Vaëja plus carrées et plus

raisonnables [que le christianisme], en même temps que plus simples.
Tout Arian était sauvé et montait au rang des dieux par le seul effet de la
pureté de sa race; tous les autres, nègres et Finnois, allaient au néant pour
la même cause.
15 April 1874, Gobineau, Gobineau, 1968, I: 124
I find the primitive religions of the Airyanem Vaejah more straightfor-

ward and reasonable [than Christianity], as well as simpler. Every Aryan
was saved and ascended to the ranks of the gods by dint of his racial pu-
rity alone; all the others, Negroes and Finns, descended to nothing for the
same reason.
However, while the Essay remained in the thrall of aristocratic prejudices,

Gobineau the novelist, while remaining faithful to the mystique of blood in the
Pleiads, henceforth believed that blood transmission took place in unknown
ways; so much so that the son of a boilermaker or a station master could merit
the title “son of a king” just as much as a prince (Gobineau, 1997: 41). Faith
being crucial in this area, he distinguished between those who had a soul be-
cause they had gone to the bother of having one, and those who had none
simply because the thought had never occurred to them. This explains Prince
Jean-Théodore proclamation in the Pleiads in which immortality appears to
be both a given and a wish: “Non! par mon âme immortelle, je ne me tuerai
pas! Je ne veux pas mourir!” / “No! By my immortal soul, I shall not kill myself!
I do not wish to die!” (Gobineau, 1997: 412) The Prince is over 50 when, having
wished the death of his wife so fervently that it actually happened, he decides
to marry a young woman called Aurore. His temperament means he has a long
and happy old age in prospect. His blood will live on intact in the little Renaud
to whom his wife gives birth in the final lines of the novel.14 In the end, he is
vouchsafed immortality by his desire to obtain it.
14 Renaud was the first name of the last son of Hugh IV de Gournay, one of Gobineau’s an-
cestors (Gobineau, 1879: 127). The novel thus was a case of wish fulfilment for Gobineau,
who had no sons.
This immortality bears little resemblance to the one postulated by the

Christian faith. Firstly, the latter promises a damnation in Hell no less eternal
that that of Heaven. Next, having reminded his sister of the nobility of the
primitive religion of the Aryans, Gobineau adds:
On n’imaginait pas qu’une erreur ou une faute d’un moment pût entraî-
ner un châtiment éternel, compensation assurément disproportionnée,
inexplicable et injustifiable.
15 April 1874, Gobineau, Gobineau, 1968, I: 124
They did not imagine that the error of a moment could bring about eter-
nal punishment, a reward that is surely disproportionate, inexplicable
and unjustifiable.
Since men were rewarded or punished according to what they were, and not
what they did, “error was ennobled by a generous heart”, as Gobineaus states
in Amadis (Gobineau, 1887: 486). Jean-Théodore only desired the death of his
wife so as to allow his individual existence to flourish. What meaning could
what is known as a “conversion” in religious terms have? What interest could
an anthropoid have in converting?
Conscious of the fact that the warlike qualities of his ancestors had become
useless in a time when violence had taken over from strength, Gobineau saw
only two possibilities for the inheritors of their blood. He writes to Prince
Eulenberg-Hertefeld on 5 April 1877: “L’amour passe avant toute chose, puis
vient le travail, ensuite il n’y a rien.” / “Love is of prime importance, then work,
after which there is nothing.” (Eulenberg-Hertefeld, 1906: 23; Duff, Bastide,
1961: 7) Was the sexual prowess of Viking heroes as accomplished as their war-
like powers? He was too discreet to bring up this question: the ethereal beauty
of his heroines was inspired by knightly romances. At least the birth of Renaud
meant that by marrying Aurore, Prince Jean-Théodore had not merely indulg-
ing in a fantasy. Himself smitten, at the age of almost 60, by the young wife of
an Italian minister in Stockholm, the author of the Pleiads was paying homage
to a country where it was never too late to love.
C’est un dogme qui fleurit dans l’Europe occidentale surtout, que l’amour
n’est pas durable et que quelques mois ou au plus quelques années suf-
fisent pour détruire jusqu’à la racine une plante aussi fragile. Cependant,
pas loin de là, dans un pays qui n’est pas absolument aux confins de la
terre habitée, en Italie, on rencontre des femmes et des hommes, des
amants qui, depuis de longues années, ont dépassé les sentiers verts de la
386 Rey
jeunesse et continuent à cheminer au milieu des froideurs de l’âge, tou-

jours aussi indissolublement attachés l’un à l’autre.
Gobineau, 1997: 308–309
It is a dogma that flourishes above all in Western Europe that love does
not last, or that it only takes a few months or years at most to utterly root
out such a fragile plant. However, not far from here, in a country which is
far from being at the edge of the inhabited world, i.e. Italy, one finds lov-
ers, men and women, who have long ago left the green lanes of youth and
who continue to make their way in the cold climes of old age, as indis-
solubly attached as ever to one another.
Won over by the grace of this Latin country, Gobineau’s views here owed more
to his personal feelings and to his reading of Stendhal than to the theories of
the Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races.
For lack of finding lasting love, two heroes of the novel, Candeuil and Louis
de Laudon, choose solitude in order to give themselves over to work, i.e. to
study. In the 11th and 12th centuries, the de Gournay family included a monk
named Hugh who, breaking with the violent customs of his time,
eut la force de se mettre au-dessus des habitudes de ses pareils, de rom

pre avec leurs prédilections, de monter plus haut que ce qui faisait leur
légitime orgueil, pour s’abandonner librement à ce qui n’était pas de
mode parmi eux.
had the strength to rise above the habits of his peers, to break with
their predilections, to go beyond what was a source of legitimate pride
for them, in order to dedicate himself freely to what was uncustomary
among them.
Like the ancient Aryan heroes of India who adopted the ascetic lifestyle, he
lived to a ripe old age (Gobineau, 1879: 72–73). Cloistered at Solesmes, Caroline
de Gobineau was proud to announce to her brother that she had begun trans-
lating and studying the sacred texts of the Ancient Persians, which were attrib-
uted to Zoroaster. Her sisters in religion, to whom she had confided her anxiety
that it was perhaps imprudent to begin such an undertaking at the age of 60,
had all replied that
les moniales n’ont pas d’âge: elles peuvent aller de l’avant sans crainte,
d’autant qu’il y en a d’autres qui continueront l’œuvre commencée.
7 March 1880, Gobineau, Gobineau, 1968, II: 125
cloistered nuns are ageless: they can forge ahead without fear, especially
since there are others who will continue the work that has been begun.
Beyond the fact that it offers exceptional individuals an opportunity for lon-
gevity, science, like nobility, reduces the importance of their individual physi-
cal deaths. In reality, they are part of a lineage whose only threat would be a
paucity of offspring. Needless to say, there was no need to confer eternal life
upon them in addition: for, they would already have had to been in receipt of
this gift in order to be counted among those who delayed the inevitable end of
the human species, or who limited that end to its material existence.
Bibliography
Bichat, Xavier, 1800. Recherches physiologiques sur la vie et la mort. Brosson, Gabon
and Co.
Eulenberg-Hertefeld, Philipp, Fürst zu, 1906. Eine Erinnerung an Graf Arthur Gobineau.
Stuttgart, F. Frommanns.
Gaulmier, Jean, 1981. “Poison dans les veines. Note sur le thème du sang chez Gobineau.”
Romantisme (Paris), n° 31, 197–208.
Gobineau, Joseph-Arthur, comte de, 1961. “Avant-propos.” Mademoiselle Irnois, suivi de
Adélaïde, edited by Abraham B. Duff and François-Régis Bastide. Paris, Gallimard,
Blanche.
Gobineau, Joseph-Arthur, comte de, 1879. Histoire d’Ottar Jarl, pirate norvégien,
conquérant du pays de Bray, en Normandie, et de sa descendance. Paris, Didier
and Co.
Gobineau, Joseph-Arthur, comte de, 1887. Amadis, poëme. Plon, Nourrit and Co.
Gobineau, Joseph-Arthur, comte de, and Anton comte de Prokesch-Osten, 1933.
Correspondance, edited by Clément Serpeille de Gobineau. Paris, Plon.
Gobineau, Joseph-Arthur, comte de, 1935. Mémoire sur diverses manifestations de la vie
individuelle, unpublished French text and German version, edited by Abraham B.
Duff. Paris, Desclée de Brouwer.
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Correspondance, 2 vols., edited by Abraham B. Duff. Paris, Mercure de France.
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3 vols., edited by Jean Gaulmier. Paris, Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade.
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Abraham B. Duff. Paris, Éditions du Seuil.
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Gobineau, Joseph-Arthur, comte de, 1997. Les Pléiades, edited by Pierre-Louis Rey.
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Tocqueville, Alexis, comte de, and Joseph-Arthur comte de Gobineau, Joseph-Arthur,
1959. Œuvres completes, 18 vols., vol. 9: Correspondance, edited by Jacob-Peter Mayer.
Paris, Gallimard.
Darwinus anarchistus explodens: Science and the
Legend of the Struggle for Life (Louise Michel)
Claude Rétat
Abstract
The reference to Darwin, topic at the end of the 19th century, is at the heart of a verbal
sparring match about who will be (or will claim to be), in matters of struggle for life, on
the right side of history. Louise Michel articulates the topoi of evolution, and alongside
the topoi of evolution-revolution, with an imagination and a practice (of thought, of
writing, of militant engagement). Her 1892 article “À propos des explosions” (“On explo-
sions”, treating the assassination attempt of Ravachol) shows in a paradigmatic—but
nonetheless sardonic and original—way her use and practice of scientific reference.
The starting point of this paper is the presence of Darwin in the writings of
Louise Michel, a presence which is important throughout, in the imaginative
works as well as in the vast corpus of encyclopaedic texts, which have for the
most part remained unpublished.1 Of course, our intention is not to validate
or disqualify this or that scientific statement, but rather to see how some topoi
and commonplace ideas relate to world view, imagination and literature, how
they are rebuilt in something new and possibly provocative. There was nothing
unusual at the close of the 19th century about mentioning Darwin, or express-
ing a view on the question of the “struggle for life”2—it was part of a game with
well-established rules. Thus, Louise Lyle showed in the case of Mirbeau and
his novel Le Jardin des supplices (1899) how allusions to Darwin, the denuncia-
tion of ‘social Darwinism’, anarchist anti-republicanism and a denunciation of
politico-scientific elites fitted together (Lyle, 2007).
Louise Michel added Darwin to her reading list. In the autumn of 1885, she
made this request to Paul Lafargue, who was visiting her in prison: “N’oubliez
pas de m’apporter […] le Descent of Man de Darwin, sa lecture fortifiera mon
anglais.” / “Don’t forget to bring me […] the Darwin’s Descent of Man. Reading
1 An essay devoted to these encyclopaedic texts will be published soon (Claude Rétat,
Classiques Garnier).
2 See Angenot, 1989 (specially chap. 40: “Migrations d’un idéologème: ‘La lutte pour la vie’”);
Bernardini, 1997.
390 Rétat
it will improve my English.”3 Indeed, she quotes from this work in her hand-
written encyclopaedic works, in the chapters on linguistics: “Ce même cébus
du Paraguay dit Darwin ‘fait entendre des sons distincts qui provoquent chez
les autres singes des émotions semblables’.” / “This same Cebus from Paraguay,
says Darwin, ‘utters distinct sounds which excite in other monkeys similar
emotions’.”4
She also added Darwin to the list of books read by characters in her novels.
The books she inserts in this way in her fiction are never random: Paroles d’un
révolté (Kropotkine, in Le Claque-dents, 1889–1890), Biribi (Darien, in La Chasse
aux loups, 1891)… It falls to little Harriette in Les Microbes humains (1886) to
read Darwin:
L’enfant était entourée de tout ce qui pouvait développer son intelligence

(ainsi le seront un jour tous les petits de la race humaine). Elle s’était en-
dormie en lisant. Le livre était tombé à terre, un livre grave, on les aime
avec passion à cet âge; c’était Darwin.
Michel, 2013: 202
The child was surrounded by things likely to foster her intelligence (as
will be one day all children of the human race). She had fallen asleep
while reading. The book had fallen to the ground; it was the sort of seri-
ous book one loves with a passion at that age; it was Darwin.
This homage appears a touch ambiguous: is Darwin passion-inspiring or sleep-

inducing? Above all, it is found at the end of the novel, just before the murder
of this same Harriette, victim of a “wolf” who has slipped into the “sheepfold”.
In the shape of a book fallen to the ground, Darwin thus functions as the sign
of a bestial, bloody present, but also of a future that promises to nurture “all
the kids of the human race” (Harriette is a middle-class child). He is to be
found at the point where violence, science, pedagogy and optimism about the
world of the future intersect: Michel, the novelist, primary school teacher and
pedagogue on a large scale (as her project of an encyclopaedia demonstrates),
dreamed of educating all of humanity. The take on Darwin as educator of
youth and developer of intelligence is therefore very positive, even though the
commonplace association of him with violence and murderous licence on the
3 According to Le Socialiste, 26 September 1885. The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to
Sex (London, 1871) was translated into French in 1872 (La Descendance de l’homme et la sélec-
tion sexuelle).
4 Manuscript in Moscow, RGASPI, 233/1/5. It refers to Darwin, 1871, 1: 53–54.
Science and the Legend of the Struggle for Life 391
part of the fittest is at the same time confirmed. While he is perceived as distill-
ing the essence of the present (a bloody jungle), he also features as representa-
tive of the scientific consciousness of this state of affairs, thus of the progress
of consciousness, and therefore as a vector of human evolution.
1 Dixit Darwin
In the encyclopaedic works, there are few quotations, as such, from Darwin: it
is pointless to search for a detailed discussion of his work; on the other hand,
the allusions are frequent (involving trigger-words), and he hovers as a tutelary
figure over the whole enterprise. Not everything has remained in manuscript
form: Louise Michel published two thin booklets, the first one in 1888 (Lectures
encyclopédiques par cycles attractifs), the second one in the 1890s (Notions en-
cyclopédiques par ordre attractif). Paradoxically, their slimness is evidence of
their importance: their author, indeed, aimed to deliver the most potent quin-
tessence of knowledge in the smallest possible space, highly concentrated as
“résines de l’Inde” / “Indian resins”, of which “un fragment gros comme une tête
d’épingle” / “a fragment no bigger than the head of a pin” could provide lasting
sustenance (Michel, 2015a: 270).
The first brochure contains a summary of Darwin (long when compared to
the rest, one full page out of sixteen):
Tous les êtres organisés sont soumis, dit Darwin, à un certain nombre
d’influences.
Tous sont en lutte contre tous, pour conquérir le droit de vivre, c’est la
lutte pour l’existence.
Michel, 1888: 12
All organized beings are subject, says Darwin, to a certain number of in-
fluences. All are engaged in a struggle against all in order to win the right
to live; this is the struggle for life.
There then follows: the variability of species, the auxiliary hereditary transmis-
sion of variability, natural selection, the extinction of individuals with “partic-
ularités nuisibles” / “harmful features”, the transmission of those features that
“assurent un avantage dans la lutte pour l’existence” / “offer and advantage in
the struggle for existence”. By referring in a note to “Ch. Darwin, On the Origin
of Species or the Laws of the Transformation of Organised Beings” (“Ch. Darwin,
De l’origine des espèces ou des lois de transformation des êtres organises”), that
392 Rétat
is, by quoting the whole title of the French translation,5 Louise Michel was
sounding a word that was particularly important to her: “transformation”.
The final page of the brochure takes Darwin in a direction that several anar-
chists favoured in reaction to the doctrines of social Darwinism:
Les hasards de la lutte pour vivre, le combat incessant pour l’existence

avaient forcé l’homme à appeler à son aide d’autres hommes. Les pre-
mières relations amenèrent des échanges de paroles, de signes, de
produits …
Michel, 1888: 16
The unpredictability of the struggle for life, the incessant fight for sur-
vival forced Man to call on other men for help. The first interactions led
to words, signs, products …
In the second brochure the “dixit Darwin” strategy is given a different form,
that of a quotation from Élisée Reclus:
L’harmonie est la loi de l’univers—C’est dans leur ordre harmonique que

sont groupées ces lectures encyclopédiques.
Les dernières pages d’Élysée [sic] Reclus leur serviront d’introduction.
“L’homme dit-il a ses lois comme la terre [.] Vue de haut et de loin, la
diversité des traits qui s’entremêlent à la surface du globe […] présente
une image qui n’est pas le chaos, mais un ensemble merveilleux de
rythme et de beauté.
L’homme qui contemple et scrute cet univers assiste à l’œuvre im-
mense de la création incessante qui commence toujours et ne finit jamais
et participant lui-même par l’ampleur de la compréhension à l’éternité
des choses, il peut arriver comme Newton, comme Darwin à les résumer
d’un mot” …
Michel, ca 1894: 1
Harmony is the law of the universe—These encyclopaedic readings are

ordered harmonically.
The final pages of Élysée [sic] Reclus will provide an introduction.
5 Darwin’s title was: On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation
of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.
“Man, he says, is governed by laws, just like the earth [.] Seen from far
above, the diversity of intertwining features on the surface of the globe
[…] appears not as chaotic, but as a marvellous rhythmic and beautiful
whole.
Man, who contemplates and examines this universe is given the spec-
tacle of an immense work, the continuous creation, which is always in
the process of beginning and never ends, and, being himself a part of the
eternity of things by the wide range of his understanding, he is capable,
like Newton or Darwin, of summing them up in a word” …
The lines quoted by Louise Michel, and written by Reclus in the conclusion
of his Géographie universelle, which he had just finished, were reproduced by
L’Intransigeant on 3 January 1894. These were eventful times for the author: his
classes had just been cancelled at the Université libre de Bruxelles, and he had
been arrested during a raid on his apartment. He explained that he had sought
to bring out the unity of “continuous creation” that lay beneath the surface
of various migrations and colonizations: he wished to treat all these human
movements not as they appeared “au premier abord […] des faits juxtaposés
dans le temps” / “at first glance […] facts juxtaposed in time”, but as governed
by a “rhythm” and endowed with “un sens général exprimable par une loi” / “an
overall meaning expressible in terms of a law” (Reclus, 1894).
The duo Newton-Darwin, becomes from the vantage of Louise Michel, who
quotes Reclus, a trio Newton-Darwin-Reclus; and, as far as the 19th century
is concerned, it is finally a duo Darwin-Reclus, whose pressing concern is to
understand humankind and to identify its “laws”. Thus, Darwin and Reclus ap-
pear as two visionaries of the science of humanity. Reclus’ conviction, i.e. that
“l’humanité se fait une” / “humanity is drawing together”, was also his object of
scientific study: “Que nos origins aient été multiples ou non, cette unite gran-
dit, elle deviant une réalité vivante.” / “Whether our origins were many or not,
this unity is growing and is becoming a living reality.” The vast enterprise of
the Géographie universelle would be summed up (as Louise Michel did for her
encyclopedic writings) in a little book that would set out the organizing prin-
ciple, the essential unifying point:
Du million de faits que j’ai dû énumérer de chapitre en chapitre, je vou-

drais extraire une idée générale et justifier en un court volume, écrit à
loisir, la longue série de livres sans conclusion apparente que je viens de
terminer.
Reclus, 1894
394 Rétat
From the million facts I must have set out in the various chapters, I wish
to extract a general idea and to justify, in a short volume, written at lei-
sure, the long series of books I have just finished without having yet
brought the conclusion to light.
It is hardly surprising then that Darwin was destined to be boiled down into a
few scraps or slogans: thus was formulated and circulated a “law” of humanity,
whose very brevity guaranteed its high theoretical value and got to the heart of
the ultimate unity of mankind.
2 General Background: Winning the Struggle / Winning the Debate
For Louise Michel, Élisée Reclus represented an explicit model. He opened

and tread an anarchist path to knowledge. They shared a common scientific
ambition, a passion for knowledge, and a conviction that this passion was key
to individual flourishing. The anarchist Darwin devised by Louise Michel thus
differed substantially from the Darwin analysed by Louise Lyle in the work of
Mirbeau: here, the scientific field is not involved in the virulent denunciation
of the scientists for their collaboration with power. On the contrary, the world
of science is an area to be conquered. Around the figure of Darwin, the real
issue at stake is what stance to take with regard to science.
Reclus would formulate the overall idea (these laws of men and of the Earth,
which he had already spoken of in 1894), in L’Évolution, la révolution et l’idéal
anarchique (1898), in which he explained how humanity came to be. The 1898
book itself had matured, beginning with a lecture given in Geneva in 1880,
Évolution et révolution, which then turned into a small 25-page brochure in
1880, before becoming a thick 61-page brochure in 1891, and then a whole book.
From the outset, he makes a point of speaking a human and social science:
his purpose is to understand the revolution through scientific means (in ri-
valry with Marx). The three editions of the text, from brochure to finished book
(1880, 1891, 1898), shared a common point: the refutation of “social Darwinism”,
in other terms of the way Darwin had been diverted in order to justify the vio-
lence of social relations. Reclus identified two systems designed to justify the
exploitation of man by man: religion and the ‘might is right’ theory (“droit du
plus fort”), which (he wrote in 1880)
a du moins le mérite de ne pas reposer sur un mensonge […] La théorie

de Darwin vient de faire son entrée dans la science et l’on croit pouvoir
s’en servir contre nous.
Reclus, 1880: 22–23
at least has the merit of not being based on a lie […] Darwin’s theory has
just made its scientific debut, and they think they can use it against us.
His response was to accept what was a fact (strength is the strongest in our
society), while adding: soon we will be the strongest, and with the revolution
we shall see the emergence of this new force. If Darwin crowns the strongest,
then Darwin is crowning us. “Car si le capital garde la force […] L’humanité
aura cessé de vivre” / “For if capital holds on to power […] Humanity will have
ceased to exist”: humanity, who is struggling for life (that is, to become the real
humanity, gathered together and united), will inevitably become the strongest,
so capital will die (Reclus, 1880: 25).
In 1891, the same demonstration (with more emphasis and details) intro-
duced a small new variable, albeit a significant one: “La théorie dite de Darwin
vient de faire son entrée dans la science et l’on croit pouvoir s’en servir contre
nous.” / “Darwin’s theory, so called, has just made its scientific debut and there
are those who would use it against us.” (Reclus, 1891: 35 [emphasis added]) In
the 1898 book, the distance Reclus puts between Darwin and social Darwinism
is even greater:
On invoque contre les revendications sociales le droit du plus fort, et

même le nom respecté de Darwin a servi, bien contre son gré, à plaider la
cause de l’injustice et de la violence.
Reclus, 1898: 203 [emphasis added]
The might-is-right argument is brought up and used against demands in

the area of social rights, and even the respected name of Darwin has been
thus utilized, much against his wishes, to argue the case for injustice and
violence.
At the same time was emerging the desire to devise a law explaining society,
in short to be the Darwin of the social sphere, to give expression to “la vie pro-
fonde de l’Humanité” / “the deeply underlying principle of life in Humanity”
(Reclus, 1898: 193), and to address the issue of power and violence. The time
when physical force held sway is gone, even as far as revolution is concerned,
writes Reclus. The more revolutionaries raise revolutionary consciousness, the
more it merges with evolution:
Finalement, toute opposition devra céder et même céder sans lutte

[…] C’est ainsi que fonctionne la vie dans un organisme sain, celui d’un
homme ou celui d’un monde.
Reclus, 1898: 291–292; 1891: 61
396 Rétat
In the end, all opposition must cease and, what is more, must cease
without resistance […] This is the way life works in a healthy organism,
whether it be that of an individual person or of a world.
This is the conclusion of the 1891 and 1898 versions.

Since the strongest beings are those who help one other, the entity destined
to be the strongest is a humankind finally united as one. Beginning with the
1880 lecture, Reclus consistently moved to defend the idea of a non-violent law
of might; so he wants to level evolution and revolution, in favour of a move-
ment presented as being the most natural (the life of a healthy organism), and
he emphasizes the importance of revolutionary consciousness, defined as
knowledge regarding the ‘laws’ governing an emerging humanity.
Reclus was in tune with a ferment of anarchist texts which, in the 1880s,
fought against ‘social Darwinism’ and the defenders of a status quo based on
the idea that the ‘might is right’ doctrine was founded in nature. Their idea
was to monopolize Darwin and to position themselves as his most scrupulous
readers.
Thus, arguments centred on quasi-fetish terms like “struggle”, “strong”, “life”,
“evolution”… By rejecting an interpretation and an instrumentalization (which
were themselves stereotypical), the approach, although the opposite (or per-
haps because it was the opposite), utilized the same words (just as the debaters
in Hugo’s Cromwell fight using biblical quotations).
For instance, “struggle” and “life” were turned to a different end by Jean
Grave in his 1889 brochure: La société au lendemain de la Révolution. He re-
placed the limited and egotistical individual, quoting Büchner, by the great
collective being, by the humanity struggling for life, “pour la vie en general” /
“for the life of all”, and by the struggle against nature for the wealth and benefit
of everyone (Le Vagre [Grave], 1889: 124–125).
“Evolution” was dealt with by Émile Gautier (Le Darwinisme social, an anar-
chist brochure from 1880) and by Jean Richepin (who faithfully recapped the
content of this brochure in 1882). This was a joust with Haeckel (who himself
was responding in 1879 to Virchow, who had argued that Darwin’s system pro-
vided socialists with arguments). Gautier and Richepin put forward, in opposi-
tion to the Darwinist Haeckel (and not to Darwin), a “social Darwinism” turned
in an opposite way, which they defined as socialist by nature. The idea was to
put Darwin at the centre of the theoretical debate. “Oui […] l’homme primi-
tif était soumis à cette loi et à ces conséquences alors fatales. Mais non plus
l’homme d’aujourd’hui.” / “Yes […] primitive man was subject to this law and to
what were then its inexorable consequences. But man no longer is nowadays.”
(Richepin, 1882) Man is evolving (so said Darwin), he achieved consciousness,
which is the source of society, so the conclusion is: “la société a d’abord été et
sera de plus en plus une réaction contre la loi de Darwin.” / “society was at first
and will more and more be a reaction against Darwin’s law.” (Richepin, 1882)—
In other words, against Darwin’s law, but thanks to Darwin. According to
Richepin, “Darwin’s law” is destined to encounter “new conditions”: the law
of struggle is leading mankind away from internecine struggle and toward
human cooperation (“les vrais forts de par leur nombre” et de par “leurs én-
ergies latentes” / “the truly strong by dint of their number” and “their latent
energy”) united in a common struggle against nature … On the same topic,
Kropotkine wrote on many occasions: the “weak” who cooperate are stronger
than lone individuals with teeth like wolves, “life” (the prize in the struggle)
would thus be theirs at the end of the evolutionary stakes, which is presumed
to turn things around and to make the previous “strongest” into the weakest
(Kropotkine, 1891).
It must be remembered how tight the constraints were governing this line
of argument: it took place within a fixed framework, with an obligation to
use certain terms, and above all to speak “scientifically” (on the level of laws
and generality) about mankind and humanity. What was at stake was “life”:
to whom would it belong? The great phrase, “struggle for life”, first uttered by
Darwin, led to a rhetorical struggle over Darwin: it was an arena where, clearly,
no one wanted to be called the weak party (unless of course they were the
weak who would one day be strong). It was not so much the details of scientific
research that impelled the debate, but the visceral, brutally compelling need
to pronounce dead one or another category, entity or identity. This episode of
science turned struggle through and over words is not necessarily a dead zone:
on the contrary. While it certainly fostered clichés and exchanges of clichés, it
nevertheless was the raging field of a life-and-death struggle.
3 Louise Michel’s Topoi
The involvement of Louise Michel in this debate and combat should not sur-
prise us. In her work, Darwin ended up being mashed into an intellectual and
imaginative outlook which was dramatically suspended between “life” and
“death”, “death” and “life”, as exemplified by the titles of her books: À travers la
vie (Through Life), title of the first poetry collection in 1888, À travers la mort
(Through Death), title of the second poetry collection, which she never pub-
lished; À travers la mort, which according to the 1891 manuscripts6 was the
6 See Michel, 2015a, appendix 2: 303.

398 Rétat
title of the “second volume” of her Mémoires (published in instalments in 1890

newspapers and re-discovered in 2015), and À travers la vie, the retrospective
title, according to the same plans, of the first volume of her Mémoires (pub-
lished in book form in 1886) … These “Throughs” set out necessary stages of the
great turnaround: from the old world (which, for Louise Michel, came right up
to the present) to the new one, where Man would be different in the wake of
his new (r)evolution (being a new animal, highly evolved, and living in a new
society); a great turnaround also in terms of ‘hunted’ and ‘hunter’ (another way
of talking about the weak and the strong in the struggle for life, by the use of
the imagery of the manhunt), a metaphor that the novel La Chasse aux loups
brought to a climax in 1891 by imagining the revenge of the dead of 1871 and the
glorious return of the Commune.
Louise Michel’s intense interest for prehistory, when the “struggle for life”
was at its keenest, also left its mark on her fictional, autobiographical, propa-
gandistic and encyclopaedic work. That is where she found proof for evolution,
not only on an organic level (beginning with protoplasm), but also on a social
one: the struggle for life had produced society, i.e. cooperation, which would
produce the revolt (the about-turn) of the hunted against the hunters. Thus,
in Prise de possession (1890), she showed the two extremities of the circle (pre-
historic and contemporary Man) coming together to close out a cycle and give
rise to a new one, which both broke with and evolved out of the previous one
(Michel, 2017: 34–35).
The transformation of the struggle for existence into the struggle against
nature (by a united mankind), repeated on page after page, dramatized in the
novels, owns up to its underlying assumption in the following encyclopaedic
fragment: in the tertiary period, she writes: “chaque jour, dit Darwin, assurait la
lutte pour vivre” / “each day, says Darwin, brought with it the struggle for life”.
She then adds:
Que la science et le travail fassent l’existence facile et qu’on lutte bientôt

contre les forces de la nature pour la science et la vérité pour le bon-
heur du genre humain. (The crossed out words have been cancelled in
the manuscript.)
Let science and work make existence easy and soon let us struggle
against the forces of nature for science and truth for the happiness of
humankind.
It is the life (to come) of the great being “humanity” that the original and pres-
ent struggle for life leads to:
L’humanité
Humanité! mot encore vide de sens ou plutôt ne représentant que l’âpre
lutte pour l’existence mais qui aura son accomplissement.
Cette lutte, partout sanglante, commence avec la vie [,] elle passe en
héritage des pères aux enfants d’autant plus implacablement que les
jours s’écoulent.
L’Humanité, c’est encore le troupeau presque tel que le dépeint Horace,
le troupeau sortant aux premiers jours hideux et muets en rampant sur la
terre nouvelle.
N’est-ce pas, c’est toujours la force, comme au commencement7 …
Humanity
Humanity! a word as yet devoid of meaning, or rather one representing
merely the bitter struggle for existence, which nevertheless will bear fruit.
This struggle, which is everywhere bloody, begins with life [,] it is
passed down from father to child as inevitable as night follows day.
Humanity is still the herd almost identical to the one depicted by
Horace, the herd in those early days crawling out onto the land for the
first time, hideous and speechless.
Things are ruled by force, aren’t they, today as in the beginning …
4 Practical Use: Portrait of Ravachol as a Brachinus
Manhunt and cannibalism: Louise Michel, in order to describe the state of so-
ciety, constantly had recourse to opposition of hunters and hunted, eaters and
eaten, and sought in evolution a way of getting beyond this division. This im-
portant animal metaphor imposed its limitations: it allowed her to kill the wolf
(the recurring representative of the predator, bringing with it echoes of both
Hobbes and Darwin) by the means of fiction, but even more to figure out how
this wolf would be transformed. Thus, in the novels of 1888–1889, the charac-
ter of the wolf, named Wolff, appeared as the offspring of a “great ancestor”, a
“fauve ancestral” / an “ancestral wild beast”, but also the father of Wolff-cubs
(so to say) which are highly humanized. As a proof of their dewolfing (so to
speak), the novel refers to them as “loulous” (a French slang word for dog). He
himself (a brilliant scientist) is torn between the monstrous past and the call
7 Moscow manuscript, RGASPI, 233/1/4.

400 Rétat
of the new world. Moreover, another Wolff turns up in the following novel, this
time as a revolutionary (Le Claque-dents).8
Conversely, the evolution of the eaten, the sheep, also had to be set out
so as their nature would no longer be such that they allowed themselves to
be gobbled up. The “flocks” who allow themselves to be shorn and culled (by
the Republic and representative democracy …) are just as responsible as the
wolves (just as little or just as much): “Le nombre immense de profils de mou-
tons chez tous les peuples explique la facilité avec laquelle peuvent s’accomplir
les égorgements.” / “The enormous numbers of sheep-like individuals within
all peoples explains the ease with which the slaughters can be carried out.9”
In short, it is time to rethink social species: if the “wolf” is destined to soften
into a “loulou” for the good of humanity, or to turn into a great fighter against
nature, for the sake of revolution, the “sheep” has to become more assertive.
Current events provided Louise Michel with indications that evolution was
taking place. When, in January 1886, the miners of Decazeville threw the as-
sistant general manager Watrin out of a window, she declared that “the time
has come for humanity” to go on the “hunt for wolves”. Eugène Pottier wrote
at the same time “La revanche des moutons” (“The Revenge of the Sheep”),10
which was as much a description of a revolution as of a metamorphosis: sheep
were growing fangs, so “Watch out!”, they “are going to eat the wolves!” / “Gare
là-dessous!”, ils “vont manger les loups!”
The article Louise Michel submitted to the socialist press in August 1892,
“Concerning explosions” / “À propos des explosions”, explaining the attack car-
ried out by Ravachol (who had just been guillotined), is paradigmatic of her
thinking, and better still, of her use of scientific references. In terms of her
rhetoric, it is totally run through with allusions to the Darwinian vulgate as
expounded by anarchist thinkers, beginning with the word “struggle”, with the
most important phrase in brackets about “humanity not wishing to perish”:
Il est naturel de jeter un coup d’œil sur les nouvelles formes que revêt la
lutte sociale.
[…] La lutte entre le monde qui s’écroule et celui qui cherche à naître
devait changer de forme.—Les écrasements de multitudes ont eu pour
conséquence (l’humanité ne voulant pas périr) la lutte seul à seul, les
armes ne peuvent donc être les mêmes.
8 See Le Monde nouveau (Michel, 2013) where Wolff dies being pursued by the crowd, and
Le Claque-dents (Michel, 2013) where Wolff is the name of a revolutionary.
9 I ISH (International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam), Louise Michel papers, ms 675.
10 Le Cri du peuple, 9 and 10 February 1886.
Cette conséquence est instinctive. Les hommes ne s’adaptent-ils pas,

pour vivre, aux lieux qu’ils habitent, n’ont-ils pas subi, en changeant leur
mode d’existence, les changements d’époque, se défendant contre les
périls qui les menacent par les moyens les plus propres à les conjurer11?
It is natural for one to take a look at the new forms taken by the social
struggle.
[…] The struggle between the world that is crumbling and the one that
is attempting to be born was bound to change shape.—The crushings of
the multitudes had this result (since humanity doesn’t wish to perish)
that the struggle is led by solitary fighters, so the weapons cannot be the
same now.
This result is the product of instinct. Is it not the case that men adapt,
in order to live, to the places they live, that they have reacted to epochal
changes by changing their way of life, defending themselves against the
perils that threaten them by the means most likely to ward them off?
So goes the theoretical preamble. Ravachol, an individual (a “solitary fighter”),

embodies both humanity struggling for life and the skill to adapt to change.
The “social struggle” changed “form”, Ravachol too changed form, becoming
(in an image) an insect of a special kind:
Un pauvre petit coléoptère, la brachine [sic] se défend des gros insectes

en les effrayant au moyen de fusées qui se développent sous ses ailes;
il est évident que la nature l’a poussée à employer ce moyen, serait-elle
moins puissante pour empêcher la destruction de l’humanité?
[…] L’extermination a toujours été conjurée par les êtres capables de
s’adapter à un milieu plus élevé.
A poor little beetle (coleoptera), the brachine [sic] defends itself against
large insects by frightening them by means of rockets, that grow beneath
its wings; it is obvious that nature compelled it to use this device, would
she be any less powerful in preventing the destruction of humanity?
[…] Extermination had always been staved off by beings capable of
adaptation to a higher environment.
11 L a Question sociale, 15 August 1892. Reproduced as an additional text in La Chasse aux
loups, Michel, 2015b: 327; see also an introduction to this text, Michel, 2015b: 37 and
following.
402 Rétat
Justifying Ravachol consisted of seeing in him, scientifically speaking, the way

in which the human animal had metamorphosed. Like the brachinus, a “poor
little beetle” compelled by nature to defend itself, he had secreted his rocket:
the humour of the title is clear (“Concerning Explosions”).
The brachinus had been described, and somewhat distinguished, in
Reynaud and Leroux’s Encyclopédie nouvelle in 1840:
[…] genre de coléoptères, l’un des plus remarquables qui existent dans la
classe entière des insectes, par la faculté que possèdent les espèces qui
le composent, d’émettre, avec explosion, par l’anus, une matière acide et
vaporisable lorsqu’on les saisit ou les inquiète de quelque manière que ce
soit […] Les trois espèces [sont]: Brachine pétard (B. crepitans), brachine
à explosions (B. explodens), brachine pistolet (B. sclopeta).
Leroux, Reynaud, 1840: 54
[…] coleopteran genus, one the most remarkable of all belonging to the
class of insects by dint of the ability of the species belonging to it to ex-
plosively emit, from their anus, a vaporous acidic material when seized
or bothered in any way […] The three species [are]: Firework Brachinus
(B. crepitans), Explosive Brachinus (B. explodens), and Pistol Brachinus
(B. sclopeta).
Moreover, the insect was sufficiently well known as to appear, with an illustra-
tion, in an 1882 manual for children (Fabre, 1882).
The article “Concerning Explosions” allows us to understand how science
fitted into an intellectual arsenal, itself in the service of a struggle and a hope
for the future based on the transformation of the human animal. The explo-
sive jet is a “natural” evolutionary process, just as Louise Michel’s view of the
situation is “natural”. The Brachinus crepitans, explodens and sclopeta allows
her to reorient, to darwinize and to spice up the old romantic image of the
chrysalis, which is very common in Louise Michel’s work. By casting a bomb,
Ravachol-brachinus had simply cast its excrement (conchié, according to the
French word) against the legal system and the present state of society. Reading
between the lines, another author’s influence, beyond that of Darwin’s, can
be felt: the Hugo of the Misérables (1862), more particularly of the chapter on
Cambronne. Cambronne, at Waterloo, in the face of the British and Prussian
overwhelming armies, “does more than spit”; he “drowns the European
coalition in two syllables”: “overpowered by number, force and matter, [he]

gives way to soul by finding this expression: excrement”.12
By dropping his word (in Hugo’s version, which is not the historical one)
on the overwhelming enemy, Cambronne fits into a sublime framework and
brings extremes together: the inspired hero defended himself and saved a
vanquished France, by the means of the Verb coming to explosion (“faisant
explosion”).
While lambs or chicks elicit tender compassion, when it comes to the con-
trast between eaters and eaten, the characteristics traditionally associated
with sheep awake neither empathic feelings nor aesthetic enthusiasm, unlike
the wolf, the wild beast inhabiting the forest, monstrously beautiful, horribly
sublime, whose furious appetites quicken the imagination of writers of popu-
lar stories.
Far away from the metaphor of sheep, whose passivity is problematic and
not exciting at all, far away from the severely overexploited metaphor of chrys-
alis, the brachinus provides a quite refreshing metaphor. It restores and renews
all the flavour, the joy, the sublimity of a very Romantic theme: the “weak” ris-
ing up. “The future belongs to the weak”, said Michelet in his December 1847
lecture, and Hugo showed the rising of the “Satyre” (against Olympians), in
1859.13 Both were fascinated by the story of the downtrodden who refuses to
back down, and who, disarmed and lost under pressure, invents weapons from
their own, spitting (and even more) in the face of their oppressor.
The Ravachol-Brachinus is halfway between Hugo’s Cambronne and
Michelet’s insect (master of metamorphoses of his own device, of a sort of or-
ganic and moral self-fashioning14). Louise Michel’s article on Ravachol is cheer-
fully aware of its provocative content. While it is obviously not a traditional
scientific dissertation (which would be absurd to expect in a context where
the idea was to reinvent knowledge, to pack it full of feeling, of imagination,
and of action), the Darwinian reference is nevertheless neither, unimportant,
accidental, nor ineffective: it is front and centre, the very core of the text and
its message, all the more serious for being openly sardonic, and vice versa. Just
as Ravachol-Brachinus used science (i.e. chemistry and explosives) in order to
fire “rockets”, in the same way Louise Michel used science (and the Darwinian
12 Il “fait plus que cracher” il “noie dans deux syllabes la coalition européenne”, “sous
l’accablement du nombre, de la force et de la matière, [il] trouve à l’âme une expression,
l’excrément” (Hugo, 1969b, XI: 281–282).
13 Third instalment of his lectures at the Collège de France: “L’avenir est dans les faibles”
(30 December 1847), in Michelet, 1898—Hugo, 1969a, X: 585.
14 Jules Michelet’s L’Insecte was published in 1858: see in particular livre i, chap. VI:
“Métamorphose. La momie, nymphe ou chrysalide.” (Michelet, 1986)
404 Rétat
reference) to justify Ravachol: she too is adapting to circumstances, and she

adapts resources. The struggle for life uses anything that comes to hand: in this
paradoxical logic, which is circular, purposely deforming, but also lively and
operative, Darwin and the ‘struggle for life’ are caught up, appropriated, and
carried away.
Such is the fin de siècle anarchist Darwin, imbued with Romanticism, that
Louise Michel conjures up. She weeps for the flocks, but does not identify with
them; certainly, she fans their revolt, but it is the anarchist act of the “solitary
fighter” (“seul à seul”) that stimulates the production of images, that illustrates
and sublimates revolutionary evolution. In this updated version of the David
and Goliath fable—or of Darwin and Goliath—, Ravachol’s act is a demon-
stration of evolution at work: guillotined, he is the bearer of the heroic-and-
scientific legend of the struggle for life.405
Et puis, voyez-vous, il n’y a pas à dire: nous sommes dans la grande lutte
entre le vieux monde et le nouveau. La lutte a commencé, elle est impla-
cable; il faut qu’elle aille jusqu’au bout,
Anyhow, there is no doubt about it: we are going through the great strug-
gle between the old world and the new. The struggle is underway and it is
implacable; it must play out until its end,
declared Louise Michel in an interview in late 1893, posing between Élisée

Reclus’ Géographie universelle, visible on the table, and a partition of “La
Tempête” on the piano. “Non, il n’y a de vrai que la lutte! la lutte où nous sa-
vons que nous resterons! Et c’est là le beau!” / “Nothing is real apart from the
struggle! the struggle in which we know that we will die! That’s what beauty
is!”: Ravachol, she repeated, is the founding figure of “modern legend”.15
15 “Louise Michel. L’opinion de la Vierge rouge sur l’anarchie.” Le Matin (Paris), 19 December
1893.
FIGure 1 Jean-Henri Fabre, La Science élémentaire, lectures pour toutes les

écoles (Fabre, 1882: 174)
“Fig. 40—Brachine en défense contre un Carabe.” /
“Fig. 40—Brachinus Defending Itself against Carabus.”
Bibliography
Angenot, Marc, 1989. 1889, Un état du discours social. Longueuil, Éditions du Préambule.
Bernardini Jean-Marc, 1997. Le Darwinisme social en France (1859–1918). Paris, CNRS
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Darwin, Charles, 1871. The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, 2 vols.
London, John Murray.
Fabre, Jean-Henri, 1882. La Science élémentaire, lectures pour toutes les écoles. Lectures
scientifiques, zoologie. Paris, Charles Delagrave and Co.
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Michel, Louise, 1888. Lectures encyclopédiques par cycles attractifs […], première livrai-
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Reclus, Élisée, 1880. Évolution et révolution. Genève, Imprimerie Jurassienne.
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Index
Abraham 381 Bouilhet, Louis 263

Achilles 384 Bourdier, Franck 102
Adam 14, 15, 381 Boyer, Régis 380
Aeschylus 380 Breuil, Henri 108
Allen, Woody 383 Brian, Aristide 215
Ambrière, Madeleine 223 Broca, Paul 230
Angenot, Marc 390 Brongniart, Alexandre 35
Aristotle 5 Broussais, François 345
Brown-Séquard, Charles-Édouard 126–128
Bachelard, Gaston 1, 6, 196–197 Burdach, Karl Friedrich 102
Bagehot, Walter 115 Brunetière, Ferdinand 181, 212
Bakhtine, Mikhaïl 6 Buch, Leopold von 329
Balzac, Honoré de 26–27, 42, 45, 223–231, Büchner, Ludwig 396
233–238, 240–256, 347, 375 Buckland, William 48, 54
Barbey d’Aurevilly, Jules 5, 142, 231 Buckle, Henry Thomas 377
Barrès, Maurice 217, 218 Buffon, Georges-Louis, Comte de 2, 3, 13,
Baudelaire, Charles 180, 182–184, 186–188, 15–19, 29, 46, 50, 54, 57–58, 80–82, 88,
191–194 196, 227, 241, 243, 313, 316–317, 327, 375
Beck, Christian Daniel 88 Burckhardt, Jacob 6
Bensaude-Vincent, Bernadette 300 Burnet, Thomas 79–80
Berchet, Jean-Claude 31–32 Burnouf, Eugène 347
Bergson, Henri 123–128, 134–136, 138, 181, 276 Busk, George 102
Bernard, Claude 126, 143, 350, 366 Byron, Lord George 26–27
Bertrand, Aloysius 238
Bichat, Xavier 381 Cadmus 26–27
Bignan, Anne 227, 229 Campagnac, H. 237–238
Blainville, Henri-Marie Ducrotay de 50 Camper, Petrus 176
Blanckaert, Claude 103 Cantorbéry, Thomas de 171
Blankenburg, Friedrich von 316 Capitan, Louis 99
Blumenbach, Johann Friedrich 176, 312–314, Carné, Louis de 232, 234
317–319, 321–322 Carnot, Lazare 225
Blumenberg, Hans 79 Carnot, Nicolas Léonard Sadi 262
Boileau, Nicolas 316 Castel, René-Richard 261
Boissel, Jean 376 Chamard, Jean 274–275
Boitard, Pierre 5, 45–59 Chaperon, Danielle 301, 305–306
Bompaire-Évesque, Claire 217 Charcot, Jean-Martin 207
Bonaparte, Louis-Napoléon (Napoléon III) Charles X 232
347, 355 Chateaubriand, François René de 29–34,
Bonnet, Charles 63 36–43, 226, 234
Bonnet, Henri 211 Chavée, Honoré-Joseph 230
Bordier, Arthur 105–107 Chenu, Jean-Charles 197
Borie, Jean 142 Christol, Jules de 98
Bory de Saint-Vincent, Jean-Baptiste 52–53, Comte, Auguste 68, 145
58 Conry, Yvette 335
Boucher de Perthes, Jacques 47, 98, 101 Copernicus, Nicolas 25, 29
408 Index
Corsi, Pietro 45 Filippi, Filippo de 46

Cotty, Ernest 274, 279–291 Flammarion, Camille 294–310
Cousin, Victor 4, 6, 181, 211, 345, 346 Flaubert, Gustave 6, 163, 327–328, 332–336,
Cuénot, Lucien 125 340–341, 380
Cuvier, Georges 3, 4, 6, 13, 19–24, 26–27, Fliess, Wilhelm 30
34–35, 45–46, 48–52, 56, 70, 88, 98, 141, Flourens, Pierre 52
223–235, 237–238, 241, 243, 245–247, Fontenelle, Bernard Le Bouyer de 47
279–282, 284, 289, 292, 312, 314, 319–322, Foucault, Michel 5, 78, 79, 141, 343
327–329, 332–333, 346, 376 Freud, Sigmund 25, 29, 30, 43, 142, 207, 211
Cyrano de Bergerac, Savinien de 15 Fumaroli, Marc 238–239
Dailly, Eugène 103 Gaigneron, Jean de 218

Danton, Georges 163 Gall, Franz Joseph 176
Darien, Georges 390 Galton, Francis 119
Darwin, Charles 6, 7, 13, 24–25, 29, 36, Gauchet, Marcel 29, 212
45–47, 53, 58, 74, 100–103, 113–116, 125, Gaulmier, Jean 375, 377
141, 204, 212, 242, 248, 255, 266, 267, 269, Gautier, Émile 396
274, 305–306, 309, 328, 330–331, Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Étienne 4, 5, 52–53,
334–335, 337–338, 340, 343, 349–350, 56, 241, 243, 245–246, 249–230, 330, 343,
355–356, 360–361, 376–377, 389–399, 345–347, 349, 353–354, 376
402–404 Gérard, Frédéric 46
Delage, Yves 125 Ghil, René 275–276
Deleuze, Gilles 123, 134–138 Gleim, Johann Wilhelm Ludwig 78, 82–83
Delille, Jacques 225–226, 259–261, 263, 284 Gobineau, Caroline de 376, 381–382, 386
Deluc, Jean-André 80 88 Gobineau, Diane de 380
Derrida, Jacques 135 Gobineau, Joseph-Arthur, Comte de
Descartes, René 379 374–386
Desmet, Piet 103 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 4, 315, 330,
Diderot, Denis 18 340
Dubos, Jean-Baptiste 181 Gournay, Hugues I de 381
Du Camp, Maxime 333–335 Gournay, Hugues IV de 384
Duchesne, Antoine Nicolas 102 Grave, Jean 396
Dumollard, Martin 107 Guérin, Maurice de 238
Dussault, Jean-Joseph 225 Guettard, Jean-Étienne 97
Guichardet, Jeannine 223
Egger, Victor 211 Guizot, François 181, 345–346
Élie de Beaumont, Léonce 36 Guyau, Jean-Marie 294
Emerich, Edmond 262–263, 282
Espinas, Alfred 119 Hacking, Ian 212
Eulenberg-Hertefeld, Prince Philipp de 285 Hæckel, Ernst 6–7, 65, 113, 125, 205, 305, 309,
Euripides 380 328, 335, 366, 396
Eve 14–15 Haller, Albrecht von 63
Ewig, Léon 233–234 Hamann, Johann Georg 315
Hamy, Ernest-Théodore 104
Fabre, Jean-Henri 402, 405 Hartmann, Eduard von 114
Fichte, Johann Gottlieb 313 Hartog, François 1
Fichtel, Johann Ehrenreich von 85 Harvey, Joy 103
Figuier, Louis 47, 280, 282, 292 Hauff, Hermann 85–86
Index 409
Hauff, Wilhelm 85 119–120, 125, 141, 245, 314, 328, 330, 333,
Haussez, Charles Lemercier de Longpré, 343, 348–353, 356, 376
Baron d’ 232 Lamartine, Alphonse de 230, 301
Hayek, Friedrich 73 Lamennais, Félicité de 228, 234
Hecht, Jennifer 103 Lamétherie ou Delamétherie, Jean-Claude
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 6, 61–62, 46
68–72, 160, 162, 351 Laplace, Pierre-Siméon de 262
Heinse, Wilhelm 77–85 Lartet, Édouard 262
Hemsterhuis, Frans 317 Lassalle, Ferdinand 338
Henri I 46 Lautréamont, Isidore Ducasse, Comte de
Henri IV 39 196–201, 203, 205
Hérault de Séchelles, Marie-Jean 16 Laveleye, Émile 337
Herbart, Johann Friedrich 213 Lavoisier, Antoine 3
Herder, Johann Gottfried 4, 61–62, 64–67, Le Dantec, Félix 125
69–70, 72, 77, 87, 162, 315, 317, 319, 343 Leconte, Alfred 263–264
Heyne, Christian Gottlob 313–314, 322 Lefèvre, André 100, 108
Hobbes, Thomas 399 Legouvé, Ernest 229–230, 233–235, 237
Holbach, Paul Henri Thiry d’ 18, 82, 87 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm 63
Homer 313–314, 322, 352 Lepenies, Wolf 78–79, 89
Horace, Quintus Horatius Flaccus 399 Leroux, Pierre 343–344, 347, 354, 356, 402
Hugo, Victor 36, 157–178, 199, 268, 366, Lesage, René 45–49
402–403 Lichtenberg, Georg Christoph 312
Humboldt, Alexander von 88, 320 Lightfoot, Sir John 14
Humboldt, Wilhelm von 6, 317 Linné, Carl Von (ou Linnaeus) 1, 13–15, 18,
Huxley, Thomas Henry 46, 103 149, 243, 313
Lombroso, Cesare 105, 141
James II 157 Louis XI 163
Jesus 84 Louis XIV 38–40
Job 84 Louis XVIII 232
John 84 Lubbock, John 115
Jouffroy, Théodore 4 Lucas, Prosper 141
Joussain, André 268 Lucretius 315, 353
Luhmann, Niklas 79
Kant, Immanuel 61–62, 66–67, 69, 72, 89, Lyell, Charles 24, 29, 34, 36, 43, 115, 267, 280,
175, 313, 383 329–330
Kaplan, Edward 331, 344, 349 Lyle, Louise 389, 394
Kaup, Johann Jakob 50
Kelvin, Lord 25 Maillet, Benoît de 14–15
Koselleck, Reinhart 5, 61–62, 78–79, 89 Maire, Gilbert 181
Kropotkine, Pierre 390, 397 Maistre, Joseph de 161
Marat, Jean Paul 163
La Bruyère, Jean de 25–26 Marx, Karl 61–62, 72–73, 336–338, 394
La Grasserie, Raoul de 272 Mas, Émile 106
Lacretelle, Charles de 162 Maxwell, James Clerk 262
Lafargue, Paul 338, 389 Meinecke, Friedrich 78
Laforgue, Jules 310 Methuselah 381
Lamarck, Jean-Baptiste de Monet de 3, 6, 13, Meulien, Tullia 280
20–25, 45–46, 52–53, 55, 58, 99, 102, 111, Michel, Louise 389–394, 397–400, 402–404
410 Index
Michelet, Athénaïs 352 Ragnvald 382

Michelet, Jules 6, 36, 37, 42–43, 142, 162, Ravachol, François Claudius Koënigstein
327–332, 341, 343–346, 352–356, 403 389, 399–404
Mirabaud, Jean-Baptiste de 82 Reclus, Élisée 392–396, 404
Mirbeau, Octave 389, 394 Reinach, Salomon 99
Mitterand, Henri 340, 394 Renard, Georges 273–274
Monbarlet, Valéry 265 Restif de la Bretonne, Nicolas Edme 2
Montesquieu, Charles-Louis de Secondat, Reynaud, Jean 344–345, 402
Baron de 6 Ribot, Théodule 210, 212
Morange, Michel 1, 5 Richard, Jean-Pierre 1
Morel, Bénédict-Augustin 141 Richepin, Jean 270–271, 305, 396–397
Morgan, Jacques de 108 Ricoeur, Paul 1
Mortillet, Gabriel de 99, 101, 104–105, 107 Robespierre, Maximilien de 163
Moses 16, 18, 84 Rosny aîné, J. H. 294–297, 302–304, 308–309
Royer, Clémence 100
Napoléon Ier 39, 46, 72 Rudwick, Martin 47
Newton, Isaac 392–393 Ruskin, John 215, 219
Nicole, Paul 106–107
Nietzsche, Friedrich 7, 84, 111–120, 140, 212 Sade, Donatien Alphonse François 142, 353
Noah 14, 381 Saint-Lambert, Jean-François de 261
Noël, Eugène 344 Sand, George 30, 230, 235
Saussure, Horace-Bénédict de 80
Odin 374, 378–379, 381 Savigny, Friedrich Carl von 72
Oken, Lorenz 330 Schaaffhausen, Hermann 101
Olivier, Laurent 29, 43 Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph 313
Orbigny, Charles d’ 46 Schlegel, August Wilhelm 312–322
Ottar, Jarl 381–382 Schlegel, Friedrich 312–317, 319–320
Owen, Richard 330 Schlözer, August Ludwig 87–88
Schopenhauer, Arthur 114, 212, 294–295
Parisot, Valentin 229 Schumpeter, Joseph 73
Pasteur, Louis 262, 333, 346 Scott, Walter 157–158, 162
Paulian, Louis 369 Serres, Etienne 157–158, 162
Pliny 196, 316, 320–322 Sollier, Paul 207–208, 211–213, 215
Pottier, Eugène 400 Sophocle 380
Pouchet, Félix-Archimède 6, 333, 343, Sorel, Albert 377
345–346, 352 Soumet, Alexandre 227
Pouchet, Georges 343 Souvestre, Émile 235–236
Poulet, Georges 1 Spencer, Herbert 6, 7, 112, 125, 204, 242, 248,
Prévost, Constant 49, 172, 330 328, 335, 349, 361, 366
Prokesch-Osten, Anton, comte de 378 Spengler, Oswald 73
Proust, Adrien 207, 208, 215 Staël, Madame de, Anne Louise Germaine de
Proust, Marcel 30, 207–219 Staël-Holstein 181–182, 319–320
Stahl, Georg Ernst 351
Quatrefages, Armand de 103–104, 107, 376 Starobinski, Jean 188, 213
Quinet, Edgar 4–6, 343 Stendhal (Henri Beyle) 6, 37, 182, 386
Quintilianus, Marcus Fabius 83 Steno, Nicolaus 89
Index 411
Stewart, Dugald 4 Virchow, Rudolf 335–396

Sue, Eugène 229–230, 236 Vogt, Carl 103
Sulzer, Johann Georg 316 Voltaire, François-Marie Arouet 20, 64–65,
Susemilh, Théodore 58 313
Taine, Hippolyte 117, 209–210, 213–214, Wagner, Richard 114

217–218, 359, 364, 366 Wanlin, Nicolas 77, 295, 305
Thomson, James 261 Watrin, Jules 400
Tocqueville, Alexis de 41, 375, 382 Weismann, August 120, 125–127, 136
Tournal, Paul 98 Winckelmann, Johann Joachim 319
Wolff, Caspar Friedrich 63, 78, 317
Ussher, James 13–14
Zola, Émile 96, 128–135, 138, 140–143, 145,
Verne, Jules 281–294 149–152, 317–328, 336–341, 359–370
Vico, Giambattista 346 Zoroaster 386
Vigny, Alfred de 72, 229–230

Bender - Biological Time, Historical Time

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Biological Time, Historical Time

Sous la direction de / Edited by

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/faux

The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at http://catalog.loc.gov

Copyright 2019 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.

This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Memory Strata, Geology and Change of Historical Paradigm in France

Devilish Words: Pierre Boitard, “maître Georges” and the Advance

From Biological Time to Historical Time: the Category of “Development”

The Law of Progress, Atavism, and Prehistory in the Belle Époque 95

Nietzsche, or Culture Put to the Test at the Timescale of Heredity 111

Zola, Hereditability of Character and Hereditability of Deviation: after a

Life, Sex and Temporality in Zola’s La Faute de l’Abbé Mouret 140

Time of History and Time of Nature in the Historical Novels of

Historical Time, Cultural Time, and Biological Time in Baudelaire 180

Evolution and Time in the Chants de Maldoror 196

Memory of the Body in Proust: Historical Time and Biological Time 207

The Evolution of Social Species in Balzac’s Comédie humaine 241

Time as Imagined in the Evolutionary Epic 258

Evolutionism and Successivity in Antediluviana, Poème géologique by

A Biologist Literary History: August Wilhelm Schlegel and the Franco-German

Evolutionary Time and Revolutionary Time (Michelet, Flaubert, Zola) 327

Michelet and La Mer: Biology and the Philosophy of History 343

Gobineau’s Heroes Are Ageless 374

Note: abbreviations are explained in the first occurrence.

Many contributors were part of the research programme “Biolographes”, co-

begin to emerge, be it in literature, with Restif de la Bretonne,1 or in natural

sciences concomitantly strive to naturalize humanity, to identify the laws of its

309), Quinet proposes to extend to human history the intuitions expressed

Translated by Anna Pevoski

Bachelard, Gaston, 1938. La Formation de l’esprit scientifique. Paris, Vrin.

Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Étienne, 1830. Principes de philosophie zoologique, discutés en

Quinet, Edgar, 1870. La Création, 2 vols. Paris, Librairie internationale.

of time (Annales veteris testamenti, a prima mundi origine deducti) (1650), in

de l’Homme, &c. / Telliamed: or, Discourses between an Indian Philosopher and

Je déclare que je n’ai eu aucune intention de contredire le texte de

I declare that I had no intention to contradict the text of Scripture; that I

Had this been a case of purely philosophical supposition? Notwithstanding his

pourquoi l’esprit humain semble-t-il se perdre dans l’espace de la durée

1 The book was only put on sale in April 1779.

noteworthy in that it presupposed a long-term process involving the cooling,

2 Dated 10 February 1780.

les os fossiles extraordinaires, he wrote, qu’on trouve en Sibérie, au

the extraordinary fossilized bones found in Siberia, Canada, Ireland & in

In the article “Chain of Created Beings” of his Dictionnaire philosophique

absolute dominion he enjoys, has managed to kill off all members of a

the bird that is drawn by necessity to water in search of prey in order to

In other words, for Lamarck,

ce ne sont pas les organes, c’est-à-dire la nature et la forme des parties du

Oh! quelle est grande, l’antiquité du globe terrestre! et combien sont

Il est dommage que ce moyen commode de se tirer d’embarras, lors-

Cuvier’s reply can be found in the Discours préliminaire (Preliminary Discourse)

Je sais que quelques naturalistes comptent beaucoup sur les milliers

Philosophie zoologique, he published On the Origin of Species, where he set out

Déracinés du présent, nous sommes morts jusqu’à ce que notre valet de

Translated by Colin Keaveney

l’histoire humaine, désormais minoritaire [n’est plus qu’] une pellicule de

However, it is my intention to return to older usages in an effort to get to the

1 The Paradigmatic Time of Mémoires d’outre-tombe

A number of works anterior to his autobiographical monument, in par-

Nos ans et nos souvenirs sont étendus en couches régulières et parallèles,

In the fourth part of Mémoires d’outre-tombe, the paradigmatic functioning

[s]a rédaction a, au contraire, accompagné celle des précédentes, si bien

1 The book was only put on sale in April 1779.

2 Dated 10 February 1780.

1 Michelet, Jules, “Dossier Méthode historique et enseignement”, Papiers Michelet (Cote A

5 On Herder’s critique of Voltaire, see Bouton, 2006.