Utopian, Dystopian and Heterotopian Nineteenth-Century British Poets
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Negotiating between Dream, Reality and Nightmare: Utopian, Dystopian and Heterotopian Nineteenth-century British Poets PAULA GUIMARÃES, [email protected] From a reading of the major theoreticians in this field, it would appear that the general concept and status of utopia has suffered a transformation along the centuries. This probably reflects the disparate ways in which Man, as a social and creative being, tends to negotiate life perspectives and choices involving three major, though opposed, loci of human existence and agency – Dream, Reality and Nightmare. This paper intends to focus its analysis on the British nineteenth century; one that is rich in new philosophical and creative approaches to ‘good’, ‘bad’ and ‘alternative’ Places – for both man and woman to imagine and inhabit. Through the exploration of the poetry and the thought of poets like Blake, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Tennyson, Morris and Wilde, it proposes to reflect briefly on the development of the concept of utopia along the successive literary movements that these poets have respectively embodied – Romanticism, Realism and Aestheticism. And it will argue that the concept, far from being dead or irrevocably reduced by the end of the century, indeed flourished and expanded in different ways – whether we interpret these products as eutopian, dystopian or else heterotopian versions of it, eventually suggesting that “Poetry dwells in a perpetual utopia of its own”. Keywords: British poets, nineteenth century, utopian, dystopian, heterotopian Se partirmos de uma leitura dos principais teorizadores neste campo, parece que quer o conceito quer o estatuto de utopia sofreram uma transformação ao longo dos séculos, provavelmente refletindo as diferentes formas através das quais o Homem, como ser social e criativo, tende a negociar perspetivas e escolhas de vida, envolvendo os três loci principais, embora opostos, da existência e da ação humanas – Sonho, Realidade e Pesadelo. Este artigo pretende focar a sua análise no século XIX britânico – um período rico em novas abordagens filosóficas e criativas de lugares ‘bons’, ‘maus’ e ‘alternativos’, a serem imaginados e habitados quer pelo homem quer pela mulher. Através da exploração da poesia e do pensamento de poetas como Blake, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Tennyson, Morris e Wilde, propõe-se refletir brevemente sobre o desenvolvimento do conceito de Utopia ao longo dos movimentos literários que estes poetas têm, respectivamente, encarnado – Romantismo, Realismo e Esteticismo. Argumenta ainda que o conceito, longe de estar morto ou irrevogavelmente reduzido no final do século, de facto floresceu e se expandiu de diferentes maneiras – quer interpretemos esses produtos como versões utópicas, distópicas ou heterotópicas do mesmo; eventualmente sugerindo que "A poesia habita uma utopia perpétua que lhe é própria". Palavras-chave: poetas britânicos, século XIX, utopia, distopia, heterotopia A good poem helps to change the shape and significance of the universe, helps to extend everyone's knowledge of himself and the world around him. Dylan Thomas From its Early Modern origins, in the sixteenth century, the word utopia, Thomas More’s creative invention,2 seems to express the tension between two different formulations or interpretations – a non-existent place and a ‘good place’, respectively suggesting a mere place of the human imagination and/ or a true earthly paradise. Thus, the crucial question of 1 Docente e investigadora na Universidade do Minho, Departamento de Estudos Ingleses e Norte-Americanos, Centro de Estudos Humanísticos, Braga, Portugal. 2 Thomas More’s Utopia was first published in Latin in 1516, on the Continent, and in an English translation in 1552. The most important structural feature of the book is its split between a critical portrait of 16th-century England in Book 1 and a description of an imaginary island in Book 2. While Book 2 has garnered more popular attention, the focus in Book 1 on the failures of English government has also proved a rich mine for criticism. 1 whether utopia can also be conceived as, and transformed into, a real place, one that is truly achievable or realizable, has constituted a major debate within Western philosophy and social and political science.3 Conversely, the reality or possibility of a ‘bad place’ or places is, unfortunately, well known to us, and we often equate it with ‘nightmare’, giving it a specific name – dystopia. The contemporary canon of utopian writing, including primarily philosophical works and a great variety of popular narrative prose, does some justice to Plato, who famously eradicated the poets from his Utopia – the Republic.4 But if we stick to the etymology, a ‘no- place’ is a place that does not exist, and one that in order to truly exist has first to be created. The question that logically arises is ‘by whom?’ And the one of ‘how is it created?’ ensues. The answer to both these questions lies in etymology again: the Greek root of the word ‘poetry’ (poiein) is ‘to make’ or ‘to create’, which was indeed extended to all the literature that is created by man. In this paper I aim, therefore, to show that in spite of what Plato and the canon say, great utopian writing has appeared in the form of poetry as well, and that different poets have provided major images of Other Places. There have always been poets who have written about the ‘good life’ – notions such as the ‘Golden Age’ and ‘Arcadia’ are, for this reason, very familiar to us.5 The great tradition of pastoral verse poems, describing in more or less realistic detail the joys of ideal country living, indeed goes back hundreds of years. Examples can be found ranging from the eclogues of Theocritus and Virgil to Tasso and Edmund Spenser in the Renaissance. But if most poets of all ages tend to focus either on the present or the past, some have also ventured to describe the future. Indeed, the categories of space and time in utopian writing tend to progressively overlap, and imaginative writers may conceive not just new spaces but also new eras. If to concoct imaginary places or systems is a fundamental disposition of the humankind, especially if it realizes that it is not satisfied with the real places or systems that it knows, the Poet is perhaps the most disposed and the best equipped of all to do so. In the late nineteenth century, the time-span that I propose to explore, the decadent poet Edward Fitzgerald translated the eleventh-century Persian poem The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, who in turn voiced this attitude admirably: Ah, Love, could you and I with Him conspire To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire. Would we not shatter it to bits – and then Remold it nearer to the Heart’s Desire! (quatrain 88, my emphasis) Indeed, Khayyám interestingly associates here the revolutionary idea of social change to the impulse or motivation provided by human love and desire. But towards the end of the eighteenth century, a time of particularly great social and political repression in England, the poet, engraver and visionary William Blake had already expressed a very similar idea (through Los, his personification of imagination) in his famous dictum– ‘I must create a system or be enslaved by another man’s’ (Jerusalem, f. 10, ll. 20–1.). His was obviously a major political statement, but one that enveloped several other dimensions of human 3 For Ernst Bloch (1959), utopia is not just a subject for rational construction and projection into the future, but also something very much present in the here and now. Thus utopia is not the ‘no-place’ of the word's Greek origins, but rather something present in the now, although available only in glimpses or image-traces. For Krishan Kumar (1987/1999), utopia is by definition a fiction as it presents possible worlds not real ones, and while distinct from ‘utopian social theory’, it is a literary form at the service of social criticism. It is also beyond the merely oneiric in the sense that it always establishes a relationship with the reality and with a possible future. Ruth Levitas (1990) claims, instead, that the concept incorporates a much wider range of forms, functions and contents (207) and is predicated on a largely inclusive notion of ‘desire’ for a different better way of being, which does not necessarily imply (radical) social change (209). Michel Foucault’s lecture “Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias” (1967), had already introduced a new concept connected with the notions of space, stating that “the space in which we live […] is also in itself a heterogeneous space […] our set of relations delineate sites which are irreducible to one another and not superimposable on one another” (39); examples of such spaces/places would be cemeteries, museums, libraries, fairgrounds, etc. 4 According to Plato, the poets help enslave even the best of us to the lower parts of our soul; and just insofar as they do so, they must be kept out of any community that wishes to be free and virtuous. The fundamental point was that poets misrepresent the nature of the subjects about which they write (e.g., the gods). They do not produce a true likeness of their topics. And the argument in book X cuts across all forms of ‘poetry’, whether tragic, comic, lyric, in meter or not. 4. ‘Arcadia’ is a concept originating in Greek mythology of a land of outstanding natural beauty unspoiled by human civilisation, free of war and pain and offering boundless pleasures both spiritual and physical. The idea behind the references to the ‘Golden Age’ in the literature of the ancients represents a nostalgic yearning for a kind of life which they imagined was free from the stresses of their more competitive, more commercial civilization. 2 endeavour and realization, namely the arts.