Laureolus

 Un passage de L'Antéchrist de Renan —le Christianisme la magie et le théâtre à l'âge de Néron:

Toutes sortes d'intrigues que l'insuffisance des documents ne nous permet pas de démêler aggravaient la position des chrétiens. Les Juifs étaient très-puissants auprès de l'empereur et de Poppée. Les "mathématiciens", c'est-à-dire les devins, entre autres un certain Balbillus d'Éphèse, entouraient l'empereur, et, sous prétexte d'exercer la partie de leur art qui consistait à détourner les fléaux et les mauvais présages, lui donnaient d'atroces conseils. La légende qui mêle à tout ce monde de sorciers le nom de Simon le Magicien est-elle sans aucun fondement? Cela se peut sans doute; mais le contraire se peut aussi. L'auteur de l'Apocalypse est fort préoccupé d'un "faux prophète", qu'il représente comme un suppôt de Néron, comme un thaumaturge faisant tomber le feu du ciel, donnant la vie et la parole à des statues, marquant les hommes du caractère de la Bête. C'est peut-être de Balbillus qu'il s'agit; il faut reconnaître cependant que les prodiges attribués au Faux Prophète par l'Apocalypse ont beaucoup de ressemblance avec les tours d'escamotage que la légende attribue à Simon. L'emblème d'un agneau-dragon, sous lequel le Faux Prophète est désigné dans le même livre, convient mieux également à un faux Messie tel qu'était Simon de Gitton qu'à un simple sorcier. D'un autre côté, la légende de Simon précipité du ciel n'est pas sans analogie avec un accident qui arriva dans l'amphithéâtre, sous Néron, à un acteur qui jouait le rôle d'Icare. Le parti arrêté chez l'uteur de l'Apocalypse de s'exprimer en énigmes jette sur tous ces événements beaucoup d'obscurité; mais on ne se trompe pas en cherchant derrière chaque ligne de ce livre étrange des allusions aux circonstances anecdotiques les plus minutieuses du règne de Néron.

Jamais, du reste, la conscience chrétienne ne fut plus ppressée, plus haletante qu'à ce moment. On se croyait en un état provisoire et de très-courte durée. On attendait chaque jour l'apparition solennelle. "Il vient!... Encore une heure!...  Il est proche!..." étaient les mots qu'on se disait à tout instant. L'esprit du martyre, cette pensée que le martyr glorifie le Christ par sa mort, et que cette mort est une victoire, était déjà universellement répandu. Pour la païen, d'un autre côté, le chrétien devenait une chair naturellement dévolue au supplice. Un drame qui avait vers ce temps beaucoup de succès était celui de Laureolus, où l'acteur principal, sorte de Tartuffe fripon, était crucifié sur la scène aux applaudissements de l'assistance et mangé par un ours. Ce drame était antérieur à l'introduction du christianisme à Rome; on le trouve représenté dès l'an 41; mais il semble au moins qu'on en fit l'application aux martyrs chrétiens; le petit nom de Laureolus, répondant à Stéphanos, pouvait provoquer ces allusions. 

Pobre cielo

 De Miguel de Unamuno, Del Sentimiento Trágico de la Vida, VI:

El amor espiritual a sí mismo, la compasión que uno cobra para consigo, podrá acaso llamarse egotismo; pero es lo más opuesto que hay al egoísmo vulgar. Porque de este amor o compasión a ti mismo, de esta intensa desesperación, porque así como antes de nacer no fuiste, así tampoco después de morir serás, pasas a compadecer, esto es, a amar a todos tus semejantes y hermanos en aparencialidad, miserables sombras que desfilan de su nada a su nada, chispas de conciencia que brillan un momento en las infinitas y eternas tinieblas. Y de los demás hombres, tus semejantes, pasando por los que más semejantes te son, por tus convivientes, vas a compadecer a todos los que viven, y hasta a lo que acaso no vive, pero existe. Aquella lejana estrella que brilla allí arriba durante la noche, se apagará algún día y se hará polvo, y dejará de brillar y de existir. Y como ella, el cielo todo estrellado. ¡Pobre cielo!

 Retropost, 2013:

 

Un artículo que subo a ResearchGate—sobre ciencia ficción, utopías, realidad virtual, y el apocalipsis entendido como comunicación total.  Y, más específicamente, sobre Olaf Stapledon y  la película de los Wachowski The Matrix. Lo escribí a finales del siglo pasado, y apareció allá por el 2004 en Alemania, en un libro titulado Memory, Imagination, and Desire.

An Apocalypse of Total Communication: 

Utopian and Dystopian Perspectives in Star Maker (1937) and The Matrix (1999)

José Angel García Landa

 

ABSTRACT: This paper deals with fantasies of universal connection and total communication which culminate in a hellish or utopian apotheosis. These are exemplified with Olaf Stapledon's novel Star Maker (1937) and the film The Matrix (1999), written and directed by the then Wachowski brothers. The paper focuses on some reflexive aspects of these fictions and on their relationship with their cultural background.

Review of Memory, Imagination and Desire

—oOo—

Farewell to... everything

(From Mary Shelley's The Last Man, III.21; p. 320-22)

This summer extinguished our hopes, the vessel of society was wrecked, and the shattered raft, which carried the few survivors over the sea of msery, was riven and tempest tost. Man existed by twos and threes; man, the individual who might sleep, and wake, and perform the animal functions; but man, in himself weak, yet more powerful in congregated numbers than wind or ocean: man, the queller of the elements, the lord of created nature, the peer of demi-gods, existed no longer.

Farewell to the patriotic scene, to the love of liberty and well earned need of virtuous aspiration!—farewell to crowded senate, vocal with councils of the wisee, whose laws were keener than the sword blade tempered at Damascus!—farewell to kingly pomp and warlike pageantry; the crowns are in the dust, and the wearers are in their graves!—farewell to the desire of rule, and the hope of victory; to high vaulting ambition, to the appetite for praise, and the craving for the suffrage of their fellows! The nations are no longer! No senate sits in council for the dead; no scion of a time honoured dynasty pants to rule over the inhabitants of a charnel house; the general's hand is cold, and the soldier has his untimely grave dug in his native fields, unhonoured, though in youth. The market-place is empty, the candidate for popular favour fins none whom he can represent. To chambers of painted state farewell!—To midnight revelry, and the panting emulation of beauty, to costly dress and birth-day shew, to title and the gilded coronet, farewell!

Farewell to the giant powers of man,—to knowledge that could pilot the deep-drawing bark through the opposing waters of shoreless ocean,—to science that directed the silken baloon through the pathless air,—to the power that could put a barrier to mighty waters, and set in motion wheels, and beams, and vast machinery, that could divide rocks of granite or marble, and make the mountains plain!

Farewell to the arts,—to eloquence, which is to the human mind as the winds to the sea, stirring, and then allaying it;—farewell to poetry and deep philosophy, for man's imagination is cold, and his dnquiring mind can no longer expatiate on the wonders of life, for 'there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom in the grave, whither thou goest!'—to the graceful building, which in its perfect proportion transcended the rude forms of nature, the fretted gothic and massy saracenic pile, to the stupendous arch and glorious dome, the fluted column with its capital, Corinthian, Ionic, or Doric, the peristyle and fair entablature, whose harmony of form is to the eye as musical concord to the ear!—farewell to sculpture, where the pure marble mocks human flesh, and in the plastic expression of the culled excellencies of the human shape, shines forth the god!—farewell to painting, the high wrought sentiment and deep knowledge of the artist's mind in pictured canvas—to paradisaical scenes, where trees are ever vernal, and the ambrosial air rests in perpetual glow:—to the stamped form of tempest, and wildest uproar of universal nature encaged in  the narrow frame, O farewell! Farewell to music, and the sound of song; to the marriage of instruments, where the concord of soft and harsh unites in sweet harmony, and gives wings to the panting listeners, whereby to climb heaven, and learn the hidden pleasures of the eternals!—Farewell to the well-trod stage; a truer tragedy is enacted on the worl's ample scene, that puts to shame mimic grief; to high-bred comedy, and the low buffoon, farewell!—Man may laugh no more.

Alas! to enumerate the adornments of humanity, shews, by what we have lost, how supremely great man was. It is all over now. He is solitary; like our first parents expelled from Paradise, he looks back towards the scene he has quitted. The high walls of the tomb, and the flaming sword of plague, lie between it and him. Like to our first parents, the whole earth is before him, a wide desart. Unsupported and weak, let him wander though fields where the unreaped corn stands in barren pleny, through copses planted by his fathers, through towns built for his use. Posterity is no more; fame, and ambition, and love, are words void of meaning; even as the cattle that grazes in the field, do thou, O deserted one, lie down at evening-tide, unknowing of the past, careless of the future, for from such fond ignorance alone canst thou hope for ease!

Consecuencias económicas de la pandemia

—oOo—

Living in the Last Days of Civilization

(From Mary Shelley's The Last Man, II.20):


I can speak for myself—want of energy was not my failing. The intense life that quickened my pulses, and animated my frame, had the effect, not of drawing me into the mazes of active life, but of exalting my lowliness, and of bestowing majestic proportions to insignificant object—I could have lived the life of a peasant in the same way—my trifling occupations were swelled into important pursuits; my affections were impetuous and engrossing passions, and nature with all her changes was invested in divine attribute. The very spirit of the Greek mythology inhabited my heart; I deified the uplands, glaes, and streams, I

Had sight of Proteus coming from the sea;
And heard old Triton blow his wreathed horn.  (Wordsworth)

Strange, that while the earth preserved her monotonous course, I dwelt with ever-renewing wonder on her antique laws, and now that with excentric wheel she rushed into an untried path, I should feel this spirit fade; I struggled with despondency and weariness, but like a fog, they choked me. Perhaps, after the labours and stupendous excitement of the past summer, the calm of winter and the almost menial toils it brought with it, were by natural re-action doubly irksome. It was not the grasping passion of the preceding year which gave life and individuality to each moment—it was not the aching pangs introduced by the distresses of the times. The utter inutility that had attended all my exertions took from them their usual effects of exhilaration, and despair rendered abortive the balm of self-applause—I longed to return to my old occupations, but what use were they? To read were futile—to write, vanity indeed. The earth, late wide circus for the display of dignified exploits, vast theatre for a magnificent drama, now presented a vacant space, an empty stage—for actor or spectator there was no longer aught to say or hear.

Voice to the Soundless Thought

—oOo—

Voice to the Soundless Thought

From Mary Shelley's The Last Man (1826), ch. 18 (Penguin, 262-4):

'It is too late to be ambitious,' says Sir Thomas Bowne, 'We cannot hope to live so long in our names as some have done in their persons; one face of Janus holds no proportion to the other.' Upon this text many fanatics arose, who prophesied that the end of time was come. The spirit of superstition had birth, from the wreck of our hopes, and antics wild and dangerous were played on the great theatre, while the remaining particle of futurity dwindled into a point in the eyes of the prognosticators. Weak-spirited women died of fear as they listened to these denunciations; men of robust form and seeming strength fell into idiotcy and madness, racked by the dread of coming eternity. A man of this kind was now pouring forth his eloquent despair among the inhabitants of Windsor. The scene of the morning, and my visit to the dead, which had been spread abroad, had alarmed the country-people, so they had become fit instruments to be played upon by a maniac.

The poor wretch had lost his young wife and lovely infant by the plague. He was a mechanic; and, rendered unable to attend to the occupation which supplied his necessities, famine was added to his other miseries. He left the chamber which contained his wife and child—wife and child no more, but 'dead earth upon the earth'—wild with hunger, watching and grief, his diseased fancy made him believe himself sent by heaven to preach the end of time to the world. He entered the churches, and foretold to the congregations their speedy removal to the vaults below. He appeared like the forgotten spirit of the time in the theatres, and bade the spectators go home and die. He had been seized and confined; he had escaped and wandered from London among the neighbouring towns, and, with frantic gestures and thrilling words, he unveiled to each their hidden fears, and gave voice to the soundless thought they dared not syllable. He stood under the arcade of the town-hall of Windsor, and from this elevation harangued a trembling crowd.

'Hear, O ye inhabitants of the earth,' he cried, 'hear thou, all seeing, but most pitiless Heaven! hear thou too, O tempest-tossed heart, which breathes out these words, yet faints beneath their meaning! Death is among us! The earth  is beautiful and flower-bedecked, but she is our grave! The clouds of heaven weep for us—the pageantry of the stars is but our funeral torchlight. Grey headed men, ye hoped for yet a few years in your long-known abode—but the lease is up, you must remove—children, ye will never reach maturity, even now the small grave is dug for ye—mothers, clasp them in your arms, one death embraces you! 

Shuddering, he stretched out his hands, his eyes cast up, seemed bursting from their sockets, while he appeared to follow shapes, to us invisible, in the yielding air—'There they are,' he cried, 'the dead! They rise in their shrouds, and pass in silent procession towards the far land of their doom—their bloodless lips move not—their shadowy limbs are void of motion, while still they glide onwards. 'We come,' he exclaimed, springing forwards, 'for what should we wait? Haste, my friends, apparel yourselves in the court-dress of death. Pestilence will usher you to his presence. Why thus long? they, the good, the wise, and the beloved, are gone before. Mothers, kiss your last—husbands, protectors no more lead on the partners of your death! Come, O come! Whil the dear ones are yet in sight, for soon they will pass away, and we never never shall join them more.'

From such ravings as these, he would suddenly become collected,  and with unexaggerated but terrific words, paint the horrors of the time; describe with minute detail, the effects of the plague on the human frame, and tell heart-breaking tales of the snapping of dear affinities—the gasping horror of despair over the deathbed of the last beloved—so that groans and even shrieks burst from the crowd. One man in particular stood in front, his eyes fixt on the prophet, his mouth open, his limbs rigid, while his face changed to various colours, yellow, blue, and green through intense fear. The maniac caught his glance, and turned his eye on him—one has heard of the gaze of the rattle-snake, which allures the trembling victim till he falls within his jaws. The maniac became composed; his person rose higher; authority beamed from his countenance. He looked on the peasant, who began to tremble, while he still gazed; his knees knocked together; his teeth chattered. He at last fell down in convulsions. 'That man has the plague,' said the maniac calmly. A shriek burst from the lips of the poor wretch; and then sudden motionlessness came over him; it was manifest to all that he was dead.

Cries of horror filled the place—every one endeavoured to effect his escape—in a few minutes the market place was cleared—the corpse lay on the ground, and the maniac, subdued and exhausted, sat beside it, leaning his gaunt cheek upon his thin hand. Soon some people, deputed by the magistrates, came to remove the body; the unfortunate being saw a jailor in each—he fled precipitately, while I passed onwards to the Castle. 

¿De qué no huís?

—oOo—