Revolutionary Romance: on the Incompatibility of Realism and Socialism in the Nineteenth Century Novel
Revolutionary Romance: On the Incompatibility of Realism and Socialism in the Nineteenth Century Novel
By George Paul Stain M. A., B. A. (Hons.)
School of Humanities
This thesis is presented for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of the University of Western Australia.
School of Humanities, Discipline of European Studies
[December 2009]
i Declaration
I declare that this thesis is my own account of my research and contains as its main content work that has not previously been submitted for a degree at any university.
George Paul Stain. ii
Table of Contents
Table of Contents ...... ii
Acknowledgements ...... iii
Abstract ...... iv
Introduction: Romance and the Realist Novel ...... 1
Chapter 1. The Foundations of Socialist Romance ...... 24
Chapter 2. George Sand ...... 41
Chapter 3. Russian Utopian Socialism ...... 55
Chapter 4. Dostoyevsky ...... 81
Chapter 5. Wagner and Redemption ...... 108
Chapter 6. Morris, Realism and the Romance ...... 124
Chapter 7. Socialist Literature and Political Change ...... 150
Conclusion ...... 164
Bibliography ...... 170
iii Acknowledgements
I would like to acknowledge the help and encouragement I have received from both my family and supervisor, Dr. Peter Morgan. Without their encouragement this study would not have been completed. I acknowledge and thank my family and friends for their support during the long time it has taken to complete this study. I would especially wish to mention my mother and sister, Lynn, along with my friends Lucy Leigh and Peter Conole. I hope that the work can stand as a testament to their help. iv
Abstract
The English novelist and socialist George Orwell asked why major realist writers such as Dickens did not support socialism. Indeed, realists and socialists rather than being allies against injustice, as may be expected, remained hostile toward each other. This study looks at the period from the 1848 revolutions until the end of the nineteenth century and seeks to explain the reasons for the animosity between literary realists and socialists. The study concentrates on the socialist adoption of the romance as its literary form of choice as opposed to the realist novel. It is proposed that the romance contains the idea that a moral end can be achieved by immoral means. Radical socialists associated utopian thought, which provided the vision of a better future, with the romance, which stressed the role of the heroic ethic to destroy injustice. The romance generated the doctrine of the redeemed hero by which a revolutionary hero may transgress traditional morality, even to the extent of murder, provided the hero offered themselves up as atonement. This idea established itself in non-democratic socialism and found its expression in writers such as Eugène Sue, Richard Wagner, William Morris and Jack London. In contrast, realist novels defend traditional values and decry the consequences of the utopian intervention in society. Dostoyevsky’s debates with major socialist theorists forms the major realist figure to challenge the assumptions in the socialist romance in this study. He could not accept the morally dubious position put forward by the socialist romance. This moral conflict rendered co-operation between realism and socialism improbable.
1 Introduction: Romance and the Realist Novel
Orwell and the realist novel
Prior to leaving for the Spanish Civil War the English socialist journalist and novelist George Orwell noted that literary realists did not join the socialist movement. He also drew attention to the low literary standards of most socialist literature. “The real socialist writers, the propagandist writers, have always been dull, empty windbags…” 1 Orwell did not just refer to hack writers but specifically to luminaries such as George Bernard Shaw and Henri Barbusse. He further attacked the utopian stream in socialism, which alienated most people from socialism. These three observations, the antagonism between certain forms of socialism and literary realism, socialist disinterest in literary values and the role of utopian thought, form a major focus of this study. Like Orwell the present work accepts that a profound antagonism existed between literary realism’s method of descriptive prose and the utopian socialist effort to change the world. It will be argued that this difference develops from the literary realists’ acceptance of traditional morality, whereas the effort to create a new secular morality develops from utopian thought and is expressed in the socialist romance.
Utopian thought supplied a morality restricted to a minority of the population and which rested not on analysis of contemporary society but on received knowledge. 2 A radical section of the socialist movement assimilated the arguments of the novelist and political theorist Jean-Jacques Rousseau. They remained dubious about people’s self- determination, which might not express the best interests of society but only immediate self-interest. 3 The effort to change the world according to a utopian programme would be achieved by revolutionary heroes and would not result from the evolution of present society. The revolutionary hero possessed the knowledge of how a better world could be constructed. This divided the world into those with the knowledge of how the world should function and the rest who were interested in immediate material gains. Utopian thought divided humanity into two and required a new morality to usher in this new world. Those with the knowledge acted according to a morality that could attain this better world and regarded others as living in ignorance. Rousseau refers to those who direct the new society as a heroes but Orwell presents such actions as dictatorial. 4 Unlike literary realism utopian socialism did not appeal to a universal ethic, but rather attached most importance to the recognition of knowledge inaccessible to most people and the actions of a revolutionary elite. The germ of the heroic ethic already existed in utopian thought and when associated with the romance it developed into the doctrine of the redeemed hero.
1 George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier, London, Left Book Club, 1937, pp. 214-216. 2 Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia, An Introduction To the Sociology of Knowledge, London, Routledge, 1991, p. 36. 3 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, ‘Social Contract’ in Social Contract, Discourse on the Virtue Most Necessary For a Hero, Political Fragments and Geneva Manuscript, Hanover, University Press of New England, 1994, p. 147. 4 Rousseau, ‘Discourse on the Virtue Most Necessary for a Hero’ in Social Contract, p. 2 and Orwell, Road to Wigan Pier, p. 211. 2 Conspiratorial socialism and literature
This thesis analyses the relationship of the romance to radical socialism and seeks to explain the antagonism between such socialism and literary realism. The study argues that the link that existed between conspiratorial socialism and the romance relied on utopian thought to provide a universal goal, which the romance tradition lacked. The romance provided a critique of conventional values through the role of the hero but utopian thought provided a goal for humanity. The thesis looks at how the romance is used to change the humanitarian intention of providing for the best of worlds to later support for terrorism. This work recognises that the literary realists provided a potent critique of such radical socialist position, which effectively prevented any co-operation between the two movements.
Conspiratorial socialism used the romance to provide a negative critique of present society. However, the romance lacked a universal goal on which to focus human activity. The romance plot described the subjective actions of two people united by love for each other. Utopian thought provided the universal aspect to conspiratorial socialist ideology that the appeal to the romance hero lacked. According to utopian thought social conventions and ignorance of arcane knowledge prevented people from acting in the best interest of humanity. The romance and utopian thought both view contemporary society negatively. 5 They combined the universal rational appeal to a better world from utopian thought with the romance’s ability to transgress social conventions. Utopian thought does not require an analysis of present society in order to represent a better future. It presents any opposition to its schemes as acts of self-interest which ignored the public good. Like the romance, utopian thought has little regard for the present as it is irredeemably bad and fit only to be cleared away. The combination of the two literary forms justified the destruction of the present as a moral act. They provide an ultimate answer to social ills in the form of a moral ideal beyond social circumstance or popular demand.
The romance provided heroes that transgress traditional values and react violently in the defence of those they love. By acting out of selfless love the hero challenges social convention and act out of a superior morality. The romance provides the heroic ethic and the drive to intervene in society lacking in utopian thought. In doing so it introduces violence as a means to achieve a better world. The romance reinforces utopian thought’s emphasis on the will to change society without challenging utopian thought’s lack of analysis and emphasis on moral ideals. The heroic ethic provides the means to change the world. The actions of the romantic hero resemble utopian aspiration as they are based on superior knowledge of an ideal world as opposed to traditional values. When the two are combined the actions of the hero are measured in terms of moral ideals, and not by reference to popular virtues or an external reality.
Chapter one argues that a justification of political killings emerges from the connection of utopian thought with the doctrine of the redeemed hero from the socialist romance. This linkage did not arise with the utopian socialist Charles Fourier but in the use of his ideas by 3 the French romance writer Eugène Sue. Sue links the utopian universality of Fourier to the heroic ethos of the romantic novel. His romance, The Mysteries of Paris, established the ideal of a redeemed hero enforcing his form of justice on evil doers. 6 The romance’s protagonist, Rodolphe, regrets his lust for personal power and seeks to rehabilitate himself by reforming the criminal world and setting up utopian schemes. The chapter claims that Sue creates a justification for political killings in his romance that becomes a mainstay of conspiratorial socialist ideology. In doing so Sue alienates the romance from socialists that prefer a democratic path to power.
Chapter two posits that the romances of the French socialist George Sand defend socialism at times of political failure by the motivation of universal love. Her romances do not justify killing but provide a vision of universal love as the means to bring about a world more in tune with people’s natural instincts. In this she closely follows Rousseau. Her novels, such as Mauprat, present romantic love as the socialist expression of fraternity. For her, traditional values interfere with the natural expression of universal love and distort the personality. However, she does not have a direct connection to utopian thought, which results in her not having an ultimate goal that would justify killing people. She divides people on the basis of living in communion with nature or not. Sand is important for socialism at times of political reverses. The idea that the natural instincts of people will always lead them to the expression of universal love creates the impression of the inevitable triumph of socialism. It is argued that due to the utility of universal love at times of failure it is not discarded by conspiratorial socialism.
Chapter three argues that the Russian socialists, such as Nikolai Chernyshevsky and Alexander Herzen, further developed the arguments for terrorism from the application of the romance to the socialist movement. Chernyshevsky emphasised utopian thought in his romance What is to be Done? The authoritarian tendency in utopian thought was combined with the idea of “New People” establishing a better society. These people are the revolutionary heroes that overturn traditional values in the drive to fully develop themselves as individuals. These figures from the romance become the literary exemplars of revolutionaries for the later Bolsheviks. It is claimed that Chernyshevsky’s romance follows that of Sue in uniting the hero from the romance with utopian thought to justify killing. Herzen attempted to formulate a new secular morality to replace traditional values. He worked from the romance to the creation of the political epic My Past and Reminiscences. In this work he portrays himself as the revolutionary hero struggling to create a better world as his personal life descends into tragedy. His morality reflects the influence of the romance as he believes a hero creates his own morality. The hero acts out of love but ignores any demand from traditional values toward his family. It is argued that he created a morality for the doctrine of the redeemed hero.
Chapter four presents Dostoyevsky as attacking the arguments stemming from the romance. He supports traditional values and mocks the works of Chernyshevsky and Herzen. It is argued that Dostoyevsky represents the realist response to socialist arguments developed from the romance combined with utopian thought. Dostoyevsky deals with personal
5 Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia, p. 36. 6 Eugène Sue, The Mysteries of Paris, London, George Routledge and Son, n. d., pp. 534-539. 4 responsibility and will not accept that killing can be justified. It is further claimed that Dostoyevsky by his journalism and novels reveals literary realism’s response to conspiratorial socialism and social injustice. Dostoyevsky details the world as it is not the world as it should be. This is the realist rejection of utopian thought and the truthful representation of people’s lives. It is posited that such an approach allows for the concept of people’s self- determination. Literary realism attacks the consequences of deriving a political philosophy from a literary archetype.
Chapter five argues that Wagner develops his operas after contact with idea of socialist redemption from the Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin. It is claimed that after Wagner abandoned the idea to create historical works he turned to the medieval romance and incorporated the idea of redemption from contact with Bakunin’s socialist version of the redeemed hero. Wagner also expresses many other ideas prevalent amongst conspiratorial socialists such as anti-Semitism, despising contemporary society and the role of the hero. It is argued that Wagner in turn influences conspiratorial socialism by his introduction of the myth into the romance. This severs any connection of conspiratorial socialist ideology to an external reality. It also disconnects universal love as the humanitarian drive to change society. The revolutionary hero is driven by aesthetic and mystical knowledge to change the world.
Chapter six presents the argument that the English socialist William Morris attempted to restore an idea of universal love to the romance in his creation of the heroic fantasy. Morris tries to incorporate medieval Christian values into a political movement. His failure to achieve this does not diminish his recognition that a political movement with a subjective morality offered little appeal to most people. It is argued that Morris placed a moral imperative above the production of material needs. This diminished the utopian role for technology in the reduction of poverty. Morris’ moral utopia copies the medieval romance but cannot reproduce a medieval values or society without a universal asceticism. It is argued that Morris uses the romance as the basis to try to return society to a past that Morris believes is preferable because it had moral values that the present lacks. Morris’ creation of heroic fantasy attempts to rejuvenate the moral world of the medieval romance. This completes the trend in conspiratorial socialism to make the world accord with the romance’s literary archetypes.
Chapter seven argues that the success of democratic socialism breaks the connection between the romance and utopian thought. The formation of democratic parties led to the demand for immediate political gains and social change. The chapter associates this change with the decline in interest in utopian schemes. It is claimed that the socialist romance changed to the socialist adventure novel in the hands of those such as the American socialist Jack London. This novel lacked the connection to a universal humanity but retained the interest in natural human instincts. The chapter posits that the utopian novel still offered the socialist movement a deterministic belief in its final triumph but now existed without a direct connection to the romance. The utopia of the American socialist Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward, sets out a future where the state organises production and fills material needs. The chapter argues that Bellamy provides no means to achieve 5 such a society outside of the dream as he lacks a role for the hero from the romance. The utopian novel thereby lacks the interventionist force it formerly held.
The hero and the socialist romance
The hero from the romance forms a major emphasis of the present work. The Mysteries of Paris became part of the literary canon of the Russian nihilists and the German Left- Hegelians. Sue’s doctrine of the redeemed hero results from the combination of utopian thought with the romantic hero. The redeemed hero recognises the negative nature of present society and seeks to change it through his actions. Utopian thought needs the idea of the hero as it divides the world into the knowledgeable and the ignorant. The hero acting from arcane knowledge seeks to change matters but involves himself in violence in doing so. This presents a moral dilemma for the doctrine of the redeemed hero. The romance hero believes the goal of a morally better world as greater than the individual lives it takes to create it. The death of a few people can be justified if everyone is better off. To overcome this problem the hero offers themselves as a sacrifice for their actions. The hero recognises that they have committed a wrong but offers his life as atonement for what has been done. This argument prevents the accusation that the hero seeks personal benefit from killing and restores some semblance of personal responsibility.
The romance directly introduced these moral principles into radical socialism. The idea that heroes could willingly sacrifice themselves out of love for “humanity” and thereby transcend common morality stems from the romance. The concept of the hero that transcends traditional morality through love is contained in the romance’s plot. This is not part of utopian thought’s appeal to a perfect society through rationality. Rather, it is the adoption of a very specific version of altruism that specifies the act of sacrifice so as to be able to transcend common morality. Such a position does not come from Christian belief but corresponds to classical sources in the ancient literary form of the romance. Radical socialism redefined altruism as the revolutionary hero establishing a perfect society and overturning the horrors of present society by the sacrifice of the self. The combination of utopian thought and the hero can be found in classical utopian works such as Plutarch’s account of classical Sparta, which describes the hero creating a perfect society. 7 This is not practical application of the ancient idea of the dictator that overcame a temporary crisis as the revolutionary hero represents a complete change that requires a utopian vision. 8 Socialism combined the idea of the hero from ancient romances and utopian schemes and provided them with a rationale to be able to transcend common morality.
The idea that a person could atone for sins they committed in setting up a new society becomes the foundation of the terrorist ethos in Russia. Dostoyevsky targeted such reasoning in his later major works. Such reasoning has no foundation in popular practise, democratic demands or common sense. This reasoning only exists in a political movement where such issues have already been negated by utopian thought. It is the complete
7 Plutarch, Lives, ‘Lycurgus’, trans. Bernadotte Perrin, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1993, p. 251. 8 Aristotle, Politics, trans. H. Rackham, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1990, p. 249. 6 subordination of moral and aesthetic values to political ideology. Such reasoning is unable to respond to values or external reality outside the restrictions of ideology. The literary archetypes from the romance function to give the doctrine of the redeemed hero credibility by its lack of reference to an external reality.
The leap from Fourier to the revolutionary hero required the hero to act in good faith and not out of personal greed. The hero acts out of faith not analysis or need. Sand’s romances filled this void, by showing society weighed down by the evils of greed. Sand provided a vision of socialism as a pure humanity untainted by personal ambition. She also created a vision of love as a political expression. The politics of Sand did not envision people taking power into their own hands. People had to learn to be disinterested and work for a common good by a return to older values before the advent of civilisation. 9 Sand provided the hero with a faith in the mystical power of love. This love corroded all social relationships and brought a new and better way of living. Sand expressed these ideas in her romances. This attitude toward the power of love expressed the theme in the romance of love conquers all. Sand remained opposed to realism and openly espoused the idea of writing of things, as they should be not as they are. 10 Dickens recognised that such romances inverted traditional values. However, Sand believed she did all this out of love for humanity.
Although Sand believed in the existence of a universal love she divided people on the basis of those initiated into knowledge of this love. She attempted to overcome this problem by the use of the hero, who acted from the greatest possible motives, love of humanity. To argue against this was to stand in the way of how things should be and the best interests of people. Altruism became very specific in its intentions. Sand introduces a purpose and end into altruism that it lacked. Formerly, altruism was acting selflessly for another without hope of a reward, as they were part of God’s community. Conspiratorial socialist altruism set up a moral ideal to which activity is directed to gain the greatest benefit for the greatest number of people. It has utilitarian implications in it that directs the motivation of the hero. The adherents of this chain of thought believe they act in the best interests of society and therefore to stand in the way of this prescribed change is immoral. This is a moral argument but it rests on a premise from the romance.
The romance provided socialism with the basic elements to justify the hero forcibly altering society according to utopian ideals. The romance provided for the primacy of political ideology over other values. The romance and utopian thought measured measure everything by how society should be. The only way in which radical socialists would allow society to change came from an ideology that excluded most people. The heroic ethic from the romance supported such a position. An elite would be responsible for social change not self-determination by the people most affected. The romance supported the division of the world into two moralities. Heroes acting according to one morality would achieve this better world by their personal sacrifice. Others acting according to social convention could not be agents of change. The morality of the romance presented not a world as it is or had
9George Sand to Gustave Flaubert, ‘Nohant 23 July, 1871’, in Flaubert-Sand, The Correspondence, trans. Francis Steegmuller and Barbara Bray, New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1993, pp. 234-235. 10 George Sand, ‘The Journeyman-Carpenter’ in In Her Own Words, trans. Joseph Barry, London, Quartet, 1979. pp. 262-263. 7 been but the world as it should be. The romance hero struggled against the present world to establish ideal love, a rational society or a moral world.
The romance aided the socialist challenge to traditional values. Radical socialists redefined the values held by most people. They expressed truthful representation and aesthetics not as description of what exists but as the explanation of an ideal that needs to be brought into existence. The requirements of a utopian plan were presented as fulfilling the needs of humanity and negated appeals to democracy or the involvement of non- heroes. Most importantly, the romance depicted killing for a moral cause as the expression of moral stature. After the failure of the 1848 revolutions conspiratorial socialism concluded that only heroes could bring about an ideal society not the democratic process. All values had to conform to bringing a new society into being. The romance corresponded to socialist aspirations but the realist novel challenged the basic idea of the inversion of traditional values.
This study uses the term conspiratorial socialists to define those undemocratic socialists who called for the romance hero’s intervention in society on the basis of utopian schemes. The term defers to Buonarroti and his work Babeuf’s Conspiracy of Equals that encouraged revolutionary socialist activism. 11 Conspiratorial socialists undertook radical social change by means of conspiratorial groups with no democratic organisation. It is an extremely authoritarian position and divides people on the basis of being revolutionary heroes or an inert mass. Their use of the romance, as against the realist novel, seeks to progress a political ideology that has no interest in an external reality or democratic involvement in social change.
Utopian thought and the romance
Orwell chafed at the influence of utopian thought upon socialist political practice. He concluded that utopian literature could not describe a society that would even faintly appeal to most people. 12 Orwell also believed that utopian visions detached justice from political morality. 13 Utopian thought creates a morality that negates any belief that does not lead to the transformation of society. 14 The ideas of justice, traditional morality and democratic involvement do not freely associate themselves with utopian thought. Conspiratorial socialist thought when influenced by utopianism could not recognise the potential of democratic evolutionary change and favoured revolutionary change. 15 According to utopian thought everything could be sacrificed to social change, including human lives and literary values. It will be argued that the literary realists’ antagonism to the conspiratorial socialists and the socialist romance resulted from their defence of traditional values.
A moral difference existed between the utopian socialism and literary realism that extended to the literary forms preferred by each movement. Conspiratorial socialism rejected the
11 Phillipe, Buonarroti, Babeuf's Conspiracy for Equality, New York, Kelly, 1964. 12 ‘John Freeman’ (George Orwell), ‘Can Socialists Be Happy?’ in I Have Tried to Tell the Truth, 1943- 1944, The Complete Works of George Orwell, London, Secker and Warburg, 2001, pp. 39-43. 13 Orwell, Road to Wigan Pier, pp. 247-248. 14 Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia, p. 36. 15 Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia, p. 178. 8 realist novel and followed a tendency to adopt the romance as its preferred literary form. As the Hungarian sociologist Karl Mannheim noted, utopian thought is not an analysis of the present. It associates itself with fantasy literature. “…the utopian mentality…guided by wishful representation and the will to action, hides certain aspects of reality.” 16 Utopian thought does not look toward descriptive literature. It concentrates on a literary form that limits discussion to those matters it deems important. It measures everything by the future it tries to create. The literary realist project of truthful description of lives has little appeal to utopian thought. This study argues that those parts of the socialist and anarchist movements that adhered to utopian thought associated themselves with the literary romance as a conscious attempt to differentiate themselves from the realists. The romance envisions the world according to arcane knowledge whereas the realist novel views the world through personal experience.
The differing political and moral assumptions behind socialist and realist literature account for the inability of the two movements to co-operate. Non-democratic socialism’s preference for the literary romance lay in the romance’s ability to modify personal ethical behaviour in line with a vision of the future. Such a doctrine remained anathema to the realists. Literary realism, such as typified by Dostoyevsky, denied the ability to transcend traditional morality, even in the name of social justice. According to the literary realists a universal morality is incumbent on everyone. The antagonism between the two forms of literature extended to different visions of a moral society. The romance came to represent progress toward an ideal future whereas the realist novel defended how to live ethically in the present. The magnitude of this difference and the fact that co-operation between the two movements proved impossible illustrates a fundamental difference between the nineteenth century romance and the realist novel.
The romance and the realist novel
The English realist novelist Charles Dickens, who dealt with issues of social justice, presented the romance as having a distinct moral difference to the realist novel. According to Dickens the romance inverts traditional morals to represent the criminal as a literary hero. “It is wonderful how Virtue turns from dirty stockings; and how Vice, married to ribbons and a little gay attire, changes her name, as wedded ladies do, and become Romance.” 17 Dickens dismissed the romance as misrepresenting the criminal world as adventurous and attractive. Dickens contrasted his portrayal of criminal life to that of the romance. Dickens argued that his depiction of criminal life corresponded to actual events and urged the reader to go and look for themselves. In contrast the romance presented literary stereotypes that had no relationship to reality. 18 The characters in Sue’s Mysteries of Paris cannot be found in Dickens description of criminal London in Oliver Twist. Dickens’ characters face moral problems that real people face every day and there is no superior hero attempting to change the world. The romance hero deals with situations abstracted from reality and only make sense in the restricted world of the romance and its literary conventions. The realists associated literary values with ideas of accurate description of
16 Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia, p. 36. 17 Charles Dickens, The Adventures of Oliver Twist, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1987, p. xvi. 18 Dickens, Oliver Twist, pp. xv- xvii. 9 reality. Realist literary values are related to the moral values held by the majority of people and reflect the circumstances they find themselves in. Realism measures ethical behaviour by the circumstances the characters find themselves in but the socialist romance envisions a hero acting according to abstract ideals.
The romance according to Dickens held different moral positions to those found in the realist novel. The moral beliefs found in the romance made no reference to an exterior reality but functioned according to literary conventions. In these literary conventions the expression of love is hindered by traditional values. The romance inverts these traditional values with little regard for the social character of morality as it concentrates on the motivation of the heroic protagonist. The romance sets up a world where individual virtue and love triumphs over convention. Such a position cannot be verified by reference to an exterior reality but only as far as it is coherent with the values set out in the romance. Dickens refers constantly to the truthfulness of his portrayal. He measures morality against what he sees. The romance measures the world according to the values it has set for itself. These values do not derive from social or political practice and even less from democratic opinion. They are archetypes from the literary conventions in the romance.
Conspiratorial socialism avoided the use of the realist novel. However, democratic socialism did associate itself with the realist literary authors. Both democratic socialists and literary realists engaged in the reportage of social inequity such as Engels’ Condition of the English Working Class but only later did democratic socialists produce realist novels. 19 The production of working class realist novels occur outside the period looked at in this study. Social reportage was the closest the early socialist movement came to realist literature. The social reportage of socialists such as Engels and Flora Tristan, and even later George Orwell, matched the work of Henry Mayhew. Mayhew worked alongside the realist novelist Thackeray on Punch before his major work on Labour and the Poor in 1849. This occurred five years after Engels’ pioneering work. 20 He was part of the milieu around the British realists that analysed the conditions and causes of poverty. Democratic socialism did share with literary realism the description of the condition of the poor. Conspiratorial socialism did not take part in social reportage and preferred a literature based not on analysis and description but on heroic achievement and abstract love.
Realism and fantasy
Conspiratorial socialists were aware of the history of a connection between idealist morality and imaginative literature that extended back to ancient Greece. For Wagner this history assured him that the romance carried knowledge beyond that gained by experience. The conspiratorial socialists followed Plato and his connection of the perfect society to idealist morality. The romance forms a literary link for the conspiratorial socialists to the philosophical production of ancient utopian schemes and idealist morality. The admiration
19 Frederick Engels, ‘The Condition of the English Working Classes in England. From Personal Observation and Authentic Sources’, in K. Marx and F. Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 4, London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1975, pp. 295-583. 20 Henry Mayhew, The Morning Chronicle Survey of Labour and the Poor, Firle, Caliban, 1980. 10 of romance and fantasy literature at the expense of realism is an ancient one and descends directly from Platonic idealism. Plato considered that literature should be strictly censored in a perfect society if not dispensed with altogether. 21 Only the person with knowledge of ideals is fit to rule and literature does not necessarily lead to such enlightenment. 22 However, Plato did differentiate literature on the basis that the narrator (diegesis or imaginative literature) is morally superior to the imitator (mimesis or descriptive literature).23 The narrator can set out ideals of behaviour whereas the imitator tends toward copying reality, which is vulgar. The moral force of creating what “should be” is superior to “what exists”. This type of criticism focuses on the denigration of an exterior reality in favour of the praise of ideals. By this reasoning literature may have a limited use in a perfect society but literary forms that describe an exterior reality are not fit for intellectual discussion.
Plato faults the faithful description of society as harmful to the best interests of society and unable to help attain true knowledge. While imaginative literature may not lead to knowledge of ideals it was a superior form of literature. The imagination could more closely conform to ideals than truthful depiction of reality. Plato’s imaginative literature conforms to the conspiratorial idea of the romance. Socialist fantasy and romances had the role of describing the best of possible worlds. Nor did such literature need to conform to popular morality but only moral ideals. Morality and political action were subordinated to an imagined ideal future. The socialist romance like Plato’s idea of imaginative literature dismissed faithful description as unable to provide knowledge of an ideal world. However, conspiratorial socialists gave literature an educative purpose that Plato denied it held.
In contrast, realist literature resembles Aristotle’s critique of Plato. Aristotle challenged the superiority of imaginative literature in his work The Poetics. Aristotle described the means to create the most effective literature. In doing so he turned to mimesis or descriptive literature that upheld literary values and used credible plots. 24 Aristotle did not subordinate literature to moral ideals but presents it has having values of its own. For Aristotle tragedy is most effective when the hero is not morally perfect and brought low by circumstance but rather the hero who is personally fallible. This makes a more convincing story and is not an exposition of moral principles. 25 Mimesis implies the use of literary values whereas diegesis looks to conformity with moral principles. This does not mean that Aristotle abandoned the discussion of moral principles in literature, but they had to be applicable to people’s lives. Aristotle believed that the difference between history and literature lay in history describing what happened whereas literature described what could happen. 26 Literature tends to deal with universals whereas history looks at particulars. 27 Literature achieves this by reference to its credibility and own values and by this method it can show a practical morality. It does not use the imagination to envision a perfect or rational society.
21 Plato, ‘The Republic’ in The Collected Dialogues Including Letters, Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns, eds., Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1973, pp. 623-625. 22 R. M. Hare, ‘Plato’ in Greek Philosophers, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1999, p. 170. 23 Plato, ‘The Republic’, pp. 638-643. 24 Aristotle, The Poetics, trans. Stephen Halliwell, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1995, p. 63. 25 Aristotle, Poetics, p. 71. 26 Aristotle, Poetics, p. 59. 27 Aristotle, Poetics, p. 117. 11 A different view of a perfect society also occurred in extant Greek literature. However, this did not agree with the vision of a perfect society in idealist philosophy. The ancient Greek poet Hesiod states that any perfect society is long gone and now people have to suffer and work to create a better world. Before Plato’s vision of a perfect society in his Republic, Hesiod discussed the Golden Age. The Golden Age existed in the past and the contemporary world has no alternative but to accept suffering. Hesiod’s Golden Age consisted of a time when people lived without the need to work and did not suffer old age. As everything grew in abundance everyone shared in the wealth. No injustice existed as these people lived as one with the Gods. Other races of people followed these fortunate people including the heroes who populated epic poetry. According to Hesiod the present people form the age of iron, in which life is much harder than previous times. 28 The people of the present look toward the past as an ideal in comparison to what they endure now.
Hesiod plainly states that justice only existed during the Golden Age as the Gods walked amongst people and ensured everyone acted ethically. The people of the Iron Age have to struggle and work to produce wealth. They suffer and grow old to produce enough for their needs. Unlike the people of the Golden Age they have the choice to act without regard to justice. They can defraud others and steal to gain wealth. 29 However, wealth can be gained honourably by working for it. Hesiod links justice to useful labour. 30 In Hesiod’s work there is a marked difference between contemporary morality based on labour and a heroic ethic. Justice is not the pursuit of honour or self-aggrandisement. It is the production of wealth through labour. To achieve this peace and justice are required. By accepting the heroic ethic conspiratorial socialists separated themselves from a role in useful labour and thereby according to Hesiod in the production of justice. The acceptance of a heroic ethic justified the literary realist taunt of the conspiratorial socialists as ‘superfluous’.
Hesiod recognised that a Golden Age cannot return. A perfect system of justice cannot exist alongside the opportunity to act according to power and greed. The existence of choice makes justice dependant on human behaviour not divine intervention or reason. The very beginning of the idea of a Golden Age contrasts perfection with the idea that justice evolves from human productive activity and not from an effort to return to a perfect world. Even the attempt to recreate the heroic ethic would be a mistake. The present world is less than perfect but it still has the ability to function as a just society. The reproduction of the means of existence by work drives the need for justice. Justice can not now be attained by the action of gathering what exists naturally or by living like Gods. Justice is the provenance of productive people. The idea that the heroic revolutionary can create a more just society due to their superior knowledge and the application of violence is outside this formulation of justice.
Descriptive literature’s attachment to justice is mediated through labour and not the direct link of imaginative literature. When the Russian realists refer to the “superfluous man” and the English realists talked about snobbery it refers to a class of people that are not constrained by the need to labour. They lack the means to recognise the role of labour in constructing a
28 Hesiod, ‘Works and Days’ in Theogony, Works and Days and Testimonia, trans. Glenn W. Most, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2006, pp. 97-103. 29 Hesiod, ‘Works and Days’, pp. 103-105. 12 just society. The clash between descriptive and imaginative forms of literature over injustice centres on how people construct justice in a flawed world as against trying to make society conform to an eternal ideal. Before Plato an idea of justice existed based on the need to provide the means of existence for oneself and one’s family. The heroic ethic no longer had any relevance to this struggle. The ancient heroic ethic took part in killing and stealing which is outside of Hesiod’s means to create a just society. No amount of imagination can recreate these past worlds without a means to enforce previous ethical systems. This contradicts the very notion of a sense of justice. The need to labour provides for human choice but continually challenges people to act justly. In contrast imaginative literature offers moral certainty in the attempt to get the world to conform to ideals.
Alternatives from ancient Greek sources existed for the idea of how morality functioned in society. Socialism and realism selected those sources that served their purposes. The literary realists took the path that rejected the role of the heroic saviour. They recognised the role of productive labour and that the conspiratorial socialists stood outside of this. The literary realists adopted a position more akin to that of Hesiod the idea of the Golden Age. Such a position conflicts with utopian thought and a heroic ethic. The antagonism between literary realism and conspiratorial socialism forms part of the ancient Greek differentiation of utopian and idealist morality and the analysis of existing societies. Plato connected his idealist morality with utopian themes and imaginative literature. These themes extend into the period of this study with the conspiratorial socialists combining utopian thought with the romance. The idea of a Golden Age links labour with justice. It does not look to the role of heroic lawgivers to deliver society from decadence. Conspiratorial socialism and literary realism may have been both interested in social justice but they have different interpretations of justice, which made co-operation difficult.
The application of the romance to a political movement owes much to the romance author and philosopher Rousseau. He was fully aware of Plato’s preference for imaginative literature and supported the suppression of imitative art as they did not support the establishment of a society that accorded with moral principles. 31 Rousseau wrote at the time of the formation of literary realism and emphasised his difference from Richardson. In his romance Julie, Or The New Heloise, Rousseau believed he wrote a story “…without wickedness of any kind, either in the characters or the action.” 32 Whereas Richardson may have been able to describe people and events well Rousseau believed in the superiority of his own work as it concentrates on the theme of love. 33 Rousseau distanced himself from the emerging literary realism to combine the ideas of the corruption of the present, the promotion of ideals as against social conventions and the romance. He presented morality as a matter of abstract principles that exist prior to experience. 34 A need existed to overturn the conventions by which most people lived. This entailed a return to the values
30 Hesiod, ‘Works and Days’, pp. 111-113. 31 Jean-Jacques Rousseau. ‘On Theatrical Imitation, An Essay Drawn from Plato’s Dialogues’, in Essay on the Origin of Languages and Writings Related to Music, trans. and ed. John T. Scott, Hanover, University of New England Press, 1998, p. 337. 32 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Confessions, trans. Angela Scholar, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2000, p. 534. 33 Rousseau, Confessions, pp. 337-338. 34 Rousseau, ‘Theatrical Imitation’, p. 338. 13 found in rural areas. In contrast Richardson and literary realism dealt with moral convention and life in cities. 35
An idealist political literature based on the romance came into being during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries opposed to realist literary values. In his work Rousseau believed he presented a moral tale that could counter the conventional lives that people led. Social conventions transgressed the true morality that people were born with but had been spoiled by modern life. Rousseau declared that in his work “One learns to love mankind.” 36 Similar to Plato Rousseau found the novel an inadequate means to express a true morality. Such a morality can be recognised instinctively not through literature. “Weakness of language proves strength of feeling.” 37 As with social convention aesthetic forms serve to create false feelings for literary characters. According to this reasoning Rousseau declared that literary values not only could not support moral ideals but also created conventional values that helped destroy virtue. His novel served a “bitter medicine” to those leading lives guided by convention. 38
Rousseau challenged literary realism even as it came into existence. His challenge outlined themes that are of importance to later socialist literary production. He showed a preference for the romance as it opposed to social convention. He also proposed a new moral politics that would lead to the creation of a morally superior world. Importantly for the use of the romance Rousseau rules out the use of the realist novel as it is tainted by present society and will merely reproduce the values of a decadent society. Literature should conform to expressing a love of humanity through the path of ideals rather than the expression of literary values. Literary values themselves only foster shallow emotions that are not passionately felt. 39 Rousseau championed a literature that bases itself on the passionate expression of love and so challenges traditional values. The romance best served the return of previous authentic values that existed prior to the rise of civilisation. The political romance from its beginnings questioned literary values as it set out to describe moral ideals. The subordination of literary values to moral ideals enabled conspiratorial socialists to accept Sue’s romance as a poorly written work while they claimed it to be of world changing significance.
Contemporary criticism of fantasy
Much contemporary criticism is steeped in the arguments from idealist philosophy. They categorise non-realist literature together as imaginative literature or fantasy. They do not separate out the socialist romance founded on political efforts to proceed to a better future from an ancient epic. In order to satisfy the category of fantasy Richard Mathews and Kathryn Hume take for granted the existence of a tradition of fantasy that extends back to the oral epic. This
35 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Julie, or the New Heloise, Letters of Two Lovers Who Live in a Small Town At the Foot of the Alps, trans. Philip Stewart and Jean Vaché, Hanover, University of New England Press, 1997, pp. 15-17. 36.Rousseau, Julie, pp. 9 and 14. 37 Rousseau, Julie, p. 9. 38 Rousseau, Julie, pp. 12-14. 39 Rousseau, Julie, pp. 9-10. 14 tradition does not differentiate between romance, mythology, the heroic epic and legend but fuses them together. Further, they do not acknowledge how modern heroic fantasy grew from the socialist romance. According to Hume’s reasoning all literature is an act of imagination and realist literature can make no special claim to represent an external reality. Thereby fantasy is no more unreal than realist literature. Fantasy is just another way of imagining a different and probably superior world. 40 This prevents discussion of the real differences between literary realism and the socialist romance. Such a position has no means to evaluate why there could be no compromise between these two literary forms. Mathews and Hume present all literary forms as just differing expressions of an undifferentiated literature.
Mathews’ and Hume’s position even ignores the divisions in imaginative literature and the reasons for these divisions. This line of argument cannot ask why an imitative literary form as heroic fantasy distanced itself from other fantasy traditions. Heroic fantasy, created by Morris, self-consciously adopted literary forms that ignored any existing tradition of imaginative fiction and realism. Socialist romances did not present themselves as part of a much larger literary tradition but consciously drew on much older literary forms and traditions. Morris and Wagner took the extinct literary form of the medieval romance as a model rather than any existing form of fantasy literature. There was a force that continually drove conspiratorial socialism to champion the romance. This tendency resulted in conspiratorial socialist romances that consciously mimicked medieval models and ignored contemporary literature. The socialist romance is a discrete literary form. The methodology of an all encompassing category of fantasy cannot account for it differences.
In his Fantasy, The Liberation of the Imagination Richard Mathews compares older oral material with modern written literature. This requires the reader to accept that two such disparate entities can be united across time, society and literary culture solely on the basis of opposition to realism and rationality. The whole argument can only be sustained if historical context is ignored. He also has trouble in explaining why Morris’ heroic fantasy did not grow out of the Gothic novel but instead took the extinct medieval romance as its model. 41 Mathews tries to avoid this problem with the idea that fantasy, by rejecting realism, provides alternative ideals and outcomes to those available in the existing world. 42 By this means fantasy is given the task of providing a liberating experience to its readers. Mathews recognises the fantasy’s role in the deprecation of existing reality but does not appreciate that this follows from utopian thought’s authoritarian role in its association with the socialist romance.
This defence of the romance against realism relies on the claim to a superior moral vision. The socialist writers, such as Wagner and Morris recognised this linkage of utopian thought, idealist philosophy and the ancient romance as a common heritage from Greek idealist philosophy. Their attempts to reinvigorate the romance were part of a scheme to justify utopian arguments and the role of the hero and in an attempt to found a world based on idealist morals. Heroic fantasy emerges from the conspiratorial socialist romance in response to an ideological need. It remains separate from other fantasy forms that are not subject to this ideology. Mathews and Hume ignore the specific circumstances that
40 Kathryn Hume, Fantasy and Mimesis, Responses to Reality in Western Literature, New York, Methuen, 1984, pp. xi-xiii. 41 Richard Mathews, Fantasy: The Liberation of the Imagination, New York, Routledge, 2002, pp. 3-4. 15 generate conspiratorial socialist literary forms such as heroic fantasy to the exclusion of other forms of imaginative literature.
A rather more sophisticated form of Mathews’ argument can be found in Hume’s Fantasy and Mimesis. Hume also sets up a model of non-realist literature that uncritically combines the oral epic with science fiction and fantasy. However, Hume recognises the existence of a fundamental literary division between fantasy and realism. Following the German literary analyst Erich Auerbach she states that throughout time the attempts to find an acceptable means to represent reality in literature are limited by the available means to do so. This imposes limitations on realist literature. Fantasy is not limited by a literary means to describe reality as it transcends reality and exposes other aspects of human existence outside of rationality. 43 Hume presents imaginative literature, such as the romance, as a superior means to understand the world as it is not a limited form of literature. These fundamental ideological assumptions come from idealist morality but Hume does not mention this. Importantly, she does not address the moral quandary created by the justification of violence in the socialist romances. Hume fails to recognise that fantasy’s lack of reference to credibility or feasibility allowed idealist morality and utopian thought to exclude the discussion of the role of violence in social change. Hume’s lack of a historical context leads her to accept the superiority of an idealist morality against social convention. She thereby reproduces the arguments of those like the conspiratorial socialists against realist literature.
Although Hume mentions Auerbach in her defence of romance she avoids his historical analysis of the problem of representing reality through literature. Auerbach demonstrated that at any point of time authors of realistic literature could only capture reality with the literary means available to them. In this way the oral techniques of Homer’s Odyssey do not allow for the written historical methodology of the Old Testament. Each literary composition works from what has gone before but is limited by the historical circumstance of its composition. 44 This means that each attempt at explaining reality needs to be gauged by its historical context not a reference to supposedly eternal divisions in literature. Hume adopts the eternal logic of the psychoanalytical concept of the unconscious to avoid a critical historical methodology. 45 Psychoanalysis limits the ability of the historian to place myth in an historical context. Instead human activity becomes expressed through the agency of the myth. This results in human activity being measured by literary archetypes. Conspiratorial socialists would agree with such a position.
For Hume meaning can be recovered by uncovering the unconscious irrational construction of humans as revealed in oral myths. Fantasy according to this methodology becomes the revelation of the primal human. Her very methodology relies upon myth and not historical analysis. However, the notion of the myth is not morally neutral. The centrality of myth is vital for the justification of revolutionary violence for the conspiratorial socialist theoretician
42 Mathews, Fantasy, p. 52. 43 Hume, Fantasy and Mimesis, pp. xi-xiii. 44 Erich Auerbach, Mimesis, The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, trans. Willard R. Trask, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1953, pp. 22-23. 45 Hume, Fantasy and Mimesis, pp. 168-171. 16 Georges Sorel. 46 Sorel describes the myth as the justification of an ideology removed from analysis of an external reality and justifying any means to bring about social change. This is applicable to the conspiratorial socialist use of the romance. Hume remains bound to non-historical psychoanalytic categories that are unable to employ historical critical methods and she is unprepared to address the use of the notion of myth in the justification of political violence.
As has been demonstrated earlier imaginative literature has a ready ally in utopian thought not historical investigation. Hume accepts the idea that romance has a moral vision of the future superior to that of realism. She gives little historical background to her support for the morally superior quality of imaginative literature other than a mention of Greeks literary thought. Hume makes reference to a changing emphasis from imitative art to creative art. For her, realism represents the old idea of imitating nature (mimesis) and a commonly shared understanding of reality. In contrast, fantasy is the creation of ideas (poiesis) and meaning with little reference to what already exists. She presents fantasy as the liberation of literature from ‘what is’ to ‘what can be’. 47 Art no longer has to be bound by a common series of ideas and what they represent to be meaningful. The supporters of fantasy believe it to be creating a new view of the world and in this way create not only new dimensions for expression but also a new world. This allows for the expression of the authentic aspirations of the writer. Realism may be a sincere appraisal of what exists but it cannot give expression the ideas of what should be. At all times morality is expressed in absolute and ideal terms.
Conspiratorial socialists would share Hume’s idea of the romance as imaginative literature that holds a superior ability to describe how the world should be. However, the argument in the present work is that such a position leads to the idea that a traditional and universal morality should be destroyed by those claiming to act on a higher moral plane. Rather than a vision of a better world utopian idealism is a negative force against popular morality. Conspiratorial socialist morality did not operate for the benefit of most people nor was it universal. The division of people on the basis of their ability to recognise a better world cannot support a universal ethic. 48 The literary forms used by the conspiratorial socialists supported their morality. Hume has not addressed the major questions that Dostoyevsky and realism raised in relation to socialism and its choice of literature. She has not asked why the romance, and those socialists that supported it, believed themselves to be justified in the use of violence.
The left-wing literary critic Fredric Jameson tries to incorporate both realism and fantasy into an overriding concept of literature. In a contribution to a collection of essays by Brecht, Lukács and Adorno, Jameson sought to find some synthesis of the views of Lukács and Brecht based upon the ideas of totality and reification. 49 According to Jameson, capitalism obscured the nature of class conflict by focussing on individual competition. There could
46 Georges Sorel, Reflections On Violence, trans. T. E. Hulme, London, George Allen and Unwin, 1915, pp. 32-34, 130-131 and 207. 47 Hume, Fantasy and Mimesis, pp. xi-xii. 48 Karl Marx, ‘Theses on Feuerbach’. In K. Marx and F. Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 5, London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1976, p. 4. 17 be no concept of the totality of moral relationships in such an impoverished outlook, only a subjective outlook of the self. Jameson’s approach presented modernism as a precursor of a new literary form that revealed the sterility of subjective morality. In contrast, the literary form of realism had the task of revealing the nature of the underlying conflicts in present society, not just the struggle against individual futility. 50 Realism not only had to disclose the illusory nature of appearances but also had to reveal underlying realities. This literary form had the task of stripping away the false ideas that comprise ideology. He recognises that realism stands opposed to ideology.
In a later work, Archaeologies of the Future, Jameson considers utopian and science fiction novels challenge contemporary political movements. The utopian work provides a means to find an alternative to an all-pervasive political and economic system. 51 He implies that a utopian critique niggles at every established society. Jameson understands this critique as opposition to modernity. 52 Jameson also closely links science fiction novels with some sort of utopian impulse to describe the future. This is presented as a legitimate and important literary pursuit that transcends the boundaries of good and bad literature. Jameson makes no distinction between utopian and science fiction writers and Dostoyevsky. 53 This argument requires literature to be seen in terms of its functionality. Literature is not presented as a good in itself or by reference to literary values. It is part of the social construction in which utility or subversion of accepted values becomes the measure. This argument is comparable to the nihilist concept of utilitarian and political literature. The argument serves to represent the romance as a progressive force in opposition to existing reality. Both Hume and Jameson believe the inversion of traditional values has a progressive nature that literature like the socialist romance expresses.
The main problem for Jameson is the inability to recognise the basis of the antagonism between the two movements. He fails to address why conspiratorial socialism should be so attracted to the romance. Jameson cannot absorb the antagonism between socialism and realism into his argument or his compartmentalisation of them both in socialist literature. They were not two kindred movements stemming from a revulsion against capitalism but were fundamentally opposed to each other. Most socialist critics, outside of Orwell and Dostoyevsky, do not appreciate that this is not just an aesthetic judgement as it extends to the very assumptions of conspiratorial socialism. The aesthetic judgement was not a matter of taste but a logical progression from the differing moral and aesthetic judgements of either side.
Jameson is aware of the debatable nature of the claim that utopian thought and literature are a liberating force for change. He footnotes but does not attempt to deal with Mannheim’s critique of utopianism’s closed mindset that is incapable of correctly analysing any situation or providing a creditable alternative. 54 Utopianism concerns itself with the will
49 Fredric Jameson, ‘Reflections In Conclusion’ in Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, Bertold Brecht and Georg Lukács, Aesthetics and Politics, London, Verso, 1990, pp. 212. 50 Jameson, ‘Reflections In Conclusion’, pp. 212-213. 51 Fredric Jameson, Archaeologies of the Future, The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions, London, Verso, 2005, pp. xii-xii. 52 Jameson, Archaeologies of the Future, pp. 11-12. 53 Jameson, Archaeologies of the Future, pp. 345-346. 54 Jameson, Archaeologies of the Future, p. 3. 18 to change society and ignores the consequences of these actions. Utopian work is based on the moral critique of the present as irredeemably bad. 55 Any action to change matters thereby becomes a good in itself. The claims of utopian work neither lead to greater literary values nor disclose truths about the world. Mannheim shows that utopian thought invariably fails to predict the future with any accuracy and he thereby considers utopian thought a negative force for change. Like the conspiratorial socialists, Jameson persists in portraying utopian thought as a positive force. Both with his attempt to absorb realism and to champion imaginative literature as challenges to capitalism Jameson fails to recognise that both these two movements have been unable to co-operate due to their differences. He cannot demonstrate why two movements for social justice were so antagonistic.
The idea of a progress to moral society contains the temptation to impose such a scheme without reference to ethical principles. The presentation of socialist morality as a progression from earlier forms of ethics ignores the changed material basis needed for a new morality and how people can recognise a new set of ethics. nineteenth century realism reflected nineteenth century democratic ideals and the universality of humanity. Democratic forms of socialism, like realism, believed in the unity and commonality of humankind. In contrast, utopian and conspiratorial forms of nineteenth century socialism divided humanity into the educated and ignorant. They did not look toward the idea of self- determination. Marx described these socialists as an educated elite teaching the ignorant masses. “This doctrine must, therefore, divide society into two parts, one of which is superior to society.” 56 The romance’s inversion of values develops from a social group believing itself to be morally superior to others. It is not the revelation of an alternative world or morality but snobbery and elitism. It also leads to the attempt to dominate others. The utopian elements in conspiratorial socialism developed into a concentration upon the achievement political power over other moral considerations. 57
Jameson does not recognise the differences in literary forms are more than a writer’s opposition to an existing reality. Utopianism and science fiction are not the inevitable productions of modernity. 58 Science fiction is not a product of the utopian novel’s distaste for the modern world. The pioneer science fiction writer Jules Verne was influenced more by the romances of Edgar Allan Poe than the utopian works of Fourier. 59 The actual links between the romance and the utopian novel lie in the choices made by conspiratorial socialists to create a distinct ideology in their struggle against realism. The imaginative literature that emerged from the 1848 revolutions is purposely uninterested in representing what “is” but only what ‘ought’ to be. Jameson follows this chain of thought in his belief that there is a need for another bout of utopian novels to challenge present reality. 60 Jameson fails to deal with the moral dimension of the struggle between the realists and conspiratorial socialists. As the realists realised it is not enough to claim that one is acting in the best interests of humanity by a vision of a better future there has to be some relationship with truth and analysis. Utopian thought only recognises an ideal moral truth not truthful representation.
55 Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia, p. 36. 56 Marx, ‘Theses on Feuerbach’, p. 4. 57 Hal Draper, Karl Marx’s Theory of Revolution, Vol. IV Critique of Other Socialisms, New York, Monthly Review, 1990, pp. 130-131. 58 Jameson, Archaeologies of the Future, p. 1. 59 Jean Jules-Verne, Jules Verne, trans. Roger Greaves, London, Macdonalds and Janes, 1976, p. 28. 19
Socialism and realism
The rift between realism and the romance poses a problem for socialism. The romance offers hope that a group of revolutionary heroes can change the world. However, this programme accepts violence and the recognition that conspiratorial socialism while having a moral goal lacks an ethical means to attain its goal. In contrast, the realist novel emphasises ethical practice but has no defined goal. The socialist that turned to the realist novel could have a platform of democratic reform but this expressed social interests not moral ideals. The consequences for socialism of this split between the romance and the realist novel can be attributed to alternative methods of attaining power. Democratic socialism favours the realist novel but conspiratorial socialism turns to the romance. The literary heritage of realist novel poses a problem for socialists. They can either try to enlist it as an ally against injustice or deem it as irrelevant for socialist ideology.
The most prominent attempt to appropriate realism for socialist purposes concerned the Hungarian Marxist philosopher Georg Lukács. Purporting to take his lead from Engels, Lukács presented literary realism as the most honest portrayal of the human personality consistent with the Hegelian idea of the totality of human relationships. 61 According to Lukács literary realism germinated from the same philosophical source as Marxism. The historical emergence and dominance of Western capitalism ensured that all human relations of that era are stamped with its effects. Socialism and realism as contemporary movements against injustice have the same assumptions built into them. Lukács believed that literary realism as the high point of bourgeois culture represented the most penetrating moral and social critique of that very culture. Likewise socialism was the most perceptive critique of society from the standpoint of politics and economics. In this way he drew a commonality of interests between realism and socialism.
Such a position runs counter to the influence of the realist novel on socialism. Marx may have condemned the romance in favour of realist literature but Lenin and the Bolsheviks favoured the utopian romances of Chernyshevsky. 62 Lukács gives priority to a socialist politics that favours revolutionary methods and therefore ignores the realist critique of such socialism. Lukács tries to present socialism and realism as two different aspects of the same movement. Socialism is the political aspect and realism the literary aspect. Orwell’s observation that few realists were socialists renders Lukács’ position of the two movements sharing a single origin implausible. The exception, Dostoyevsky, Lukács denigrates as misguided. 63 Lukács understands that the two movements share a motivation against injustice but he supplies an aesthetic to socialism from an opposing movement. Lukács supports revolutionary socialism that has a problematic relationship to literary realism. His position uniting the two movements cannot be substantiated. The problem of utopian
60 Jameson, Archaeologies of the Future, p. 27. 61 Georg Lukács, Studies In European Realism, A Sociological Survey of the Writings of Balzac, Stendhal, Zola, Tolstoy, Gorki and Others, London, Merlin, 1972, pp. 7-8. 62 Dimitri Volkogonov, Lenin, Life and Legacy, trans. Harold Shukman, London, HarperCollins, 1994, p. 18- 22. 63 George Lukács, ‘Dostoyevsky’ in Georg Lukács, Marxism and Human Liberation, San Juan, E (ed.), Delta, New York, 1973, pp. 179-185. 20 thought and how society should be structured remains in Lukács. Lukács from his early work to his last pronouncements on democracy never resolved this conflict between realism and socialism expressed as the difference between “is” and ‘ought’. 64
Those socialists who attacked the realist movement tried to place a moral flaw in realism’s claim to describe reality. However, they ignored the moral opposition between socialism and literary realism. The German playwright Bertold Brecht simply presented realism as a bourgeois art form. 65 He dismissed the realist critique of conspiratorial socialism by describing it as an aesthetic that had been superseded and supported the present order with all its faults. Contrary to Lukács, Brecht recognised that literary realism and socialism did not form parts of a single movement against capitalism. For Brecht they remained antagonistic. Brecht turned toward modernism to express his aesthetic and hoped to lead socialist literature with him. The actual socialist aesthetic based on the romance is ignored by Brecht as he believes modernism sprang to life from a new aesthetic untainted by traditional values. As Brecht’s argument presents modernism as a new movement removed from previous society and as such it contains the remains of the utopian appeal to a better future. His approach contains no analysis of the literary forms favoured by conspiratorial socialism and their relation to morality.
Conspiratorial socialism values the romance and fantasy literature as they limit discussion of socialist morality to future. The contentious issue of killing for a political cause is avoided. The supposed moral superiority of imaginative literature has gone as far as the claim that realism and the certainty it brought with it helped engender fascism. The German philosopher Theodor Adorno sought to present fascism as the logical result of a rational politics that collapsed into inhumanity. Politics and realism can no longer find a sincere reply to inhumanity. They only reproduce the factors of certainty that created this inhumanity in the first place. Only a non-realist art that can mock reality can subvert the attitudes of tyranny. 66 The attempt to describe reality was dishonoured by the growth of totalitarian regimes that appealed to reality. 67 Adorno fell back on supporting literature that had a detachment from reality and presented a world as it should be. Adorno returns to the idea that art forms like the romance and fantasy have a progressive essence.
Adorno does not address the concern of realism that the use of imaginative literature such as the romance justified political killing. The literary realists distanced themselves from such a position. Adorno excludes those literary forms that analyse contemporary society and replaced them with imaginative literature. This supposedly provided a better, more poetic understanding of society. However, Adorno looks to the literary forms that conspiratorial socialism favoured and continues with a similar criticism of realism. Adorno does not move outside of utopian thought and like the conspiratorial socialists turns to support from imaginative literature. The poetic literary forms of the utopian novel, heroic
64 I. Mészáros, Lukács’ Concept of Dialectic, With Biography, Bibliography and Documents, London, Merlin, 1972, pp. 9 and 41-45 and Georg Lukács, The Process of Democratisation, trans. Susanne Bernhardt and Norman Levine, New York, State University of New York Press, 1991, pp. 81. 65 Bertold Brecht, ‘Remarks On An Essay’ in Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, Bertold Brecht and Georg Lukács, Aesthetics and Politics, London, Verso, 1990, pp. 78. 66 Theodor Adorno, ‘Commitment’ in Adorno, Benjamin, Bloch, Brecht and Lukács, Aesthetics and Politics, London, Verso, 1990, pp. 184-188. 67 Adorno, ‘Commitment’, pp. 188-191. 21 fantasy and the romance were precisely the forms favoured by conspiratorial socialism in their claim to be able to transcend a common morality. Adorno turns the whole position of the antagonism of conspiratorial socialism and realism on its head to reach a historically unjustified conclusion. He misrepresents literary realism and its relationship to the authoritarian regimes that grew from conspiratorial socialism. There is a need to move beyond moral idealism and the claim that imaginative literature has superior moral values. This will give a clearer appreciation of the natures of romance and realist literature.
Realism and romance
The present study elucidates the differences between the romance and the realist novel. It thereby owes a debt to previous studies that attempted to explain this difference. A distinction existed between the realist novel and the romance since Cervantes and the picaresque novel. Don Quixote is scathing of previous romances. 68 The realist novel continues the tradition of rejecting the romance. Ian Watt’s influential work on the formation of the English novel describes realism as having similarities to contemporary empiricist scientific thought. For him the novel describes knowledge being gained by progressive revelation provided by the senses. Watt presented this knowledge as occurring on an individual basis like the empiricists, which thereby gave rise to an antagonism between older notions of objectivity and more modern ideas of subjectivity. 69 Watt, like the German sociologist Max Weber, argued that Protestantism provided the mechanism for an individualised morality that helped erode previous traditions. 70 He presumed that ideological movements such as Puritanism and the foundation of empirical science reflected the growth of a middle class and that the novel formed part of a similar movement. The creation of the novel represented the attempt to portray reality authentically.
Although Protestantism challenged traditional religion the present work shows that political forces that opposed to traditional moral values adopted the romance. Protestantism would not support the inversion of traditional values but it has no necessary link to realism. Further, Watt does not establish a link between Protestantism and realism beyond England and avoids the important role of Catholic and Orthodox authors such as Balzac and Dostoyevsky in the realist movement. Watt’s work does not help explain the antagonism between the realist novel and the romance. Watt cannot explain the substance of this difference but suggests that the realist novel provides a new way of looking at reality. However, the realists are following older ideas of Christian realism that celebrate what exists in God’s kingdom. 71 Those socialists who represented the greatest challenge to the old order often appealed to simple utilitarianism but turned to the romance. Socialists like Chernyshevsky who wrote socialist romances subordinated literary values to political
68 Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1950, p. 31. 69 Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel, Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding, Harmondsworth, Pelican, 1977, pp. 12-14. 70 Watt, Rise of the Novel, p. 200. 71 Theophilus, De Diuersis Artibus, trans. C. R. Dodwell, London, Thomas Nelson, 1961, pp. 60-64. 22 usefulness. 72 Chernyshevsky values science as the depiction of what exists but he expressed his ideas of how the world should be in the romance.
The literary realists would not agree with Watt that realism emerged from the middle class appreciation of empirical thought. Sue’s The Mysteries of Paris focuses on the actions of the well off and aristocracy. Thackeray targets the romance as an art form that fuels the aspirations of the middle classes in their desire to ape the nobility. 73 The choice of the romance as a literary form does not refer back to literary values or truth but on its ability to express social aspirations. The class divide of socialist romance is not that found in Watt. Rather, it is an attack on traditional values to express how different social forces wanted the future to be after the French Revolution. It is also a literary form that ignores the role of labour and production in the formation of a just society. The Russian realists such as Turgenev present the romance as the literary form of choice of the “superfluous people” outside of productive social classes.
In his significant critique of the orthodoxy established by Watt, McKeon in The Origins of the English Novel recognised Watt’s inability to demonstrate the domination of middle class thought and examined realism’s use of literary formulae found in romance works. 74 McKeon sees the two literary forms as emerging from the same material. To achieve this McKeon adopts a methodology that emphasises the role of ideology. The first claim of his method is to establish the existence of literary archetypes. He dismisses Watt’s claim that the realist novel attempted the authentic representation of reality in favour of representing literature as a discrete discipline with its own rules and methods. 75 For McKeon literature cannot represent objective reality, but rather by means of a series of traditional formulae, presents a continuous succession of credible stories that reflect the concerns of its readership. 76 However, McKeon builds on Watt rather than rejecting him by replacing Watt’s simple correlation between realism and the rising strength of the middle class and scientific empiricism with ideological motives. The writing of a novel becomes an exercise in the use of formulae or archetypes and not in description of the existing world. McKeon removes the ability to refer to truthful representation by the realists but does not tear down the romance’s claim to be able to reveal what should be.
McKeon described the novel as being founded during a period of disagreement over two distinct discourses over the nature of truth and the nature of morality. 77 The present work agrees with this method. However, McKeon believes that the production of romance fiction stemmed from an aristocratic viewpoint. In contrast, a simple empirical vision of the truth equates with the virtues of capitalism and finds its expression in the realist novel. Those works that confront the existing order such as satire, and presumably the utopian novel, challenge the novel and in turn negate questions of truth that supposedly support the status
72 Franco Venturi, Roots of Revolution, A History of the Populist and Socialist Movements in Nineteenth Century Russia, Revised Ed, trans. Francis Haskell, London, Phoenix Press, 2001, pp. 156-158. 73 William Makepeace Thackeray, Book of Snobs, St Lucia, University of Queensland Press, 1976, p. 65. 74 Michael McKeon, ‘Generic Transformation and Social Change: Rethinking the Rise of the Novel’ in Richard Kroll, The English Novel, 1700 to Fielding, London, Longman, 1998, pp. 28-29 and Michael, McKeon, Origins of the English Novel, 1600-1740, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987 pp. 282-283. 75 McKeon, The Origins of the English Novel, pp. 2-7. 76 McKeon, Origins of the English Novel, p. 7 and 21. 23 quo. The interplay between these literary forms and the ideological disputes behind them drive the development of the novel. 78 The origin of the novel becomes an exercise in the use of literary archetypes for the service of ideological forces largely unseen and unrecognised by those composing literature.
McKeon’s use of idea of ideology improves Watt’s argument. However, the antagonism of realism and romance involves more than two different literary forms sharing similar archetypes. It is true, as McKeon points, out that the two literary forms are arguments over truth and morality but there is no neat division between the romance and science. The difference between the two literary forms turns on the acceptance of traditional values with the realist novel or trying to impose moral ideals by the use of the romance. The romance supported change as it inverted traditional values. The substitution of popular values by an ethic of ‘reasons of state’ relied on the romance. The romance simply dismissed any appeal to feasibility or an external reality. For literary realism the idea that justice relates to human labour retained a connection with the natural world and an external reality. It may have been subject to ideological pressures but they never believed they could reveal ideals hidden from the external world.
McKeon’s analysis of the foundation of realism, while it does account for the importance of ideology, does not give realism any credit for its attempt to reach beyond ideology’s stranglehold on thought. Mannheim demonstrated the relationship between utopian thought and the expression of the will that encourages social intervention irregardless of consequences. As such utopian thought has an activist aspect that realism lacks. This is the attraction that combines utopian thought with the romance in socialist literature. Realism attempts to go beyond a particular social group’s interests. Realist literature rests on a claim that there are truths beyond social interests or ideology. The romance derives a morality from the attempt to establish the society that ought to exist. The realist agenda tries to explain the world as it is not as perceived by any particular social group. It is the effort to find truths and thereby the ability to hold universal moral values, which is beyond the ability of the romance as a literary form.
77 McKeon, Origins of the English Novel, p. 22. 78 McKeon, ‘Generic Transformation’, pp. 34-43. 24
Chapter 1. The Foundations of Socialist Romance
Eugène Sue
The most prominent figures in the formation of the socialist romance are the French authors Eugène Sue and Amandine-Aurre-Lucie Dupin better known by her pseudonym of George Sand. Both attracted a large following in the socialist movement especially in Russia. 1 Their romances helped shape a set of moral precepts that influenced the socialist movement and its reaction to the role of political violence. Sue presented the idea of the redeemed hero, who through his sacrifice could transcend traditional values and transform society. He drew on the heroic ethic from the romance to establish the doctrine of socialist redemption. This doctrine sought to establish that traditional values could be transgressed in the name of a common good if the transgressor willingly sacrificed himself for the benefit of humanity. In contrast, Sand presented universal love that would not countenance political killings as the underlying principle for the socialist movement. Mikhail Bakunin believed her emphasis on universal love as the basis of life provided the secular foundation for a belief in socialism. 2 She supplied the broad ranging universal morality that Sue lacked. Whereas Sue provided the heroic ethic for socialist action Sand appealed to universal principles that obliged everyone to behave in a manner that would provide a more just society. In spite of these differences they set the pattern for the use of the romance by the socialist movement.
The most important socialist romance in the process that incorporated the hero into socialism was Eugène Sue’s The Mysteries of Paris. This romance established the role of the hero and the inversion of traditional values. The romance novel established a means to divide people according to either heroic asceticism or universal utilitarianism. The romance novel of Sue combined the vision of the best of possible worlds from utopian thought with the idealisation of the self-sacrificing hero. However, when the ascetic hero accepted killing to create a morally superior world they stepped outside traditional moral grounds. The act of violence destroyed the hero’s claim to moral superiority. The romance itself could not supply any link to universal values. Utopian thought provided a vision of a better world for everyone and the satisfaction of material needs. Only by offering themselves as a sacrifice could the hero atone for their actions and remain in a moral framework. The conspiratorial socialist use of the romance needed to demonstrate that violence was unavoidable as the present was irredeemably evil and they took part in violence to benefit other, not themselves.
1 Franco Venturi, Roots of Revolution, A History of the Populist and Socialist Movements in Nineteenth Century Russia, 2nd Ed., London, Phoenix Press, 2001, p. 74. 2 Venturi, Roots of Revolution, p. 74. 25 The moral justification of violence through the doctrine of socialist redemption in Sue’s The Mysteries of Paris became important for the foundation of conspiratorial socialism. Semyon Frank found an irreconcilable split occurred in socialism between a private asceticism and the universal satisfaction of material needs. 3 There existed in socialism an individual self-denying ascetic ethic alongside a universal materialistic morality based on the fulfilment of want. Sue provided the self-appointed and self-sacrificing hero of the romance, who evolved into the revolutionary hero. This hero sacrificed all in order to transform society with no hope of personal gain. The revolutionary hero did not act according to fixed moral principles but from the need to bring a new and fairer society into being. Ascetic heroes did not hold universal values but operated according to their superior individual ability to recognise historical necessity. They presented themselves as operating outside of traditional morality through the realisation that society would not be improved without their ability to take the actions that others would not condone. Their sacrifice would bring about a better world. The conspiratorial socialist revolutionary operated according to a new moral code that stressed their duty toward humanity. Socialist asceticism may have required private sacrifice but this did not mean a retreat from engagement with the world or a renunciation of violence.
The other side of Frank’s division of society into the ascetic and utilitarian is that those who are not heroes are reduced to a position of merely fulfilling their material needs. They do not have a role in providing for political change. They do not have the knowledge of a better world that the heroes have. Under such a division of society there can be no universal ethic and revolutionary duty holds a superior moral position to the utilitarian way of life. This lack of knowledge and vision releases non-heroes from the duty to transgress traditional values. The romance hero removes most people from the political process. The doctrine of the redeemed hero does not appeal to democratic change.
Such a position was subject to criticism from both Sand’s version of the socialist romance and the realist novel. Sand provided a vision of humanity as essentially good but corrupted by society. Once those corrupting elements had been removed, such as the Catholic Church, people would be free to express universal love. However, the need to change society united Sand and Sue. Whereas Sand argued from the expression of a natural human instinct of love for change Sue’s romance hero acted from as the agent of historical progress. The use of the romance avoided any discussion of the efficacy of this change or the means to achieve a utopian society. The use of the romance to reject present society and to argue the case for socialism united both these authors.
The realist novel offered no support for the moral and social certainties that Sand and Sue offered. The realist novel attempted to portray society as it exists and the ethical problems that result from interaction with others. This precluded the use of the romance. The romance emphasises how the world ought to function. The heroic ethic borrowed from utopian thought the belief in the absolute worthlessness of existing society. In contrast, the realist novel challenged the certainties found in the socialist romance. The realist novel set
3 Semyon Frank, ‘The Ethic of Nihilism: A Characterisation of the Russian Intelligentsia’s Moral Outlook. In Landmarks, A Collection of Essays on the Russian Intelligentsia, 1909, trans. Martin Schwartz, New York, Karz Howard, 1977, p. 177. 26 out the challenges that face people in an existing society but does not condemn the present world as beyond redemption or in need of radical change. The challenge to the literary form of the romance came from the champions of realism in Karl Marx and Dostoyevsky. Both recognised the danger inherent to such an ideology and struggled against it. Ultimately both failed to prevent the spread of conspiratorial socialism, which demonstrates the strength of an ideology that could summon support from either the argument for a historically justified better society or a superior morality based on a literary form. Both of these arguments came from the premises of the socialist romance.
‘The Mysteries of Paris’
Its importance over a period of 50 years throughout the European socialist movement and the need for Marx to critique The Mysteries of Paris marks it as a fundamental text of conspiratorial socialism. In Russia socialist critics influenced by left-Hegelian thought from Vissarion Belinsky through to Mikhailovsky presented The Mysteries of Paris as the model of socialist fiction. 4 Marx set himself apart from other left-Hegelians by his deprecation of Eugène Sue’s Mysteries of Paris (1843) as an important and influential work of socialist literature. The first published collaborative work of Marx and Engels, The Holy Family, in 1844 took issue with the efforts of the left-Hegelians to venerate The Mysteries of Paris as the description of how a moral society should function. 5 The Mysteries of Paris significantly influenced the left-Hegelians before the 1848 revolutions and still provided the model for nihilist and anarchist literature after the death of Dostoyevsky in 1881. This popular work attained its success by blending the familiar literary form of the romance with utopian socialist programmes. It provided the justification of the heroic ethic based on an argument over the superior understanding and abilities of the revolutionary hero. The self- sacrificing ascetic hero protagonist of Sue’s work later develops into the image of the “new person”, Rakhmetov, in Nikolai Chernyshevsky’s utopian romance What Is To Be Done?
As with the other contemporary French romance writers Alexandre Dumas and Sand, Sue’s popularity has waned. However, at the time of The Mysteries of Paris Sue’s popularity outstripped that of the realist author Balzac. 6 Although Sue profoundly influenced socialism he did not regard himself as a socialist. Sue became a writer after he squandered his inheritance by a flamboyant and extravagant lifestyle. This change in circumstance led him to alter his former conservative views of a royalist to a supporter of the broad left. The loss of his fortune and the subsequent rejection by high society resulted in Sue looking amongst criminals and the poor for material. However, he did not mix with poor people and any respect Sue may have felt for the socialist movement stemmed from his outrage at his treatment by high society. 7 Sue may have adopted some facets of
4 V. G. Belinsky, ‘Letter to V. P. Botkin, March 1, 1841’ in Selected Philosophical Works, Moscow, Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1948, pp. 321 and 385-386 and Nikolai K. Mikhailovsky, Dostoyevsky: A Cruel Talent, trans. Spencer Cadmus, Ann Arbor, Ardis, 1978, p. 61. 5 Marx and Engels, ‘The Holy Family or Critique of Critical Criticism, Against Bruno Bauer and Company’ in K. Marx and F. Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 4, London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1975, pp. 69-77. 6 Graham Robb, Balzac, A Biography, London, Papermac, 1994, p. 422. 7 Hal Draper, Karl Marx’s Theory of Revolution, Part 1, State and Bureaucracy, New York, Monthly Review Press, 1977, p. 227. 27 socialist ideology but remained outside the socialist movement. This did not prevent the adoption of The Mysteries of Paris as a standard socialist text by conspiratorial socialists.
The plot of The Mysteries of Paris moves through numerous pages to reach a predictable romantic ending. The story starts with a young prostitute being accosted by a ruffian and being saved by a mysterious figure, Rodolphe, the hero of the novel. Through many adventures involving the criminal underworld the young woman, Fleur de Marie, is revealed as the lost daughter of Rodolphe, who in turn is revealed as a legitimate prince of a small German principality. Rodolphe lifts Marie out of moral and physical squalor before he recognises her as is his daughter, whom he presumed dead. As the stock figure of the virtuous prostitute Marie can calm even the angriest opponent by her penitential manner. This leads her to become a nun and eventually an abbess after restoration to society by her father. She suffers but remains virtuous and accepts her fate. Alongside this plot runs the activity of Rodolphe who represents morality in action. He is the product of his education by both the honest member of the English gentry, Murphy, and the duplicitous Polidari. Rodolphe is presented with either the path of righteousness from Murphy or self-centred greed from Polidari. Due to the influence of Polidari he attacks his father and marries a social climbing Scots woman. Realising the awfulness of his murderous ambition he tries to turn around not only his life but also that of others. Rodolphe accepts the need to redeem himself. He recognises he committed evil and as a result he sees a better way for the world to work. He believes it to be the duty of the rich not only to reward those that have led good lives but also to punish the wicked.
Sue introduces the ideas of the utopian socialists Charles Fourier and Robert Owen into the romance. Rodolphe runs a model farm that pays his workers four times the usual wage and provides double the usual board. Rodolphe employs workers on the basis of their respectability and hard work. In return the workers try harder and produce more than all the local farmers. 8 Another reform set up by Rodolphe is a bank for the poor. This bank is designed to borrow money at a time of unemployment to be repaid later with no interest. 9 This idea, the free credit bank, formed the major platform of the of later Bonapartist social reform programme influenced by the utopian socialist Claude Saint-Simon. 10 Rodolphe explains that such a bank not only rewards the poor through their own efforts but also increases the wealth of the rich by an increase in productivity.
Sue reveals one means to achieve a better world as the education of rich young people into works of morality and charity. Rodolphe considers the giving of charity and the doing of good works by rich women as not only edifying but also as a form of amusement for them. 11 The setting up of charitable institutions serves to further enrich the wealthy and bring pleasure to their lives as well as doing some good. Charity is no pure altruistic act as while it improves the lives of those in need it also benefits those who give the charity. Charity amuses and gives pleasure to those who give. Sue did not consider altruism, doing something for another without regard for gain, a sufficient reward. He does not describe a
8 Eugène Sue, Mysteries of Paris, London, George Routledge and Son, n. d., pp. 202-203. 9 Sue, Mysteries of Paris, pp. 666-669. 10 Hal Draper, Karl Marx’s Theory of Revolution, Volume IV, The Critique of Other Socialisms, New York, Monthly Review, 1990, pp. 5-6. 11 Sue, Mysteries of Paris, pp. 358-359. 28 Christian morality. It is utilitarianism and is based of the usefulness or pleasure of an action. Socialist asceticism and the heroic ethic do not rely on doing something as a good in itself but as serving a specific purpose. Sue’s idea of charity does not recognise a direct social responsibility to others but is based the idea of personal self-fulfilment. Like the heroic ethic it serves a higher purpose than providing immediate help. Charity is related to the development of the personality in the giver and the receiver. It is not part of a universal ethic of responsibility or compassion but the formation of a better society through the development of the individual.
Sue reveals how far he has moved from traditional morality when he deals with retributive justice. Although skilled in martial arts Rodolphe is nearly killed by the villainous criminal called “The Schoolmaster”. This criminal seeks to capture Fleur de Marie and hold her for ransom. He seems beyond redemption as he freely robs and murders for a living, relying on his great strength to defy the law. The “Schoolmaster” finally falls into the hands of the romance hero. Here Rodolphe puts into practice the other dimension of his moral teaching. In order to teach the “Schoolmaster” the error of what he has done and to enable him to gain redemption he has a doctor surgically blind him. 12 This is complementary to the role of Rodolphe as the charitable aristocrat who rewards his own criminal accomplice, “The Slasher”, with money and a job. “The Slasher” repents of his crimes and serves Rodolphe as a spy and bodyguard. However, the “Schoolmaster” is blinded and given a small amount of money on which to survive and think about his life. The plot ensures that the “Schoolmaster” has nightmares of his evil life which lead to his repentance and death but only after he has murdered his and Marie’s greatest tormentor, the procureress known as the “Screech Owl”. He is then left to rot in an asylum after going insane as a result of his wicked life. 13
Rodolphe’s morality has no limits. He could have handed over the “Schoolmaster” to the police, as a convicted murderer he would have been executed. However, Rodolphe considers blinding him as a morally superior means to lead him to repentance and the recognition of his evil life. It does not occur to Rodolphe that such an action might be illegal, immoral and unnatural. The act of redemption is more important than acting lawfully or according to the dictates of Enlightenment humanity. This is not Christian redemption. Redemption here is not the recognition of one’s common humanity but the transcendence of normal moral bounds. Rodolphe gains knowledge of the correct way to lead his life by repenting of his deeds and he seeks to lead the “Schoolmaster” along the same road. No appeal is made to a traditional moral code. Rodolphe’s morality is expressed either by utopian example or by the punishment of those that stand in the way. Sue’s romance does not require a moral means to attain a moral society as it is the expression of the romance’s inversion of values.
Rodolphe is the aristocratic hero of literary romance. He only varies from the others of his kind by dispensing justice without regard to legality while he regards himself as a paragon of morality. The disparity between his actions and his belief in his own righteousness could have become a plot in a psychological story of self-deception but this is beyond the scope
12 Sue, Mysteries of Paris, pp. 86-95. 13 Sue, Mysteries of Paris, pp. 534-539. 29 of Sue as a writer, the romantic novel or its socialist supporters. The conspiratorial socialist romance was not capable of criticising ideology. This is left to the realist novel such as Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment. Sue’s hero simply follows the path of the romance as a literary form with evil being punished and the triumph of good. The plot revolves around the display of the hero’s abilities and the justification of his actions by the narrative’s finale. Behind the socialist colour from Fourier lies the belief of the ends justifying the means and “reasons of state”. This ethic is only modified by the appeal to the need for redemption. A moral elite establishes itself on a notion of socialist redemption. The hero recognises his own fallibility, but by acting to found a better future society can be forgiven his transgression of a common morality. In Sue’s work socialist asceticism acquires an overtone of moral superiority.
It is important to recognise that Sue does not attempt any realistic portrayal of society. He concentrates on describing his moral message. The Mysteries of Paris owes its popularity to its easily recognisable romance plot with a social message. Like its ancient Greek ancestors it demonstrates the power of love triumphing over every manner of hardship and criminal activity. All the major positive figures are revealed to be of noble blood, even the fallen woman. The criminal world is merely a backdrop to the attempts of the hero to overcome circumstance and win back the heroine. In this case it is his daughter. In the ancient Greek models this was his true love. The idea of the virtuous prostitute or the good woman brought low by circumstance only to be rescued by the hero is a product of the romance. The earliest romances have the rescue of the fallen woman as a central theme.14 The Greek models also have the hero and fallen woman consorting with pirates and criminals. Sue’s most important innovation beside the introduction of socialist theory to the romance is to expand the role of romantic love from the physical love between a man and woman to the abstract love of humanity. Sue moved the idea of love from a concrete relationship between two people to an abstract feeling towards everyone. Even the “Schoolmaster” is blinded out of love of humanity and for his own good. The structure and themes are very close to the ancient romances but Sue inserts a social and moral message that the original romances lacked.
The poor in this novel are not those to be found in the descriptions of Engels or Mayhew. They are stock romance heroes and villains. However, to blandly dismiss this novel as just another ‘potboiler’ is to ignore its merits. It did introduce its readers to the workings of the criminal world. Likewise it did propose that many of these people suffered due to unfortunate circumstance and poor choices not because of genetics or moral failings. 15 Even Sue’s solution of providing proper paid work in healthy surroundings is positive. The major fault of the novel lies not only in its rambling form but also in its solemn moralising. It cannot be doubted that both Sue and the left-Hegelians believed that they wrote and acted in a manner that benefited humanity. There can be no doubting their sincerity. However, the role of Rodolphe as saviour, judge and executioner over people who have lost the power to live virtuous lives without his intervention both overrates the talents of Rodolphe and underrates ability of people to recognise their own faults. The power of the will to
14 See Chariton, Callirhoe, trans. G. P. Goold, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1995. This is the first romance from the second half of the first century B. C. 15 Draper, Karl Marx’s Theory of Revolution, Part 1, State and Bureaucracy, p. 227. 30 change society is presented as stronger than the ties of traditional values. Through the use of the romance morality becomes an exercise of the will and appeals to ideals not a set of social principles. Sue’s morality rests on dividing people according to the extremes of aristocratic virtue and the ignorant debasement of the majority of the population. The lived experience of these people held little significance compared to the high ideals of the romance hero.
The ‘Mysteries of Paris’ as a moral critique of society
A member of the left-Hegelians and associate of Bruno Bauer, Franz Zychlin von Zychlinski, under the pseudonym Szeliga, wrote an appreciation of Sue’s work in June 1844. 16 This article Eugen Sue: The Mysteries of Paris, A Critique marked the first major socialist work to deal with the moral aspects of this romance less than a year after its publication. Szeliga took this work as a serious attempt to illustrate socialist morality and began over forty years of socialist theorising about the combination of Fourier’s utopianism with romance literature. Szeliga writing in Bruno Bauer’s journal Allgemeine Literatur- Zeitung claimed that the world would be doomed to destruction unless people like Rodolphe reveal the mysteries of present society.
According to Szeliga Sue’s novel expressed an artistic unity by displaying not just the ills of the objective world but the actions by heroes like Rodolphe to turn those evils around. 17 Szeliga saw Rodolphe as having been open to both good and evil teaching as a young man. His attraction to self-indulgence led to his attempt on his father’s life. Szeliga presented Sue’s morality as an ascetic ethical duty to others as he acts without immoral self interest. Rodolphe’s repentance for his attempt to murder his father enables him to express a true love of humanity through recognition of his own imperfection. Socialist redemption forms the means to gain a superior morality. However, Szeliga explains that Rodolphe’s drive to punish evil and reward good is part of a world movement to achieve human perfection. The task of the socialist hero becomes the revelation of the evils that lurk in society and the destruction of the powers that create evil. 18 The self-appointed hero can see the mysteries that beset the world, a gift denied to other people. As Marx, remarked this put the educator on a plane not responsive to traditional morality. 19 The hero and others in society no longer share the same morality. Szeliga working from Sue, denies the possibility of a common morality binding on everyone. Rodolphe can freely transgress traditional morality by blinding the “Schoolmaster”. Szeliga presents this as a moral action.
The most important contribution of Szeliga to the socialist appreciation of the Mysteries of Paris concerns this idea that the redemptive hero has the power to attack the broad ills of society and is fully justified in the use of any means to accomplish this. The literary convention of the redemptive hero who seeks to destroy evil combined with utopian
16 Szeliga, ‘Eugen Sue: Die Geheimnisse von Paris, Kritik von Szeliga’, in Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung, Heft VII, June 1844, pp. 8-48. 17 Szeliga, ‘Eugen Sue: Die Geheimnisse von Paris’, pp. 30-31. 18 Szeliga, ‘Eugen Sue: Die Geheimnisse von Paris’, pp. 31-33 and 38. 19 Karl Marx, ‘Theses on Feuerbach’. In K. Marx and F. Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 5, London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1976, p. 4. 31 socialism becomes the mechanism for attaining a perfect society. Non-democratic forms of socialism used Sue to justify their claim to be able use violence to change society by virtue of their supposed greater insight and moral standing. They did not promote themselves as perfect but accepted the need to act immorally and sacrificed their own moral being in the name of humanity. They were killing for a better world.
The ability of Rodolphe to be able to undertake immoral actions in the name of a better world results from the division of people into heroes and the masses. The idea of being able to act immorally while claiming to hold superior values is the world of power elites. For Mannheim the division of morality resulted from the need for ruling classes to act in a different manner to others for “reasons of state”. It is based on the need to retain power and social stratification. It stands in conflict with democratic or universal forms of morality. The division of morality into those who follow “reasons of state” and those who rely on traditional morality represents the justification of ruling elites. 20 The lack of a democratic dimension to Szeliga’s thought leads him to support a morality of “reasons of state”. It is a return to a society where some undertake political action and others remain an inert mass. Rather than the establishment of a new world, this is a return to a heroic ethic from the past. It is the establishment of rule by a new set of rulers. It does not represent an escape from autocracy but the replacement of previous autocrats by ones who believe themselves to be acting morally in the name of humanity and from historical necessity in killing their opponents.
Szeliga drew attention to the two sources of conspiratorial socialist morality in The Mysteries of Paris. The form of the perfect society came from the socialism of Fourier but the mechanism for the enforcement of that society came from a literary source, Sue’s romance. This point is vital for the subsequent history of The Mysteries of Paris and the socialist movement. The connection of this work with conspiratorial socialism rested on the ability for a self-appointed hero to purge the world of evil without the intervention of the majority of the population. The ethical justification behind Fourier’s schemes relies on individuals being enabled to reach their fullest development. The planners of a utopian existence believed that it operates in the best interests of everyone. To look outside it or to reject it is to act contrary to humanity’s best interests. Anyone who disagrees with this point of view acts from either ignorance or misanthropy. The role of the hero is to punish those who disagree. The romantic novel provided the role of the puritanical hero that Fourier’s utopian thought lacked. Sue’s vision of the world comes from the literary form of the romance and its division of the world into the criminal and the aristocratic heroic. The very restricted world of Sue’s romance does not allow for any analysis of the external world but only the acceptance of this moral division of people.
Marx, Engels and ‘The Mysteries of Paris’
Marx’s and Engel’s attack on Szeliga sprang from differences in the left-Hegelians and their approach to the utopian socialists. Both the left-Hegelians and Marx shared a background
20 Karl Mannheim, ‘Rational and Irrational elements in Contemporary Society’ in K. Mannheim, Man and Society in an Age of Reconstruction, Studies in Modern Social Structure, Kegan Paul, Trench, Truber and Co., London, 1942, pp. 71-73. 32 in German philosophy, which subsequently affected their approach to both socialism and The Mysteries of Paris. Marx and the left-Hegelians were familiar with the major utopian theorist François Marie Charles Fourier, who had died seven years previous to the publication of the novel. Initially, Marx’s associate Frederick Engels freely acknowledged the influence of Fourier on him and sought to expand further knowledge of him in Germany.21 Engels’ split with the left-Hegelians came due to his appreciation of Fourier’s analysis of trade and its consequences whereas the left-Hegelians based themselves on Fourier’s moral arguments. Marx and Engels did not separate the individual from the rest of society. “Only in the community has each individual the means of cultivating his gifts in all direction; hence personal freedom becomes possible only in the community.” 22 This is a very different position from society being changed by the action of the individual will.
In August 1844 Marx and Engels attacked Szeliga unmercifully as part of a larger attack on Bruno Bauer. In The Holy Family Marx and Engels criticised Bauer for his attacks on democracy. According to Bauer and the left-Hegelians the masses were motivated by their selfish interests and not by principles. A socialist society would combine a universal asceticism based on principles elucidated by enlightened intellectuals. For Bauer and the left-Hegelians the active mechanism of historical change relies on the philosopher/artists that could recognise the abstract principles that formulate a better society in contrast to the selfish desires of the mass of people. The left-Hegelians could not suggest a means for people to express their own self-determination. In fact self-determination proved an anathema to them. Marx and Engels opposed this by their support for the self- emancipation of working people through their own actions and political formations. This meant socialist involvement in democratic processes.
For Bauer the demands of the masses must be avoided so as not to contaminate the fundamental idea that elites are the motor of history. 23 In contrast, Marx and Engels explained through their analysis of the working class how the future will change. 24 The two sides of the argument came down to a distinction over how change could be achieved in a period of revolution. Either idealistic heroes would lead the people on the basis of ideals or a democratic movement would triumph. Socialism divided into the small conspiratorial groups appealing to moral certitude and democratic parties aiming at immediate gains. Marx and Engels asserted that socialism should take the latter path.
Marx and Engels in their attack on Szeliga point out that Sue had not written an original artistic work dealing with morality but had incorporated a simplified version of Fourier into a romance. Sue reduced the world to the concerns of the criminal versus the aristocrat and he lacked Fourier’s attack upon the injustice of trade. This resulted in Sue’s supposedly new morality having more to do with idealistic claims to represent a perfect morality than any representation of reality. Marx took each of Rodolphe’s plans for a better future, such as the model farm, and demonstrated that they could not financially exist outside of the
21 Frederick Engels, ‘A Fragment of Fourier’s on Trade’ in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 4, London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1975, pp. 614-616. 22 Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, ‘The German Ideology’ in Marx and Engels, Collected Works, Volume 5, 1845-1847, London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1976, p. 78. 23 David McLellan, Karl Marx, His Life and Thoughts, London, Macmillan, 1973, p. 134. 24 McLellan, Karl Marx, p. 134-135. 33 pockets of a rich individual who gained his money from others in the first place. Most importantly, Marx and Engels took exception to Rodolphe’s blinding of the “Schoolmaster”. Whereas Sue describes this act as the means to provide for the “Schoolmaster's" redemption Marx and Engels describe it as cruel and illegal. The actions of Rodolphe are those of a petty tyrant who exercises his brand of morality on others by virtue of his wealth. They take issue with the idea that Rodolphe could have a greater world-view than others due to remorse over his attack on his father. The most telling point that Marx and Engels make is that like most of the left-Hegelians, such as Szeliga and Bauer, Rodolphe is far more interested in punishing the faults of others than in being able to recognise his own failures. 25 The idea of socialist redemption can only exist where there is no self-critical awareness.
Marx and Engels noted that the ideological drive behind Sue and Szeliga closely resembled that of the Young England movement. 26 This movement according to Engels represented the feudal opposition to capitalism and sought a return to an idealised medieval past. They included such diverse figures as Disraeli and the “…half-German Englishman” the Scottish feudal socialist Thomas Carlyle. 27 Before the 1848 revolutions Marx and Engels had noted the conditions that gave rise to the combination of the romantic novel and a social utopia that incorporated the feudal system. Wagner and Morris’ heroic fantasies result from this mixture. The ideas that Sue and Szeliga bring together are the vision of a perfectible society, an antiquarian or mythological regard for the past, the use of the romance and the worship of the heroic leader whose will purges the present of its ills. Marx and Engels noted that these ideas are connected to reactionary forces with socialism. Marx and Engels recognised this in socialism itself before the outbreak of revolutions in Europe and before the development of individual terrorism by Russian socialists. They exposed a tendency for political elites to justify political violence for their own benefit in The Mysteries of Paris.
Marx and Engels directed their attack upon Szeliga as he represented the most blatant form of idealism in contemporary socialism. Szeliga’s sincerity led him to state what other left-Hegelians would prefer to avoid. For Marx and Engels, Szeliga demonstrated the idealistic form of this argument while others tried to stress their underlying humanity. 28 The recognition of moral ideals does not equate with acting humanely. Rodolphe and the conspiratorial socialists demonstrate that acting from ideals can lead to unpleasant outcomes for those subject to their power. Marx and Engels countered the idea of society operating on the basis of true love by stating that it cannot be supported by logical argument. It is pure speculation and has no more validity than a statement such as the world is run on the basis of pure evil. Against this Marx and Engels set up the alternative of materialism. The effort to produce one’s material existence raises people above the level of a beast and also gives them a social being. This social being is not reliant on the idea of universal love. The specific morality of any time period relates to the way in which people create their
25 Marx and Engels, ‘Holy Family’, pp. 192-209. 26 Marx and Engels, ‘Holy Family’, p. 205. 27 Frederick Engels, ‘The Condition of the Working–Class in England’ in K. Marx and F. Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 4, London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1975, p. 578. 28 Karl Marx, Writings of the Young Marx on Philosophy and Society, ed. and trans. Loyd D. Easton and Kurt H. Guddat, New York, Anchor, 1967, pp. 373-374. 34 material existence. 29 The differences between the two positions look back to the differences between Hesiod’s Golden Age and Plato’s Republic. Marx’s view ensures that morality is concrete and not abstract and ideal. Marx and Engels contradicted the idea that Szeliga and Sue’s morality was based on a love of humanity. Marx and Engels objected to idealism on the basis of a concrete and materialist conception of history. The idealist morality put forward by Sue and his supporters collapsed as the use of violence to reform society cannot be justified on moral grounds. Marx and Engels looked for support from empirical evidence and how to improve matters for the majority of the population. In contrast, the idealists such as Szeliga turned toward demonstrating how society ‘ought’ to be.
The Holy Family has been poorly dealt with in the critical writing on Marx. One of the few to study the work in conjunction with The Mysteries of Paris has been the American Marxist Hal Draper. He sums up the romance in this way. “The point is this: not only is Les Mystères de Paris a prime example in world literature of glorification of the Social Saviour from Above, but is one of the most revolting examples of that genre.” 30 He realised that the book has serious shortcomings as literature, it did not present a realistic portrayal of people’s lives and promoted an unpleasant morality. Draper gives Marx his due in drawing attention to this from his earliest work. Draper recognises that this moral view expanded from this source into other violent political movements. 31
Marx and Engels were not alone in their attacks on Bauer and Szeliga’s moral constructions. Max Stirner, a fellow left-Hegelian and founder of philosophical anarchism, took the individualistic moral argument to its furthest extension. Stirner believed that once God is dismissed as the foundation of morality all that is left is reference to individual desire. 32 However, this subverted the idea of socialist redemption as any action according to Stirner stems from personal gain. For Stirner the idea of the ascetic hero sacrificing himself for humanity becomes nonsense. Sue tries to rescue the doctrine of the redeemed hero by reference to a duty to humanity. The self-realisation of the individual in Sue’s Rodolphe became a part of the moral development of a person who then acts from a superior morality. In contrast, Marx and Engels understood that politics did not involve an appeal to eternal and universal principles and the individual but referred to an external reality and to the demands of the majority of people. Stirner rejected all these positions as for him there is no broad category of humanity only a collection of individuals with their own desires. Conspiratorial socialism positioned itself outside of Marx’s and Engel’s democratic movements and Stirner’s moral relativism. They relied on the utopian vision of the future in The Mysteries of Paris to provide a moral basis for this form of socialism.
Left-Hegelianism and Sue
From Szeliga through Marx to later Russian socialists, Sue’s work connected socialist utopian thought and conspiratorial socialism with the romance. Even after 1884 the nihilist
29 Marx, Writings on Philosophy and Society, pp. 409 and 425. 30 Draper, Karl Marx’s Theory of Revolution, Part 1, State and Bureaucracy, p. 227. 31 Draper, Karl Marx’s Theory of Revolution, Part 1, State and Bureaucracy, p. 232. 32 Max Stirner, The Ego and Its Own, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 55-56. 35 journalist Nikolai Mikhailovsky continued to praise Sue’s work. Mikhailovsky recognised the influence of Fourier’s teachings in the passages where Rodolphe finds people work that fit their psychological nature, such as the “Slasher” as a butcher. 33 Sue’s romance presented Fourier’s utopian socialist in a popular form. This explains the long popularity of this novel in Russia. Here utopian ideas clung to the radical movement long after more democratic forms of socialism had emerged in the rest of Europe. It is significant that Dostoyevsky railed against Fourier’s brand of socialism even after the birth of successful democratic socialism with the German Socialist Party. 34
The other influence of The Mysteries of Paris on the Russian socialist movement lay in the work’s justification of violence. As Mannheim noted, utopianism retained an authoritarian attitude to the implementation of a socialist society. 35 This may not have resulted in utopians, such as Fourier, supporting the violent transformation of society, but the romance linked the two lines of thought. Later conspiratorial socialists accepted the need for violence to create a new society. Mikhailovsky, who held this romance up as a model of socialist literature is described by the literary critic Marina Kanevskaya, as a “whole-hearted supporter of revolutionary terrorism”. 36 The attack on literary realism by conspiratorial socialism took the elements of justified violence and the appeal to a perfect world from Sue’s romance and applied it to support for political terrorism. The limitations literary realism placed on murder and its scorn of a utopian society placed it outside the scope of conspiratorial objectives.
The Russian conspiratorial socialists openly espoused terrorism. They developed this position from the same sources as Szeliga, The Mysteries of Paris and Left-Hegelianism. The left-Hegelians had a specific impact on the development of socialism, especially in Germany and Russia. The left-Hegelians introduced the German classical philosopher G. W. F. Hegel into socialism. They took Hegel’s underlying appeal to rationality and created an ideology of progress where traditional elements of society if not rational or progressing a purpose in history should be swept away. Feudal autocracy represented the past and held little hope for the future as such it was an obstacle for the achievement of a more modern and better society. Hegel’s philosophy introduced the hero as someone who challenged society and introduced new institutions not by democratic change or gradual evolution but by the use of non-traditional moral means. In the past heroes, by following their own will and without reference to popular demands, were the motor of historical development. 37 As Hegel put it “A mighty figure must trample many an innocent flower underfoot, and destroy much that lies in its path.” 38 The left-Hegelians popularised these ideas amongst the socialist movement.
33 Nikolai K. Mikhailovsky, Dostoyevsky: A Cruel Talent, trans. Spencer Cadmus, Ann Arbor, Ardis, 1978, p. 61. 34 Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment, trans. Julius Katzer, Moscow, Raduga Publishers, 1985, pp. 386-389. 35 Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia, An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge, London, Routledge, 1991, p. 36. 36 Marina Kanevskaya, N. K. Mikhailovsky’s Criticism of Dostoyevsky: The Cruel Critic, New York, Edwin Mellen Press, 2001, p. 9. 37 Allen W. Wood, Hegel’s Ethical Thought, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991, pp. 115-16. 38 Wood, Hegel’s Ethical Thought, pp. 226-227. 36 Hegel dissociated himself from contemporary acts of terrorism and the justification of the heroic outside of ethical boundaries. 39 However, the proponents of The Mysteries of Paris developed the idea of socialist redemption from this work to overcome the ethical problems associated with terrorism. The revolutionary hero recognised the moral wrong committed by killing someone but did not seek to gain any personal advantage by the murder. The hero even offered themselves up as a sacrifice for a deed done in the name of humanity and historical necessity. The transition to a modern society required the destruction of autocracy. Monarchies had to be removed in order for a better society to prosper and achieve a better life for all. To turn ones back on this historical need is cowardice. The Mysteries of Paris shows the ascetic hero rejecting wealth and power in order to progress society. Rodolphe transcends traditional morality as he atones for his actions through the sacrifice of all he possesses.
In Russia this greatly influenced socialist activists. Herzen recognised that Hegel’s phrase “all that is real is rational” undercut any claim by autocracy to represent the church and the state. Herzen considered Hegel and the anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, himself influenced by Hegel, to be the required reading for a radical. “I think that a man who has not lived through Hegel’s Phenomenology and Proudhon’s Contradictions of Political Economy, who has not passed through that furnace and been tempered by it, is not complete, not modern.” 40 Herzen placed Hegel alongside Proudhon, the most popular socialist writer of the time, as vital to understanding socialism. Herzen combines Proudhon’s moral critique of contemporary society with Hegel’s belief in historical progress to form the idea that an autocracy formed a moral anachronism by its very existence.
Left-Hegelian thought attached a simple moral condemnation to their critique of contemporary society. They argued that autocracies are not evil because of any specific action they have committed, but because they represent a stagnant past in need of removal. Like the argument of tyrannicide an autocracy has to be destroyed because of its nature, even if it is benevolent in its actions. This removes any discussion of the efficacy of removing an autocracy as any move to destroy it progresses the movement of history. Such an argument also removes any appeal to moderation or co-operation with other social movements. Most importantly for left-Hegelian support for the romance such an argument removes any appeal to restraint. Autocracy and feudalism are bad by definition not because of their actions. Therefore to oppose them is a good in itself and does not require measurement against a personal ethic. To kill in order to advance a social need becomes a duty that can be justified as acting on behalf of a greater good if the murderer does not directly gain from the action. Conspiratorial socialism accepted this replacement of traditional and personal morality with an appeal to a communal ethic. Left-Hegelianism created the ability of conspiratorial socialism to transcend personal ethics. It inverted the idea that it was wrong to kill and supported violence as a regrettable but necessary act.
39 Charles Taylor, Hegel, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1988, pp. 421 and 423 and Wood, Hegel’s Ethical Thought, pp. 178-186. 40 Alexander Herzen, My Past and Thoughts, The Memoirs of Alexander Herzen, Volume II, London, Chatto and Windus, 1986, pp. 400-402. 37 Those like the anarchist Bakunin steeped in Hegelian philosophy drew his lessons from this. 41 He preached that “The passion for destruction is a creative passion.” 42
Left-Hegelianism expressed disgust for democracy, exalted the role of the hero, and believed they held superior knowledge to others. This encouraged the idea that a dictatorship should direct society to create a better world. The lack of a personal ethic left open the ability to perform any action on matter how ill-advised, unpopular or unsavoury. An action became measured by the idea of social progress. As the realist novel generally supported traditional values and a personal ethic it held little appeal to left-Hegelians. The romance transcended the bounds of everyday life, traditional morality and responsibility to family. The idea of acting out of love rather than tradition from the romance accounted for more in left-Hegelianism than aesthetic considerations. The expression of love found in the romance became equated with acting out of love for humanity surpassing moral sanctions that would hinder progress. The expression of love in the romance became the vision of humanity beyond law or social duties. The individual takes on the role of ushering in a new society devoid of any social constrain and based on a belief in superior knowledge.
Although such arguments make a token gesture to the idea of liberty this is not to be taken as the expression of everyone to share in personal liberty. Bakunin makes it clear that this liberty is the liberty of the chosen few to transcend traditional ethics. 43 Bakunin did not support democratic involvement of people in political processes. He saw the need for a dictatorship in order to teach others the correct path for society and the need for a conflagration of present society. This was not freedom from interference by others found in liberalism but the freedom to development one’s own personality free from social constraints. 44 Personal development took priority over the need not to interfere in the lives of others. Love from the romance did not deal with the liberty to practise one’s own beliefs free from autocratic interference but a means to become a fully developed human. The love from the romance becomes the means to dictate how people should develop not allowing people to make the decision themselves. It is a very limited vision of liberty and not one trusted to the majority of people.
The romance represents the triumph of the will as motivated by love. Mikhailovsky recognised that Sue follows Fourier’s moral arguments by dividing different positions in society according to different psychological types. Sue takes the ideas of Fourier and installs them in the form of the romance. Sue combines the idea of the hero being able to transcend social norms and the establishment of a rational society in the future in the form of the romance. He combines those ideas from German classical philosophy with socialist utopianism and casts it in the literary form that can sustain such a mixture. The romance by a lack of reference to an external reality supports this position without reference to its lack of appeal to most people.
41 Shlomo Barer, The Doctors of Revolution, Nineteenth Century Thinkers Who Changed the World, London, Thames and Hudson, 2000, pp. 606-608 and 772. 42 Mikhail Bakunin, The Confession of Mikhail Bakunin, With Marginal Comments of Tsar Nicholas I, trans. Robert C. Howes, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1977, p. 102. 43 Barer, Doctors of Revolution, pp. 773-774. 44 Bakunin, Confession, pp. 92, 147-148. 38
Sue and conspiratorial socialism
Sue’s romance continued to hold importance for the conspiratorial socialism movement after Szeliga. Alongside the German left-Hegelians the Russian radicals also adopted similar premises from Hegel. Herzen relates that in the 1840’s Hegel was hotly discussed by Russian radicals and they sought out the literature from the left-Hegelians. 45 The radical literary critic Vissarion Belinsky followed the left-Hegelians in stressing the importance of the subjective individual. In agreement with the left-Hegelians he found that “… the fate of a subject, an individual, a personality is more important than the fate of the world…” 46 This led to the conclusion that the development of the world changing hero was the most important factor in history. Belinsky favoured Sue’s The Mysteries of Paris over the works of Balzac and Dostoyevsky. 47 Belinsky found in contrast to these authors The Mysteries of Paris had a “genuine and noble” message. He wrote that “The author wished to present a depraved and egoistical society worshipping the golden calf; the spectacle of suffering of wretched people doomed to ignorance and poverty: to vice and crime.” 48 The personal development of the hero would lead to transformation of society.
According to Belinsky society was immoral and only supported the ignorance and poverty of most people whereas the rich grew richer. There was the need for “Friends of the People” to join with the people to change society. 49 Belinsky tried to integrate The Mysteries of Paris into the revolution of 1830. According to Belinsky the novel reflects the disillusionment of the working classes in parliamentary democracy, which provided nothing to them. French laws only upheld inequality and poverty. The institutions of the law, traditional morality and parliamentary democracy only served to reinforce the power of the rich. The working classes needed to turn to crime in order to support themselves and their families. They transgressed traditional morality and entered the world depicted in The Mysteries of Paris. 50 Society caused people to act against their better nature and personal ethics by simply trying to provide for their families. Modern society caused people to act immorally. This required the destruction of present society in order to found a moral society. Belinsky described the inequalities of capitalist and aristocratic society in moral terms. The destruction of contemporary society, even if it took immoral means, could be presented as an ethically justified position if the perpetrators acted without regard to personal gain. The hero also became a person with superior knowledge and bravery to tackle the state. The hero’s involvement in such schemes developed him into a higher level of being. This is the basis of Chernyshevsky’s vision of “New People” discussed later.
The Mysteries of Paris may have had the structure of a romance but according to Belinsky it accurately depicted society after the 1830 revolution. This overlooks the problem
45 Alexander Herzen, ‘Young Moscow’ in Selected Philosophical Works, Honolulu, University of Hawaii, 2003, pp. 516-519. 46 V. G. Belinsky, ‘Letter to V. P. Botkin, March 1, 1841’ in Selected Philosophical Works, Moscow, Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1948, p. 150. 47 Belinsky, Selected Philosophical Works, pp. 321 and 385-386. 48 V. G. Belinsky, ‘Les Mystères de Paris’ in Selected Philosophical Works, Moscow, Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1948, p. 323. 49 Belinsky, ‘Mystères de Paris’, p. 327. 50 Belinsky, ‘Mystères de Paris’ pp. 324-326. 39 identified by Mannheim namely that utopian thought cannot accurately depict or examine society. 51 Belinsky specifically associated this novel with the need for revolution combined with the role of the hero to transcended traditional morality. For Belinsky the truthfulness of the description did not relate to how closely this description mirrored French society but on how it revealed a moral ideal. His moral ideals resulted from an assessment of the inequality in society and he condemned any society that did not match his ideals. The accurate depiction of the realists, such as Balzac, could only be of transient interest, whereas the elaboration of eternal ideals held a truth beyond the present. Such reasoning left little room for the realist novel but gave the romance immense scope. Belinsky gave the romance a mystical role of revealing a morality beyond that apparent to most people. The socialist critic Mikhailovsky later adopted this position and support for The Mysteries of Paris from Belinsky in his critique of Dostoyevsky. 52
Revolutionary socialists continued to follow Belinsky’s arguments and stressed the importance of The Mysteries of Paris in contrast to literary realism even into the 1930’s. Conspiratorial socialists could not grasp the essential critique of Sue by the literary realists and Marx. As the romance rejects any appeal to reality and popular demands it remains fully in the realms of ideology. To simply relegate the literary realist moral critique of The Mysteries of Paris to a position of a competing ideology avoids questioning the relationship of literature to reality and morality. With this approach all literature becomes a form of the romance. The prominent Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci attempted to assert that Dostoyevsky wrote adventure stories comparable to Sue. 53 He avoids the basis of the moral differences between the two literary forms. According to his approach there can be no independent literary values only expressions of underlying ideology. Gramsci presents Sue as writing “sensational” works and Dostoyevsky’s realist critique of conspiratorial socialism becomes an alternative “lyrical” form of romance. The moral argument between literary realism and conspiratorial socialism take on rival ideological positions from opposed social groups. The effort to prevent political inspired killings is an ideologically driven position with no greater validity than the ideology of the conspiratorial socialists. There are no values outside of ideology and even murder can be justified on ideological grounds. Gramsci’s argument condones killing for a political purpose and supports the idea that the revolutionary hero can escape the bounds of moral behaviour. This position cultivates heroic adventurism and attempts to nullify the realist criticism of political violence.
Democratic forms of socialism were not attracted to the romance. Marx and Engels did not support the romance but the realist novel. They held a very low opinion of Sue and his work. Engels regarded Balzac and Cervantes as the most significant authors in literature.54 Cervantes and Sue’s near contemporary realist author, Balzac represent the critique of the romance in favour of the attempt to describe society more accurately. The forces in socialism that relied on an analysis of society to understand the formation of social classes and democratic politics turned to the realist literary tradition. As is shown by The Holy
51 Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia, p. 36. 52 James H. Billington, Mikhailovsky and Russian Populism, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1958, p. 177. 53 Antonio Gramsci, ‘Cultural Derivatives of the Serial Novel’ in Selections from the Cultural Writings, trans. William Boelhower, London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1985, pp. 374-375. 54 Frederick Engels, ‘To Gabriel Deville, London, 27 April, 1888’ in K. Marx and F. Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 48, London, Lawrence and Wishart, 2001, p. 180. 40 Family the rejection of the romance sprang from the need to allow people to determine their own lives and not have a social system enforced on them. The realist novel does not offer a transcendence of socially accepted morality. The realist novel did not elucidate a heroic ethic but dealt with a common and inclusive idea of ethical behaviour.
Sue’s romance is a vehicle for these ideas to foster revolutionary action. The association of Sue with libertarian socialism continued with the anarchist aristocrat Pytor Kropotkin. His memoir from 1899 details how with his arrest he tried to write a novel using Sue’s work as a model. 55 Sue’s novel expressed ideas dear to the conspiratorial socialist movement and it was still seen as a model for socialist literature fifty years after its publication. Even with its faults it is one of the most influential works of fiction from the nineteenth century. It also marks the complete rejection of the Russian nineteenth century literature by the Russian conspiratorial socialists. Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Leskov and Turgenev were held in distain by conspiratorial socialism in favour of a style of romance that is now virtually ignored. These socialists drew from Sue a vision of the future to which artistic merit, truthfulness of representation and popular appeal were subordinated to a particular moral ideal drawn from the literary romance. For the conspiratorial socialists Sue represented a challenge to realism on the basis of a superior moral vision. They also lacked any aesthetic appreciation of literature that did not serve a specific and current purpose. For the conspiratorial socialists literature had a utilitarian purpose and so became subordinated to present needs. There could be no independent literature.
In contrast, the English realist novelist George Eliot recognised that the realist literary position did not convey any overt political aspirations. Realism did not see people as perfectible. It therefore accepted that many decisions made in the world are wrong. People should not be divided on the basis of class, belief or knowledge as any morality has to be not only universally applicable but also modified by historical circumstance. People are placed in a particular circumstance that an accepted morality has to come to terms with. Any political change would be due to the application of ideas such as justice and liberty not wholesale social change. 56 The circumstances of place and time continually modify any universal appeal to a moral ideal. The ideal world of the romance is beyond the physical constraints of time and place, let alone popular demands. Sue’s moral ideals divide the world into criminals and the aristocratic hero. No such world exists and while flawed Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment presents a more plausible alternate. While not necessarily free itself from ideological underpinnings, realism recognises historical circumstance to a greater extent than conspiratorial socialism or romance. It concerned itself with contextualising the present not setting the present in conflict with the eternal categories of ideal behaviour. This only serves to denigrate the present in favour of a future that can never be attained. This difference in basic outlook required different literary forms. The conspiratorial socialists turned to the romance as it could incorporate utopian thought and the heroic ethic. The Mysteries of Paris provided the basis for this position. Whereas those socialists, such as Marx and Engels, that looked toward more democratic political involvement turned towards the realist novel.
55 Peter Kropotkin, Memoirs of a Revolutionist, London, Cresset, 1988, p. 324. 56 George Eliot, ‘Address to Working Men, by Felix Holt’, in Rosemary Ashton (ed.), Selected Critical Writings, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1999, pp. 338-354. 41
Chapter 2. George Sand
Universal love
George Sand provides the socialist romance with an ethic of universal morality that the doctrine of the revolutionary hero lacked. Sand’s emphasis on the idea of universal political love encompassed everyone in a single morality. However, as Semyon Frank indicated, this involved not just the principle of the greatest good for the majority of people but the fair distribution of goods. 1 Such a position posed a problem for the doctrine of the redeemed hero as it is about fulfilment of immediate needs and not about historical necessity or the realisation of moral principles. It is not the creation of a perfect moral society. A division exists in conspiratorial socialism between a heroic ethic of the few that seeks to put in place a utopian programme and the masses pictured as grasping as much material wealth as possible. In contrast, Sand’s romances attempt to avoid the division of humanity in two. The heroic ethic from the romance depends on the hero attaining a superior knowledge and different moral standards to the rest of society. The hero has no interest in democracy or gaining material benefits for the rest of the population. They are fighting to install a world in line with ideal principles. Frank sees attempt to combine socialist ascetic behaviour with the satisfaction of material needs as unstable. Sand’s romances offer the means to avoid this instability.
Sand wrote socialist romances that emphasised the role of love in tearing down obsolete social conventions. She did not justify the use of violence to attain a better society. Her romances placed greater reliance on ideals such as universal love. Sand’s romances emphasised the expression of this love between two people rather than addressing the practical means to change the basic composition of society. This is a different moral order to those addressed by Sue and the conspiratorial socialists. For Sand the universal principle of love guided both personal and political actions. Sue and the conspiratorial socialists believed that personal and political actions should be guided by the goal of reorganising society and the development of the individual. Sand attempted to moderate political excess by attaching political action to a common humanity. Political action in Sand resulted from compassion for others. As such it is alien to an ethic of the ends justifying the means. Sand subordinated political ethics to a traditional personal morality such as would apply in the family. In contrast, the conspiratorial socialist vision of the romance looked toward the hero transcending contemporary moral constraints in the name of historical need. The conspiratorial socialist interpretation of Sue concentrated on exceptional people, who acted as the agents of historical change. The two socialist approaches to the romance clashed on their moral outlook and the proposed political actions.
1 Semyon Frank, ‘The Ethic of Nihilism: A Characterization of the Russian Intelligentsia’s Moral Outlook’, in N. Berdyaev, S, Bulgakov, M Gershenzon, A, Izgoev, B, Kisyakovsky, P. Struve and S. Frank, in Landmarks, A Collection of Essays on the Russian Intelligentsia-1909, trans, Marian Schwartz, New York, Karz Howard, 1977, p. 177. 42 The revolutionary hero served the unfolding requirements of a historical process not the immediate needs of the existing society. The question of the use of violence to assist revolutionary change posed a major ethical problem during Sand’s involvement with the 1848 revolution in France. Sand wanted no part in any violence. However, after the 1848 revolutions a section of the socialist movement envisioned the authoritarian imposition of socialism. The German socialist Karl Heinzen advocated the killing of about 2-3 million people in order to achieve socialism. 2 The problem existed that if enticing people to change society failed, the use of force against those preventing the creation of a socialist society became an alternative. The romance hero owed a duty to establish a principled society not people’s well being. This meant that the people who undertook the role of heroic liberators would not be bound by a common morality that forbade murder. Sand’s universal love placed limits on revolutionary activity. Sue demonstrated that the romance as a literary form encompassed the promotion of violence. Sand wanted no part in this.
This secular ethic appealed to a wide variety of people. Although personally hostile to realism, Sand influenced many important nineteenth century authors including George Eliot and Matthew Arnold and Dostoyevsky. Although Dostoyevsky held an early infatuation with Fourierism he later became extremely hostile to any form of socialist utopia. He recognised a disparity between utopian socialist professions of universal love and actions to bring such a society into being. At first it would seem that Dostoyevsky and Sand would be drawn to each other by a common interest in a universal ethic. However, two points prevented this, Dostoyevsky’s support of traditional Christian values as against Sand’s atheism and Dostoyevsky’s endorsement of literary realism. For Dostoyevsky, Sand was to be commended for moderating the excesses of the conspiratorial socialism. 3
The use of a universal ethic does not translate into the use of the realist novel. Sand holds particular importance for the socialist romance by incorporating a belief in universal love independent of Christian doctrines and conventional values. She represents a position between the positions of Sue and the literary realists. However, she remained an active socialist and openly hostile to realism as a literary form. Her vision of universal love stemmed from Rousseau and an antagonism to Christianity. Likewise, her rejection of the realist novel sought to reinforce the message of an atheist universal morality. She specifically rejected the Christian morality of Balzac. In conversation with Balzac she recalled saying to him, “In short, you wish to, and know how to, depict man as you see him. Very well! As for me, I feel inclined to depict him as I wish he should be, as I think he ought to be.” 4 Sand looks to a society governed by moral principles. Whereas the conspiratorial socialists attempted to forge a future that corresponded to historical necessity Sand proposed this future to be based on a love that transcended convention. Sand presents an idealistic morality as much as the left=Hegelians. Rather than emphasising the hero Sand turned to the idea contained in the romance that an all powerful love can overcome any obstacle.
2 Alexander Herzen, My Past and Thoughts, The Memoirs of Alexander Herzen, ed. Dwight Macdonald, London, Chatto and Windus, 1974, pp. 360-361. 3 Fyodor Dostoyevsky, A Writer’s Diary, Volume 1-1873-1876, trans. Kenneth Lantz, Evanston, Northwestern University Press, 1997, pp. 508-510. 4 George Sand, ‘Preface to The Journeyman-Carpenter, 1840’ in In Her Own Words, trans. Joseph Barry, London, Quartet, 1979, p. 263. 43
The romance and the realist novel
Sand wrote to promote a cause. For example, Mauprat has the aim of denouncing the bourgeoisie and social inequality. 5 She also acknowledged that her writing did not often reach a very high standard. “…I have never been a true artist, although I have felt all the weariness, ardour, enthusiasm and suffering of this hallowed profession. True glory had never crowned my efforts for rarely have I been able to wait for inspiration….unfortunate is he who works with trowel and spade to build a rough-hewn, formless work, at times full of vitality but always incomplete, hasty and feverish.” 6 The political message took precedence over literary value. This position is not restricted to Sand. Chernyshevsky adopted a similar position to Sand, and Orwell bemoaned the lack of socialist literary standards. Sand cannot be pilloried for her literary standards. The conspiratorial socialist use of the romance subordinated literary values to political concerns. The lack of independent literary standards marks Sand as a standard socialist romance author.
The political ideal of universal love behind the romance’s plot reveals itself to be essentially that Rousseau’s natural religion and an attack on Catholicism. Sand describes the ‘natural’ man as the intuitive man of the people, who is contrasted to the distorted aristocratic brute. Society and religion (civilisation) have corrupted the aristocrat whereas contact with nature leads Patience, one of the heroes of Mauprat, to realise the love that lies in us all. The romance is a panegyric for the revolution based upon Rousseau and political deism. The old civilisation is about to be swept away by the ideas of Rousseau and a new natural religion will establish itself based upon justice and virtue. 7 The forces for change will triumph with the revolution, which is a positive force. The evils of the old class system and Roman Catholic Church stand in the way of this triumph of love. Universal love does not equate with Christian morality as Sand sets it up as a competitor. Universal love seeks to replace Christian morality with a politically based belief system.
As with Sue, Sand turned to the romance to project her moral idealism. Sand wrote socialist romances that incorporated the idea of universal love as against traditional morality. This placed Sand in a position opposed to the realist novel. Her work consisted of the self-conscious effort to construct a socialist alternative to Balzac. 8 Balzac portrayed how people were motivated and lived but Sand tried to portray an ideal relationship between men and women. 9 This become apparent in her love stories, such as Mauprat, where the long-suffering heroine overcomes the evil ingrained into an upper class man. 10 Sand equates the idea of universal idealistic love with the romantic love of two people for each other. The natural basis of society is an overarching undifferentiated love of humanity
5 ‘George Sand to François Buloz, editor of La Revue des Deux Mondes, Nohant, September 15, 1841’, in George Sand, In Her Own Words, Joseph Barry (ed.,), London, Quartet, 1979, pp. 423-424. 6 George Sand, ‘Preface to Lettres d’un Voyageur’, in George Sand, In Her Own Words, Joseph Barry (ed.), London, Quartet, 1979, pp. 422-423. 7 George Sand, Mauprat, trans. Sylvia Raphael, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1997, pp. 26-28. 8 Curtis Cate, George Sand, A Biography, London, Hamish Hamilton, 1975, pp. 496-497. 9 George Sand, ‘Preface to The Journeyman Carpenter, 1840’, pp. 262-263. 10 Sand, Mauprat, p. 134. 44 but this has been corrupted by institutions such as the church. This contrasts with Balzac’s attempt to show how the drive to make money contorts every social relation. Balzac, the royalist, stated that in a money-driven society there is no nobility. 11 All social relations under capitalism would bear the stamp of the relationship commodity production. The task was to find a means to act morally while also finding a means to survive economically. For Balzac there was no ideal answer to this problem. At first these seem similar ideas about the evils of contemporary society but Sand concentrated on what ought to be rather than an analysis of what causes injustice. Even Dostoyevsky recognised that Sand’s work aimed at describing the perfect relationship and flawless love. 12
Contemporary novelists recognised Sand’s personal qualities but they also drew attention to the difference between Sand and Balzac and their differing attitudes to literature. The mother of Anthony Trollope and significant author in her own right, Fanny Trollope, admired Sand’s work but recognised her as a writer of romances. Trollope described the greater part of Parisian literary output as being created by an impoverished group of intellectuals who hoped for financial success. Their efforts relied upon trying to reach new levels of sensationalism and emotional intrigue. Trollope saw these productions as ephemeral and destined to be quickly forgotten as ever-new sensational romances were printed. She believed that Sand stood apart from this group of writers, whom she declared “contemptible” and “unprincipled”. She excuses Sand on the grounds that she strove to present a picture of an ideal society through compassion. 13 As with other contemporary commentators Trollope found Sand’s personal qualities preserved her from the full consequences of the romance as a literary form. She still retained some of the sensational subject matter of the typical romance but attempted to bring a new significance to the romance in line with her political and moral beliefs. Her moral stature lifted her above the production of literature as a commodity.
From her examination of the state of French literature Trollope also excluded Balzac. She admitted that before staying in Paris she had little knowledge of him but due to popular acclaim she took far greater notice. She separated Balzac from the writers of romances on the basis that he made the attempt to write to the standards of previous French literature. Due to his literary virtues his work would survive whereas those of the romance writers would quickly perish. 14 Although Trollope associated Sand with the sensationalist literati she noted that her writing ability and sense of morality lifted her above others. In contrast, Trollope lifts Balzac out of the category of the literati due to his conformity with literary values. For Trollope, Balzac’s self-reference as part of a literary tradition differentiates him from Sand. Trollope distinguished between the two on their relationship to literature. Although Balzac earned a great deal of money from his book sales his main drive was to write well. Sand produced romances to provide for her family and illustrate her political position. 15
11 Honoré de Balzac, Ursule Mirouët, trans. Donald Adamson, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1976, p. 147. 12 Dostoyevsky, Writer’s Diary, Vol. 1, p. 513. 13 Fanny Trollope, Paris and the Parisians (1836), Gloucester, Alan Sutton, 1985, pp. 428 and 492-494. 14 Trollope, Paris and the Parisians, pp. 497-498. 15 Sand, ‘Preface to Lettres d’un Voyageur’, pp. 422-423. 45 The differences between Sand and the realist novel can be gauged by a comparison of Mauprat and Balzac’s The Peasants. The romance does not allow for a discussion of complex moral issues, merely the opposition of the protagonists as good and their opponents as evil. The events of the French Revolution serve as a backdrop for the actions of universal love. By basing the novel in the countryside Sand avoids discussion of the terror in Paris. She also ignores any discussion of peasant political movements. Sand restricts the role of violence and duplicity to the forces of the aristocratic counter-revolution. Sand presented the countryside in different terms to that of her contemporary and opponent Balzac.
In The Peasants Balzac describes the actions of the peasantry after the revolution as vulgar, dissolute and self-destructive as without realising it they take part in the growth of commercial relationships in the countryside. 16 The values of the peasantry alter with the change in circumstance and the new relationships between landowners and the peasants. Whereas Sand accepts the ideology of the revolution at face value Balzac describes this as an illusion that masked a grab for land and power. Mauprat gives a distorted vision of the revolution in the countryside that only allows for the repetition of Rousseau’s ideas. At no point is there a discussion of the moral quandaries thrown up by new economic relationships. Sand’s novel is constructed to justify a socialist programme and presents a French Revolution devoid of revolutionary violence.
The romance discusses what should be and not what exists. In contrast, Balzac illustrated the difference between what is said and what is done. He thereby gives his characters self- awareness and complex moral problems to deal with. Balzac tries to be honest in his portrayal of what actually happens. He describes the clash between the moral principles of the ex-officer and the peasant‘s efforts to gain land and wealth. This clash between traditional moral principles and the immediate drive for wealth is beyond the confines of the romance. In the romance the desire to acquire basic improvements to living standards is contrasted to the pure morals of the heroes. In Balzac the failure of moral principles in the face of the desires of those employing the unprincipled drive for wealth is tragic. However, the romance cannot let its eternal principles be questioned. Significantly, the anti-idealist Marx pointed to The Peasants as an illustration of the establishment of commercial relationships over any other obligations after the revolution. 17 Realism and the romance could not co-operate on basic assumptions of human existence or historical accuracy. Sand’s reference to the French Revolution does not add to any understanding of historical events but serve to illustrate the workings of eternal principles.
In Mauprat Sand portrays the passions as overriding injustice. Sand represents the birth of new ideas coming alongside the French Revolution. She presents all new ideas and the personality as the products of the environment in which the person is brought up. 18 However, she does not discuss where the ideas that change the environment could come from as ideals exist independently of circumstance. Sue and his supporters turned to the appeal to socialist redemption as a means to recognise eternal truths denied others. Sand
16 Honoré de Balzac, The Peasantry (Les Paysans), trans. Marriage, Ellen, New York, Macmillan, 1910. pp. 265-269. 17 Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. III, ed. F. Engels, Moscow, Progress Publishers, 1971, p. 39. 46 with her reliance on universal love cannot refer to the redemptive hero. Sand’s universal love comes from the natural expression of human emotions. It is difficult to understand how recognition of ideals can occur in a corrupted society. Sand requires a means to know moral ideals outside of society to avoid reproducing conventional behaviour. Sand in this romance pictures a political solution to the problem of the emergence of “New People” and new ideas. The revolution removes those social forces that restrict the essential human nature expressed as universal love. Universal love triumphs against its enemies described as the Catholic religion, which destroys the ability for true humanitarian love to flourish. 19 However, the use of the romance restricts any critique of the revolution such as occurs in Balzac. The political principles of the revolution are not open to scrutiny.
Hardy and Sand
A comparison of Mauprat with The Return of The Native demonstrates the major differences between romance and the realist novel. In Mauprat while the French Revolution in the countryside whirls around them the trials and woes of the heroine are resolved when she lives with her aristocratic lover who distributes some of his land to “The People” as an act of patriotism and utopian benevolence. 20 This is standard romantic fare. The trials of aristocratic love are given the backdrop of a mythologised history. Mauprat uses history in the same way as the oldest romance, Callirhoe. 21 The lovers move across a landscape set in the past as they suffer trials that love will eventually overcome. It does not seek to be accurate but to reflect the author’s position in regard to nature and the revolution.
As he wrote Return of the Native in 1878, publishers urged the last of the major English realist novelists, Thomas Hardy, to model his work on Sand. The publisher found Sand’s country stories to be “perfect, and have a certain affinity to yours.” 22 Hardy was already familiar with socialism and made notes from Sand’s Mauprat and from Fourier. 23 Socialist literature interested Hardy but he chose not to use the conspiratorial socialist literary form of the romance. Hardy veered away from the simple deism found in Mauprat. 24 Hardy read Mauprat and noted the sentence “a single moment can sometimes overthrow in passionate natures the labours of many months.” 25 Hardy took the quote from Sand and forged a realist solution to the statement. This is not Sand’s appeal to universal love breaking through the constraints of social conventions to release a force for a better world. Return of the Native is not a romance but a tragedy. Like Balzac, Hardy dealt with illusion and self-deception. All the major protagonists in this work yearn for the delights of the city, which other realists such as Dickens had portrayed as vile. In Return of the Native Eustacia believes Clym to be her means to
18 Sand, Mauprat, pp. 133-136. 19 Sand, Mauprat, pp. 216-221. 20 Sand, Mauprat, p. 296. 21 For an example of an actual pirate being used as a romance villain see Chariton, Callirhoe, trans. G. P. Goold, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1995, p. 55. 22 Martin Seymour-Smith, Hardy, London, Bloomsbury, 1994, pp. 224-225. 23 Thomas Hardy, The Personal Notebooks of Thomas Hardy, Richard H. Taylor (ed,), London, Macmillan, 1978, pp. 79 and 177. 24 Seymour-Smith, Hardy, pp. 192-193. 25 Seymour-Smith, Hardy, p. 225. 47 escape rural stagnation. Wildeve is also dissatisfied with his lot in life and ignores his good wife as he craves that which can never be. 26 Whereas Sand sees the future as in harmony with current political beliefs and even directed by such ideas, in Return of the Native Hardy places ideas and aspirations in opposition to reality. These characters struggle against their own being to become something that cannot exist. This is the essential tragedy behind his novel.
The realists see freedom as the recognition of both necessity and the responsibility owed to others. It is not an expression of the individual will. In Hardy’s novel the characters’ drive to live out their self-deceptions destroys them. They do not illustrate abstract concepts of either living in harmony with nature or Rousseau’s idea of the natural savage corrupted by civilisation. The rootless and purposeless rural intelligentsia cannot reconcile themselves to being who they are and drive themselves to pointless quests in search of what cannot exist. This is not a romantic happy ending but the tragedy of pointless self-destruction. An awareness of what is achievable would avoid the disaster but having self-awareness would also remove the protagonist’s pride and wilfulness. To deny Eustacia her vanity is to deny her whole being. Although the ideals of the rural intelligentsia are unobtainable this very yearning constitutes their very being. Like the rootless Russian “superfluous men” to try to take a realistic assessment of their situation is to try to come to terms with their essentially negative character. Sand’s romance cannot come to terms with the dislocation of political belief and actual circumstance. It cannot do so as there is no reference to an exterior reality by which to judge the actions of the protagonists. It is also beyond the interests of the political movement to acknowledge the dislocation of doctrine and political circumstance.
Hardy seeks to highlight this disconnection of reality and ideology whereas Sand tries to gloss over it. For Hardy the loss of years of labour in a moment represents self-deception dashing the efforts of years of struggle in an effort to attain the unattainable. The moral obligations owed to family by hard work can be destroyed by following wilful desires that are unrealisable. Moral obligations cannot be measured by political aspirations. Hardy’s novel concerns the dislocation of “is” and ‘ought’. Wildeve and Eustacia destroy themselves by trying to create a life they believe is their right but take no consideration of what exists. Every decision they make relies on an appeal to their personal desires or a higher reality. It can never be on the basis of an analysis of the contemporary world. This is the difference between the romance and realism.
Sand presents romantic love conquering all this as the highest motivation a person can attain. Any appeal to such a position being unrealistic leads to the condemnation of present reality failing to live up to the ideal. Sand’s morality cannot admit to the dislocation of doctrine and reality without dismissing the present as failing to keep the standard set by the ideal. The realist novel in Balzac and Hardy describes the very convulsive relationship between “is” and ‘ought’. When Wildeve and Eustacia flaunt traditional values to follow their desires they destroy more than just themselves. They also indicate their beliefs to be false. The characters in romances, such as Mauprat, do not have this level of self-criticism open to them.
26 Thomas Hardy, The Return of the Native, London, Macmillan, 1975, pp. 370-377. 48
Idealism and the romance
The moral idealism contained in the romance leads to the division of humanity. It divided humanity between those that were aware of how society should function and those who were not. The realist novel in attempting to portray society as it is has to come to terms with human fallibility. The ancient romance combined the ideal of romantic love overcoming all boundaries with the actions of the hero being justified by the unjust actions of the villain. Unlike Sue, Sand did not try to justify violence in her fiction. This left Sand with the difficulty of trying to find a means to establish socialism in her writing. Sand quickly lost her influence once the more ruthless forces in socialism gained prominence and social democratic parties formed. 27 Sand highlights the problem of how revolutionaries could justify violence while professing to work for the benefit of humanity. Those revolutionaries that followed the path of Sue believed they acted out of humanity but on the basis of socialist redemption they divided people into active revolutionaries and the passive majority. A different division occurred in Sand even though she advocated a universal ethic. This came from utopian thought’s division between the knowing and the ignorant. Sand divided humanity according to an understanding of mystical knowledge.
Sand’s idea of love corresponded to the centrality of love in the romance and the subversive effects of love on social relationships. The moral problems described in Balzac’s novels are to be overcome by the application of universal compassion or love. Sand’s romances demonstrate how social pressures based on power undermine personal relationships based on love. Sand wrote of the need for a true love that resurrected the love between men and women. This love was not erotic love, affection or friendship but something both very personal and universal. Utopian thought and idealism may owe much to Plato but this particular form of love does not. 28 Sand’s idea of love has its origins in the political doctrine of fraternity. She measured love by reference to the abstract love of humanity. Love became an ideal that existed as a standard of behaviour. However, people corrupted by civilisation could not recognise their own best interests. 29 Love for Sand was a force that could reshape economic and political forces on its own. The fundamental expression of humanity for Sand was a love that surpassed all social doctrines. It is an expression of love as a relationship between people that has no relationship to Christian morality.
Sand deliberately joined ideas of romantic love between two people with political fraternity to create an ideal of a universal love. In Sand there is the movement from the concrete expression of personal love to the abstract appeal to the love of everyone. As such it loses any context and becomes a political attitude. She composed socialist romances to exalt this vision of love. In her romances this love corroded of all social conventions such as class, gender inequality, nation and commonly accepted religious morality. Class and other
27 Dostoyevsky, A Writer’s Diary, Volume 1, pp. 508 and 513-514. 28 Plato, ‘Laws’ in The Collected Dialogues Including Letters, Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns, (eds.), Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1973, pp. 1402-1405. 29 George Sand, ‘Socialism, 1848’ in George Sand In Her Own Words, Joseph Barry (ed.), London, Quartet, 1979, pp. 380-381. 49 existing social conventions gave an individual a character, which constantly corrupted a primordial human instinct for universal love. Sand created people as expressions of this ideal of universal love. To deny this was to deny one’s underlying humanity. However, the cost is to present people’s individuality as in conflict with the moral ideal. Sand’s morality values the collective ideal over the individual motivation found in Sue.
In her politics of love Sand tried to appropriate the Christian idea of innate unity of believers to the doctrine of political equality. However, she had difficulty in transforming her universal love into a meaningful political program. Her universal love equated with popular sovereignty but not majority rule. She followed Rousseau in her belief that popular sovereignty was infallible but majority rule could fail, as it was susceptible to social convention. 30 Universal love existed as an infallible ideal beyond the effects of social circumstance. Sand believed that by the use of reason people would understand that acting according to universal love would achieve their best interests. 31 Universal love did not equate with popular morality, as it could only be available to those with the vision of a better world. Those who accepted the doctrine could only practise universal love. As can quickly be realised this chain of thought did not refer to any discussion of reality or artistic values but centred on the acceptance of an ideal and revealed truth.
For the realists, such as Balzac and Marx, the relationships that govern people, such as commodity production and a cash nexus, cannot be avoided. They are part of the social circumstance that people are forced to exist in. They also recognised that such relationships are not eternal forces of evil but the product of a historical process. The past and future had different challenges from those existing in the present. Sand follows Rousseau in finding the problem in civilisation that corrupts the natural inclinations of people. She believes that universal love can break down the effects of these social structures on people and restore a natural relationship between people. The literary realist recognised that perfection cannot be achieved and illusive ideals are continually modified by changing circumstance. For the realists even morality is modified by historical circumstance. Sand’s idea of universal love relies on it being a force outside of and in opposition to social circumstance.
Sand and mysticism
Sand’s use of Rousseau distances her from the left-Hegelian’s notion of the hero as part of historical necessity but her understanding of the world becomes mystical in nature. Balzac distanced his work from that of Rousseau. He saw civilisation and Christianity as positive forces that moderated the tendency toward individual self-interest. The institutions of Christianity and the state supported a universal morality. While he did not support democracy Balzac saw the need to comprehensively describe contemporary society in his Human Comedy. In this series of works he depicted the struggle between traditional
30 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract and The Discourses, trans. G. D. H. Cole, London, Everyman, 1993, pp. 200-202. 31 Sand, ‘Socialism’, pp. 392-396. 50 morality and the efforts to enrich oneself at the expense of others. 32 The study of contemporary society could analyse the difficulties for a universal morality with the spread of capitalist values. Sand did not have this means of gaining knowledge of moral ideals available to her. She had to turn to intuitive knowledge as the romance deal with ideals and therefore had great difficulty with social analysis. Sand was left with establishing knowledge through mystical understanding, which also stemmed from Rousseau.
Rousseau differed from the left-Hegelians in the significance he gave to a mythologised past. Rousseau looked back to a better society that has been lost due to the effects of civilisation. 33 Rousseau’s belief in superior knowledge previous to civilisation and organised religion did not just support the beliefs of conspiratorial socialism. Other contemporary religious movements such as occultism also appropriated this idea of innate goodness being corrupted by civilisation. Contemporary mystics recognised the importance of Rousseau to a belief in previous arcane knowledge that could be released through subjective intuitive knowledge. 34 French mystics believed Rousseau described the problems that resulted from the inability of present society to absorb earlier spiritual knowledge. Taking a lead from Rousseau, Sand also tried to recover the more primitive intuition of people before the effects of civilisation. Sand, like contemporary mystics, appealed to a love that was external to traditional cultural institutions and intuitive in nature. A basic difference between Sand and left-Hegelians lay in the mystical nature of her understanding of how people recognise their inner divinity. The left-Hegelians looked to a historical process that revealed those institutions that needed to be ushered in by heroes. The left-Hegelian hero worked as the rational apparatus of the historical process not Sand’s communion with a primal set of beliefs revealed by communing with nature.
Sand’s emphasis on how people should act rested on mystical knowledge. The romance with its lack of a relationship to reality could carry such a message. The literary realist novel required reference to the external world of experience and was not suitable for Sand’s purposes. Balzac had sense enough not to mix his works of mystical philosophy with his descriptive works. He divided them into distinct parts of his The Human Comedy. George Eliot found “the most pitiable” of all novels by women are those that seek to reveal “the writer’s religious, philosophical or moral theories.” 35 Although Eliot held Sand’s novels in high regard she felt that they emphasise Sand’s effort to construct a complete theory of correct social behaviour rather than an examination of how people actually manage in an unjust world. 36 Sand chose to create literature that revealed the hidden truths and ideals of society. In doing so she could not use the contemporary realist form of the novel. She turned to the romance to reveal truths hidden from the majority of the population. The distance Sand put between herself and realism left few other options other than the romance as her favoured literary form. In the romance she could reveal universal love as a force that could reform the world of its own volition without the need for violence.
32 Honoré de Balzac, ‘Introduction to Human Comedy, July, 1842’ in At the Sign of the Cat and Racket, trans. Clara Bell, New York, Macmillan, 1901, pp. 6-9. 33 Rousseau, The Social Contract and the Discourses, pp. 114-115. 34 Ronald Decker, Thierry Depaulis and Michael Dummett, A Wicked Pack of Cards, The Origins of the Occult Tarot, New York, St. Martins Press, 1996, p. 56. 35 Eliot, ‘Silly Novels by Women Novelists’, in Rosemary Ashton (ed.), Selected Critical Writings, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1999, p. 305. 36 Frederick Karl, George Eliot, A Biography, London, HarperCollins, 1995, p. 99. 51
The literary realists recognised the mystical nature of Sand’s idea of universal love in her work. The English realist novelist and satirist William Makepeace Thackeray considered that Sand had literary ability but found that the political positions in her work damaged their aesthetic integrity. In his critique of Sand Thackeray praised some passages in detail as examples of effective writing. “I don’t know whether the reader has been struck with the above mysterious scene as the writer has; but the fancy of it strikes me as very fine; and the natural supernaturalness is kept up in the best style.” 37 However, the realist in Thackeray found that Sand failed to reach these literary standards when she deals with her political ideology. Thackeray considers this as especially deleterious when she refers to Christianity. He recognises that this position derives from Rousseau and supports a position of pantheism. 38 Thackeray scorns the passages in Sand’s Spiridon in which she reveals ancient truths hidden from people by Christianity. Like contemporary mysticism, Sand describes an intuitive knowledge that could be recovered by means of ritual and artefacts. 39 Thackeray expressed exasperation with the text of an ancient manuscript Sand inserted in Spiridon. “Will it be believed, that of all the dull, vague, windy documents that mortal ever set eyes on, this is the dullest?” It is not the revelation of ancient knowledge but a contemporary concoction of pantheism and mysticism. 40
Sand presents aesthetic values as directly connected to political values. As a realist, Thackeray recognises that this leads to the domination of aesthetic concerns by predetermined political concerns. For Thackeray Sand’s later profession of true universal love lowers the aesthetic levels set by her earlier novels. Her attempts to label all previous religions as masking the truth by stating that “We are all Messiahs, when we wish to bring the reign of truth upon earth; we are all Christs, when we suffer for it!” Thackeray finds “disgusting” and “absurd”. 41 Thackeray recognises that Sand’s arguments for the deification of individual humans in pursuit of the “truth” are conceited and lead to the denigration of duty toward institutions such as the family. Such doctrines can neither be popular nor could they help promote quality literature. 42 Sand’s doctrines lead to the subordination of literature to politics. Thackeray criticises the mystical quality of Sand’s politics and the inability of these ideas to win popular support or lead to the creation of literary values.
Whereas Thackeray dismissed Sand’s ideas on a universal divinity in all humans, Dostoyevsky recognised that this idea differentiated Sand from other socialist supporters of the romance in Sue. Universal love and divinity posed difficulties for the left-Hegelian interpretation of The Mysteries of Paris. A universal divinity requires that everyone be considered equal and sacred. There can be no enforcement of morality or higher purpose. The world is not divided into heroes and others. For Sand there is no higher purpose other than expressing love. There can be no historical progress other than to banish ignorance. The left-Hegelian division of society into the hero who transcends the morality of others and
37 William Makepeace Thackeray, The Paris Sketch Book, Cologne, Könemann, 2000, p. 260. 38 Thackeray, Paris Sketch Book, p. 254. 39 Decker, Depaulis and Dummett, Wicked Pack of Cards, p. 69. 40 Thackeray, Paris Sketch Book, p. 269. 41 Thackeray, Paris Sketch Book, p. 272. 42 Thackeray, Paris Sketch Book, pp. 273-274. 52 the justification of violence conflicts with Sand’s mystical socialism. Sand’s ideas question the institutions of Christianity but do not support Szeliga’s moral subject acquiring the ability to judge others on the basis of a superior moral purpose. At base Sand still maintains a universal personal moral ethic that does not justify violence but at the cost of subordinating the individual to a mystically understood common good.
Love as politics
Sand’s popularity dwindled before her death. Even though George Eliot, like Dostoyevsky, could find much to admire in Sand, she admitted that her work left little influence behind after her death. As both Eliot and Dostoyevsky admitted Sand had more impact as a symbol and inspiration than she did as a writer. 43 Her opponent, Balzac, and the realist novel had a greater impact in the field of literature. No one could question Sand’s sincerity but she contributed little to the growing debate over the impact of the 1848 revolution and the quest to achieve a socialist society. It was left to Balzac to try to show the consequences of the earlier French Revolution on society. To do so he used a different literary form. The contrast between the romance and literary realism also highlights the differences between Sand’s sincerity and Balzac’s fidelity. The Hungarian Sociologist Arnold Hauser links nineteenth century democratic thought with realism, which explains the importance of fidelity to this literary form. 44 Democratic movements relied on an honest appreciation of what actually occurs and the achievement of immediate needs not an appeal to moral ideals. Fidelity is allied to ideas of truth and aesthetic value. In contrast, Sand’s idea of a universal humanity is not linked to democratic ideas but rather to ideas of sincerity and constancy to eternal principles. This leads her to subordinate aesthetic values to the achievement of her moral ideals. As sincerely held beliefs gained by a mystical understanding of ideals they cannot be judged by reference to any external reality.
The literary form of the romance to express universal love finally destroys Sand’s attempt to limit violence and revere the family. The abstract love of humanity can contradict the concrete love for ones family. There are many testimonies to Sand’s kindness and help to other writers. It cannot be doubted that she was a decent and kind person, a gifted letter writer and a good friend. The English poet and essayist Mathew Arnold met her in 1846 and wrote a memorial to her in which he fondly remembers her kindness and her novels, which while admitting they were not of the highest quality, deeply affected him. 45 Her sincerity failed to come to terms with the changes taking place in socialism. The personal qualities of Sand as a person served to estrange her from those political forces that turned to political violence to bring about socialism. However, love does not preclude violence as Sue’s hero Rodolphe blinds people out of love for humanity. Sand remained sincere in her beliefs that the family should be cherished. She told Cosima Wagner of her disapproval over Cosima leaving her husband and children. Cosima replied that she realised that she
43 George Eliot, ‘Women in France; Madame de Sable (1854)’, in Rosemary Ashton (ed.), Selected Critical Writings, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1999, p. 39. 44 Arnold Hauser, The Sociology of Art, trans. Kenneth J. Northcott, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982, pp. 212-214. 45 Mathew Arnold, ‘George Sand’ in Poetry and Prose, London, Rupert Hart-Davis, 1954, p. 598-600. 53 transcended traditional morality but she had intended no evil. 46 This is a major problem for Sand. Cosima acted from the sincere belief that she acted from the best of principles and intentions out of love. Sand could not counter this argument. There is no means to judge the behaviour of others acting out of love. Sand’s use of the romance depends on its ability to depict love as corrosive of traditional values.
Literary realism suffers from a similar problem to that of Sand. While it can recognise injustice, realism also struggles to find a way to realise a better society. Orwell does not doubt Dickens’ description of poverty or his moral purpose but he finds his proposed solutions inadequate. The appeal to natural goodness does not fit in with Dickens’ revelation of how the poor live. People are crippled by living in squalor and in need. However, Orwell knows that the ready-made solutions offered by moralising doctrines offer no hope at all. 47 By opting for the description of what is rather than what ought to be realism is far more convincing as an artistic creation but they cannot offer any appeal to a moral solution to injustice. Accuracy and fidelity of description serve to show the enormity of the problem and the lack of a common compassion. All the realist can offer is the knowledge that to transgress traditional morality is wrong. The left-Hegelian solution avoids an appeal to universal compassion but allows the use of violence to construct a world based on the ethic of the hero.
The romance cannot surmount the disjuncture of “is” and ‘ought’. The romance is caught between glorification of the hero or revealing a mystical truth recognised by only a few. Sand opposed the vision of Balzac not just because she despised his royalist tendencies. She was putting forward a moral alternative for the benefit of humanity. In this way she continued to appeal to the pre-revolutionary doctrines of Rousseau. The solutions that Balzac offered would ensure that the poor would act according to traditional moral beliefs but would remain poor and abused. From Rousseau she could claim the present to be irredeemably bad and in need of replacement according to moral principles. Her solutions may have been impractical but they offered hope for the establishment of a moral world and would not make matters worse. Her romances could not be challenged on moral grounds. She knew that moral ideals cannot be disputed on the basis of impracticality. Sand composed her romances as a political manifesto to challenge to what is on the basis of what should be. The alliance of realism and the truth held less importance for Sand than the promise of political change allied to moral ideals.
In terms of a political programme Sand’s challenge to Balzac in offering a moral alternative to the injustice of capitalist social relations makes political sense. Balzac can reveal that Sand’s scheme of universal love coming out of the French Revolution is unrealisable. However, he can only offer moral invective against the forces that improved the lot of the unscrupulous, rich and powerful. Balzac can only encourage people to recognise the obligations to their family, state and religion. Sand would not deny the obligations a person owed to their family but she attempted to offer more than the recognition that suffering would continue to exist. She tried to construct an answer to suffering. Sand believed that
46 Cosima Wagner, Cosima Wagner’s Diaries, Volume One, 1869-1877, London, Collins, 1978, p. 119. 47 George Orwell, ‘Charles Dickens’ in The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, Volume 1, Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus (eds.), London, Secker and Warburg, 1968 p. 460. 54 she could advance the political cause not by truthful representation but by appealing to a moral ideal. The romance is her effort to create a better world. The realist novel cannot offer a solution to the problems besetting those in need. Sand believed that her romances at least offered hope.
The two socialist versions of the romance played a crucial role in the formulation of socialist attitudes. Sand offered a popular non-Christian universal ethic based on love. She drew inspiration from a mystical understanding of intuitive love and provided a non-violent personal ethic for most people. This challenged contemporary society and values. In contrast, Sue offered a vision of the revolutionaries who punished those who opposed the transformation of society based on their status as redeemed heroes. Sue may have provided the idea of the hero reforming the world through the exertion of the will and their self-sacrifice but offered little other than a morality of “reasons of state”. Revolutionary heroes are free to apply a morality of “reasons of state” while most people are denied the opportunity of democratic choice.
However, both Sand’s romances and utopian thought divide the world into the ignorant and the activist minority with special knowledge. The activist minority did not have to obey traditional morality and could take whatever means were needed to create a better world. Even with Sand this finally resulted in the situation where the knowledgeable few could act according to “everything is permitted”. The moral alternatives set out by Sue and Sand are not mutually exclusive but continually reinforce each other. Such moralities make no reference to current circumstances as they are ideals and are supposedly above any specific ideology. In this manner they are freely available to whatever ideology, of the left or right, wishes to make use of them. The use of the romance has no inherent characteristic that classifies it as ‘socially progressive’. The vision of the future does not have to be what people want or fulfil material needs it only has to conform to abstract ideals.
55 Chapter 3. Russian Utopian Socialism
Universal love and the redeemed hero
Russian conspiratorial socialists took Sue’s and Sand’s romances and developed those elements that justified violence. The romance’s justification of violence combined with a morality of “reasons of state” assisted the development of terrorist ideology. The Russian conspiratorial socialist romances refined the doctrine of the redeemed hero found in Sue to justify terrorist activity. The Russian socialist movement had two alternatives available to them for the production of socialist literature. They could use either Sue’s or Sand’s form of the romance, or become part of the flourishing Russian school of literary realism. The conspiratorial socialist attraction to utopian thought, and dependence on the role of the romance hero ensured the ongoing engagement with Sue. Sand’s idealisation of perfect love held little appeal for Russian conspiratorial socialists and they focussed on the development of the idea of Sue’s redemptive hero.
As Sand’s ideal of universal love rejected violence and democracy it limited the forms of political expression available to her. No such limitation existed for the doctrine of the redeemed hero. Conspiratorial socialists were not motivated by popular demand but assumed that they acted from a superior set of moral values. Not only did this exclude any appeal to a universal ethic but it also ensured that socialism had no basis in democratic change. An enlightened minority would enforce social change on the rest of the population. The mystical nature of Sand’s love could not be reconciled with the nihilist interest in transcending traditional society to institute a rational society. Utopian thought contained an unstable mixture of an appeal to a better future for all while denying a universal ethic. The intervention of revolutionary heroes to destroy present society required a belief that they were not bound by traditional values. Sue’s romances offered this, whereas Sand’s works did not justify acts of terrorism. After 1848 the preference for Sue’s romances over those of Sand occurs as conspiratorial socialism accommodates terrorism into its programme.
However, one ethic did not necessarily cancel out the other. This proved a strength of conspiratorial socialism as it could find a ready response to any political circumstance by alternating between competing ethics. Both Sand’s universal love and the redeemed hero dismissed the contemporary world as fit only to be destroyed. Neither doctrine relied on an analysis of society but uttered moral outrage over the state of society. They both appeal to moral ideals not immediate needs. Both moral arguments resemble utopian thought as they divide people into the knowing and the ignorant. In the doctrine of the redeemed hero, the knowledgeable commit any act provided that they offer themselves as a sacrifice. In contrast, the ignorant act according to traditional ethics. Sand’s form of the romance provides the universal principle that the heroic ethic lacked. Sand assures socialists that love is natural and will always triumph over the impositions of society. It provided a deterministic belief in the eventual victory of socialism in times of political reverses. Conspiratorial socialism never completely rejected either the ethic of the redeemed hero or 56 the appeal to universal love in favour of the other. Conspiratorial socialism utilised and emphasised one or the other ethic according to political circumstance.
In periods of revolutionary opportunity the heroic ethic offered the ability to exploit any success. However, in times of repression with little popular unrest the appeal to universal love held greater attraction than political adventurism. The heroic ethic with its ability to use any means to gain its ends provided revolutionaries with the chance to exploit favourable situations. Political adventurism presented itself as representing historical necessity through such an ethic. The ethic in Sue’s heroic romance reinforced the idea that any political success represented social progress. The doctrine of the redeemed hero continually encouraged revolutionary adventurism.
In contrast, when revolutionary politics failed, utopian hopes based on universal love provided an immediate alternative. The knowledge that a better and more rational society was inevitable gave utopian thought a natural resistance to claims of failure and lack of popular support. Sand’s appeal that world would be better if every one behaved according to her ideas of universal love, could not be faulted by immediate political reverses. The two forms of the romance reinforced each other as changing circumstances called for the use of either branch of the socialist romance. Sand provided an ethic for the perfect future and Sue an ethic for the knowing to be able to establish this better world. These two alternatives derive from the same source in the socialist romance and are not mutually exclusive.
The changes in socialist politics after 1848 affected the relationships between conspiratorial socialism and the other social movements. The heroic ethic represented as much of a challenge to the realists as it did to an ideal of universal love. The realists clung to traditional values and differentiated themselves from the conspiratorial socialists over the issue of whether immoral means could be used to achieve a morally desirable goal. The realists denied this could be realised. Realism was not compatible with the doctrine of the redeemed hero found in conspiratorial socialism. The support for the redeemed hero alienated those other movements that promoted the idea of social justice. The adoption of the idea of the redeemed revolutionary hero not only represented lack of concern for democratic aspirations but it also challenged the idea that democratic participation could achieve socialism.
The changed emphasis in socialism and the prominence of the heroic ethic did more than express a change in tactics. Morality in the heroic ethic referred not just to the desirability of a particular perfect society but emphasised the destruction of the present society. It brought ideas such as degeneracy to the fore. The split already found in the utopian novel between the educated and the ignorant now widened to represent the ascetic hero and a degenerate majority interested in material improvement. The majority was now not just to be educated but to be forced into accepting radical change as this represented the best of possible worlds. Morality became a duty to change the world outside of social and political circumstance. To stand in the way of creating an ideal society was to act immorally. The doctrine of the redeemed hero relied on this idea of a higher moral duty to be able to kill. Both Chernyshevsky and Herzen helped foster this ideological position with their ideas on 57 the degeneracy of present society. The logic of this position led toward support for violent means to create a better society as a degenerate majority of the population would be unable to improve society. The idea of degeneracy presents most people as the problem and they need to have change enforced upon them. Degeneracy creates a division between an ideal vision of humanity and people functioning in an existing material world. Existing people do not act in the best interests of an ideal of humanity and have to be forced to change. The romance with its links to idealist philosophy supports such a position.
The works of both Sue and Sand impacted on Russian socialism and influenced the moral choices it made. Dostoyevsky acknowledged a debt he owed to Sand and the influence she commanded over his generation. “I was sixteen, I think, when I read her tale L’Uscoque for the first time…Afterwards, I recall, I had a fever all night long…George Sand for some years held almost the first place in Russia…” 1 Dostoyevsky marked the death of Sand with an article in which he outlined her importance to Russian literature and politics. He acknowledged that she did not write about the poor and down-trodden trying to live virtuous lives, as did the realists. She wrote about strong women overcoming the social situation in which they found themselves. Dostoyevsky paid credit to her humanity and noted her similarities to traditional Christian teachings. 2
This did not prevent the realists from attempting to exploit the differences between the two socialist ethics. The Russian realist novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky recognised the consequences of a change in emphasis from a universal morality based on love to the ethic of the redeemed hero. He emphasised the fundamental contradictions between the two forms of the romance and challenged the trend toward violence. In his article written after the crushing of the Paris Commune, Dostoyevsky turned to Sand to demonstrate the moral alternatives available to Russian socialism. Dostoyevsky made the point that Russian socialism did not primarily concern itself with the lives of poor people and unlike Sand, they lacked a reference to a universal morality. Dostoyevsky hoped Sand’s belief in a universal ethic would prevent Russian socialists from imitating the events of the Paris Commune.
The division of socialist literature between universal love and the redeemed hero took on a much deeper significance when applied to terrorist ideology. Sand attached more emphasis than Sue to the need for everyone to act morally. Sand did not have Sue’s overt emphasis on the utopian element in socialism, which envisioned a specific design for the future. Also, Sand’s heroines could not blind an opponent for their own salvation. Dostoyevsky in his article on Sand used her to attack those forces in Russian socialism that believed violence could be condoned to liberate society. The doctrine of the redeemed hero divided socialism. Marx and Engels recognised that Sue represented a morally unsupportable position but those like the nihilist Mikhailovsky still cherished The Mysteries of Paris as the exemplar of a socialist romance even after the death of Dostoyevsky. 3 The
1 Fyodor Dostoyevsky, A Writer’s Diary, Volume 1-1873-1876, trans. Kenneth Lantz, Evanston, Northwestern University Press, 1997, p. 509. 2 Dostoyevsky, Writer’s Diary, Volume 1, p. 513. 3 Nikolai K. Mikhailovsky, Dostoyevsky: A Cruel Talent, trans. Spencer Cadmus, Ann Arbor, Ardis, 1978, pp. 60-63. 58 support of the ethic of the redeemed hero is an argument to justify the act of killing for a cause. It may have been fundamentally flawed but it was sincerely held. Dostoyevsky in the article on Sand bemoans her diminished importance in the socialist movement as she provided a foil against those doctrines originating in Sue.
Russian conspiratorial socialism adopted those ideas from the romance that justified violence for political ends. The linkage of the romance, the idea that moral norms may be transgressed and political violence justified occurs most markedly in the Russian conspiratorial socialists. Nikolai Chernyshevsky’s What Is to Be Done? influenced most socialists in this period and beyond. This work continued to be fundamental reading for Lenin and the Bolsheviks. 4 Chernyshevsky’s novel validates Mannheim’s claim that utopian thought contains an authoritarian position. 5 He presents a “New Person” in the form of Rakhmetov a redeemed hero. Chernyshevsky concentrated on the authoritarian tendencies in utopian thought to exclude the idea of universal love. Like Sue’s work, Chernyshevsky’s novel presents utopian ends as achieved through people fulfilling their own individual needs and development. Chernyshevsky had no room for a universal, especially Christian, ethic. The utopian element in Chernyshevsky combined a moral vision for humanity with an individual ethic of self-fulfilment to create the “New People” required to establish a perfect society. There was no reference to a set of ideals to which people should live but the creation of heroes that could transform society by the full development of their potential. “New People” would fashion society after their own nature not by reference to popular demands or immediate political gains.
Similarly, the Russian aristocrat, journalist and author Alexander Herzen provided the philosophical support for the heroic ethic. Herzen wrote a standard socialist romance along the lines of Sand, Who Is To Blame?, which condemned contemporary social standards and moral hypocrisy. Later he actively involved himself and his family in European revolutionary movements. The failure of the 1848 revolutions suggested the need for more violent solutions and Herzen provided a theoretical means to justify such a position. Herzen turned from Sand’s ideas of universal love in his romance to an emphasis on the role of the revolutionary hero that operated according to a subjective morality. Such a morality assumed that the present degenerate nature of society justified its destruction. Anything that helped bring this about, no matter how ill conceived, served a moral purpose. The violent destruction of traditional values became a positive attribute for socialist politics. This led to Herzen openly championing Mikhail Bakunin, the creator of violent revolutionary anarchism.
Both Chernyshevsky and Herzen distanced themselves from what would seem their natural allies in realism. At the time of the pre-eminence of Russian literature both sought out literary forms opposed to the realist novel fashioned by Turgenev, Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy. Although a fellow editor with Turgenev of the Contemporary, Chernyshevsky curtly dismissed the Russian realist tradition. Chernyshevsky stated that the only novel worth reading was Thackeray’s Vanity Fair. All other novels, including the Russian realists,
4 Dimitri Volkogonov, Lenin, Life and Legacy, trans. Harold Shukman, London, HarperCollins, 1994, p. 20. 5 Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia, An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge, London, Routledge, 1991, p. 36. 59 did nothing more than repeat the same themes. To read other realist novels after reading Vanity Fair wasted time when so much had to be done to change society. 6 Chernyshevsky turned to composing a utopian romance in the novel What Is To Be Done? Herzen moved from a romance, Who Is To Blame?, to involve himself in journalistic activity and the treatise on socialist morality in a period of defeat, From the Other Shore. In his memoirs, in the form of the revolutionary epic My Past and Reminiscences, he represents himself as a tragic revolutionary hero and reveals his personal torment in trying to live out this role.
As Dostoyevsky realised these socialists substituted an idea of how the world should function rather than an understanding of the needs of Russian people. 7 Neither Herzen nor Chernyshevsky dealt with analysing the world as it exists. Chernyshevsky referred to the world as it should be and Herzen regarded the world as corrupted by the forces of the church and Tsarist state. The present always found itself inadequate when compared to their vision of the future. As such the present represented an obstacle to be overcome not the period in which people tried to resolve their moral dilemmas. Both Herzen and Chernyshevsky dissociated people’s existence from ethical decisions. Ethics became measured in terms of a heroic attitude. This was not an ethic of self-determination by the majority of the population. Neither writer appealed to the desires of most people as they divided society between activist heroes with a morality of “reasons of state” and a passive majority. As such there could be no appeal to a universal ethic as found in Sand.
Chernyshevsky
The son of an Orthodox clergyman Chernyshevsky quickly dissociated himself from realist authors such as Turgenev and Tolstoy. His ventures into literature were challenges to previous realist work. Chernyshevsky took exception to the figure of the nihilist, Bazarov, in Turgenev’s Fathers and Children and presented his figure of the revolutionary Rakhmetov as a positive socialist alternative. 8 Chernyshevsky did not consider himself a writer but a person of principle. He looked upon Turgenev as a writer who lacked principles. In turn Turgenev retaliated by accusing Chernyshevsky of trying to restrict literature to political tracts and using authoritarian methods. Chernyshevsky found little to argue with in this characterisation. 9 He believed that reform of degenerate Russia was hopeless and that socialism should work for radical change. All literary efforts should be subordinate to this need to usher in a new world. 10 Chernyshevsky subordinated all values, both moral and literary, to a political vision of the future.
Chernyshevsky did not represent people on the basis of class. He spoke for those who shared his vision of the future. Chernyshevsky divided people on the basis of a shared ideology not on an economic relationship between people. For him people either shared
6 Nikolai Chernyshevsky, What Is To Be Done?, trans. Laura Beraha, Moscow, Raduga, 1983, p. 311. 7 Dostoyevsky, A Writer’s Diary, Volume 1, pp. 287-289. 8 N. G. O. Pereira, The Thought and Teachings of N. G. Cernysevskij, Mouton, The Hague, 1975, p. 76. 9 Franco Venturi, Roots of Revolution, A History of the Populist and Socialist Movements in Nineteenth Century Russia, 2nd Ed., London, Phoenix Press, 2001, pp. 156-157. 10 Venturi, Roots of Revolution, p. 159. 60 his vision of the future or were ignorant of their best interests. Chernyshevsky used the romance to echo this division. It is important to recognise that his use of the romance moved socialism further from the ideals of universal love found in Sand and toward the glorification of the hero found in Sue. Much of this is accomplished by the use of the authoritarian attitudes from both utopian thought. A person with knowledge did not have to be bound to the same moral values as the ignorant abide by. The utopian elements of What Is To Be Done? provided Chernyshevsky with these conclusions. He directed all action toward a vision of the ideal society and set this as a political goal. Chernyshevsky also supplemented this call to action with an appeal for the creation of “New People”. Existing people are not enlightened enough to bring the new world into existence or even enjoy it. The new society and new values required “New People” to transform the present into this vision of the future. Behind this creation of the world anew lay the actions of the hero from the romance.
A problem exists with the idea of the educated gaining superior knowledge denied to others. Chernyshevsky has to explain how and where the “New People” obtain such knowledge when others lack it. 11 Chernyshevsky tried to surmount this problem through his example of the “New Person” in Rakhmetov. Chernyshevsky’s socialist literary hero continues the tradition of Sue’s redeemed aristocrat in changing the world. Chernyshevsky gives the example of a “New Person” and socialist hero in the character of Rakhmetov who turns his back on a fortune, like Sue’s Rodolphe, to dedicate himself to changing society. Rakhmetov does not educate himself by reading books. He rejects novels and all but a few works of political economy. 12 His education consists of moving amongst others in society and showing them by his example and austerity how they should live and work. He is a teacher to the rest of society with an innately superior moral standing. The ethic of socialist hero relies on the ability to see beyond mere appearances and recognise the need to radically alter society. The hero sacrifices themselves to ensure a better life for all.
The figure of Rakhmetov is no act of imaginative literary inspiration but the application of a literary archetype to an event in contemporary socialist politics. In What Is To Be Done? Chernyshevsky identifies Rakhmetov with the landowner Bakhmetev and presents him as an example of a selfless paragon who sought to establish a utopian colony that would produce the “New People”. 13 Bakhmetev sold his property and set off to create a utopian colony overseas. Bakhmetev deposited money with Herzen before setting out to found the colony on socialist principles in South America or Australia. He then vanished leaving the money at Herzen’s disposal. The anarchist Bakunin then attempted to appropriate the money for revolutionary causes and finally succeeded after Herzen’s death. This money financed Nechaev’s terrorist activities in Russia. An ideological connection exists between the effort to set up a socialist commune and terrorist activities. One provides for the production of “New People” the other for the destruction of the present society. The ethos of the socialist hero provides for both efforts.
11 Karl Marx, ‘Theses on Feuerbach’ in K. Marx and F. Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 5, London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1976, p. 4. 12 Chernyshevsky, What Is To Be Done?, p. 311. 13 Chernyshevsky, What Is To Be Done?, pp. 319-320 and 428-429. 61 Nechaev’s activities resulted in a murder to bond the perpetrators in an act that ensured they were all guilty and therefore unlikely to inform or refuse to take part in further crimes. Dostoyevsky severely criticised the murders that resulted from the use of this money in Diary of a Writer. 14 Dostoyevsky composed works to directly counter Chernyshevsky’s position. The combination of utopian ideals with the heroic ethic did not create “New People”. Rather, it became the use of violence in the name of political expediency. The removal of a universal ethic allows for self-appointed “New People” to commit murder in order to create a more effective terrorist cell. The heroic ethic combined with utopian ideals in Chernyshevsky has no moral boundaries.
The combination of utopian thought and the romance resulted in the denigration, not just of present society, but also traditional beliefs and morality. Hauser saw the nineteenth century socialist attack on the linkage of truth, democracy and the aesthetic values as aimed at the supporters of traditional values such as the realists. Conspiratorial socialism attacked democratic and liberal ideas and developed an aesthetic that despised literary values. 15 When Chernyshevsky noted art should serve morality by this he meant politics.16 In his major work the novel, What Is To Be Done?, he makes no effort to serve literary values. The figure of Rakhmetov has no time for art as he works to change society. What Is to Be Done? leaves no room for literary values, democratic change or universal morality. The extreme utilitarian themes in this work mean that support for the truth, equality, a common morality and aesthetic values have value only as far as they are useful to change the current situation. None of these standards has a value in themselves. Chernyshevsky asserted that as these values served the interests of the present regime they must be overturned. The heroic ethic reduced everything to a moral dichotomy between what supported the conspiratorial socialist view of society and values that did not. Such a morality would not tolerate anything that did not support its political programme.
Chernyshevsky turned to the belief that by expressing one’s ‘true’ inclinations one served the common good. Like Sand he found that by stripping away the false ideas influenced by traditional values the true ‘natural’ values could be expressed. The road to knowledge came from listening to one’s own desires not collective interests. Chernyshevsky held that religious beliefs only served to support the existing and inequitable social system. He believed that people should be motivated by “rational egoism” so as to behave in their best interests. Everything that people found useful was good and people found this pleasurable so they acted from their own interests and thereby served the interest of the community. The interests of the enlightened individual matched those of the community as a whole. Aesthetics, the interests of a minority or class should be subordinated to this larger vision of the future. 17 Social circumstance obscured the ability of most people from seeing this and religion confused them from acting in their best interests and thereby that of the community. The socialist heroes by their ability to recognise the true nature of the world could demonstrate how people should live. These “New People”, by trying to get the world
14 F. M. Dostoievsky, Diary of a Writer, trans. Boris Brasol, Cassell, New York, 1949, pp. 142-148 and E. H. Carr, Romantic Exiles, A Nineteenth-Century Portrait Gallery, New York, Octagon, 1975, pp. 230. 15 Arnold Hauser, The Sociology of Art, trans. Kenneth J. Northcott, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982, pp. 212-214. 16 Pereira, Thought and Teachings of Cernysevskij, p. 40. 17 Pereira, Thought and Teachings of Cernysevskij, pp. 38-39. 62 to conform to their ideas, not only changed the world but helped express themselves authentically.
This idea runs through What Is To Be Done? Rakhmetov is not altruistic as he finds it more pleasurable and ‘truthful’ to behave in the manner he does. Alongside this are the ideas of revolutionary asceticism and the renunciation of all things that are not strictly useful. 18 This idea brings the novel back to the world of Sue with people doing charity work because it is useful and pleasurable. Christian charity depends on people acting out of love for God and towards other people as part of God’s creation. Underneath this is the acceptance of the unity of believers. Chernyshevsky’s arguments follow from the splitting of humanity into two camps. Chernyshevsky’s rejection of Christianity breaks the connection between an individual and their relationship to others. Chernyshevsky, like Sue, abolished the emotion of compassion toward others as fellow humans, as heroes primarily serve their own desires. As they follow their desires they conform to historical progress. Their world is a collection of individual wills not an individual interacting with others according to social values. Rakhmetov acts from the need to express himself authentically. There is little in this argument that deals with the self-determination of classes, minorities or nations. The popular and immediate needs of people are not the concern of Chernyshevsky. The collective values to be achieved resolve themselves in the self-expression of the socialist heroes in their quest to create a new world. The English philosopher and political economist John Stuart Mill believed in the ability of people to choose whatever they wished to believe as long as it did no-one else any damage. Chernyshevsky’s ideas imply coercion and the removal of popular values to establish liberty. Chernyshevsky asserts the need to establish an ideal society not one based on the self-determination of social groups.
Chernyshevsky’s ideology serves a similar purpose to that of Calvinism in the destruction of earlier moral traditions. In relation to Calvinism Weber drew attention to the English puritan John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress in which the protagonist Christian abandons his family and starts on his journey to attain his personal salvation. The motivation is purely selfish and rejects any responsibility to others. 19 The idea that personal salvation has to be accomplished as an individual means even one’s duty to family is sacrificed for the purity of ones soul. In utopian thought and the heroic ethic the main drive is the responsibility to express oneself. The existing duties owed to family, friends and other people are of a lesser order. All relationships with other people are mediated by the hero’s personal fulfilment. The conclusion is that even violence cannot be judged as a completely evil act. If there is a sincere belief by the socialist hero that violence is required to reform the world, then a person would be compromised if they did not carry it out. Duty is owed to oneself and not to others or a common set of values. This emphasises the sincerity of an action not the advisability of undertaking the action or the consideration of it being immoral.
The difference between the Russian radical ideas of morality in literature and those of the realists can be illustrated by reference to the radical literary critic Nikolai Dobrolyubov. He
18 Chernyshevsky, What Is To Be Done?, pp. 309-313. 19 Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the “Spirit “ of Capitalism and Other Writings, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 2002, p. 74 and John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress, London, Ducimus, 1975, pp. 3-6. 63 tried to associate Turgenev’s novel On the Eve with the socialist movement. However, he believed this novel portrayed the difference between the expansion of the hero’s personality as against operating according to duty. Dobrolyubov found that the character of Shubin in On the Eve, while morally upstanding, was a passive figure. He is capable of self-sacrifice but he is independent of a cause. He can only exist in the turbulent times as an “eternal slave or a martyr.” 20 Anyone following a set of moral duties cannot attain aims that are indicated by the processes of history. Human progress needs people that can act according to a different moral standard.
Dobrolyubov finds that Turgenev describes this new style of hero in the Bulgarian Bersenev, who is trying to liberate his country from the Turks. This character is passionate in his efforts to overthrow the domination of his country and revenge the death of his parents. Dobrolyubov interprets his motivation in the following terms “…he is striving for the liberation of his country because to him it means ensuring his own peace of mind, the happiness of his whole life; if he could have found satisfaction in anything else he would not have concerned himself about his enslaved country.” 21 Bersenev’s character is in harmony with a social aim. His growth as a person matches the liberation movement. Any attempt to express his personality in terms of duty to others would lead to the failure of the liberation movement. By this reasoning a social movement needs to correspond to the moral beliefs of the hero, who must also be cherished as a special person. The hero in their drive to attain their personal desires leads to the realisation of historical progress. There is no room in this argument for a social morality or a set of duties owned to others. The historical process operates through the subjective desires of the hero. Such a system functions on the level of elites and cannot be democratic. It has the inherent aspect of the self-realisation of the hero being equated with the best interests of humanity.
This attack on established values even affected Chernyshevsky’s attitude to love. Chernyshevsky attempted to make the central love story in What Is To Be Done? subversive of social convention by having characters act out of self-interest rather than universal love. Although Chernyshevsky created strong heroines similar to Sand the conclusions he drew justified the heroic ethic not universal love. 22 The central female protagonist is free to choose whoever she wants to be with and successive partners take implausible steps to enable these changes. There are no deep emotional ties outside of fulfilling an immediate need. There is no explanation of why the fulfilment of “New People’s” immediate needs is any different than that of other people outside the assurance that the hero’s desires lead to social change. There is no moral measure by which to judge this. Chernyshevsky built on these ideas of self-fulfilment from utopian ideas of Fourier and set them in opposition to the idea of human compassion found in Sand. While Chernyshevsky reinforced the division between the knowing and the ignorant found in Sand he could not support Sand’s appeal to universality. Sand, by accepting a universal morality, could not support violence. Chernyshevsky by his use of the historical purpose for the “New People” overcame this impediment to conspiratorial socialism.
20 N. A. Dobrolyubov, ‘When Will The Day Come?’ in Selected Philosophical Essays, Moscow, Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1956, pp. 409-410. 21 Dobrolyubov, ‘When Will The Day Come?’, p. 412. 64 As Dostoyevsky recognised, Chernyshevsky’s position made no room for attachments or love for other people. Sue and Chernyshevsky combined the romance and utopian novel to supplement one another in avoiding an appeal to compassion. The romance supplied the hero and heroic ethic alien to the utopian novel but vital for the motivation of the socialist heroes. The utopian novel split the knowing from the unenlightened and sought to reconcile them later through a reference to a new world. This combination abolished Sand’s appeal to the romance’s universal love. The world would not be united through common compassion. Chernyshevsky created a philosophical version of the romance’s heroic ethic devoid of the appeal to common emotions. It substituted a belief in ideology to reveal a truth obscured by traditional values. This created a situation where the destruction of the present formed a moral cause and Chernyshevsky believed no other solution was available. This doctrine resulted in conspiratorial socialism branding any other movement for social justice as tainted by present society. It also further alienated itself from any possible support from all but the few who believed they held a superior moral standing to the rest of society.
Chernyshevsky and liberty
Chernyshevsky’s use of the romance is not setting out a series of alternatives to the present. His romance proclaims that there is no alternative to his propositions. He does not deal with universal personal liberty. He uses the romance to limit the discussion of any other alternative. Chernyshevsky’s political opinions served to alienate other movements based on the struggle against injustice. Chernyshevsky dealt with an ideal world which made no reference to the practicality or popularity of this ideal. His moral principles resembled those of other non-democratic and authoritarian socialists. It is important to recognise that socialism spanned not only democratic ideas but also those doctrines opposed to self-determination and personal liberty. The French anarchist Pierre Joseph Proudhon and the Scottish historian Thomas Carlyle, whom Engels associated with socialism, are examples of influential extreme authoritarians connected with the socialist movement. 23 Both attacked working class movements, believed in authoritarian elites to run the nation and even supported slavery. 24 The forces that opposed realism were no ready allies of nineteenth century liberal ideas. Chernyshevsky himself did not support democracy but believed elites should progress society to a better future. The contemporary Russian Marxist Georgi Plekhanov recognised that Chernyshevsky advocated a revolution based on and carried out by the intelligentsia. 25 When he drew attention to Sand, as opposed to contemporary Russian socialists, Dostoyevsky indicated that such authoritarian socialists not only lacked a universal set of moral values but held questionable values toward those they sought to liberate. There can be no universal ethic
22 Chernyshevsky, What Is to be Done?, p. 437-438. 23 Frederick Engels, ‘The Condition of England, Past and Present by Carlyle’ in Marx and Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 3, London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1975, p. 467. 24 J. Salwyn Schapiro, ‘Pierre Joseph Proudhon, Harbinger of Fascism’ in American Historical Review, Vol. L, No. 4, July 1945, pp. 724 and 729 and Simon Heffer, Moral Desperado, A Life of Thomas Carlyle, London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1995, pp. 195-197 and 274-276. 25 Georgi Plekhanov, ‘Dobrolyubov and Ostrovsky’ in Selected Philosophical Works, Vol. 5, Moscow, Progress, 1981, p. 623. 65 built on the division of the world into two camps. Support for educated elites that used violence meant that they would control other people.
Chernyshevsky’s sincerity cannot be doubted, but the idea that the redeemed hero can take on the role of both judging and changing society is flawed. The claim to struggle for individual liberty had both authoritarian and libertarian aspects. The central texts of liberalism recount a struggle between two differing positions on liberty. Eighteen years before Dostoyevsky’s article on Sand, John Stuart Mill defended the concept of liberty against those who sought to impose the needs of the state on individual liberty. Liberal thought grew from opposition to feudal political structures and absorbed such ideologies as tyrannicide. 26 Mill struggled against the authoritarian attitudes contained in these doctrines that fostered the idea that revolutionaries worked as agents of people’s aspirations and would create a state that would function for the benefit of all. Such a doctrine contrasted this new state to existing regimes, which served only needs of a king. The argument continued that, as the new state served all, no limitations needed to be put on the power of this new state. Its function should be as an agent of people’s best interests and it should not be limited in providing for that goal. 27 The perfect state would automatically work for the best interests of all without the need for complicated legislation. The state became the embodiment of ideals and therefore functioned beyond sectional interests. This ideology presented communal needs as identical with individual rights and the function of the state.
The conspiratorial socialist idea of liberty contained unstable ingredients. Neither the drive to sacrifice the self to a humanitarian duty nor the idea of personal growth led to an idea of personal liberty. Those who followed the arguments of the left-Hegelians believed in historical progress that transcended a traditional code of behaviour. Either, as with Bakunin, the selfless duty owed to humanity allowed one to kill and destroy in the name of that same humanity or, as with Stirner, the needs of the self allowed murder to enable the growth of the self. 28 At no point can their interpretation of liberty be equated with the idea of “Do unto others as you would have them do unto thee.” Either the hero is superior to others and can act as the agent for the ignorant or the individual has no duty to act in a way that would deny the self. In both ways the relationship of the individual to the state is not established. Both positions divide people on the basis of knowledge or personal desire. Left-Hegelian influence moved moral values away from ideas of personal liberty to actively directing other people’s lives in the name of historical necessity. The conspiratorial socialists opposed a traditional moral code, which they found unacceptable due to its links with present autocracy. 29 However, this argument did not extend to a guarantee that the new society would tolerate individual liberty. There was no universal ethic that could support the idea of individual liberty.
Herzen did not go beyond such formulae when he interpreted Mill and the pursuit of liberty in his particular way. Herzen proposes that there is the need for heroes to act with “passionate
26 George Paul Stain, ‘Lying One’s Way to the Truth’, The Origins of George Lukács’ Justification of Terrorism, Unpublished M. A. Thesis, Perth, University of Western Australia, 1999, pp. 85 and 92- 95. 27 John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1985, p. 61. 28 Mikhail Bakunin, The Confession of Mikhail Bakunin, trans. Robert C. Howes, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1977, pp. 147-148 and Max Stirner, The Ego and Its Own, ed. David Leopold, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000, p. 282. 66 conviction” toward an ideal. Liberty was one such ideal. 30 For Herzen the struggle against the tyranny of the state requires transcending the traditional morality which only leads to mediocrity and stagnation. “My task is the purely logical one of trying to eliminate the brackets from the formula in which Mill’s result is expressed; from his individuality differentiates to form the historical integral.” 31 Herzen predicates personal liberty on the need for a social revolution. This is not a democratic revolution but one based on the achievement of abstract ideals and led by heroes. Herzen changed the need for personal liberty found in Mill into the need to attain ideals through social revolution. The hero acted to bring these ideals into being without reference to traditional morality. This is a different objective to Mill and one that is based on coercion. Conspiratorial socialist liberty bore little relationship to that of the liberal Mill.
Mill took exception to this point of view. 32 He found that personal liberty needed to be protected against state power. The individual has rights that are threatened by unlimited state power purporting to be the agent of everyone’s best interests. The opposition to feudalism contained doctrines that served to extend state power beyond that found in monarchical governments. Effectively they sought to suppress individual rights in the name of the collective interest. They also removed the ability of the individual to appeal to independent judicial procedures. The rule of the elect did not mean that a state would emerge that would be less authoritarian than what it replaced. The division between the knowing and the ignorant contained the basic moral division that are found in attacks on personal liberty. The knowing believed they selflessly acted in the interests of all. They expressed the ideals to which society and others should conform. Other people acted out of self interest and could not found a perfect society. The conspiratorial socialists attacked present authority but not the removal of coercive authority. According to Bakunin the revolutionary was to be completely subservient to a higher organisation. “…he (the revolutionary) conforms strictly and unconditionally to the orders an instructions which come down to him from above, without ever asking, or even wanting to ask about the position of the organisation to which he belongs…” 33 The duty a revolutionary owed towards the organisation took precedence over any duty toward the family and a moral code. The morality of the hero of The Mysteries of Paris becomes transformed into acting for the good of the revolutionary organisation not humanity. This idea combines the service of humanity with the idea of heroic endeavour in the form of the political party. It has no direct connection to people outside the party.
Conspiratorial socialism also used other arguments against personal liberty. One belief stated that the primitive conditions that exist in places such as Russia require despotism to educate and raise people to a level at which they can function as autonomous political beings. This is a similar doctrine to Cherynshevsky’s appeal for the creation of “New People” in Russia. Even Mill agreed with the logic of this argument and found that political liberty could only exist in states that had progressed beyond archaic feudal and Asiatic
29 Mikhail Bakunin, Statism and Anarchy, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1990, pp. 206-207. 30 Herzen, My Past and Thoughts, Volume Three, p. 1079. 31 Herzen, My Past and Thoughts, Volume Three, pp. 1083-1084. 32 Mill, On Liberty, pp. 61-62. 33 Mikhail Bakunin, ‘Appeal to the Officers of the Russian Army’ in K. Marx and F. Engels, Collected Works Vol. 23, London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1988, pp. 451. 67 despotisms. 34 The movement from feudalism to socialism in Russia would need a very strong guiding hand. The argument continues, that given the primitive condition of Russia strong measures would have to be taken before people could take political responsibility for themselves. The revolution would produce the “New People” capable acting as fully functioning political beings. Political liberty in Russia became predicated on the production of “New People”. Chernyshevsky’s “New People” have no allegiance to people tied to traditions and ways that do not correspond to Russia’s future. To look towards popular support would see a political movement trapped in recreating traditional methods and institutions.
The authoritarian attitude in conspiratorial socialism originates in utopian thought. This occurs markedly in Chernyshevsky and influences his choice of literary form. Marshal Berman recognises that Chernyshevsky’s What Is To Be Done? formed part of the tradition of the literary romance, which Chernyshevsky combined with utopian themes. Berman argues that this novel is the first attempt to write a subversive novel about modernity from the point of view of the oppressed classes in Russian society. 35 While Berman recognises the literary form of What Is To Be Done? to be the romance he does not understand that Chernyshevsky chose this form of literature to support his moral attitudes. This novel is not about poor people but rather the function of the intelligentsia in society. Chernyshevsky’s heroes, like Sue’s, moralise and preach to the less well off. Berman does not recognise Chernyshevsky’s disdain of realism corresponds to his lack of description of existing society. Berman’s representation of this novel as an authentic voice of the lower classes takes no account of the authoritarian tendencies in utopian and romance literature. He tries to give the novel a democratic credential it lacks. Chernyshevsky, like most non- democratic socialists, supported the use of force and dictatorial methods. He also divided people on the basis of being educated or uneducated not according to people’s experience of modernity that occurs in Berman. 36 Personal experience is of little value to Chernyshevsky. He deliberately divides people into two camps on a moral basis, “New People” or the ignorant majority. The ignorant such as the heroine’s mother are slightly ludicrous figures who can only seek financial returns from marriage. 37 Chernyshevsky turned to the heroic form of the romance and combined it with the utopian novel to support his moral position.
Berman sees the socialist romance as part of discussion of the modernisation of Russia. However, he does not deal with their relationship to the ideas of personal liberty. The practical task of the transformation of Russia to a modern state held the tendency to impose solutions on the Russian people. The temptation always existed to apply an authoritarian solution to Russia’s problems. In contrast to Mill the earlier liberal philosopher John Locke considered the despotic state has a place in civilised society. Such a position sacrificed personal liberty in order to protect property and prevent injustice. 38 He justified political violence and the restriction of personal liberty as they are undertaken for the
34 Mill, On Liberty, p. 69. 35 Marshal Berman, All That Is Solid Melts Into Air, The Experience of Modernity, New York, Simon and Schuster, 1982, pp. 218-219. 36 Venturi, Roots of Revolution, p. 157 and Berman, All That Is Solid, p. 15. 37 Chernyshevsky, What Is to be Done?, pp. 80-83. 68 benefit of the people. This corresponds to the doctrine of the redeemed hero who could act to transform society in the interests of the future. Despotic measures can be taken as the hero acts as the expression of a passage to the future. Carlyle supplied the idea that the hero takes on the role of a person with a mission beyond the capacity of others to found new societies and beliefs. 39 The idea here is that a collective good can only be achieved through the heroic ethic not democratic changes, it is an act of individual development and expression. It is not a response to popular demands. The hero by acting to set up a better future redeems themselves for the immoral acts they commit in the process. The socialist romance, especially the doctrine of the redeemed hero, provided the moral reasoning to justify authoritarian socialism.
Socialist interpretations of Chernyshevsky
In 1865 the nihilist critic Dimtry Pisarev perceived the theme of What Is To Be Done? to be an extension of Turgenev’s figure of Bazarov in Father’s and Children. While Pisarev admits that What Is To Be Done? follows the regular plot of a romance, it has significance beyond this with the description of “New People”. 40 Like Chernyshevsky, Pisarev did not believe in an individual morality but blames social evils like poverty and idleness for deforming individual development. 41 Crime results not from the failure of people to adhere to a moral code but from a lack of developmental progress. The “New People” have developed a new set of duties that do not correspond to traditional morality. They can follow their own desires as their desires correspond with their social duty. Their personal development ensures that their selfish desires equate with the universal laws of society or universal love. 42 These people are beyond traditional morality and do not sin or repent as they combine goodness, truth, honesty and reason. Pisarev believes Chernyshevsky’s characters live and work for the benefit of humanity. Hence their own desires equate with social interests. The personal development of the “New People” leads them to act in harmony with society out of universal love. 43 Pisarev presents Chernyshevsky’s romance as a morality of personal development in harmony with a love of humanity. The problem with this is that although Pisarev places the emergence of a new person as congruent with the love of humanity there is no link between them. The development of the self does not equate with social duties of the needs of the moment. Stirner made this clear. The doctrine of the redeemed hero is the effort to rescue this connection.
If the social system is to blame for all ills then the destruction of the present social system by any means is a common good. Pisarev elucidates this in his analysis of Chernyshevsky’s figure of Rakhmetov in What Is To Be Done? This literary figure Pisarev reveals as
38 John Locke, Two Treatises on Government, ed. Peter Laslett (2nd Ed.), Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1970, pp. 368-370. 39 Thomas Carlyle, ‘On Heroes and Hero Worship’ in Sartor Resartus and Heroes and Hero Worship, London, Dent, 1975, p. 346. 40 Dimtry Pisarev, ‘Thinking Proletariat’ in Selected Philosophical, Social and Political Essays, Moscow, Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1958, pp. 628-629. 41 Pisarev, ‘Thinking Proletariat’, pp. 631-632. 42 Pisarev, ‘Thinking Proletariat’, p. 636. 43 Pisarev, ‘Thinking Proletariat’, p. 645. 69 Chernyshevsky’s promotion of social revolution. 44 The other protagonists in the romance are concerned with their personal development in their individual relationships. On the other hand Rakhmetov is concerned with humanity as a whole. He represents an ascetic revolutionary that serves his own interests while he provides a model for humanity by example. 45 Pisarev recognises Rakhmetov as the key to the behaviour that is required to transform society. Changing society does not come about through a personal ethic that would prevent killing for a cause. Rather it is an ethic that places duty to an abstract idea of humanity above the concrete responsibility not to hurt anyone. This is the same difference Herzen finds between himself and Mill. Pisarev believes that the love of humanity can encompass killing people for the sake of their salvation and he believes that What Is To Be Done? corresponds to this belief.
Chernyshevsky himself echoes Pisarev’s interpretation. In What Is To Be Done? Chernyshevsky joins the debate over the transformation of Russia. He demonstrates that there cannot be any overriding morality. Chernyshevsky forgives any breach of traditional morality by “New People”. In his romance he describes the married heroine as free to attach herself to whomever she pleases. 46 Chernyshevsky merged individual choice with the collective good as doing pleasurable acts also creates a better society. In contrast, other people are forced into doing bad things due to the circumstances in which they find themselves and they take no pleasure in doing so. In her second dream his protagonist Vera Pavlovna sees her mother who tells her that she paid for her education with stolen money. If this had not happened Vera would have been left in very desperate circumstances. 47 Chernyshevsky found that stealing was not only inevitable but carried no stigma in a world stricken by inequality. The removal of inequality would result in very little crime. 48 The poor are forced into behaving against their best interests and inclinations by the situation they find themselves in. Crime is a societal problem brought about by not following the unfair laws of a corrupt society and is not an individual moral problem. 49 At each step in his reasoning Chernyshevsky moves further and further away from individuals taking responsibility for acts that are regarded as immoral by the majority of the population. This results from Chernyshevsky’s requirement for the creation of “New People” to be founded on the destruction of traditional moral codes. He fails to recognise that the inequity between the “New People” and others invalidates any claim to describe a common future for them both.
Chernyshevsky wrote to expand the arena for personal expression and attack traditional beliefs. This is the liberty to transgress traditional collective values on the basis of superior knowledge. It is the conflict of the educated with the ignorant who are condemned to live in their traditional beliefs. Chernyshevsky postponed the arrival of personal liberty for all until a society existed that could foster “New People”. The state had a role in the creation of citizens that would be worthy of it. The state would not be an expression of what existing
44 Pisarev, ‘Thinking Proletariat’, p. 675. 45 Pisarev, ‘Thinking Proletariat’, pp. 672-674. 46 Nikolai Chernyshevsky, ‘Sto Delat?’ in Sobranie Sochinenii, Tom 1, Moscow, Pravda, 1974, pp. 105-110 and What Is To Be Done?, pp. 137-143. 47 Chernyshevsky, What Is To Be Done?, , pp. 200-203. 48 N. G. Chernyshevsky, ‘The Anthropological Principle in Philosophy’, in Selected Philosophical Essays, Moscow, Foreign Languages Press, 1953, p. 101. 49 Chernyshevsky, ‘The Anthropological Principle’, pp. 128-129. 70 people wanted or wished for. Chernyshevsky did not believe in a freedom of conscience. The backward state of Russia precluded such an idea. The people of feudal Russia would prevent the creation of an ideal society by acting according to their traditional ways of living. “New People” had the task of establishing a new society. They could not be bound by traditional moralities. To achieve the establishment of a rational society would be the task of the authoritarian state. The whole argument rests on the premise of creating the best possible society for people and the creation of the best possible people to fill it. At its base is the idea that the knowledgeable few can act altruistically for everyone. However, they do not act for existing people but for the still only potential “New People”. Altruism cannot be expressed toward existing people as it would not enable the emergence of the “New People”. This leads to the position where the worse things are the better it is as this will lead to the foundation of a better society.
Degeneracy
Both Herzen and Chernyshevsky used the romance to justify political violence. However, Chernyshevsky did not include the idea of degeneracy as a fundamental part of his ideas. Like political economists Chernyshevsky believed in a rational society in which people recognised the need to be useful and to follow their individual needs. The sum total of individual needs equalled the general good. In his version of political economy Chernyshevsky replaced the profit motive with the appeal to general welfare. Working together instead of in competition gave greater pleasure than doing damage to someone else. People would therefore naturally progress toward co-operation. 50 For Chernyshevsky the world was not inherently degenerate, just misguided. However, for both Chernyshevsky and Herzen the new world would be a moral authority that did not get its legitimacy from democratic support. The new world would re-educate its citizens to become more productive and involved members of an ideal society.
Herzen worked his way from the Sand-inspired romance of his youth in his novel Who Is To Blame? to the recognition that the degeneracy of this world called for more drastic solutions. He came to believe that after the 1848 revolutions present society could not be reformed. In order to achieve socialism a very special set of people were required. Herzen took the hero of the romance and set him the task of destroying the old world in order to create the new. Neither Chernyshevsky nor Herzen could present a concrete means to go from a feudal to socialist social structure outside of an individual ethic. Chernyshevsky worked from Fourier’s utopian ethics while Herzen turned to the ethics of the romance hero. There is no attempt to find an analysis of Russia and what policies would provide better conditions for most people as both men concentrated on a justification for tearing apart what existed.
Herzen began to shape a heroic ethic that dispensed with a universal morality. Much of this stemmed from the use of the concept of degeneracy. Like Sand, he relies on Rousseau to explain how civilisation has corrupted people. Herzen’s use of degeneracy stems from Rousseau’s attack on civilisation and presented the savage as being the only
50 Pereira, Thought and Teachings of Cernysevskij, p. 78. 71 person capable of living an authentic life. The spread of civilisation prevented the expression of the self. The civilised person is a slave to others whereas the savage can give expression to their own needs. 51 Rousseau also denied that contemporary literature could correctly express the ills of the world. He argued that modern literature did not speak as an authentic voice of the self. Such literature had been corrupted by civilisation and masked the chains of tyranny. 52 What Rousseau left unsaid is that the literary expression of the past, such as the romance and epic, expressed the authentic self lost to the civilised person. This means that the older forms of literature gave a more authentic depiction of what it is to be human than the sophisticated means available to modern literature. This became a dominant theme in later conspiratorial socialist romances. The idea of degeneracy and the use of the romance share a similar source in the ideas of Rousseau.
However, Herzen did not look back to the past but like utopian thought focused on the future but he did use the older literary forms. By rejecting literary realism and his use of the romance he recreated a literature that could give a voice to the self beyond the degenerate present. He used the personal epic of My Past and Reminiscences as a means to talk directly to others, no matter how painful the subject matter. His idea of the truth is to reveal the hero’s personal failings and claim this gives great insight. He follows the lead of Rousseau in his Confessions in this form of autobiography. 53 Truth becomes the expression of one’s authentic feelings. Herzen creates himself as the heroic subject of his own romance in which he reveals a truth beyond analysis. The more painful the exposure of personal trauma, the more truthful it is presented as being. Truth is moved from the correspondence between description and an external reality to the description of interior feelings and subjectivism.
This manner of presenting truth and social injustice created a problem of how to deal with the present. The basic problem for socialism through its use of Rousseau’s idea of degeneracy is that the past becomes idealised into something to aspire to. Rousseau describes the degeneration of a government in the same terms as social interaction and the aging process. “Just as the private will acts incessantly against the general will, so the Government makes a continual effort against Sovereignty. That is the inherent and inevitable vice which, from the emergence of the body politic, tends without respite to destroy it, just as old age and death destroy the body of a man.” 54 Rousseau explains that this process results from people using power for their own ends rather than in the interest of the people. 55 Injustice occurs as a moral failing and Rousseau believes society before civilisation to be a more natural way to live. Human degeneration results from the effects of civilisation. 56 People lived better lives in a state of nature.
51 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract and the Discourses, trans. G. D. H. Cole, London, Everyman, 1993, pp. 114-115. 52 Rousseau, ‘A Discourse on the Arts and Sciences’ in The Social Contract and Discourses, pp. 4-5. 53 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Confessions, trans. Angela Scholar, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2000, pp. 647-648. 54 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Social Contract, Discourse the Virtue Most Necessary for a Hero. Political Fragments and Geneva Manuscript, Roger D. Masters and Christopher Kelly (eds.), Hanover, University Press of New England, 1994, p. 186. 55 Rousseau, Social Contract, p. 187. 56 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Origins of Inequality (second Discourse) Polemics and Political Economy, Roger D. Masters and Christopher Kelly (eds.), Hanover, University Press of New England, 1992, p. 24. 72
Historical analysis is avoided and the past becomes a moral ideal, not something that either no longer exists or that created the present. This is the timeless world of the ideal not the immediate world in which people live. The means to move from the present to the ideal world cannot be established by rational or historical analysis. Marx, the materialist socialist, indicated that the intellectual products of the ancient past may offer a view of people as the target of all production but modern production methods offer the potential for people to become more than the limited scope available to the ancients. 57 The end of material deprivation transforms society rather than setting up ideal societies. This is the fulfilment of immediate needs, not a correspondence to an ideal. For Marx the means to change the present comes from industrial production and the creation of new classes not the moral dictates of what should be. The present contains possibilities far beyond the imagination of the past. The idea of degeneracy prevented idealist socialists from seeing the hope for the future contained in industrial production. It could only concentrate on the failures and injustices of the present. The conspiratorial socialists would always react in moralistic terms to what happened around them.
The important theme that idealist socialism picked up from degeneracy is the support it gives elites. According to the ideology of degeneracy the majority of people have shaped a society that fulfilled their direct needs without reference to society overall or by the expression of their authentic selves. Only those with either a superior morality or a more perceptive vision could overcome degeneracy. Marx recognised that this split removed the educated from the demands of a common morality. This leaves the problem of how educators become educated or how they receive their superior vision. 58 The ideology of degeneracy implies that some people have a superior perceptiveness to others but it cannot supply a mechanism for this to exist outside of mystical revelation. Degeneracy contains in it the idea that the enlightened do not have to conform to common values. The doctrine of degeneracy cannot be reconciled with democratic principles. It always falls to a minority in society either to recognise or to be the saviour of that society. Degeneracy as a doctrine perpetuates the split between the knowing and the ignorant found in the romance and utopian novel.
The needs and challenges of the past could not be applied to the present without critical analysis. For Marx the crucial difference between the past and the present lay in the expansion in modern production techniques. The present posed the question of why there should be poverty and injustice in a world that can eliminate physical want. 59 Unlike the past there is no reason why some should starve while others live in plenty. Marx himself proclaimed that the old society would disappear and that this process had already started with capitalist production. For Marx a new system of production swept away the old forms of life that focused on the exchange of money. Degeneracy was not a moral failure but a reflection of current production methods. As production methods changed so would the present inequalities. These were new times and needed new responses. Marx did not see
57 Karl Marx, Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations, trans. F. Cohen, New York, International Publishers, 1971, pp. 84-85. 58 Marx, ‘Theses on Feuerbach’, p. 4. 59 Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, ‘Manifesto of the Communist Party’, in K. Marx and Frederick Engels, Collected Works Vol. 6, London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1976, pp. 486-487. 73 moral arguments as the most important factor in the changes to society. Marx not only shunned the utopian and feudal socialists, he also spurned their literary productions. Not only were ideas such as a perfect past and future fruitless but the literary productions of those like Sue were not just misdirected but also morally and politically dangerous.
Realism discounted the more extreme models of degeneracy. The English realist author George Eliot describes the effort to change matters as being propelled by the knowledge that people are dependant on one another and the desire to do as little harm as possible. 60 Realism described an existing situation, posed possible solutions and exposed the moral decisions that had to be made. An analysis of society lay behind realism. Realism set itself the literary task of description followed by a moral quandary. In contrast, conspiratorial socialism dug into the older vein of romance to try to find recurring ideals. Realism presented a new form of literature, the popular novel, which could not exist independently and results from industrial production. While realism recognised itself as the child of present production techniques conspiratorial socialism looked back to the ancient forms of the romance and the utopian treatise. Degeneracy kept dragging political perceptions back to an idealised past and future.
Chernyshevsky and Herzen do not offer hope for the present from the changes that are taking place. By declaring the present as irredeemably flawed they sought to return the world to a purer existence. There is no plan of how to construct that future. They look to the past ideas of moral idealism to find alternative ideas. Likewise they chose to look to the past for their literary forms in the romance. The whole argument falls back on moral ideals not what is already available. Vera’s dream in What is To Be Done? sets out the technological feats that can be achieved if only the correct moral foundations are applied. The novel tries to establish a means whereby the ignorant can become educated. The heroine provides the example of an educated and enlightened new woman who emerges from a stupid and ignorant family. 61 However, all this is dependant on the acceptance of the correct moral formula. This is coupled with the idea that most people will not recognise this truth without some form of coercion.
Herzen
Herzen tried to found a new morality and revolutionary forms of socialist literature in opposition to Dostoyevsky and the other realists. After the 1848 revolutions a simple faith in reason linked to a universal political morality, such as held by Sand, dissolved in the face of the collapse of the revolutions in favour of autocracies. Herzen represented one of the major political and literary figures that tried to forge a political morality devoid of universality and rationality. This forms part of a debate between Russian conspiratorial socialism and the realist novelists. 62 What Is To Be Done? replies to Turgenev’s Fathers and Children and Dostoyevsky through his journalism and Devils replies to Herzen’s From the Other
60 George Eliot, ‘Address to Working Men, by Felix Holt’, in Selected Critical Writings, ed. Rosemary Ashton, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1999, p. 342. 61 Chernyshevsky, What Is To Be Done?, pp. 180-183. 62 Richard Freeborn, The Rise of the Russian Novel, Studies in the Russian Novel from ‘Eugene Onegin’ to ‘War and Peace’, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1973, p. 133. 74 Shore. The realists and the conspiratorial socialists locked themselves in a literary struggle over contemporary morality.
Herzen represented the most significant figure in what Dostoyevsky described as the generation of liberals that fostered the more extreme ideology of nihilism. 63 Herzen, a rich landowner, spent most of his adult life abroad in France, Italy, Switzerland and especially England. From there he involved himself with socialist personalities and witnessed the events that led to the collapse of the revolutionary regimes of 1848. He, along with his lifetime friend Nikolai Ogarev, published a series of political pamphlets and newspapers, the most important of these being Kolokol, (The Bell). Herzen was familiar with the works of the German philosophers and personally knew the major French socialists. Although he disagreed with German materialist philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach in regard to a universal morality he still held him in high regard. Herzen even stated that Feuerbach had inspired him to write his first journalistic effort. 64 Proudhon formed the other major influence and personal acquaintance of Herzen. Herzen admits Proudhon’s strength “...lay not in creation but in criticism of the existing state of things.” 65 Herzen argued with the idea of universal ethics but agreed with Proudhon’s denigration of the present.
Herzen published his romance Who Is To Blame? in 1845-1846. The socialist critic Belinsky hailed this work as interesting but not very creative work. 66 The plot of the novel centres on a tangled love story. The question in the title is resolved by the realisation that the protagonist is living a wasted life because of a society that is based on the labour of serfs. Only a life that confronts the injustice of the present can save one from boredom and spiritual decline. 67 As in Sand there is an emphasis on the idea of universal love of humanity being frustrated by existing social conditions. The romance hero sees the need for justice and a better world. This novel did not abandon literary values as compared to What Is To Be Done? that appeared later in 1863. Who Is To Blame? does not contain the heavy irony, authorial commentary and utopian (dream) framework of the later work. However, the failure of European revolution in the years between Herzen’s and Chernyshevsky’s novels changed socialist political practice. The figure of Rakhmetov in What Is To Be Done? is an avowed revolutionary with a programme of change unlike Herzen’s hero Beltov.
It has to be stressed that the conspiratorial socialists were not a group of well intentioned but slightly misguided youths. They must be credited with understanding the issues that they dealt with. Herzen had a wide range of acquaintances ranging from Proudhon to Bakunin. He understood the issues facing socialism and was no dilettante. The Russian aristocratic socialism of Herzen and Bakunin was not democratic or based on popular appeal. This movement advocated an extreme ideal of small scale or peasant production. It spawned the ideology of individual terrorism. 68 Neither of these movements appealed to
63 Dostoievsky, Diary of a Writer, pp. 142-148. 64 Alexander Herzen, ‘Young Moscow’ in Selected Philosophical Works, Moscow, Foreign Languages Press, 1956, p. 525. 65 Herzen, My Past and Thoughts, Vol. II, p. 806. 66 Venturi, Roots of Revolution, p. 23. 67 Alexander Herzen, Who Is To Blame?, A Novel in Two Parts, Moscow, Progress, 1978, pp. 241-244. 68 Hal Draper, Karl Marx’s Theory of Revolution, Vol. IV, Critique of Other Socialisms, New York, Modern Reader, 1990, pp. 130-131. 75 democratic change and neither had much influence in countries with a democratic socialist movement. The major influence of Herzen was found in the troubled and violent politics of countries such as Mexico. 69 Democratic socialism and liberal democratic parties in the more industrialised countries effectively opened up new opportunities not available to places such as Russia, Spain, Italy and Mexico. Increased industrial production could be used to ease the social tensions that expressed themselves in political anarchism. Conspiratorial socialism flourished in places with small-scale production and feudal social structures. As these ceased to exist so did the appeal of conspiratorial socialism.
After the collapse of the 1848 revolutions Herzen compiled a series of articles, From the Other Shore, reviewing their failure. He continued to edit and revise these until 1858. 70 This work, contemporary with Marx’s and Engel’s Communist Manifesto (1848), represented Herzen’s major theoretical views on socialism. This work even influenced Dostoyevsky. Dostoyevsky heard the preliminary work, Before the Storm, at a meeting of the Petrashevsky circle and later discussed Herzen’s work in The Writer’s Diary. 71 Dostoyevsky met Herzen in 1862 during the latter’s exile in England and he continued to take an interest in the family. 72 Dostoyevsky’s previous good relations with Herzen soured, as they did with most of the other Russian writers such as Turgenev, after he visited Western Europe. 73 The figures of Herzen and his daughter Natalie occur in Dostoyevsky’s fiction, Herzen as Versilov in Podrostok (The Adolescent) and Natalie, who commits suicide in the unkind psychological study, Krotkaya (The Gentle Girl). 74 Dostoyevsky’s reaction to Herzen is discussed in the following chapter.
Herzen, unlike Chernyshevsky, knew and involved himself in all the major European radical movements. Herzen broadly supported a political position similar to that of the French Revolutionary socialists such as Auguste Blanqui, but rejected their emphasis on revolutionary cells to create a socialist state. He believed that contemporary morality had to be torn down, as it only supported the present political regimes. Such a morality had no connection to a broad humanity and enabled the current social system to function. 75 Herzen disagreed with Bakunin’s fascination with German classical philosophy, claiming that it only reinforced the political system. Nonetheless, he retained close relations and supported the political aims of Bakunin. Herzen’s break with German philosophy caused him to regret Hegel’s influence on the authoritarian anarchist Proudhon. 76 Herzen clung to Rousseau’s vision of the natural man, as represented to him by the peasant attitude of Proudhon. The 1848 revolutions disillusioned Herzen toward all the trends of socialism. He conceded that even Proudhon had failed in the face of this crisis in revolutionary
69 Enrique Krauze, Mexico, Biography of Power, A History of Modern Mexico, 1810-1996, trans. Hank Heifetz, New York, Harper Collins, 1997, p. 292. 70 Alexander I. Gertsen, ‘S Tovo Berega’ in Sobranie Sochinenii, Tom 3, Moscow, Pravda, 1975, pp. 223- 354, translated in A. Herzen, From the Other Shore and The Russian People and Socialism, trans. Moura Budberg, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1979. 71 Dostoievsky, Diary of a Writer, pp. 186 and Leonid Grossman, Dostoyevsky, A Biography, trans. Mary Mackler, London, Allen Lane, 1974, p. 136. 72 Grossman, Dostoyevsky, pp. 265-267. 73 Kjetsaa, Fydor Dostoyevsky, p. 179. 74 Grossman, Dostoyevsky, pp. 511-513. 75 Alexander Herzen, My Past and Thoughts, Vol. 2, trans. Constant Garnett, London, Chato and Windus, 1968, p. 754. 76 Herzen, Past and Thoughts, pp. 401-402. 76 politics. 77 The influence of defeat and disillusion, apparent in From the Other Shore drew Herzen to an extremely individualistic and dark moral philosophy.
Herzen’s most important contribution to socialism rested in his composition of an alternative morality to popular Christian ethics. This morality expanded the heroic ethic found in the romance. Herzen, like the French socialists, condemned Christianity. Unlike Sand and other socialists he did not try to assimilate anything like a Christian morality into a socialist political programme. He remained in the sphere of political atheism. As with Rousseau, he portrayed Christianity as a force that enveloped the individual into universal needs. This involved the continual sacrifice by the individual of themselves for a false dream. Against this Herzen asserted that the only effective religion was a form of mysticism that believed in a direct relationship between an individual and God. Organised Christianity constructed a morality that supported the present social order and could not sustain the needs of a future social order. 78 In language that foreshadowed Nietzsche, Herzen described Christianity as restricting any heroic morality and fostering “…the pride of the lackey, the arrogance of the slave.” 79
Herzen presented Christianity as the enemy of self-expression. He followed the German anarchist Max Stirner’s criticism of Feuerbach in that there could be no claim to talk about humanity as a category as humanity consisted of a collection of individuals. 80 An individual’s needs were separate from the collective morality of Christianity and only the destruction of Christianity would see the triumph of the individual. An intersubjectivity of wills would establish individual ethics that others recognised. Each individual has to tolerate another’s self-expression. Herzen strikes a problem as he has to find a means in which social co-operation can exist in a theory governed by the individual’s self-expression. The quandary of the ill-matched coupling of the heroic ethic with universal love sits behind Herzen’s position. The heroic ethic functions to attack anything described as supporting the present social order and does not accept difference. They are only fit to be destroyed by the agents of the new order. This leaves Herzen’s philosophy without either popular appeal or the idea of compassion.
Herzen attempted to combine an idea of the heroic ethic and compassion in these words: Egoism and social sense (brotherhood and love) are not virtues or vices. They are the basic elements of human life, without which there would be no history, no development, but either the scattered life of wild beasts or else a herd of tame troglodytes. Kill the social sense in man- and you will get a savage orang-outang; kill the egoism in him and he will become a tame monkey. Slaves have the least egoism of anyone. 81 Herzen’s combination of individual and the social needs of people does not show how a social ethic can exist in a world of atomised individuals. Herzen attempted to combine Sand’s universal love with the authenticity to express one’s true self. The problem of how to reconcile these two strands of thought in socialism remains unresolved. Herzen only
77 Herzen, Past and Thoughts, pp. 821-822. 78 Gertsen, ‘S Tovo Berega’, pp. 338-340. 79 Gertsen, ‘S Tovo Berega, p. 340. 80 Max Stirner, The Ego and Its Own, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 300-301. 81 Gertsen, ‘S Tovo Berega’, p. 342. 77 partially overcame this by equating egoism with political fraternity, which made self-interest into a political ideal. Herzen also believed that the pursuit of individual interest would enable everyone to share in the social production of society. The point at which self-interest operated against the good of the community remains unaddressed.
Herzen believed morality did not remain constant but varied with historical circumstance. However, even though the heroic ethic emerged from the ancient romance Herzen presented it as the expression of the modern individual and it formed the only true and binding morality. Herzen stated that…“The truly free man creates his own morality.” 82 Significantly for the clash with realism, Herzen took this to mean that no one should accept blame for their actions but should strive to live authentically. Herzen split action from responsibility. He took the example of Benjamin Constant’s Adolphe as his literary example.83 In this novel the protagonist, Adolphe, out of a sense of compassion stays with a woman he no longer loves. Herzen rejected compassion, as even the most destructive actions would at least lead to the birth of a new way of life. He believes the destruction of present society as both a moral and necessary. “In any case it will be a virtuous act.” 84 Acting authentically even if it is contrary to accepted morality is virtuous if it expressed the true self. Herzen took a position that avoided consideration of consequences and responsibilities. As for the violent anarchist Mikhail Bakunin, the very act of destruction was in itself an act of liberation. This continues the movement toward a political position of ‘the worse the better’.
The romance hero formed a vital link in the reasoning that led to support for terrorism. Sincerity took priority over the effects of an action. This means that even if actions lead to the worst possible circumstance this is preferable to leading a lie by denying one’s own desires. The meaning of truth has been adjusted to mean an action corresponds to beliefs rather than an objective and external world. This is a most significant ideological position in the support for political violence. Herzen declared the present world to be degenerate. Anything that brought about change would be an improvement in the long run. The destruction brought about by the romance hero prevented the new world from collapsing into mere degenerate self-interest. The romance hero, like Rakhmetov, did not act out of compassion but from the need to express his self. He may commit what to others seems like sins but he acts from the belief in the truth of his convictions. Following Herzen’s logic he cannot be judged according to traditional morality. Even when at its most destructive the action of the revolutionary hero by expressing his own self liberates others. There is no reference to the needs and desires of others in the hero’s actions. The self development of the hero acts as an indicator of historical need. This is the means by which the redeemed hero functions to provide a social morality lacking in Herzen’s individual moralities.
A line runs from Sue’s redeemed aristocrat directly to the birth of socialist terrorism. In his assessment of revolutionary morality Herzen represented the anarchist Bakunin as the alternative and the future hope for Russia. 85 in Devils Dostoyevsky later described the
82 Gertsen, ’S Tovo Berega’, p. 343. 83 Benjamin Constant, Adolphe and the Red Notebook, trans. Carl Wildman, London, Hamish Hamilton, 1956, pp. 122-124. 84 Gertsen, ‘S Tovo Berega’ p. 343. 85 Herzen, The Russian People and Socialism, pp. 207-208 and Past and Thoughts, pp. 1363-1364. 78 ideological savagery that emerged from the collaboration between Bakunin and the first Russian terrorist, Sergei Nechaev. 86 Herzen’s solution to the problems of contemporary society led directly to political anarchism and the formation of the terrorist movement. Although Herzen himself never supported terrorism his journey from the romance brought him to the inevitable position of support for Bakunin. Bakunin is the aristocrat that sacrifices his former life in the name of social change. As an avowed supporter of revolutionary violence Bakunin had no moral problems with the use of terror. The socialist romance found its political expression in Bakunin’s support for destruction.
By 1861 Herzen was aware of Bakunin’s lack of moral scruples. After his escape from Siberia, where he offered the Tsar the opportunity to lead a Pan-Slavism movement, Bakunin wrote to Herzen. In this letter he spoke of the need for the Pan-Slavist movement to unite against the German states. Bakunin had sought to subordinate Poland to the Tsar as a counter to German civilisation and spoke of the need to destroy the Hapsburg empire. “The destruction, the complete destruction, of the Austrian empire will be my last word; I don’t say deed: that would be too ambitious; to promote it I am ready to become a drummer- boy or even a Provost.” 87
This statement is in need of explanation. The Provost acted as a military policeman and was the most despised person in the army. The duties of the Provost included finishing off soldiers who had been shot by a firing squad. The Provost did not serve in the ranks, but enforced discipline on those that did. Unlike common soldiers, the Provost did not participate in the ethic of supporting each other in order to survive. He had no attachment to anyone and carried out what other soldiers regarded as the most degrading duties. 88 Bakunin tells Herzen that he is willing to do the dirtiest deed, even kill other socialists, in order to establish a Pan-Slavist federation. There is no concept of acting as an agent of humanity. This federation could be led by the Tsar, whom Herzen presented as the most reactionary force in Europe. When Herzen looked upon destruction of traditional values as a positive advance toward socialism, he knew that there were no limits to Bakunin’s depravity in transcending traditional morality. Nevertheless, Herzen praised Bakunin as a progressive force.
Herzen distanced himself from the consequences of his theories by accepting the idea that he was superfluous to these inevitable changes. He remained neither a productive part of society nor part of the party that would fashion the future. … We shall be the last links joining two worlds, belonging neither to the one or the other; men severed from our kind, divided from our environment and abandoned to ourselves; superfluous because we can share neither the senility of the one side, nor the infancy of the other. There is no room for us at the table. Men who deny the past, men who have only abstract plans for the future, we have no heritage in either, and therein lies testimony both to our strength and to its uselessness. 89
86 Dostoievsky, Diary of a Writer, p. 142. 87 Herzen, My Past and Thoughts, Volume Three, p. 1351. 88 Philip J. Haythornthwaite, The Armies of Wellington, London, Arms and Armour Press, 1994, p. 72. 79 Herzen takes a position whereby he can claim superior vision as an alienated individual but recognised that such a position could not lead to participation in a popular movement. He realises better than Chernyshevsky that Rakhmetov’s working amongst people to inspire them is more a display of superiority rather than effectively changing society. Herzen could defend abstract ideals, such as freedom of speech, but nowhere did his philosophy deal with concrete issues, such as economic exploitation. 90 As with Wagner this is the stance of the tragic hero not the practical politician. Herzen reproduces the literary device of the tragic hero out of step with his own kind and marooned in a time in which he has no place. The ethos of the hero from the romance has come to dominate an analysis of revolutionary morality. Herzen’s importance lay in calling upon extreme forces of destruction but taking no responsibility for doing so. When such a position is challenged, Herzen retires to a position of impotence. The whole exercise relies on Herzen’s powers of self-deception.
The road from his Sand-like romance Who is to Blame? to My Past and Reminiscences is more than the movement from the simple socialist romance to the political epic. It represents the movement from a belief in a simple common humanity to the recognition of the world as irreconcilably decadent and fit for destruction. When Herzen tried to write his epic account of his role in the socialist movement, My Past and Reminiscences, he recognised his failure. In a letter to the novelist Turgenev, Herzen stated that his only defence against the charge that he only wrote this work for his own glorification was that he told the truth. He revealed this truth as the Tsarist autocracy being an evil that must be destroyed so a better future could exist. 91 Not only did truth become a subjective understanding but also Herzen struggled to find an altruistic reason for the composition of My Past and Reminiscences. Without a universal ethic there can be no altruistic reason behind the work. It recounts the exploits of a revolutionary hero enjoying his own self development. To justify his actions in writing the book Herzen relied upon the argument of a degenerate society but this does not equate with altruistic motives.
My Past and Reminiscences a record of the personal tragedy of a revolutionary struggling against injustice across the whole of Europe. The story relates all the personal tragedies that befell Herzen but did not cripple his desire to seek and work towards a new Russia. It is an epic struggle whereby the hero fails to attain his goal but retains some dignity. At no stage is it the story of working class struggle or the description of destitution. It is not the organised democratic struggle to improve people’s living standards and gain some immediate relief from oppression or poverty. It is the world of revolutionaries seeking to establish new nations such as Italy and new regimes in places such as France. Herzen recognised the tragedy of sacrificing his family, social position and life to this cause. He becomes the tragic hero who cannot attain what he sets out to do but does not surrender. He is the romance hero that suffers many a tragedy but does so out of love. However, Herzen has already dismissed compassion as an irrelevance. Herzen sees the sacrifice of himself and his family but cannot recognise the duty he owes his family as greater than that to abstract ideals. Herzen fails to come to terms with any concrete duty in his efforts to
89 Gertsen, ‘S Tovo Berega’, p. 326 and Herzen, The Russian People and Socialism, p. 210. 90 Gertsen, ‘S Tovo Berega’, pp. 326-327. 91 Herzen, My Past and Thoughts, pp. 670-676. 80 serve historical necessity. This is the point that Dostoyevsky makes in his vicious attack on Herzen dealt with in the next chapter.
This is the failure of the socialist romantic hero from Sue to Herzen. Everything is subordinated to the heroic ideal. Weber correctly drew attention to selfishness that posed as personal salvation. The democratic and realist alternative to selfish heroics are the parent struggling to provide for their family in the midst of want. This is a concrete and unsought for heroism. The romance hero in the final analysis struggles to convince themselves they are a hero. Herzen tried to question whether he acted out of self- glorification but he could only settle on the accusing Tsarism of being an evil in need of destruction. The action of self-glorification corresponds to the heroic ethic but the concern for injustice returns Herzen to the arguments of universal love. My Past and Reminiscences is the story of the inability to place both positions in one ideology.
Later Russian realist authors directly link Herzen to the formation of political terror. The realist response to the nihilists did not disappear with the death of Dostoyevsky. During the Bolshevik terror the Russian author Ivan Bunin pointed to Herzen’s vital role in its creation. He quoted Herzen as stating “We are sobering up humanity…We canonised revolution…We are sparing future generations sorrow by our disenchantment, our suffering…” This is self-glorification mixed with the socialist redemptive idea of self- sacrifice. As Bunin commented, “No we’re still a long way from sobering up humanity.” 92 Bunin denied the idea that the likes of Herzen could be working for a better world when the legacy of this form of socialism led to unbridled viciousness. Herzen did not appeal to any higher purpose for humanity other than destruction. For Bunin the final catch cry of this ideology was “the worse, the better.” 93 Rather than measuring itself by material improvement the conspiratorial socialist ideology made a benefit out of making things worse. Conspiratorial socialism transgressed a common morality in the belief that by making things worse they would create a better society.
92 Ivan Bunin, Cursed Days, A Diary of Revolution, trans. Thomas Gaiton Amarillo, London, Phoenix Press, 2000, p. 100. 93 Bunin, Cursed Days, p. 112. 81
Chapter 4. Dostoyevsky
Realist challenge to Russian socialism
The combination of autocratic French socialism with German philosophy occurs simultaneously with the introduction of the socialist romance. The romance expresses the concerns of undemocratic socialism acting through the hero to bring about a better world. Unlike the realist novel it avoided dealing with matters in the present. Russian socialists took their lead from Sue and Szeliga by their support for the romance and the idea of socialist redemption. Chernyshevsky and Herzen emphasised the left-Hegelian justification of immoral actions on the grounds of historical progress. Many Russian radicals were schooled in German classical philosophy to the extent of attending lectures in Germany. Herzen declared that “a man who has not gone through Hegel’s Phenomenology and Proudhon’s Contradictions of Political Economy, who has not been in the crucible of the one and has not been tempered by the other, is not complete, not modern…The philosophy of Hegel is the algebra of revolution, it emancipates man to an extraordinary degree and leaves no stone standing of the Christian world, of the world of outlived tradition.” 1 Dostoyevsky and literary realism contradicted these positions.
Literary realism and conspiratorial socialism differed over whether a moral end can be achieved by immoral means. For Dostoyevsky this question stood at the centre of socialist politics. Unlike the majority of realist authors, Dostoyevsky took part in socialist political activity. Dostoyevsky recognised that socialism influenced his early work and he did not lose interest in this movement throughout his career, 2 His critique of conspiratorial socialist literature found its way into his later novels. In these novels Dostoyevsky utilised his experiences, journalistic reports and the literature to counter the nihilist morality expressed by Herzen and Chernyshevsky. Dostoyevsky worked from the standpoint of a popular universal ethic that challenged the idea that the end justifies the means. Dostoyevsky considered that mixing with ordinary people as he did in Siberia altered his attitude to socialism. He came to accept that universal popular Christian morality stood in opposition to socialism. In contrast, conspiratorial socialism supported an elitist ethic counter to the interests of the majority of Russians. 3
Dostoyevsky regarded the idea of human perfectibility to be a myth. 4 Politics could not change the world to resemble the timeless existence of ideals. Under such a myth change became an end in itself because it describes the present failing to correspond to moral ideals and therefore it is irredeemably bad. The belief in the present being beyond reform connected Chernyshevsky’s utopianism to Herzen’s subjective morality. This myth labelled
1 Alexander Herzen, ‘Young Moscow’ in Selected Philosophical Works, Honolulu, University of the Pacific Press, 2003, p. 521. 2 Geir Kjetsaa, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, A Writer’s Life, trans. Siri Hustvedt, New York, Viking, 1987, pp. 81- 84. 3 Fyodor Dostoyevsky, A Writer’s Diary, Vol. 1, 1873-1876, trans. Kenneth Lanz, Evanston, Northwestern University Press, 1999, pp. 288-290. 4 Dostoyevsky, A Writer’s Diary, Vol. 1, p. 288. 82 the present as degenerate in comparison to what society should be and gave its believers a moral justification to destroy the existing social system. The myth functioned as a negative force that pushed for the destruction of all traditional institutions without a means to construct a credible future society. As with all utopian writing a major difficulty arises in finding a moral means to construct a perfect society. For Dostoyevsky and other non- socialist writers this myth compromised morality by making it subservient to the formation of an idealised future. Morality did not function as a guide to human behaviour but as an ideal beyond social circumstance.
The ideological support of the use of immoral means to construct socialism ensured that no co-operation took place between the socialist romance and utopian novel with realism. In return realism either shunned or criticised socialist literary productions. The differences between the two literary forms expressed not just repugnance over socialist morality but also the elitism expressed in this belief. Realism could not support the gap between the educated and the ignorant that resulted in conspiratorial socialism’s belief in two moralities. Realism recognised a universal morality and this made any alliance between Chernyshevsky and Herzen’s socialism virtually impossible. Dostoyevsky as he matured found himself having to choose between these two movements.
The romance echoed the exclusivity of the knowing as against the ignorant. Literary forms such as the realist novel were relegated to those who could not recognise the need to create an ideal society. Conspiratorial socialism subordinated aesthetic values to the attainment of a moral ideal. It deliberately adhered to literary forms that alienated it from other social movements. To participate in Russian conspiratorial socialist schemes meant the acceptance of a distinct ideology and the literary means that expressed that ideology. Dostoyevsky found himself forced to choose between acceptance of conspiratorial socialist doctrines and the pursuit of literary values. Chernyshevsky and Herzen helped shape an exclusive group that saw all other groups as unable to change present society. In groups such as the internationals other socialists that appealed to more democratic policies, such as Marx, fostered alliances with other social movements. This enabled Marx to praise realist literature and see it as a legitimate way of describing working life. Universal morality led to the ability to form alliances. The conspiratorial socialist romance excluded those who did not agree with their policies.
Dostoyevsky looked to the realist novel and his journalism as the means to challenge the socialist romance. He dealt with what he termed the “insulted and injured”. 5 In England Henry Mayhew analysed the situation of these people in his articles for the Morning Chronicle. This relationship between social analysis, journalism and the realist novel did not exist in Russia. The alliance between realism and social analysis that generated popular moral outrage in England had difficulty getting past conspiratorial socialist idealism in Russia. Unlike Great Britain and Germany, the attempt to create a political movement based on the labour movement did not occur until later in Russia. Russian socialists did not replicate the attachment of the British utopian, Robert Owen, to organised labour. Russian utopianism chose the idealism of Fourier not Owen’s practical foundation of labour unions. The idea of people taking their fate into their own hands is alien to both the 83 romance and conspiratorial socialism. Herzen concentrated on providing a moral alternative through the expression of the will. Chernyshevsky looked forward to the creation of small artels led by the enlightened intelligentsia. However, Dostoyevsky knew what it was to starve. He knew what it was to be part of the under class. Like Mayhew and Dickens, he knew the suffering that had been generated by industrial society. Realism required the analysis of present society and the Russian conspiratorial socialist movement stood against this. Dostoyevsky’s fiction is an attempt to bypass the claims of conspiratorial socialism and focus on the hardship endured by many Russians.
Dostoyevsky dissected the world of the big city in the form of the realist novel. He detested what industrial capitalism represented and the lives it destroyed and crippled. He hated the moral vacuum of capitalism in Western Europe as much as in Russia. Dostoyevsky’s novels are filled with anguish over what it is to be poor. None of this appears in Herzen and Chernyshevsky. Dostoyevsky’s novels are about coping with the world as it is. He looks at the immediate solutions to immediate problems like finding the next meal. It is not about finding a formula that would banish exploitation forever. Dostoyevsky did try to find a moral means to modify the excesses of capitalism in Russia. He looked to the tsarist state to intervene in the direction of the economy. This would not create an ideal state but would provide moral boundaries to prevent the exploitation of Russians. Russians as a people stood unified by religion and a moral tradition. Dostoyevsky believed in a unity of believers that should not be divided on the basis of wealth or need. In contrast, socialism referred to a world as it should be and turned to the model of Sue’s romance, The Mysteries of Paris. The rift between realist description and socialist romance took on a virulent tone in Russia. The clash over morality between Dostoyevsky and Herzen demonstrated the depth of feeling this generated and the chasm that existed between the two movements.
The alienated intellectual
Bunin expressed the antagonism between Dostoyevsky and Herzen over the consequences of socialist ethics. Bunin recognised that a rational or a moral society does not necessarily follow rousing people to take action to create a dream. Bunin selected the socialist writers Maxim Gorky and Herzen as those that misjudged this situation. 6 The use of immoral means compromises the attempt to build a better society. Dostoyevsky took issue with Herzen’s revolutionary politics and expressed his disagreement in several of his novels and short stories. Herzen’s ethics resemble those Dostoyevsky portrayed as Raskolnikov’s beliefs in Crime and Punishment and Dostoyevsky directly addressed the failure of Herzen to put his family responsibilities before his beliefs. The sacrifice of Herzen and his family for an ideal brought misery on all those involved. 7 Dostoyevsky saw the disparity between Herzen’s subjective idealist revolutionary ethics and the search for a goal of a better world.
5 Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Insulted and Injured, trans. Julius Katzer, Moscow, Progress Publishers, 1978. 6 Ivan Bunin, Cursed Days, A Diary of Revolution, trans. Thomas Gaiton Marullo, London, Phoenix, 2000, p. 87. 7 Bunin, Cursed Days, p. 100. 84 The debate extended to the social origins of Herzen’s morality. The realist writers situated the heroic ethic as the product of a specific social group, whom they termed “superfluous men”. Herzen even referred to himself as superfluous after the failure of the 1848 revolutions. 8 The term originates with Ivan Turgenev, a liberal landowner, realist novelist and self imposed exile, who contributed the best known short stories and novels on this topic. 9 In his Diary of a Superfluous Man, Turgenev describes the awkward situation in which the protagonist finds himself. He judges a philanderer correctly but ends by being reviled for his insight and thereby excluded from the woman he loves. 10 Turgenev later used the same term and the idea of impotence to characterise Bakunin in the novel Rudin.11 The protagonist of the novel, Rudin/Bakunin, although incapable of achieving happiness himself is tyrannical in his efforts to dictate the actions of others. 12 Turgenev presents the “superfluous man” as not only alienated from anything he cares about but he also contains the germ of despotism.
Dostoyevsky and Turgenev recognised, contrary to Herzen, that this negative ideology had a social basis and did not present a complete social theory. As these ideals originated from a social base they could not be the perfect ideals that existed beyond social circumstance. The realists recognised that the superfluous men dealt with ideas that came from and reflected their social position. The superfluous men dealt with ideology not ideals. It consisted of a self-contradictory and negative mixture of an appeal to universal love coupled with heroic actions. Such an unstable mixture could not remain benign. Turgenev’s novel Otsti i Deti, (Fathers and Children), took the idea of the tyranny of the intelligentsia further. In this novel he created the name “nihilist” to describe the young political atheists and their policies of destroying all that was old. 13 In this novel a crude socialism attacks everything and everyone around it and in doing so polarises those involved. This resulted in denying the nihilists themselves the chance of love and happiness. “superfluous people” acted as if their ideology had universal significance but it brought misery to themselves and those in contact with them.
Dostoyevsky and Herzen
For Dostoyevsky, conspiratorial socialists rejected Christian morality and replaced it with the faith that moral and industrial progress would cure the poverty and suffering of workers and peasants. Even though they wrote in Russian they adhered to a doctrine which continually abused Russia by comparison to a supposedly more progressive France and Germany. 14 Dostoyevsky fiercely opposed the belief of “westerners” in social progress
8 Alexander I. Gertsen, ‘S Tovo Berega’ in Sobranie Sochinenii, Tom 3, Moscow, Pravda, 1975, pp. 326- 327. 9 Joseph Frank, Dostoevsky, The Stir of Liberation, 1860-1865, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1986, p. 170. For a contrary point of view see Leonard Shapiro, Turgenev, His Life and Times, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1978, p. 67. 10 Ivan Turgenev, ‘The Diary of a Superfluous Man’ in First Love and Other Stories, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1989, pp. 27-72. 11 Ivan Turgenev, Rudin, A Novel, Moscow, Foreign Languages Press, 1954, p. 117. 12 Turgenev, Rudin, pp. 62-63. 13 Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Sons, trans, Bernard Isaacs, Moscow, Progress, 1974, pp. 38-39. 14 ‘Dostoyevsky to Maikov, August 16/28’ in Joseph Frank and David I. Goldstein (eds.), Selected Letters of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, New Brunswick, Rutgers University Press, 1989, p. 254. 85 and portrayed it as the introduction and imposition of capitalism. Such a solution would not lead to a better life for the majority of the population but to the establishment of a class of exploiters. Dostoyevsky regarded the contemporary Russian institutions and ethics as safeguards against foreign interference in Russia’s self-determination of its own future. Dostoyevsky set up self-determination as the alternative to the dictates of the socialist ideology.
Furthermore, Dostoyevsky used Turgenev’s term of abuse for the westerners, “poshlost”, meaning wilfully boorish. 15 Dostoyevsky connected the supporters of nihilism with the lack of aesthetic values. Dostoyevsky found the dismissal of universal moral values and the lack of positive alternatives extended to a lack of literary values. The nihilists opposed realism and other significant literary efforts in Russia. The nihilists still turned to the French romance of Sue for inspiration. In contrast, other socialists that supported working class self-determination recognised the literary importance of Russian realism. 16 The nihilist idea of the present as degenerate did not allow it to appreciate any product of the present world outside of a very limited ideological scope. They looked to literary models from the past and outside of Russia.
Dostoyevsky continued his criticism of Herzen in his literary work. He named Herzen twice in the discussion of utopia in Podrostok (The Adolescent), published in 1875. Dostoyevsky made it clear that the opinions of Versilov, the protagonist’s father, closely resembled those of Herzen. 17 Dostoyevsky also dealt with the family tragedy of the suicide of Herzen’s daughter, Liza, in the short story Krotkaya (The Gentle Girl). This story formed part of Dostoyevsky’s Writer’s Diary for 1876 in which he described the deaths of two girls from the opposite ends of Europe. 18 Both these works concentrated on the failure of people to take responsibility for their family and avert tragedy. Dostoyevsky presented such families as a torment to their own members. For Dostoyevsky, Herzen represents someone who concentrates on serving humanity while his family suffers.
In Podrostok the character Versilov virtually ignores his illegitimate son, Arkardy Dologorky, the protagonist of the novel. Dostoyevsky contrasts Versilov with a traditional Orthodox peasant, Markar, who marries Arkardy’s mother and helps to rear Arkardy. Versilov’s attitudes and beliefs are seen as destructive to his family’s happiness. Not only does Versilov ignore his family but also he pursues women much younger than himself. Even though he regarded himself as a friend of humanity and believes he acts in everyone’s best interest he achieves nothing. Dostoyevsky clearly saw the politics of Versilov as a cover for his desires and vanity, which act to dupe him as to their destructiveness. Versilov personifies the liberal benefactor who hurts everyone close to him while being unaware of the harm he does and is oblivious to their needs. He is a “superfluous person” duped by his own self-gratification into ignoring the very things that make him the person he is. There can be no self development of such an individual. Dostoyevsky presents Versilov’s
15 F. M. Dostoievsky, Diary of a Writer, trans. Boris Brasol, Cassell, New York, 1949, p. 274. 16 For example, Frederick Engels, ‘Reply to Mr. Paul Ernst’ in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Collected Works, Volume 27, London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1990, p. 81. 17 Fydor Dostoyevsky, An Accidental Family, (Podrostok), trans. Richard Freeborn, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1994, pp. 491 and 499. 86 vanity as the actual outcome of Chernyshevsky’s attempt to create “new people”. Chernyshevsky’s and Herzen’s self construction of the individual is a myth with destructive consequences for those involved with that individual.
Dostoyevsky illustrated Versilov’s beliefs in the form of a persistent dream he has, described as being like a painting by Claude Lorraine. The painting consists of an eighteenth century rural Arcadia in which a man and woman run free, unburdened by either children or civilisation, which lies ruined around them. The image clearly invoked French utopias and Rousseau. This vision of a free humanity is derived from Western European art and not the necessities of Russian life. 19 Versilov contrasts his dream of the Golden Age with the reality of Europe ravaged after the Paris Commune of 1871. Here the treasures of Europe are destroyed and the Archbishop of Paris murdered by Blanquist socialists. Versilov recognises the actions of the left and right to be wrong and hopes that as a Russian he can still remain faithful to the ideals of European civilisation. This would include efforts to achieve a principled society not acting according to the demands of politics.
However, Versilov’s Arcadia maintains Rousseau’s denigration of civilisation against natural man. 20 Versilov contains both the pinnacles of European civilisation and its disparagement and destruction. Rousseau’s ideal of the natural savage belittled Christianity as oppressive and supporting the state. Furthermore, by preaching submissiveness Christianity undermined any attempt to express both democratic aspirations and individual rights. 21 Dostoyevsky drew attention to the socialist attempt to create a perfect world and saw this as a laudable enterprise. However, by following Rousseau, Versilov’s earthly utopia assumed a moral dimension independent of the traditions of European culture and learning. This ideal society needed a person unfettered by social and family responsibilities and able to express their own personal needs. Versilov both upholds and denies the Western civilisation he despises. The pretence that Western civilisation can be simply dismissed as creating misery avoided the productive ability in such a system to overcome poverty. The instability of nihilist political thought is apparent in Versilov. He appeals to the Western aesthetic tradition but disparages the accompanying traditional morality. However, Dostoyevsky shows that a belief in the degeneracy of Western civilisation links it to the triumph of the heroic ethic which created a situation such as the Paris Commune.
Mystical ascetic characters, such as Tikon in Devils and Starets Zossima in The Karamazov Brothers, figure importantly in Dostoyevsky’s later works. These characters represent Dostoyevsky’s alternative to capitalism and conspiratorial socialism. The pilgrim Makar fulfils this role in Podrostok. Makar helps to raise Arkady and he demonstrates all
18 Fydor Dostoyevsky, ‘A Meek Girl’ in Uncle’s Dream and Other Stories, trans. David MacDuff, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1989, pp. 253-295 and Dostoyevsky, Diary of a Writer, Vol. 1, pp. 677-693. 19 Dostoyevsky, Accidental Family, p. 491. 20 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Origins of Inequality (second Discourse) Polemics and Political Economy, Roger D. Masters and Christopher Kelly (eds.), Hanover, University Press of New England, 1992, pp. 70-85. 21 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Social Contract, Discourse the Virtue Most Necessary for a Hero. Political Fragments and Geneva Manuscript, Roger D. Masters and Christopher Kelly (eds.), Hanover, University Press of New England, 1994, pp. 299-302. 87 the characteristics of the mystical Russian pilgrim. As a foil to the aristocratic cynical atheism of Versilov, Makar represents the virtues of faith and common decency. Makar has none of Versilov’s wit but expresses compassion and the aspirations of the majority of people to live honest lives. 22 However, Makar has the ability to move amongst everyone and be held in high regard, which emphasises the ‘superfluous’ nature of Versilov. Versilov is alienated from those who should love him, such as his family. All of Versilov’s wit, ability and attempts to serve humanity function to isolate him even further.
Dostoyevsky presented the figure of Makar as Versilov’s antithesis by his mystical religion and his adoption of the son. Dostoyevsky resolved the problem of the expression of the individual and the duty owed to family and society by reference to the equality of all believers before God. This equality, rooted in the European Christian church, presented everyone with moral duties but also gave the respect that people owed to others. 23 This moral structure had an existence in the traditional institutions, including the family, which enabled the ideas of freedom, liberty and democracy to be viable. 24 To destroy them left no effective means to express morality.
In Podrostok Dostoyevsky presents Herzen as caught between trying to express love for humanity but failing to achieve anything but misery for those he should care for. The pull of the heroic ethic constantly drags the revolutionary hero to perform the negative act of the destruction of present society. This also involves the destruction of the hero’s family. This is a very selfish act, the heroic ethic demands the sacrifice of everything to fulfil personal salvation. Dostoyevsky demonstrates that even this level of sacrifice will not achieve any meaningful improvement in people’s lives. The heroic ethic can only be the utterly tragic waste of Herzen’s life or the mocking travesty of a life in Dostoyevsky’s Versilov. The heroic ethic needed to be expressed the literary form of the romance. Only the use of literary archetypes can give those like Herzen and Versilov the appearance of having heroic stature. To apply a truthful description of the heroic ethic, as Dostoyevsky does, robs it of its pretensions. In Podrostok the heroic ethic is shown to be a self-indulgent waste. The tragedy of the heroic ethic is the waste of gifted people’s lives and hurting other people that have done no wrong. In the next work dealing with Herzen Dostoyevsky shows this ethic as wilfully destructive of every human relationship.
‘The Gentle Girl’
In the novella The Gentle Girl Dostoyevsky abandons the light-hearted tone of Podrostok. In doing so Dostoyevsky produced one of his most tragic works. The allusion to Herzen in the article preceding the story in Dostoyevsky’s Diary of a Writer is an unnecessarily cruel jibe. Herzen suffered many tragic deaths in his family while abroad and he did not need public attention drawn to his misery. This aside, the tragedy of the story revolves round the effort to keep faith with morality while suffering from want. Here Dostoyevsky addresses Herzen’s claim to be able to improve the world by the application of subjective ethics or the
22 Dostoyevsky, Accidental Family, pp. 405-409. 23 Dostoievsky, Diary of a Writer, p. 999. 24 Dostoievsky, Diary of a Writer, p. 1000. 88 doctrine of the redeemed hero. This girl knows what it is to suffer but also realises that to break faith with traditional morality will not solve anything. In Podrostok Versilov mocks the efforts of a girl to gain some independence by working as a governess, much to the distress of Arkardy’s mother. The female protagonist in The Gentle Girl has difficulty in even getting this modicum of independence after failing to get a placement as a governess. This is a much harder and crueller world than that found in What Is To be Done? or Who Is To Blame? The story revolves round cruelty for cruelty’s sake. It is not a vision of an inherent goodness in everyone, redemption or triumphant heroism.
In The Gentle Girl poverty forces the girl into a marriage in which she endures the torture inflicted by the self-loathing narrator. He is a fallen army officer who runs a pawnshop and quotes Mephisto “I am part of that force that always wills the Evil and always does the Good…” 25 The narrator justifies benefiting from the misfortune of others as his actions will benefit all in the end. As a pawnbroker this man believes he provides a public service. However, the narrator recognises that his livelihood leaves him completely isolated and loveless. He understands his only redemption could be through a virtuous girl in such poverty that she would marry him and come to love him even with his flawed character. The narrator believes he can break down his wife’s virtue and that by coming to love him she will accept his vices. This she cannot do and she prefers to kill herself. The girl condemns the way in which the narrator’s wealth is acquired by taking from others in desperate need. The whole ugly incident occurs because poverty has placed the girl in the position whereby her virtue can be thrown into question. Although in desperate poverty the girl cannot compromise her virtue and kills herself. Even extreme poverty cannot excuse immoral actions.
The association of Herzen with the pawnbroker would seem to be a jibe at Herzen’s wealth and pretensions. While he moved around Europe with relative wealth he also associated with revolutionaries and neglected his family as it fell apart. Herzen’s personal redemption, like that of the pawnbroker, is earned at the expense of others. In Herzen’s case it is his family who bears the cost. Dostoyevsky presented Herzen as involved with the modern evils of capitalism and socialism, which were engaged in a constant struggle against popular morality. The Gentle Girl carried the condemnation of Herzen that by failing to support popular virtues he degraded his daughter’s life to such an extent that it led to her suicide. Dostoyevsky may have given a brilliant portrayal of the self-deception of evil but it also showed a definite lack of compassion toward Herzen. Dostoyevsky described how the lack of responsibility to one’s family destroyed everything that a person should cherish as important. It can be imagined that Herzen must have felt some blame over his daughter’s suicide. Dostoyevsky himself is being cruel.
For Dostoyevsky the rise of capitalism in Russia and the challenge of socialism offered grim alternative futures for Russia. These alternatives differed little in their consequences for most Russians. Both movements excuse moral failings as producing a better outcome in the future. They result from the personal failings of those involved not other altruistic motives. Dostoyevsky attacked both Herzen and capitalism with intense hatred. Although The Gentle Girl expresses this dislike at other times Dostoyevsky acknowledged being 89 once inspired by similar dreams himself. 26 The point that Dostoyevsky makes is that evil does not just happen. It can be recognised and by taking personal responsibility it can be avoided. A set of popular ethical principles exist of which all are aware and most importantly a moral end cannot be achieved by immoral means. Herzen’s posturing as a socialist hero is the cause of his calamities and that of his family. It is not a case of a tragic hero struggling against forces beyond the powers and beliefs of ordinary people. According to Dostoyevsky, Herzen forged the weapon of his own misfortune and suffered accordingly.
Dostoyevsky and responsibility
Dostoyevsky also attacked Herzen’s idea that a different set of ethical principles could be applied to the heroic revolutionaries. In Crime and Punishment Dostoyevsky attacked Herzen’s self-constructed morality found in From The Other Shore. Raskolnikov, the protagonist of Crime and Punishment, writes an article affirming that the superior and strong willed could not allow themselves to be limited by common virtues. For Raskolnikov it is possible for a superior type of person to even commit murder in order to achieve their potential. 27 Those not recognising their own greatness only have a life of reproducing their own kind. However, truly great people, by their ability, had an obligation to even kill in order to introduce a new world. The entire plot of Crime and Punishment progresses from Raskolnikov putting this idea into practice. Raskolnikov murders two women to gain money to achieve personal greatness. The remainder of the novel recounts how he repents of his action and seeks forgiveness. The idea that immoral means can be used in the service of constructing a better world leads to the realisation that in reality Raskolnikov has only committed a squalid act of robbery with violence. His redemption comes from the acknowledgement that he has done wrong and by asking others for forgiveness not through an act of self-sacrifice.
Dostoyevsky’s critique of Herzen demonstrates that the heroic ethic can encompass political expediency and commercial greed. Dostoyevsky represents aspects of Herzen in both the pawnbroker and Raskolnikov. Neither are flattering portraits. Raskolnikov bemoans his fate but he shares the isolation of the pawnbroker in The Gentle Girl. Both have alienated themselves from other people. Unlike Raskolnikov the pawnbroker has not done this through an act of principle but out of misanthropy as he follows the business of profiting from misfortune. However, both cause the death of others without any relief of their suffering. Dostoyevsky highlighted the commonality between the ideas of the pawnbroker and Raskolnikov. Dostoyevsky equates the idealist nihilist with the profiteer who drained the most unfortunate. Conspiratorial socialism will not give results any different from unrestrained capitalism. They both descend from the same impulse and reasoning. However, the pawnbroker at least realises that his actions are not morally defensible. He is merely fulfilling his own desires.
25 Dostoyevsky, ‘The Meek Girl’, p. 258. 26 Dostoyevsky, Writer’s Diary, Vol. 1, p. 284. 27 Fydor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment, trans. Julius Katzer, Moscow, Raduga, 1985, pp. 278-280. 90 The literary realist tradition did not accept the doctrine of killing for the benefit of humanity. The fundamental idea of being able to kill for profit derives the earlier realist novelist Honoré de Balzac in Pere Goriot. 28 Dostoyevsky was familiar with Balzac having earlier translated him as his first literary project. 29 Balzac places the sentiment that it could be desirable for someone to die in order that another could profit in the conversation of a social climber. Balzac himself traces the idea that someone could die for the sake of another’s pretensions to Rousseau. In Crime and Punishment Raskolnikov hears the idea from a self-indulgent billiard player. Herzen’s heroic ethic when practised does not function for the benefit of humanity. The ideals of nihilism are equated with the grubbiest thoughts of the most dissolute in contemporary society. They symbolise the triumph of the very worst that could be visited upon Russia by “superfluous people” who considered themselves the founders of a better society. Such a doctrine is the ideology of those that would benefit the most from subjecting the majority of the population to misery.
Dostoyevsky supported Christian morality in opposition to Herzen’s morality. Herzen specifically denied that there could be any universal morality in From The Other Shore. He considered Kant to be mistaken in his effort to analyse every action according to the categorical imperative. 30 Kant sought to reinforce Christian virtues by applying the self- critical test of only behaving in the manner that you would wish everyone to adopt. This maxim is very similar to the Christian doctrine of “do unto others that you would do unto yourself”. 31 Herzen completely dismissed Christian virtue and tried to substitute the individual creation of one’s own morality as fulfilling a historical destiny. Against the universal applicability of moral equality before God, Herzen envisioned a subjective plurality of moral pathways. As Dostoyevsky quickly realised, this did not mean that everyone had an equal opportunity to express his or her values. The extreme poverty faced by many people left them little opportunity to create their own values.
Aileen Kelly is one of the few writers to study the conflict between Dostoyevsky and Herzen. In her analysis of this disagreement she applies Richard Rorty's distinction between ironic and metaphysical ways of talking. For Kelly, Herzen rejected idealism and abstract moralism adhering instead to civic virtue. Kelly dismisses Dostoyevsky as a religious utopian whom Herzen undermined by his irony. 32 This methodology inverts the political positions of both parties. Herzen becomes a practical moralist and Dostoyevsky, through his belief in God, becomes a utopian. Kelly’s position can only be held if ideas are separated from their consequences. The dismissal of Dostoyevsky’s Orthodoxy as utopian describes support for traditional and popular moral values as an ideology in competition with Herzen’s subjective idealism. Every moral ethic is equated with ideology. Such a position takes no account of the consequences of such moral positions. Herzen looked toward the destruction of Russian society as the prerequisite to the formation of a better society. He accepted that violence was required and immoral means could produce a better world. Dostoyevsky supported
28 Honoré de Balzac, Old Goriot, trans. Marion Ayton Crawford, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1977, pp. 157- 158. 29 Leonid Grossman, Dostoyevsky, A Biography, trans. Mary Mackler, London, Allen Lane, 1974, p. 50. 30 Gertsen, ‘S Tovo Berega’, p. 327. 31 J. H. W. Stuckenberg, The Life of Immanuel Kant, Bristol, Thoemmes, 1990, p. 317 and Luke, Ch. 6 verse 31. 32 Aileen Kelly, ‘Irony and Utopia in Herzen and Dostoyevsky: ‘From the Other’ and ‘Diary of a Writer’’ in The Russian Review, Vol. 50, Oct. 1991, pp. 397-416. 91 traditional universal morality and rejected political murder. Herzen is the utopian idealist and Dostoyevsky concerns himself with the practical outcomes of Herzen’s conspiratorial socialist morality.
Kelly does not address Dostoyevsky’s main concern, the concrete consequences of a conspiratorial socialist morality, and cannot explain why Herzen’s ironic civic virtue led him to represent Bakunin, the anarchist prophet of terrorism, as the future hope for Europe. 33 While Herzen supported Bakunin in From the Other Shore the realists Turgenev and Dostoyevsky found Bakunin’s policies violent, repulsive and authoritarian. Kelly is placed in a position where she accepts Herzen’s morality in which not only are the majority of humanity incapable of self-determination but they have to rely on the terrorist Bakunin to deliver them to a better world. The branding of Dostoyevsky as a utopian based on his belief in universal values distorts the consequences of Herzen’s morality for other people. There is more at stake in this conflict than ironic representation of the conflict between two equally valid ideologies. It is the concrete issue of the authoritarian consequences that flowed from Herzen’s morality.
Dostoyevsky and Sue
Kelly does not recognise the connection between Herzen’s morality and the use of the romance to propagate conspiratorial socialist ideology as against Dostoyevsky’s realist novels. A comparison between Dostoyevsky’s novels and Sue’s The Mysteries of Paris elucidates the difference in their moralities. Sue uses his hero to intervene in the lives of criminals to demonstrate a better world they could live in. A utopian farm gives them a means to construct a healthier more profitable life. Sue does not regard the prostitutes in his story as outcast but unfortunates in need of help. However, the only help comes with the hero who is capable of enforcing his own morality on others. There is no self determination in this romance. People are divided on the basis of those that are irredeemably evil like the ‘Screech-Owl’ and those who accept the leadership of the hero. Prostitution presented a problem to European cities but Sue does not offer any insight into its causes and offers the solution of a better world in the future. Dostoyevsky analysed the situation differently and came to a far different conclusion.
The existence of child prostitution and poverty mocks the idea that a plurality of morality exists. A universal morality to which all were subjected formed a protection for those most in need. It was not a form of oppression. The theme of poverty forcing girls into prostitution is a major theme of Dostoyevsky. In Crime and Punishment the destruction of the family is achieved by the degradation of the family by having too little to eat and the need to sacrifice of some of the family for the benefit of the others. This is not the noble and supposedly heroic sacrifice that Herzen was making for the achievement of socialism. Both Herzen and the prostitute in Crime and Punishment, Sonia, broke contemporary morality but Sonia did it out of family responsibility and recognised it as wrong. Herzen did
33 Alexander Herzen, ‘The Russian People and Socialism’ in From the Other Shore and The Russian People and Socialism, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1979, pp. 207-208. 92 so believing himself to be morally superior and avoided his family responsibilities. The final collapse of Raskolnikov’s theories leads to the realisation that he had acted far more immorally than Lisa.
Dostoyevsky illustrates the chasm between realism and the socialist romance on several levels. In his social reportage he makes common ground with the democratic socialists in his attacks on unrestrained capitalism. Before he wrote his later novels Dostoyevsky visited Western Europe and produced the journalism of Winter Notes on Summer Impressions. The human degradation of London’s underworld and French moral hypocrisy repulsed Dostoyevsky. Here we have the link between the realist novel and social analysis that had earlier occurred between Engels, Tristan, Mayhew and Dickens. Dostoyevsky’s report of his trip through Western Europe, where he met Herzen, is marked by the absolute outrage at the sight of young girls being used for prostitution. 34 In his journalism Dostoyevsky criticised his socialist and liberal opponents for their lack of concern for the injured and humiliated.
The foundational socialist romance, The Mysteries of Paris, presented a view of prostitution as a criminal act solved by a socialist saviour enforcing morality on criminals. This work believed that prostitution existed because of the evil motives of those such as the “Screech Owl” and the “Schoolmaster”. In a better world such things would not occur. Dostoyevsky challenged this when he used the literary form common to both realism and socialism. In his journalism of Winter Notes on Summer Impressions, published in 1862, Dostoyevsky produced a work in the category of socialist travel reportage. This work resembled the French socialist Flora Tristan’s London Journal of 1842 in its personal outrage at the rapacity of unrestrained capitalism. Tristan directly linked the level of prostitution to the disparity in wealth and the lack of state will to attack the problem because of the prevailing philosophy of free market economics. At that period London had over 50,000 prostitutes and had achieved notoriety as the vice capital of Europe. 35 London had come to represent the consequences of free market economics to the rest of Europe.
The description of poverty by realists and socialists also illustrated the rift in socialism. Herzen’s description of European revolutionary circles in My Past and Reminiscences does not include the poor. Herzen’s work is populated with destitute revolutionaries in his combination of epic and autobiography not the world of the poor. The conspiratorial socialists by their use of the romance excluded themselves from an alliance with working class organisations and other political groups. The heroic ethic combined an exclusive morality with the inability to co-operate with other social movements. The use of the romance and the utopian novel provided the literary background to this division of the world into revolutionary heroes and others. The aesthetic values behind the romance placed personal salvation above any other value. Any literary form that championed universal responsibilities was an anathema to conspiratorial socialism. Realism may have written about the life of the poor in formulae that it shared with the romance but it discussed these
34 Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Winter Notes On Summer Impressions, trans. David Patterson, Evanston, Northwestern University Press, 1991, p. 39-41. 35 Flora Tristan, The London Journal of Flora Tristan, London, Virago, 1982, pp. 89-102. 93 in terms of economic exploitation. The realist novel was not the simple moralising found in the romance.
The Crystal Palace
Dostoyevsky looked at the Crystal Palace and asked why the ability to construct industrial marvels had not ended poverty or the evils of child prostitution. His trip around Europe convinced him that capitalist society actually encouraged these evils. Dostoyevsky’s description of prostitution differs markedly from that of Sue. Dostoyevsky contrasted the plight of child prostitutes in London with the adoration of the Crystal Palace. Built in 1850 it housed exhibitions of the world’s industrial produce in 1851 and 1862. The gardener Joseph Paxton designed it to be constructed from prefabricated units that ignored traditional architecture. The Crystal Palace became vaunted as the prime example of the entrepreneurial drive behind English free market capitalism. 36 Dostoyevsky did not satisfy himself with ideas such as Sue’s model farms to solve the problems of the unfair distribution of wealth. Furthermore, a simple technological answer to poverty did not exist. Dostoyevsky found ridiculous the idea that morally superior production methods such as co-operation in What Is to Be Done? would lead to a better world. The free expansion of the individual will or rational egoism would not overcome social problems but rather they would make them worse.
Dostoyevsky also dealt with the issues raised in the romance What is to be Done? He dismissed the simple correlation between Chernyshevsky’s connection of technological advancement and social progress. Dostoyevsky could not believe that technological advancement would ultimately lead to the foundation of a better society. He was far too sceptical of capitalism. He recognised the role that technology played in the exploitation of people. The romance did not deal with these issues but referred to the solution of a cartel set up by the wise heroine that created profits for all involved. Dostoyevsky drew attention to what it was like to starve. The system may be immoral but acting immorally to challenge the basis of exploitation was no answer.
Chernyshevsky referred to the Crystal Palace in What Is To Be Done? Here it appears as a celebration of the coming of the “New People” and as a hint of the new and better world that will be built by modern technologies. 37 Chernyshevsky accepted the claims of technology to be able to provide a perfect environment. Others have found Dostoyevsky’s references to the Crystal Palace should be taken as an illustration of his efforts to attack rationality. Those such as Joseph Frank failed to recognise that Dostoyevsky’s objection to the Crystal Palace was not that it replaced free will and suffering with determinism, but that it is part of a system that will crush most people in the name of personal liberty. 38
36 Asa Briggs, Iron Bridge to Crystal Palace, Impact and Images of the Industrial Revolution, London, Thames and Hudson, 1979, pp. 165-169. 37 Nikolai Chernyshevsky, ‘Sto Delat?’ in Sobranie Sochinenii, Tom 1, Moscow, Pravda, 1974, pp. 375- 376. 38 Joseph Frank, Dostoyevsky, The Miraculous Years, 1865-1871, London, Robson, 1995. pp. 325-326. 94 Dostoyevsky disbelieved that technology and an individual ethic would create a better world.
Dostoyevsky explicitly asserted that the Crystal Palace represented a moral system that sacrificed children to procure wealth. During the period of Dostoyevsky’s major novels prostitution also became a huge problem in Russia. It expanded from approximately two thousand in the early 1860’s to forty-four thousand in 1871. 39 The problem of prostitution and the degradation of women did not restrict itself to Dostoyevsky. Tolstoy addressed it in Resurrection, a novel that suffered from severe censorship. 40 Dostoyevsky returned to this linkage of the Crystal Palace and prostitution after his trip to Europe in Notes from the Underground, published in 1864. 41 Dostoyevsky did not see himself as an anti- enlightenment figure. He constantly saw Russia as the heir to European civilisation. 42 He is not rejecting rationalism but unrestrained capitalism, which he equated with conspiratorial socialist ethics.
Following his visit to London, Dostoyevsky knew that unrestrained capitalism posed a threat for the majority of Russians. In Winter Notes to Summer Impressions, following his description of child prostitution, Dostoyevsky described admiration of the Crystal Palace as the worship of Baal. Dostoyevsky does not refer to Mammon, that is the deification of wealth, but the Canaanite God of thunder and fertility, Baal. Here Dostoyevsky compares London to ancient Canaan and Carthage through the practice of ritual prostitution and child sacrifice associated with Baal worship. 43 Flaubert’s Salammbô published in 1862, the same year as Winter Notes vividly depicted the full horrors of Canaanite and Carthaginian religion. 44 Dostoyevsky did not trivialise the situation by dealing in abstract intellectual courtesies; rather he flung the vile consequences of free market capitalism back at the reader. Unrestrained capitalism forced the sacrifice of children and women as they tried to support their families. The self-sacrifice of the revolutionary hero was an indulgence denied these people.
In comparison Herzen’s and Chernyshevsky’s understanding of the operation of Western capitalism seem naive. Herzen lived in a London in which the first police district contained over five and a half thousand prostitutes. Three and a half thousand formed the lowest class of these, most being children from the age of ten. Added to this, the low wages paid to seamstresses obliged them to work part-time as prostitutes in order to prevent starvation. 45 Herzen does not deal with this problem. The reality of this situation makes Chernyshevsky’s dreams of a community of seamstresses forming their own little collective seem absurd. 46 These people did not wish to have this way of life thrust on them but they had no means to avoid such a miserable fate. There was no ability for these people to
39 Peter Henry, Vsevolod Garshin, The Man, His Works and His Milieu, Oxford, Willem A. Meeuws, 1983, p. 68. 40 Lev Tolstoy, Resurrection, trans. Julius Katzer, Moscow, Progress Publishers, 1978. 41 Fydor Dostoyevsky, Notes From the Underground and The Gambler, trans. Jane Kentish, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1991, p. 26. 42 Dostoyevsky, A Writer’s Diary, Vol. 2, pp. 877-878. 43 Jeremiah, Ch. 19, verse 5 and Leviticus, Ch. 20, verses 1-7. 44 Gustave Flaubert, Salammbô, trans. J, W. Matthews, London, Greening, n.d., pp. 349-360. 45 Henry Mayhew, The Morning Chronicle Survey of Labour and the Poor: The Metropolitan Districts, (1849-1850), Firle, Caliban, 1980, Volume 1 pp. 159-161 and Volume 3, pp. 27-28, 73-74, and 96-100. 46 Chernyshevsky, ‘Sto Delat?’ pp. 169-173. 95 choose their own morality. Dostoyevsky despised England for allowing the unregulated pursuit of wealth to destroy its own citizens.
Dostoyevsky characterised socialist ethics and the free market as “everything is permitted“ and those with power and the least scruples hold sway. 47 The problem of prostitution demonstrates for Dostoyevsky that the collapse of traditional virtues not only fails to lead to the free expression of personal values but only a more intense exploitation. Dostoyevsky returned to the problem of prostitution repeatedly in Notes From The Underground, Devils, The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov. Most pertinent is the exchange between the narrator and the prostitute in Notes From the Underground. The narrator offers hope to a prostitute but collapses into the sterile platitudes of the “superfluous man” when pressed for aid by her. 48 Sue’s aristocratic romantic hero could not cure society by applying socialist remedies. The pressing need of the poor and defenceless remained the promotion of a morality that not only served all but also bound all to it. The heroic ethic ignored the aspect of responsibility that prevented exploitation.
Dostoyevsky made the utopian assumptions of Chernyshevsky look ridiculous. The romance did not allow for an examination of exploitation. Chernyshevsky lacked Fourier’s understanding of the basic immorality of the system of trade. 49 Instead Chernyshevsky chose to emphasise the communal and sexual side of Fourier. Dostoyevsky, in Crime and Punishment, ridicules Fourier and Chernyshevsky in the character of Andrei Lebeziatnikov, an amiable and principled fool. Lebeziatnikov propounds Fourier’s doctrines on love and the need to establish a commune but he expresses outrage at the attempt of Peter Luzhin, the would be suitor of Raskolnikov’s sister Dunia, to compromise Sonia. In his arguments Lebeziatnikov makes direct reference to Chernyshevsky’s What Is To Be Done?, making this romance appear absurd. 50 Whilst discussing Sonia’s desperate need that caused her to become a prostitute he presents prostitution as a commercial transaction and Sonia as expressing her freedom to enter such a deal. Furthermore, Lebeziatnikov stresses that prostitution protests against the lack of authenticity in human sexual relationships. It has nothing to do with the tragedy that befell Sonia and her family. It also offers no solution to the family’s immediate needs. Dostoyevsky links conspiratorial socialist ideology with capitalist dogma.
The reduction of personal relationships to a financial transaction deprives them of any moral aspect. At no point does it even occur to Lebeziatnikov to assist Sonia in a way that would help her save herself from the life she leads. The need to act responsibly drags Sonia into a life that will destroy both her and her family. There is no way out of this while poverty exists. The need to act ethically leads to suffering. The heroic posturing of those like Herzen who describe their anguish in public is in itself a vanity denied those in poverty. Dostoyevsky again established the connection between conspiratorial socialism and the ideology of capitalism. Both Lebeziatnikov and Chernyshevsky try to attach an ideology of
47 Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment, pp. 294-296. 48 Dostoyevsky, Notes From the Underground, pp. 12-121. 49 Frederick Engels, ‘A Fragment Of Fourier’s On Trade’ in K. Marx and F. Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 4, London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1975, pp. 614-615. 50 Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment, pp. 387-389. 96 freedom to the necessities forced on people by poverty and oppression. The romance avoids dealing with this situation.
Dostoyevsky challenged Chernyshevsky’s social explanation of crime but had difficulty in providing a viable alternative. By the chain of thought that any action that attacked the present world became a good action Raskolnikov tries to justify his murders. He claimed his poverty and need outweighed ethical considerations. The money could alleviate poverty and the moneylender had committed a moral offence by hoarding money and beating her sister. 51 Raskolnikov sought to remove moral stigma from his actions by blaming his social circumstance. Dostoyevsky had difficulty in overcoming the crippling effect of poverty and the limitations on the actions of the poor in Crime and Punishment. The logic of poverty will lead to all his friend’s orphaned children becoming homeless and being supported by their prostitute sister, Sonia, when this fails her younger sister will follow her. Sonia sacrifices herself to feed her brothers and sisters but even this feeds the cycle of exploitation. Not even suicide can prevent Sonia’s descent into suffering because the other children would then be destroyed if she did. 52 Dostoyevsky solves the problem in the novel by having the disreputable child molester Svidrigailov kill himself, leaving money to Sonia’s family. The idea that a debauchee should repent through suicide and thereby do some good by relieving poverty may be appealing but is scarcely realistic. It is very close to the conspiratorial socialist solution of the redeemed sinner sacrificing themselves for others. Dostoyevsky’s real solution is the application of a common morality to everyone. People should resist the immoral temptation to use prostitutes and people should have the means to do socially worthwhile work.
The Tsarist State
Dostoyevsky argued that the importation of capitalism represented the biggest threat to Russia after seeing the desperate lives of so many English people. In comparison Herzen lived amongst such misery but claimed that the tyranny of the Tsar caused Russia’s backwardness. Herzen’s solution would mean the triumph of capitalism in Russia. Dostoyevsky rejected Herzen’s promises of a plurality of moralities. Herzen’s denigration of Christianity did not mean that an atheist subjective morality could emerge; rather it set up a conflict between popular morality and the immorality of the few and powerful. Although Dostoyevsky disparaged Catholicism he recognised the power of Saint Thomas’ argument that the urge to accumulate wealth has no limit and contorts everyone to its desires. 53 The pursuit of a socialist utopia would not lead to a communal society but the installation of a deeply divided and impoverished society. Dostoyevsky saw a possibility that the tsarist state itself could be used to prevent the worst excesses of the spread of capitalism to Russia.
51 Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment, pp. 28, 67 and 83. 52 Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment, pp. 342-345. 53 St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologæ, A Concise Translation, Ed. Timothy McDermott, London, Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1989, p. 396. 97 Dostoyevsky and the conspiratorial socialists cannot escape from the problems associated by sacrifice. Sonia sacrifices herself for her family but it can only prevent even worse happening for a short time. The idea that personal sacrifice can facilitate the creation of a better world is debatable. This applies both to Dostoyevsky’s Christian idea of sacrifice to atone for sin and the heroic redemption of the conspiratorial socialists. The revolutionary hero takes on the sin of acting immorally to create a better world. Likewise, it stretches credibility that Svidrigailov can transform himself and by his own sacrifice atone for his sins. His actions may help the immediate needs of a few but it will not overcome endemic poverty. Dostoyevsky tried to overcome this problem by proposing state intervention to moderate exploitation. This matched the programmes of the democratic forms of socialism. While his moral philosophy is still emphasised individual responsibility Dostoyevsky looked toward Tsarism to provide a moral protection of Russian people from the excesses of socialism and capitalism.
Dostoyevsky attempted to find an answer to the problem of suffering through the acceptance of the Tsarist State. The State represented an ethical entity that should support popular morality. A common morality was not enough to ensure a just society on its own. In the face of poverty moral decisions such as Sonia’s ensured suffering continued. Only the intervention of the state as an organ of popular morality could prevent injustice. The conspiratorial socialist did not have this as an option. The state represented the interests of an autocracy and needed to be destroyed. By dismissing the state as an oppressive instrument of the Tsar the conspiratorial socialists found themselves as having to fall back on the heroic ethic as a means to challenge injustice. Without an appeal to the moral state the alternative relied upon a purely personal ethic without a universal morality.
Shortly before his death in 1881 Dostoyevsky proclaimed the Tsar as a liberator and the father of the people. 54 As a father figure he held responsibility to his family, the Russian people. Dostoyevsky’s faith attached moral virtue to the state religion. 55 He believed the Orthodox Church held a direct relationship with God. This enabled the church to present a correct understanding of God’s will whilst itself being a moral entity. There can be little rational explanation of this linkage outside of the idea that the popular traditions of the church allowed it to act as a moral entity. Dostoyevsky’s faith expressed the unique importance of Russian religious experience. The Orthodox church and its connection to the Tsarist State would express a traditional Christian morality that would oppose both capitalism and conspiratorial socialism. This would not cure suffering but would prevent the excesses of these alternatives.
The realist novel does not offer a ready solution to the problem of injustice and poverty. It can offer an analysis of the problem and call for state intervention but it has no ability to prescribe the final overthrow of injustice. The romance does offer a solution but at the cost of removing people’s self determination and destroying popular morality. The romance’s solution has little to recommend it. It will not see the end of tyranny only the substitution of one problem for another. The realist novel may not have offered a means to make improvements but it would not make matters worse.
54 Dostoievsky, Diary of a Writer, p. 1032. 55 Dostoievsky, Diary of a Writer, p. 1001. 98
Nihilist criticism of Dostoyevsky
Dostoyevsky mocked Herzen’s formulation of conspiratorial values as self-indulgence. The conspiratorial socialist values would not create a better world but would only lead to unrestrained violence and destruction. Nikolai Mikhailovsky, a prominent nihilist journalist and political commentator, re-invigorated Belinsky’s previous criticism of Dostoyevsky. Mikhaillovsky’s critique supported Sue’s The Mysteries of Paris as a foil against Dostoyevsky’s later works. 56 He supported the conspiratorial socialist movement and turned to the romance as the literary form most suited to the movement’s ideology. As such he criticised Dostoyevsky as his literary work did not contribute to the creation of a new society. In his critique he links the romance to his vision of the future and finds no place for the realist novel for the conspiratorial socialist cause.
Recent scholarship has avoided dealing with the use of the romance to justify killing and Dostoyevsky’s moral criticism of conspiratorial socialism. This results from those such as the literary critics Mikhail Bakhtin and Marina Kanevskaya developing their arguments from Mikhailovsky and his criticism of Dostoyevsky. They associate Dostoyevsky with subjectivist ethics and avoid Dostoyevsky’s objection to such a moral position. In Crime and Punishment he describes how subjective idealism justifies murder. The romance, especially The Mysteries of Paris, supported such a moral position. Dostoyevsky distanced himself and critiqued the subjective idealism found in Mikhailovsky. Bakhtin and Kanevskaya follow Mikhailovsky and fail to make the connection between conspiratorial socialism’s support of terror and the romance. They even fail to distinguish between the romance and the realist novel.
Dostoyevsky drew attention to the problems with socialist literature of a lack of an ethic of responsibility and nihilism’s inability to create literature with significant aesthetic and moral values. Dostoyevsky’s reaction to Herzen’s conspiratorial socialism took the shape of the support for the state to protect the poor on the basis of the Christian faith. Dostoyevsky saw the flaws in Herzen’s subjectivism and sought to overcome this with the idea of the moral state. Nihilism in the 1880’s distinguished itself from realism on the basis of subjective idealist morality. Conspiratorial socialism presented the state as inherently evil and combined this with an ethic of the redeemed revolutionary hero. This position also supported the romance, especially Sue’s Mysteries of Paris, against Dostoyevsky’s realist novels. Mikhailovsky’s attack on Dostoyevsky’s works after his death targeted Dostoyevsky’s aesthetics and morality as supportive of oppression. This attack aimed to show the superiority of nihilist morality and with it a superior aesthetic vision.
Mikhailovsky’s main charge against Dostoyevsky rested on the claim that his work did not support the morality of Chernyshevsky’s “New People” and in doing so supported an oppressive state. Other conspiratorial socialists, such as the nihilist journalist Dimitri Pisarev supported Chernyshevsky and stressed a morality of self-sacrifice to change the
56 Nikolai K. Mikhailovsky, Dostoyevsky: A Cruel Talent, trans. Spencer Cadmus, Ann Arbor, Ardis, 1978, pp. 10-11. 99 social system. 57 The divide between the realists and the conspiratorial socialists centred on the justification of killing as a moral duty to society. Pisarev in his support for Chernyshevsky placed the nihilists outside the realm of sin and thereby included killing. 58 Dostoyevsky found such a position deplorable. The idea that those with special knowledge could even kill others divided people into the powerful and the defenceless. Herzen agreed and followed this reasoning to its logical conclusion that everyone created their own morality. The conspiratorial socialists engaged in a constant struggle to represent themselves as agents of a greater social good while they justified any means to attain a better world. Conspiratorial socialist ethics were compromised from their beginnings but Mikhailovsky attempted to defend such a position before and after Dostoyevsky’s death.
Plekhanov claimed Mikhailovsky’s position developed from the left wing criticism of Hegel by Bruno Bauer. Bauer had earlier broken with Marx over his position of the educated elite dominating the mass of people. Plekhanov presented Mikhailovsky’s politics as supportive of the idea that heroes progressed society by their actions. Mikhailovsky’s position stems from Hegel’s hero acting in accordance with a universal spirit to progress historical need. The hero acts as a subject of history to usher in a new society. Bauer took Hegel and emphasised the hero as opposed to the majority of people in their motivation to change society. Mikhailovsky follows Bauer in this and opposes Marx who sought to present Hegel’s universal spirit as the material interaction of people with the environment. Plekhanov presents Mikhailovsky as following Bauer in socialist heroes being motivated by their own subjective self-consciousness. 59 Whereas Marx sought to base Hegel’s universal spirit in material terms, Bauer and Mikhailovsky presented the universal spirit as stemming from subjective will. Mikhailovsky accepts Bauer’s subjective idealism and criticises Dostoyevsky according to it.
Mikhailovsky’s support of terror
Mikhailovsky’s subjective idealism formed the basis for his support for terrorism. 60 The positions Dostoyevsky took in regard to terrorism in Devils and Crime and Punishment conflicted with Mikhailovsky. The revolutionary, for Mikhailovsky, understood a subjective and idealist version of truth, which transcended objective understanding. Society’s primary purpose centred on the development of individuals in society. Truth was a subjective entity felt by the individual, not the objective outcome of scientific investigation. 61 In contrast to Stirner, Mikhailovsky held that this subjective truth corresponded to the will of the people. Mikhailovsky tried to link the heroic ethic with the universal love but as Stirner recognised, there could be no connection of a mass of individuals with the concept of humanity. 62 For Mikhailovsky the people’s will could not be represented by the existing political system but
57 Dimitry Pisarev, ‘Thinking Proletariat’ in Selected Philosophical, Social and Political Essays, Moscow, Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1958, p. 645. 58 Pisarev, ‘Thinking Proletariat’, p. 637. 59 G. Plekhanov, ‘Once Again Mr. Mikhailovsky, Once More the ‘Triad’’, in Selected Philosophical works, Volume I, Moscow, Progress Publishers, 1974, p. 702. 60 Marina Kanevskaya, N. K. Mikhailovsky’s Criticism of Dostoyevsky: The Cruel Critic, New York, Edwin Mellen Press, 2001, p. 9. 61 James H. Billington, Mikhailovsky and Russian Populism, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1958, p. 97. 62 Max Stirner, The Ego and Its Own, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 55-56. 100 required the radical social change. In this manner Mikhailovsky rejected political parties in accordance with the ideas of Proudhon. 63
Mikhailovsky looked upon any force that impeded the development of the individual as violence. Like Stirner he believed the individual may kill in order to fulfil their personal development. 64 Mikhailovsky understood violence to be institutional violence that crippled the development of the personality. 65 “The saddest violence which can be done to a man is to make it impossible for personality to grow. The poor boy who is able in school, but is turned to become a common labourer before his mind can develop: the gifted woman who is shut up in the house of her stuffy husband; never to have a chance to use or develop her gifts; these are the most shameful crimes of violence known to us.” 66 Terrorist violence is not even registered as immoral violence. Mikhailovsky supported violence against the state as it did not foster the growth of the “New People”. He describes justice as having a subjective nature based on the personal development of the individual. What ever does not support Mikhailovsky’s political programme he presents unnatural behaviour.
Mikhailovsky’s support for subjective understanding of society derives from the supposed personal development of people before civilisation. Mirroring Rousseau, Mikhailovsky sees industrial society as limiting individual development and therefore as immoral. A rational society would be the same for everyone and should function to support the individual. “Everything that diminishes the heterogeneity of society and strengthens the heterogeneity of its members is moral, just, reasonable and useful.” 67 Moral justice cannot be discovered by reference to objective analysis. Truth as verity such as science cannot support an ethical position. 68 The nurturing of personal development by society means that any ethical position has to be on the basis of subjective understanding. Only the individual can recognise the ideals in society that would lead to a utopia.
The realists and their support of traditional ethics impinge on the development of the self by social demands and so are at base immoral. For Mikhailovsky the destruction of an immoral society becomes a moral good. The hero destroys an irredeemable society in the name of a greater good. However, this recognises a divide between the hero and the masses. 69 The hero recognises the ideal society through their own personal development. The destruction of contemporary society becomes a positive moral activity and Mikhailovsky links this directly to The Mysteries of Paris. The actions of Rodolphe in blinding “The Schoolmaster” become not immoral but a positive ethical action. For Mikhailovsky Dostoyevsky cannot generate a moral system because he does not help develop the individual’s personality and is compromised by collaboration with the state. Dostoyevsky’s condemnation of killing becomes immoral and terrorist killing becomes a positive ethical
63 Billington, Mikhailovsky and Russian Populism, pp. 114-115. 64 Stirner, The Ego and Its Own, p. 282. 65 Errol Mathura, Foundations of Sociological Subjectivism, The Social Thought of N K Mikhailovsky (1842- 1904), London, Athena Press, 2004, p. 136. 66 Mikhailovsky quoted in Mathura, Sociological Subjectivism, p. 132. 67 Mathura, Sociological Subjectivism, pp. 55-59. 68 Mathura, Sociological Subjectivism, p. 90. 69 G. Plekhanov, ‘A Few Words To Our Opponents’ in Selected Philosophical Works, Volume I, Moscow, Progress Publishers, 1974, p. 729. 101 pursuit. For Mikhailovsky The Mysteries of Paris illustrates this achievement of a new set of values. The romance mirrors conspiratorial socialist principles.
Mikhailovsky and Dostoyevsky
Richard Freeborn defends conspiratorial socialist literary efforts on the grounds that although they are of poor quality they formed a part of controversies that inspired great literature. 70 In proposing this argument Freeborn ignores the attachment of conspiratorial socialists to the romance and the avoidance of aesthetic values. Works like What is to Be Done? cannot be credited for the production of literature such as Crime and Punishment. As Freeborn admits, Chernyshevsky’s works were almost deliberately badly written. Conspiratorial socialists subordinated aesthetic values to their ideology. Aesthetic values have no independent existence for them. Conspiratorial socialist literature shackles all values to the needs of their ideology. They favoured the romance as it avoided dealing with those issues that conspiratorial socialism found confronted their ideology. Freeborn’s position cannot acknowledge this.
The struggle between socialism and realism involves the struggle between differing moral assumptions encompassed in differing literary forms. The realists placed emphasis the literary quality of their work. Conspiratorial socialists sought out a literary form in the romance that best represented their ideology. As late as 1899 the prominent anarchist Pytor Kropotkin admitted that in his youth he wanted write a novel based on The Mysteries of Paris. 71 Conspiratorial and utopian socialism ignored the growth of Russian literature and developed a model of socialist aesthetic values from old foreign romances. There is a fundamental difference between the realist novel and the romance. Instead of sweeping the romance into an undifferentiated mass of Russian literature, as with Freeborn, Bakhtin and Kanevskaya, is important to understand why conspiratorial socialism deliberately turned its back on the development on the rise of the Russian novel.
Mikhailovsky’s ideology linked his non-democratic attitude with his deprecation of Russian literature. Mikhailovsky attacked the idea that the Russian people could understand their best interests or could produce important literature. He measured everything against the needs of the conspiratorial socialist movement. Mikhailovsky turned to the socialist romance as the natural support of his idealistic socialist principles. Mikhailovsky followed Herzen in the belief in the role of the will to transform Russia to socialism. Socialism could not be entrusted to the masses, as they would only follow a tyrant. Rather intellectuals working for egalitarian principles would establish socialism. The opinions of working people could not be the guide for action, as they did not understand their own real interests. As a conspiratorial socialist literary critic he vigorously attacked both Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy. Even Chekhov suffered from Mikhailovsky’s negative criticism. He found that Chekhov suffered from a lack of a guiding idea that would lead people in the
70 Richard Freeborn, The Rise of the Russian Novel, Studies in the Russian Novel from ‘Eugene Onegin’ to ‘War and Peace’, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1973, p. 133. 71 Peter Kropotkin, Memoirs of a Revolutionist, London, Cresset, 1988, p. 324. 102 effort to create a socialist moral society. 72 Mikhailovsky continually deprecated contemporary literature in favour of the earlier foreign literature that even Belinsky, his mentor, admitted had little aesthetic value. 73 Mikhailovsky judged all literature by the immediate needs of a political movement.
Mikhailovsky took his support of the romance further than defence of the heroic ethic with the idea that people should be shielded from the reality of the world. Mikhailovsky blamed Dostoyevsky for being cruel in his depiction of people and reality. Mikhailovsky believes most people would find being presented with reality too confronting. 74 According to Mikhailovsky Dostoyevsky needlessly confronts people with suffering and his characters are almost pathological. Mikhailovsky believes this to be morbid and in bad taste. Rather than describe the horrors of what exists the pleasure of what can be should be depicted. The conspiratorial socialists presented the romance as a myth to be realised rather than realism showing a problem to be addressed. Mikhailovsky removes the realist argument that they describe the truth and replaces it with the vision of the ideal. The depiction of what exists has little importance and serves to reinforce oppressive present society. The only moral choice open to the conspiratorial socialist literature was to describe a better future. For Mikhailovsky only a subjective myth can offer a true moral outcome. Mikhailovsky echoes Sand’s belief that the romance may lack aesthetic values of the realist novel, but remains morally superior.
Mikhailovsky presents himself as the heir to Belinsky and Dobrolyubov’s earlier praise of Poor Folk. Even though Dostoyevsky’s early work Poor Folk gained the acceptance of these socialist critics Mikhailovsky recognised that Dostoyevsky’s major works supported Tsarism. Mikhailovsky followed Belinsky’s criticism of Dostoyevsky’s later work that he stooped to the description of the fantastic and had not properly discussed social problems.75 He took this further by his accusation that Dostoyevsky’s work served reaction. 76 Mikhailovsky believed Dostoyevsky avoided showing how Tsarism oppressed the poor rather he tormented the characters placed in unfortunate situations his later work.77 The main thrust of Mikhailovsky’s argument describes Dostoyevsky’s realism as portraying cruelty because he accepts suffering as unavoidable. The strange characters in his novels do not operate according to rational behaviour but blindly hurt others. 78 Mikhailovsky does not require an accurate representation of reality but the description of how ideals operated in society. 79 The best interests of people are to establish the eternal principles of justice. Mikhailovsky took the idea of universal love as the basis of his attack on Dostoyevsky but linked it to the ability to kill.
Mikhailovsky advocates a return to Sue’s romance. Mikhailovsky contrasts The Mysteries of Paris with Dostoyevsky’s later work. Like Belinsky, Mikhailovsky admits that Sue’s work
72 Billington, Mikhailovsky and Russian Populism, p. 154. 73 V. G. Belinsky, ‘A View On Russian Literature in 1846’ in Selected Philosophical Works, Moscow, Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1948, p. 427. 74 Mikhailovsky, Dostoyevsky, pp. 10-11. 75 Belinsky, View On Russian Literature’, pp. 385 and 426. 76 Mikhailovsky, Dostoyevsky, pp. 10-11. 77 Mikhailovsky, Dostoyevsky, pp. 48-55. 78 Mikhailovsky, Dostoyevsky, pp. 11-12 and 27. 79 Mikhailovsky, Dostoyevsky, p. 54. 103 is crude and poorly written, but he prefers it as it shows how the hero can redeem a criminal. Dostoyevsky’s realism does not support such social ideals. 80 Mikhailovsky believes the means to achieve social ideals rests in the heroic ethic found in Sue. Mikhailovsky believes Sue’s literary archetypes exist in society. As literary ideals they have more importance than the actions of the majority of people. The adoption of the heroic ethic illustrates what can be possible rather than what exists. Mikhailovsky pushes Herzen’s arguments further by completely divorcing morality from any appeal to reality. Mikhailovsky measured all things, including artistic ability, by a moral standing derived from utopian thought and ignored the advances in democratic politics found in England and Germany.
There could be no idea of a common front against injustice. Mikhailovsky claimed that Dostoyevsky’s portrayal of suffering and repentance through forgiveness reinforced Tsarist oppression. 81 Sue’s hero expressed a love of humanity and undertook his violent actions to bring about a future moral society. The Tsar acted as a representative of a morally flawed society that did not allow for the development of “New People” and so like Dostoyevsky committed violence toward the individual. There could be no agreement even on basic ideas such as redemption. The redeemed hero of Sue’s, Rodolphe, by sacrificing his social standing could set himself to the task of changing the world. His actions in trying to gain power had educated him as to the error of acting for material gain alone. He had become redeemed by the knowledge that he could put in place a better world. Socialist redemption enabled Rodolphe to act immorally in the knowledge that he served a higher moral purpose. He acted immorally as he had a greater love of humanity than to see it suffer. This argument can only be sustained if the love of humanity is reduced to an abstract idea. The blinding of someone is acceptable if done through love. The idea of redemption as the asking of forgiveness as found in Dostoyevsky is completely alien to Mikhailovsky.
Although Mikhailovsky stressed the importance of The Mysteries of Paris he would seem to have had only a passing acquaintance with this work, as his account of the redeemed criminal as a butcher is inaccurate. 82 This indicates that the novel itself was either not as important as the political standing of the ideas it contained or that Mikhailovsky followed someone else’s account of the romance. It would seem to be the later as Mikhailovsky presented himself as the direct ideological descendant of Belinsky and repeats Belinsky’s opinions. 83 Mikhailovsky selected Belinsky’s praise of The Mysteries of Paris and repeated them uncritically in his attack on Dostoyevsky. 84 He is following the ideology of conspiratorial socialism and not applying original thought to the support of the romance. Mikhailovsky does not deal with any aesthetic considerations in his attack on Dostoyevsky it is an exercise in preserving the conspiratorial socialist set of beliefs. Significantly, Mikhailovsky did not publish his most expanded critique of Dostoyevsky until his opponent had died and could no longer answer. The savagery of his attack when Dostoyevsky died
80 Mikhailovsky, Dostoyevsky, pp. 60-63. 81 Mikhailovsky, Dostoyevsky, pp. 35-36. 82 Compare Mikhailovsky, Dostoyevsky, p. 60 with Sue, Mysteries of Paris, pp. 95-99. 83 Kanevskaya, Mikhailovsky’s Criticism of Dostoyevsky, p. 30. 84 V. G. Belinsky, ‘Les Mystères de Paris’ in Selected Philosophical Works, Moscow, Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1948, pp. 320-328. 104 demonstrates the serious damage done to his ideology by Dostoyevsky’s novels and journalism and acknowledges their popular support. It is not a measured assessment of the aesthetic value of Dostoyevsky’s work but a continuation of Belinsky’s dismissal of Dostoyevsky.
The support of conspiratorial socialist ideology blinded Mikhailovsky to the deficiencies of his own philosophy. Once the idea of universal love disappears with the adoption of the heroic ethic such an ethic ends up with the proposition the “everything is permitted”. Mikhailovsky does not respond to this criticism of Dostoyevsky. Instead he places the heroic ethic outside the reach of empirical measurement. This is the vital contribution of Mikhailovsky. He shapes a political movement according to the demands of the romance. He mystifies the heroic ethic and gives it an aspect outside of rational debate and accurate description. It is the passage of the heroic ethic from literary archetype to political programme by means of the mystical understanding of the “superfluous person”.
Mikhailovsky’s subjectivism involves the notion of service to humanity being the basis for personal development. Plekhanov recognised that this position derives from Bruno Bauer and Szeliga, who supported The Mysteries of Paris. 85 However, Mikhailovsky has no means to oppose Stirner’s critique of Bauer. Stirner reveals that if one accepts the idea of the individual and dismisses the moral influence of the church and state an idea of humanity vanishes. 86 The loss of an appeal to a common humanity leaves Mikhailovsky with coercion as a means to change society. Mikhailovsky tries to overcome this problem by splitting the world between the subjective human world and the objective scientific world. Science represented objective truth but justice represented a subjective truth. 87 He believed that science destroyed any appeal to authority but the combination of this with the growth of the individual recognising historical progress and the urge for a utopia created altruism. 88 The individual’s personal development became a measure of all things and the recognition of ideals. However, he still accepts the coercive tactics of killing for a political cause.
Mikhailovsky and Bakhtin
Recent literary studies of the relationship between Dostoyevsky and Mikhailovsky have focused on finding an objective existence for Bakhtin’s concept of “polyphony”. By ignoring the moral basis for Dostoyevsky’s use of dialogue these studies function to support the very subjective ethics Dostoyevsky struggled against. Bakhtin attempted to link Chernyshevsky’s romances to Dostoyevsky’s work. 89 Bakhtin attempted to incorporate Dostoyevsky into the conspiratorial socialist ethic. 90 He turned to subjective idealism in an
85 Georgi Plekhanov, ‘The Development of the Monist View of History’ in Selected Philosophical Works, Volume 1, Moscow, Progress Publishers, 1974, pp. 639-640. 86 Max Stirner, The Ego and Its Own, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 119-121. 87 Billington, Mikhailovsky and Russian Populism, p. 34. 88 Billington, Mikhailovsky and Russian Populism, pp. 39-40. 89 Mikhail Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoyevsky’s Poetics, trans. R. W. Rotsel, Ardis, New York, 1973, pp. 43 and 55. 90 Albert Camus, The Rebel, London, Hamish Hamilton, 1953, p. 139. 105 effort to understand Dostoyevsky and found a source for his position in Mikhailovsky. He found that “… The sort of moral torture to which Dostoyevsky subjects his heroes in order to force from them the word of ultimate self-consciousness allows him to expose in the portrayal of a character all that is material and objectivised, all that is firm and immutable, all that is external and neutral, in the sphere of the character’s self-consciousness and his self-utterances.” 91 His argument attempts to show that Dostoyevsky’s characters have independent existence from each other and his novels represent “the interaction of consciousnesses in the sphere of ideas.” 92 Bakhtin sees Dostoyevsky’s novels as illustrating an intersubjectivity of wills such as is found in Herzen’s defence of a conspiratorial socialism. At no point does Bakhtin attempt to come to terms with Dostoyevsky’s critique of subjective idealism and its consequences.
Kanevskaya accepts Bakhtin’s position toward Dostoyevsky’s novels and attributes Mikhailovsky with formulating similar ideas. She claims that the discovery by Mikhailovsky of the polyphony of voices in Dostoyevsky’s novels before Bakhtin demonstrates the objective existence of subjective literary structures. 93 She accepts Bakhtin’s description of Dostoyevsky’s novels as originating in utopian novels and not antagonistic to the realist novel. 94 There is no attempt to analyse the antagonism between the literary forms of the realist novel and the utopian novel and the romance. They are left as differing methods of literary construction without reference to political consequences. The question of why conspiratorial socialism did not generate a new literary form but returned to the earlier romance is ignored.
When Bakhtin and Kanevskaya present Dostoyevsky’s novels as ‘polyphonic’ they assume that he is describing a pluralism of subjective voices in contemporary society. They do not recognise that Dostoyevsky gave a voice to his opponents in his novels to show how their ideas led to unacceptable consequences. Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment does not represent the flourishing of alternative futures. He represents nihilist arguments for terrorism. For Dostoyevsky the conspiratorial socialist moral position found in the romance was unacceptable not just another voice in a plurality of voices. For Dostoyevsky an equal validity of ideologies does not exist. Subjective morality and its attendant support for terrorism was an enemy to be fought and overcome, not an alternative reality. The ideas put forward by Bakhtin and Kanevskaya exist in the doctrines of those like Herzen and Mikhailovsky not in the novels of Dostoyevsky.
The division between Chernyshevsky and Dostoyevsky incorporates aesthetic values. Chernyshevsky admits his work to be of inferior literary quality but of a superior moral and political value. “I haven’t a drop of literary talent in me. Even my Russian is poor. No matter-read on, good people, you will find it well worth your while. Truth is a splendid cause, it makes up for any and all shortcomings in the writer who serves it.” 95 In contrast Dostoyevsky believed that literary values both existed independently of a political position
91 Bakhtin, Dostoyevsky’s Poetics, p. 43. 92 Bakhtin, Dostoyevsky’s Poetics, p. 26. 93 Kanevskaya, Mikhailovsky’s Criticism of Dostoyevsky, p. 18. 94 Kanevskaya, Mikhailovsky’s Criticism of Dostoyevsky, p. 187. 95 Nikolai Chernyshevsky, What is To Be Done?, Tales of “New People” A Novel, trans. Laura Beraha, Moscow, Raduga, 1983, p. 38. 106 and truthfully described reality. 96 Given the literary and moral division between them it is unacceptable that Bakhtin attempts to unite Chernyshevsky and Dostoyevsky as champions of the ‘polyphonic’ novel. 97 Even Bakhtin’s attempt to prefigure Dostoyevsky’s literary methods in Socratic and ancient literary methods is more applicable to the socialist romance that stemmed from ancient models. 98 This position can only be held if the central issue of the justification of political murder is ignored. Bakhtin and Kanevskaya attempt to create a category of a monolithic nineteenth Century novel that ignores the basic divisions between the romance and the realist novel.
Both Bakhtin and Kanevskaya ignore Dostoyevsky’s dismissal of subjective idealism. Mikhailovsky’s position is not a realist investigation of society but Bauer’s rejection of the democratic intervention of people in society. For Mikhailovsky “Progress is the gradual evolution of the individual human being toward perfect completeness by means of the most comprehensive division of labour in the organs of the body and the least possible division in society, between individuals. Everything that hampers this movement is immoral, unjust, harmful and irrational. Those things alone are moral, just, rational and good that reduce division in society.” 99 Mikhailovsky believed in a socialism derived from subjective choice and moral ideals. It was not to occur due to necessity and objective analysis. 100 The hero’s subjective will is by itself moral. Anything that opposes it Mikhailovsky finds immoral. This is not support any idea of a set of pluralist alternative views. For Mikhailovsky the development of the individual means the destruction of present society by elites. The views of most people are not to be taken into account. The subjective position that Bakhtin and Kanevskaya seek to justify is applicable to the socialist romance which relied upon these arguments. However, it is not applicable to Dostoyevsky or the realist novel.
Dostoyevsky confronted conspiratorial socialism with several unpleasant truths about itself. Its literary productions ignored accepted moral limitations in the attempt to establish socialism. The romance such as The Mysteries of Paris lacked credibility. The romance retained importance as it rejected any appeal to people’s needs, self-determination and the appeal to a true description of people’s lives. It replaced traditional values with a heroic ethical idealism and divided humanity into the ignorant and the enlightened. From this division grew the idea that by the sacrifice of ones life and family the sincere revolutionary could transcend accepted morality. Dostoyevsky revealed that the idealisation of people into literary archetypes, as occurred in the romance, allowed for the replacement of universal morality with the ideology of the “superfluous men”. Those like Mikhailovsky championed these ideas and applied them to the romance. Because these ideas proved incompatible with the realist novel Mikhailovsky rejected contemporary literature and literary values in favour of the foreign romance.
Bakhtin and Kanevskaya attribute a form of subjective idealism foreign to both Mikhailovsky and Dostoyevsky in an attempt to authenticate a monolithic pluralistic
96 Kjetsaa, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, pp. 137-138. 97 Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoyevsky’s Poetics, pp. 54-55. 98 Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoyevsky’s Poetics, p. 92. 99 Kanevskaya, Mikhailovsky’s Criticism of Dostoyevsky, p. 23. 100 Billington, Mikhailovsky and Russian Populism, p. 65. 107 Russian literature. Unlike Dostoyevsky and Mikhailovsky, they fail to recognise that the antagonism between realism and the romance can only be overcome with the collapse of one or the other literary forms. Dostoyevsky and Mikhailovsky are representatives of fundamentally opposed moral positions that present each other as enemies. Bakhtin and Kanevskaya cannot account for this hostility as they draw upon the same subjective idealism as conspiratorial socialism. Dostoyevsky demonstrates the impossibility of building a better world based on immoral actions. Bakhtin and Kanevskaya deny the fundamental appeal subjective idealism has for conspiratorial socialism in its ability to justify political murders. They ignore the political and moral consequences behind the literary debate. Rather, they describe a bloodless world where the contenders hold views in an intersubjectivty of ideas and in which none has a greater validity. 108
Chapter 5. Wagner and Redemption
Romance as revelation
After Robert Owen socialists no longer attached utopian aspirations to working class movements. The role of the hero guiding the world to an ideal future devoid of immediate material gains held little popular appeal to organised labour. The division of society into the knowing and ignorant cannot survive in democratic politics. The socialist hero required utopian thought to justify acting against traditional values. The emphasis on heroic moral purity as against improved living standards distanced conspiratorial socialism from democratic movements. The revolutionary hero still required an appeal to a rational utopia or historical progress to achieve a better world but these doctrines had little meaning for those who suffered from oppression. In order to establish a connection with utopian thought and the doctrine of the redeemed hero the German composer Richard Wagner associated socialist redemption with an idealised medieval romance and myth. He proposed that romance’s links to ancient knowledge revealed the world of ideals hidden to others. The Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin supplied the doctrine of the redeemed hero to Wagner during the 1848 revolutions, which Wagner developed into the idea of redemption in Parsifal. Wagner uses the romance to reinvigorate the doctrine of socialist redemption and utopian thought by associating them with the power of mystical revelation.
Wagner took the romance from being the literary adjunct to a political movement and gave it mystical significance in direct opposition to traditional beliefs. He took the story of the Saga of the Volsungs as a model of literature suitable for the contemporary conspiratorial socialist movement. Wagner still associated the romance with utopian thought as it represented the vision of the future for a political movement. Wagner formulated an alternative set of ethics influenced by anarchism and idealist philosophy by associating the romance with myth. Wagner’s reliance on the political power of myth allowed for a break with any reference to reality. Bakunin influenced Wagner with conspiratorial socialism, which Wagner later modified with idealist philosophy from Schopenhauer. Wagner’s association with Bakunin at the time of his work on the Ring cycle marks his interest in a movement associated with extreme authoritarianism and violence. His later interest in idealist philosophy provided a level of mystical abstraction that fostered the belief in music providing the means to poetically appreciate the ideals that normally remained hidden. Wagner illustrates the forces that fed a new ethic behind a non-democratic authoritarian politics and the use of the romance to express this ethic.
Wagner set up literary archetypes from the romance as revelations of how society should be. As with Sand, present society and civilisation stood in the way of people recognising their essential nature. This justified the destruction of contemporary society. Wagner used the medieval romance to support this message as a model for the present. Other conspiratorial socialists took the romance seriously. The anarchists Sergei Nechaev and Bakunin lived out an echo of Sue’s The Mysteries of Paris as they promoted acting and living amongst thieves to 109 overthrow the present world. They claimed to do this as criminals have no qualms about preserving past morality or traditions. 1 The political ventures into unrestrained violence had little to do with social analysis and more with copying literary archetypes. The use of the literary archetype avoided dealing with an analysis of society and the actual forces involved in change.
Wagner did not divest himself of utopian thought but self-consciously promoted the linked ideas of a utopian myth to guide people to a better society and the idea of a cleansing revolution. 2 Wagner’s idea of utopia involved the claim that the contemporary world had become decadent. The modern world, in contrast to the medieval, based itself upon usury and the suffering of the many for the benefit of the few. This marks the conjunction of socialism and anti-Semitism. In contrast to Chernyshevsky, Wagner believed that art provided a means to appreciate the ideals hidden from most people. Art in an ideal society would blend with the teachings of Jesus and the ancient Greeks to enable everyone to enjoy their human potential. Jesus represented the suffering of humanity but Greek civilisation represented the vast potential of the human spirit. Wagner presented this aesthetically inspired idea as achievable by an impending revolution. 3 The romance as the aesthetic product of Greek civilisation could release this human potential.
The romance is the means to turn existing and traditional love into an abstract and idealised love. The basis of Parsifal, The Perceval story, exists only as a romance and not as an epic story or myth. The earliest version is the story of Peredur, Son of Efrawg in the stories compiled in The Mabinogion. 4 The Welsh translator of this story Gwyn Jones remarks that the transition from epic to romance entails the change from the specifics of time and place to the abstractions of the romance someplace and sometime. 5 The epic deals with specific events in the life of a certain person. The romance moves further away from concrete events or behaviour to idealised time and behaviour. The repetition of the behaviour is the role of the story. The plot has moved from the realms of the story about a defined group of people to the realms of the ideal or universal. This is its major importance to Wagner. The story has moved from the culturally specific in language, time and place to occupy a position that has reference to a universal set of behaviours. Wagner uses the romance, to which he attaches the pseudo-religious myth and the epic, to gain knowledge of the ideal from classical literature.
The romance creates a set of ideal morals for people to follow. The ideal behaviour will never match the actual behaviour of people in any time or place. This returns Wagner to a position similar to Rousseau and Sand. The majority of people will not express the ideal set of behaviour. They will remain in the world of immediate needs and desires. These people cannot achieve a better world, as they are not perfect but only shadows of what is best for people. This means that for Wagner and his supporters democratic opinion is less
1 S, Nechaev and M. Bakunin, ‘The Revolutionary Catechism’ in K. Marx and F. Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 25, London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1988, pp. 545. 2 Richard Wagner, ‘What is Utopia’ and ‘The Revolution’ in On Music and Drama, trans. H. Ashton Ellis, Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, 1992, pp. 67-74. 3 Wagner, ‘What Is Utopia’, pp. 67-69. 4 ‘Peredur Son of Efrawg’, in The Mabinogion, trans. Gwyn Jones and Thomas Jones, London, Everyman, 1993, pp. 164- 202. 5 Gwyn Jones, ‘Introduction’ to The Mabinogion, trans. Gwyn Jones and Thomas Jones, London, Everyman, 1993, pp. xxxiii- xxxiv. 110 important than the world of the medieval romance. This is not the Christian world with the universality of believers but an elitist collection of people that impose a set of behaviours based on a reading of the medieval romance.
In contrast the realist novel deals with people’s problem’s that have a specific time and place in either the contemporary world or a researched accurate description of the past. The resolution of the problems of the protagonists are not idealised but as Dostoyevsky tried to show have some general application through traditional values. It must be emphasised that idealism does not equate with universal values except on the level of the abstract. The world of the specific to which we all belong has very little relevance to the world of ideals. In political terms this means that living people are just the means to achieve the realisation of the ideal. They have no importance in themselves. Schopenhauer took this line of thought to its logical extension where people have no importance as ends in themselves. They cannot even be valued over animals. 6
The romance and utopian thought mutually support each other. Both Wagner and Morris composed utopian themes alongside the romance, Morris in News from Nowhere and Wagner in Parsifal. Both appeal to the romance’s conception of the past and give this conception the form of a moral utopia. This ensures that their views exclude any other alternative as utopianism does not accept opposition. Mannheim found the wishful thinking and activist mentality in utopian works functioned to reject anything that would contradict their visions. 7 However, Mannheim’s analysis applies with even more force to the romance. The romance served the purpose of rejecting any reference to an exterior world past, present or future. The distance between these policies and any attempt at analysing reality became wider with the introduction of myth. The hero of the romance acquires mystical knowledge rather than rational understanding. The application of the extinct literary form of the medieval romance to a political programme enabled it to ignore the practicalities of that programme. Everything is dealt with on the level of abstract ideas and the circumstance, consequences and practicality of these principles are never questioned. Wagner extenuates the moral idealism already found in Sue and gives them universal application.
The romance as classical knowledge
Wagner’s aesthetic appreciation of society adopted the romance as a standard by which to judge society. Not only Cervantes but also ancient Greek and Latin authors mocked the romance as having no relationship to reality and as rather ridiculous. 8 Wagner gave the works of romance a significance that bears no relationship to their literary value. This is at first puzzling as, like Schopenhauer, Wagner proposes a theory that assumes that not all art was profound or enlightening and that there is no equality of the written word. 9 Even
6 Christopher Janaway, ‘Schopenhauer’ in Roger Scruton, Peter Singer, Christopher Janaway and Michael Tanner, German Philosophers, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1997, pp. 300-301. 7 Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia, An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge, London, Routledge, 1991, pp. 36-37. 8 Lucian, ‘A True Story’ trans. A. M. Harmon in Lucian, Vol. 1, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2006, pp. 247- 357 and Petronius, Satyrica, trans. R. Bracht Branham, London, Dent, 1996. 9 Arthur Schopenhauer, World As Will and Representation, Vol. II, New York, Dover, 1958, p. 410. 111 though the literary inadequacies of the romance were widely recognised Wagner awarded it in a privileged position. In part the enhanced status of the romance relies on the Platonic idea of the superiority of the imagined over the actual. However, Wagner tried to give even greater importance to the romance and believed that the world should conform to this form of literature.
Wagner believed that the setting of the medieval romance to music had contemporary aesthetic and social significance. He accomplished this by reference to the origins of romance and its relationship to classical literature. In July 1870 during the period of the composition of The Birth of Tragedy Nietzsche discussed the origins of ancient Greek literature with Wagner and the German scholar Erwin Rohde. 10 Rohde wrote the pioneering work on the subject of the ancient Greek romance. He continued his support of Wagner after Wagner split with Nietzsche. Rohde regarded Wagner as the saviour of German culture from materialism. For Rohde, Wagner supplied the mystical connection to the world beyond appearance for the benefit of German civilisation. 11 As a scholar Rohde considered that the surviving works of Greek romance represented a degenerate variety of a higher art form. They did not form a literary genre in their own right. The Greek romance had been inspired by other Greek literature, such as the tragedy, but had become decadent. 12 The medieval romance descended from the ancient romance and provided direct access to classical knowledge and culture.
When combined with music the romance directly channelled an underlying message from ancient culture to the listener and avoided being degraded by the decadence of contemporary society. Wagner could ignore the poor literary values of the romance as it held a connection to tragedy and so he could claimed that they were part of a common heritage in ancient knowledge. The idea of decadence also incorporated the view whereby the majority of people could not escape the world of illusions or utilitarianism. When further refined and combined with myth the romance took on political significance as an anti- capitalist and anti-Christian force. The romance challenged the world of usefulness and the senses. The romance became the means to reveal the knowledge of the ancients, a means to challenge traditional morality and the expression of the self-sacrificing hero. The romance had become a compendium of reasons to invert common values and support the use of violence. This position is the recovery of intuitive, even occultist, ancient knowledge found in Sand and ridiculed by Thackeray.
Wagner’s medieval romance set to music carried this heritage. Not only did it preserve the socialist heritage of political activism but also it collected the ideas of the importance of the heroic sacrifice, the role of the genius, wisdom of the ancients and the relative unimportance of the world of appearance. Overarching these ideas was the idea of the socialist redemption and idealist heroic altruism that Wagner welded into a whole. Wagner transformed a literary form that had been mocked since ancient times as lightweight into breathtaking significance. The socialist romance through its association with utopian
10 Cosima Wagner, Cosima Wagner’s Diaries, Volume One 1869-1877, trans. Geoffrey Skelton, London, Collins, 1978, pp. 231-232. 11 Ernest Newman, The Life of Richard Wagner, Vol. IV, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1976, p. 344. 12 B. P. Reardon, Collected Greek Novels, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1989, p. 13. 112 thought and subjective idealism emerged as literature that overshadowed all others. Realism dealt with the world as it existed but the romance could chart the world as it should be and under Wagner could now reveal the world of ideal universals. The redeemed hero had the means to attain knowledge through the romance and had no need to serve commonly accepted values.
This solved the two problems for the conspiratorial socialist movement of how the educators can be more able to recognise what is best for the rest of humanity and the need to demonstrate how an ideal world can be created. The elite can recognise a world that is denied those who live satisfied with the illusions provided by every day life. They become heroes that can sacrifice themselves as an example to others. Armed with a superior knowledge through reading romances these self-sacrificing heroes are forced to suffer a world that is denied to others. They are the inheritors of the world of classical tragedy and play the role of the tragic doomed heroes against a background of protecting people from a similar fate. This is a world that cannot be revealed by reference to reason, history, consequences or common sense. It is also the world of Dostoyevsky’s Grand Inquisitor and a dictatorship founded on controlling people out of love. The lesser world of the senses only provides illusions. It is the role of illusions like myth to make society function. All these ideas were later found in Georges Sorel, himself influenced by Nietzsche, and revolutionary syndicalism. The common thread in this view of the romance is the justification of violence.
Wagner and socialist redemption
Socialist redemption provided the ability to transcend traditional values in the name of creating a new morality. However, Wagner was loath to abandon a humanitarian aim by his appeal to moral ideals. Thereby, his work combines the hero and utopian elements from the romance with the appeal to universal love. However, Wagner provides the emphasis on the redeemed hero and “reasons of state” that contradict a humanitarian impulse. The idea first found in Sue that the socialist hero could act contrary to traditional ethics denies universal moral values. The basic appeal to a universal love of humanity remained with conspiratorial socialism but the redeemed heroes themselves can no longer be judged by the moral values they propose for others. Wagner seeks to overcome this with the idea that the redeemed hero by virtue of his sacrifice could work to enforce a moral world.
Socialist redemption can only exist in the highly artificial world of the romance. The very idea of the redeeming hero comes from a literary form not from social practice. A way had to be found to lend this doctrine credibility for conspiratorial socialism. Wagner’s importance for later socialist and anti-socialist usage of this doctrine relied on the ability of the hero to mystically acquire the knowledge denied the majority of people. Wagner accepts that there are differing moralities for the hero and for others. Wagner achieved this through the acquisition of knowledge through the aesthetic appreciation of the world. This is something new in socialist literature and owes a debt to Bakunin’s glorification of destruction. Wagner found that the recognition of the beautiful could reveal knowledge and understanding beyond the reach of the uninitiated. The aesthetic appreciation of society 113 linked the beautiful with the ideal. 13 When applied to the doctrine of socialist redemption it transformed it from a romance plot to a mystical understanding of the moral ideals that exist behind appearances. The knowing could gain an understanding of society through their superior aesthetic sensibility and thereby gain the means to become redeemed heroes. The redeemed hero acted from a higher moral duty of which others were completely ignorant. Wagner supplied a mystical even religious inspiration for socialist redemption.
Christian redemption and the associated idea of atonement are part of a tradition which originate in the Old Testament idea that through the foundation of Christianity everyone could be delivered from sin and enter into communion with God. 14 This is not the direct recognition of God or the world beyond appearance found in mysticism and subjective idealism. A messiah becomes the connection between God and man. It is the idea that people can be forgiven for doing wrong. Atonement refers to the reconciliation of people with God through the sacrifice of Christ. 15 The sacrifice of Christ marks a new covenant between God and people. Again there is no direct knowledge of God but everything is mediated through Christ and the church. Such a traditional form of belief does not contradict popular ethical principles. Nor does it justify the killing of someone or appeal to revolution. There are no common religious principles between the subjective idealism of Wagner and Christianity.
Wagner also gave the doctrine of the redeemed hero some credibility with the introduction of myth to conspiratorial socialist thought. Revolutionaries offer themselves in an act of superior moral value and by doing so they atone for what they have done. It is important to recognise that this doctrine owes nothing to Christian doctrines but is a creation of radical atheism. This doctrine inverts commonly accepted values. In effect to kill in the name of the people is to do a moral good. Socialist moralising presented this as redemption and sought to give its heroes the status of martyrs. 16 Revolutionaries by their mystical aesthetic understanding can liberate society from those matters that are purely material. The actions of the hero become part of a myth not available to the uninitiated.
Wagner and Bakunin
Wagner supported and took part in the revolutions of 1848. Ignoring his position as a court official in Dresden, Wagner took part in the street disturbances and fighting against the government. 17 During this period he made the acquaintance of the anarchist aristocrat Bakunin. Bakunin made a lasting impression on Wagner and he devoted most of his description of the 1848 fighting to his relations with him. Even in later years he kept himself
13 Richard Wagner, ‘What Is Utopia’, pp. 85-91. 14 Ephesians, 1:7-10. 15 Luke, 22:20. 16 This is presented very clearly by one of the conspiratorial socialists involved in the assassination of the Tsar Alexander II. See Vera Figner, Memoirs of a Revolutionist, DeKalb, Northern Illinois University Press, 1991, p. 99. 17 Richard Wagner, My Life, trans. Gray, Andrew, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1983, pp. 391- 395. 114 acquainted with what happened to Bakunin. 18 In his autobiography Wagner makes clear his close relationship with Bakunin five years prior to his introduction to Schopenhauer. 19 Wagner even discussed the plans of the Ring cycle with Bakunin and recorded his reaction. 20 The political doctrines of anti-Christianity, compassion (universal love), political activism, elitism and anti-Semitism found in Wagner were all current socialist ideological positions. They also formed the vital part of Bakunin’s violent stream of anarchism. Wagner’s political visions share this heritage and Wagner’s use of the medieval romance functions to support these doctrines. The concept that joined them all together was the rejection of traditional values which Wagner derived from myth and the romance.
As well as anarchist ideas, Wagner merged aspects of German philosophy with his artistic creations. His major contribution consisted of the use of the romance to introduce an overt mysticism into the political and artistic reaction to rationalist philosophy. The moral idealism found in utopian thought Wagner replaced with an appeal to the aesthetic understanding of reality beyond appearance. The hero stalks through the romance and provides an insight into a world and morality hidden from others. The hero creates the world after the image of the romance. The doctrines of political anarchism and idealist German philosophy can be found in Wagner’s work. Schopenhauer’s pessimism can be seen as affecting the end of the Ring cycle with the end of the world. 21 However, the collapse of Valhalla and the death of Wotan are also part of the inheritance from the apostle of destruction, Bakunin.
Wagner adopted significant aspects of anarchist thought and attitudes from Bakunin. Most importantly for Parsifal is the form of socialist redemption that Bakunin explained to Wagner. 22 The moral argument of socialist asceticism requires that the hero does not gain from the acts of destruction and has to either be killed or suicide. These ideas found their way into Wagner’s work. The idea of redemption by love in Götterdämmerung represents an amalgamation of ideas from Schopenhauer and Bakunin. The destruction of the world in the name of love by a redeemed hero comes from Bakunin and socialist redemption. Schopenhauer supplied a means to see past the world of appearances to the real world beyond reason in music. 23 Wagner united the political and philosophical movements by means of the socialist use of the romance. He was not just setting these ideas to music but creating a greater role for the romance as a political and spiritual tract.
Wagner’s political writings also supported many of the central doctrines of Bakunin’s anarchism. Morris also appropriated the medieval romance for the socialist cause but he associated with the more pacific anarchists such as Kropotkin and attempted to create a secular universal morality. 24 In contrast, Wagner glorified the violent conspiratorial anarchism of Bakunin. Wagner shared Bakunin’s virulent anti-Semitism, a product of
18 Cosima Wagner, Diaries, Volume 1, 1869-1877, trans. Geoffrey Skelton, London, Collins, 1978, pp. 278 and 369. 19 Wagner, My Life, pp. 615. 20 Wagner, My Life, pp. 387. 21 H. F. Garten, Wagner the Dramatist, London, John Calder, 1977, pp. 102-103. 22 Wagner, My Life, pp. 386-387. 23 Janaway, ‘Schopenhauer’, p. 233. 24 Ford Madox Ford, A History of Our Own Times, Solon Beinfeld and Sondra Sontag (ed.), Manchester, Carcanet, 1989, pp. 168-169. 115 political anarchism. It is incorrect to simply dismiss Wagner’s anti-Semitism as the product of his diminishing faculties as it is part of his judgment of present society as degenerate. 25 Bakunin used a constant flow of invective against everyone he saw as an enemy or rival. In most of this he sank to anti-Semitic derision. Anarchism played a vital role in the generation of political anti-Semitism with Proudhon being the first political theorist to advocate the extermination of the Jews as a people. 26 Wagner may have absorbed the racial lessons of Joseph Gobineau but the origins of political anti-Semitism and genocide lay in anarchism. Wagner’s anti-Semitism was a socialist commonplace that was not tempered by friendship with Bakunin.
Wagner transformed art, political belief and human understanding into mysticism in order to accommodate them into the heroic ethos. Wagner promoted himself as the bearer of a new form of literary production, the musical drama. He described how in 1847 he abandoned his efforts to describe historical events in favour of recasting mythology to music. He based his vast Ring cycle upon his studies of the Icelandic version of The Saga of the Volsungs. 27 Before his interest in Schopenhauer Wagner had already concentrated on the abstraction of morality to spheres beyond experience. The movement to create operas based on a romance marks the creation of an ideology based upon faith transmitted by art. A new world order would come into being by channelling literature and music through the literary form of the romance. In this Wagner continues socialist literary practice.
Wagner shared Bakunin’s interest in the philosophical critique of Hegel. Bakunin was schooled in idealist philosophy but chose to implement this in the field of political activism with the socialist movement. Like earlier idealists, such as Stirner, he tried to inaugurate a new morality based on the will. Bakunin knew the works of Hegel well and had studied in Germany and attended Schelling’s lectures by alongside Engels, Kierkegaard and Burckhardt. 28 Turgenev in Rudin made it clear that despite his bluster Bakunin remained entirely in the traditions of German philosophy. 29 Engels acknowledged the role that the left-Hegelian Stirner played in the formulation of Bakunin’s ideas. The defining point of Bakunin’s philosophy came from Stirner’s idea of the rebellion of the individual. Bakunin incorporated the idea of the cleansing of society through violence into this set of ideas. 30 Humanity would be saved by conscious acts of barbarity. They would differ from previous acts of murder, except tyrannicide, by being performed as an act of compassion. All the players in the creation of anarchism dug from the same ideas.
Wagner also shared Bakunin’s aesthetic appreciation of the world. Wagner noted how Bakunin could work for the entire world to be engulfed in revolution but stressed the need to protect certain, almost sacred, works of art like Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. 31 Turgenev in his criticism of his former friend Bakunin also drew attention to this combining
25 Newman, The Life of Richard Wagner, Volume IV, p. 654. 26 Hal Draper, ‘A Note on the Father of Anarchism’ in New Politics, Winter, 1969, p. 79. 27 Wagner, My Life, pp. 343, and 376-377. 28 Terrell Carver, Friedrich Engels, His Life and Thought, London, Macmillan, 1991, p. 67. 29 Ivan Turgenev, Rudin, A Novel, trans. Constance Garnett, London, William Heinemann, 1915, pp. 58- 59. 30 Fredrick Engels, ‘Letter from Engels to Max Hildebrand, London, 22 October, 1889’, in K. Marx and F. Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 48, London, Lawrence and Wishart, 2001, p. 392. 31 Wagner, My Life, p. 384. 116 of aesthetic concern with a destructive urge. 32 The ascetic hero with an artistic temperament has a role to reform the world. Most importantly it does not require the need for a humanitarian motivation. Mystical revelation is a direct communication of knowledge not social learning. Unlike Sand and Chernyshevsky Bakunin did recognise the importance of aesthetics in understanding the world. However, he could see aesthetic value in ugly things such as wilful destruction. Bakunin’s aesthetic presented art as the expression of the will. “The passion for destruction is also a creative passion.” 33 The total destruction of society is equated with a symphony by Beethoven as a creative act. Wagner did not only absorb the aesthetic appreciation of the world from Schopenhauer but had already been exposed to Bakunin’s version. Wagner’s initial exposure to the idea comes with Bakunin’s idea of the aesthetic appreciation of destroying traditional values.
Wagner’s position on the aesthetic appreciation of the world varies from that of Bakunin only where Wagner presents himself as primarily an artist not a political activist. For Wagner, Bakunin represented the embodiment of selfless humanitarianism combined with utter savagery. In comparison, Wagner presented himself as advocating the reform of society through art. 34 The urge in Bakunin to destroy everything, even one’s own self, Wagner took as a selfless desire to create a better world. Bakunin displayed his dedication toward humanity by even being willing to die for it. Wagner did not fully accept a political program of mass destruction and proclaimed a liberating role for art. Bakunin proclaimed humanitarianism based upon the willingness of the self to be consumed in the desire for destruction whereas Wagner saw himself as producing the artwork of the future perfect world. However, both saw themselves as inspired by the combination of aesthetic and humanitarian impulses.
Wagner saw Bakunin as one of the few with a grasp of the true significance and scope of the role of the revolutionary in the 1848 revolutions. 35 Wagner describes how Bakunin dismissed the Ring cycle but encouraged the production of a work on Jesus. Bakunin favoured portraying Christ as a weak character to be dragged away and executed. 36 Bakunin belittled the idea of democracies and republics in favour of the complete destruction of all civilised values. He stated that to achieve his potential as a human being a Protestant pastor would have to burn his vicarage and family. 37 For Bakunin redemption and self-realisation could only be reached by acts of self-destructive violence. 38 Bakunin sought to present himself as a heroic figure unrestrained by any commonly accepted set of values. The constant feature of his tirades, reported by Wagner, is anti-Christian violence.
The need to justify the purity of one’s convictions continually led to the demand to exhibit one’s asceticism by self-sacrifice, even suicide. Bakunin took the idea of revolutionary asceticism to its logical extreme of self-destruction. The hero has to die even at their own hand. As in Wagner’s Ring cycle even the Gods have to die. The anarchist creation of a
32 Turgenev, Rudin, pp. 62-63, 79 and 118. 33 Shlomo Barer, The Doctors of Revolution, Nineteenth Century Thinkers Who Changed the World, London, Thames and Hudson, 2000, p. 780. 34 Wagner, My Life, p. 388. 35 Wagner, My Life, pp. 395-398. 36 Wagner, My Life, p. 387. 37 Wagner, My Life, pp. 386-387. 38 Aileen Kelly, Mikhail Bakunin, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1982, pp. 270-273. 117 better world could not exist without the destruction of the hero. The actions of the hero form a tragedy as the imposition of a new morality requires the death of those who bring it about. The lack of a universal ethic in the doctrine of the redeemed hero leads to the conception of the hero as a tragic, even self destructive, figure. For Wagner, tragedy is only applied to the figure of the hero not those who would be hurt by the attempt to set up an ideal world.
Wagner portrayed revolution as the discarding of an aristocratic yoke to prevent exploitation. This justified violence along the lines of tyrannicide. There is no appeal to reality or historical example in such claims and it cannot be demonstrated that a more liberal, democratic or humane society has ever been founded on the murder of a tyrant. 39 Wagner avoided the problem of how a moral socialist society could be founded by immoral means. Wagner’s idea of revolution incorporated the idea of inspired heroes destroying contemporary society in order to create an ideal society based upon brotherly love. Like Sand, Wagner associated the triumph of the revolution with man becoming God. 40 Wagner’s means to achieve a better world remained similar to those of Bakunin. The revolution was the immediate work of selfless heroes dedicated to the love of humanity. The aim of revolution involved the utter destruction of everything, except works of art, in the name of removing tyranny.
Wagner and myth
Wagner sought to contract political debate to the creation of a society based upon the medieval German romance. He continued the socialist tradition of combining utopian thought with the romance. Instead of composing tracts that imagined a perfect past or future Wagner turned to the romance as an ideal according to which humanity should live. Wagner’s ideas on the role of myth proved his most important legacy for socialism. For Wagner myth represented true folk wisdom. As such it held a privileged position of being able to reveal the hidden truths about the human spirit. The role of the artist became the continual retelling and recasting of such legendary material. 41 Wagner believed ancient Greek society represented the ideal position on art. The ancient Greeks supposedly continually refined their myths to present the end of all knowledge to be humanity itself. 42 The medieval romance carried this connection to ancient Greek culture and knowledge through continuing the tradition of the ancient romances.
Wagner portrayed Christianity as a force that sought to interfere with the transfer of this innate knowledge. Like Sand he wished to substitute an abstract idea of universal love for concrete Christianity. The romance, as against the myth, constantly moves from the concrete to the abstract. 43 Wagner believed Christianity attempted to ruin the power of folk myth by replacing its heroic vitality with the idea that people would be redeemed through a
39 Robert Filmer, Patriarchia Or, The Natural Powers of the Kings of England Asserted and Other Political Works of Sir Robert Filmer, ed. Peter Laslett, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1949, p. 88. 40 Wagner, ‘The Revolution’, p. 90. 41 Richard Wagner, ‘The Value of Myth is Its Eternal Truth’ in On Music and Drama, pp. 90-91. 42 Wagner, ‘Myth As It Relates To The Folk And To Art’ in On Music and Drama, pp. 87-90. 43 Jones, ‘Introduction’ to The Mabinogion, p. xxxiii- xxxiv. 118 Christian death. Christianity represented the effort to cut myth from its roots in the folk. 44 This idea of an essential anti-Christian heroic dimension to people is similar to Sand’s idea of receiving the knowledge of natural goodness from communing with nature. Wagner believed he could use myth to excavate the essence of human existence. He claimed to be describing a far greater reality than those described by the naturalists and realists. They merely described the appearance of reality whereas Wagner’s fantasy dug down to the very essence of being human. By its very nature the artistic striving of romance for a true and ideal world led to the political call for a new politics in line with the concerns of romance literature. 45 Wagner connected the ability to gain esoteric knowledge to myth and then mixed it with the romance, which supplied a link to classical learning.
Wagner and those that presented the myth as revealing hidden truths obscured a distinction between myth and history. The idea that myth was the driving force behind contemporary politics became especially important in the later work of the French socialist Georges Sorel. Sorel’s socialism advocated a destructive wave of revolution by the working class driven by utopian myths. 46 The ideas of Sorel represent the point at which the Mussolini’s fascism and Gramsci’s revolutionary socialism diverge from previous Italian socialism. 47 In this split socialism and fascism become competing myths for the foundation of ideal societies. The appeal to a simple humanitarianism in Sand had been replaced by the assertion of the ability to recognise truths hidden from rational analysis. Wagner provided the bridge for the idea of myth to be appropriated from German scholastic biblical criticism and to be given a new existence as an alternative set of beliefs to Christianity itself. 48 To justify such a position Wagner turned to German idealist philosophy.
Wagner and subjective idealism
After his association with Bakunin the works of Schopenhauer inspired Wagner to develop the idea of myth as the fundamental way of knowing. Wagner appealed to an unconscious, even poetic, comprehension of the human condition. The romance could not appeal to credibility for its arguments. Wagner instead referenced his work based on past romances to the idea of the primacy of the myth. Wagner expressed myth as being the universal expression of the truth through the literature of the people. 49 Wagner associated the romance with other ancient literary forms. By the use of Rohde’s work Wagner mixed myth, heroic epic and medieval romance into a primal literature, which he believed generated all other literature. However, Wagner cannot demonstrate that medieval aristocratic romances reflected anything but the restricted world of the privileged few in the past.
44 Wagner, ‘Myth Diluted by Christianity’ in On Music and Drama, pp. 139-140. 45 Wagner, ‘The Romance Versus Drama. Romance Turned To Politics Eventually’, in On Music and Drama, pp. 147-148. 46 Georges Sorel, Reflections On Violence, trans. T. E. Hulme, London, George Allen and Unwin, 1915, pp. 32-34, 130-131 and 207. 47 J. R. Jennings, Georges Sorel, The Character and Development Of His Thought, London, St. Anthony's, 1985, pp. 159-160. 48 The realists were aware of the difference between history and myth from German biblical criticism and the need to keep them separate. See George Eliot, “From the Translation of Strauss’s The Life of Jesus (1846), Introduction’, in Selected Critical Writings, Rosemary Ashton (ed.), Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1992, pp. 4-10. 49 Richard Wagner, On Music and Drama, pp. 85-91.. 119
To achieve this Wagner rejected any reference to an exterior reality. Wagner ceased to undertake the study of history after Rienzi. In this he followed Schopenhauer who believed that as history only dealt with the particular it could never be used to make useful generalisations. It could never uncover the real motivations behind an incident as it dealt with the world of appearance. The main interest of history is to reveal the future of humanity not what has previously existed. 50 This is the importance of Schopenhauer to Wagner. The main interest is the future not the present. He reinforces those parts of socialist doctrines concerned with the romance and utopian thought. The world of appearance is not as important as the intuitive understanding of reality gained from experience. 51 It also sees the present as a reference to the future. The past and present as they exist in and for themselves are ignored. Only the revelation of the world of ideals has importance. Of further relevance for Wagner, Schopenhauer believed art could reveal the world beyond mere appearance and show parts of the universal understanding of what it is to be human. Music plays the most important role in transmitting some idea of this mystical understanding of reality. 52 This understanding of the world and its moral purpose can be fuelled by the men of genius, which Wagner considered himself to be. 53
This set of doctrines reinforces the role of the romance as myth in revealing hidden truths. The artistic genius can reveal a reality by imagination beyond that which can be gained by a narration of someone’s experiences. Further, the genius does not act from the need to attain specific aims but can approach an understanding of the ideal world behind perception. In this way the genius can come close to the ideas of altruism. 54 The genius acts out of intuition and beyond common understanding. Any appeal to common knowledge and humanity are cleared away and the important tasks are left to the people of genius. Schopenhauer’s idea of altruism is similar to the socialist idea of the ascetic revolutionary. Both exclude the majority of the population and present themselves as having superior vision based on no demonstrable basis. Schopenhauer believed that geniuses that have written tragedy can reveal those aspects of the world beyond the human will, but unlike Wagner, he took this as leading to resignation. 55 Wagner takes Schopenhauer’s insight and applied it to an activist politics. For him the artistic genius saves the world through the use of literature and setting the romance to music enhances its ability for mystical revelation. He took the ideas of elitism and the idea of art transcending the world of appearance from subjective idealism and combined it with the use of the politically active hero and the use of the romance from socialism.
Redemption and ‘Parsifal’
In 1882 Wagner set the idea of redemption as a major part of his Parsifal. Wagner tried to ally his version of universal love to the theme of socialist redemption. However, the
50 Schopenhauer, World As Will and Representation, Vol. II, pp. 440-444. 51 Schopenhauer, World As Will and Representation, Vol. II, p. 37. 52 Schopenhauer, World As Will and Representation, Vol. II, p. 407. 53 Schopenhauer, World As Will and Representation, Vol. II, p. 376. 54 Janaway, ‘Schopenhauer’, p. 290. 55 Schopenhauer, World As Will and Representation, Vol. II, p. 432-434. 120 problem still exists of universal love clashing with heroic violence. Put in Nietzschean terms this the clash between love and power. 56 This love does not refer to Christian compassion. It is important to recognise the inheritance of these ideas from Wagner’s association with Bakunin and idealist philosophy. This means that at no point does Wagner’s concept of redemption cause him to renounce its connection to paternalist violence. This is not a Christian or any established religious programme. The mixture of religious inspiration in the disciplines of Schopenhauer leaves an abstract religious inclination without providing any concrete structure to form a living morality. All the actors involved in the creation of this mixture are anti-Christian. Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Bakunin and Wagner railed against the Christian religion. Any reference to love or compassion in Wagner is the same idealised, mystical love found in Sand.
The anti-Christian moral doctrines of Schopenhauer and the political atheism of Bakunin ensure that Wagner’s use of Christian terminology cannot be accepted without investigation. Socialism contributed to what have passed as religious overtones in Wagner’s work. The supposed Christian ideas in Parsifal are in reality socialist ideas of abstract love. Nietzsche recognised the vital importance of redemption to Wagner but described Wagner’s version of redemption as self-delusion. He describes how Wagner moved from a revolutionary destroying every tradition to accepting love as a redeeming aspect of life. 57 For Nietzsche, Wagner betrayed his standing as an aesthetic hero by his use of redemption. Nietzsche recognised that the doctrine of a redeemed hero contradicted an appeal to universal love. However, this does not place Wagner outside of conspiratorial socialism. As described earlier in regard to Sue and Sand, conspiratorial socialist thought switched between emphasis on the redeemed hero and an appeal to universal love according to political circumstance. Wagner remained in the spectrum of conspiratorial socialist thought with his ideas of redemption and utopian thought.
Nietzsche understands that the world of the literary hero does not refer to traditional belief. There cannot be any simple correlation between the romance and Christianity. The imagined world of the romance and the existing traditions of a common belief cannot be reconciled. Socialism evolved a theory of redemption to challenge the Christian meaning of the term. The combination of utopian thought, the doctrine of the redeemed hero and the revelation of love are present in Parsifal in which Wagner also included the echoes of utopian paradise and universal love. These are all themes of conspiratorial socialism that stand opposed to any Christian interpretation.
Wagner’s redemption refers to an abstract humanity. He also understood his art and purpose as being in direct opposition to realism. He took the medieval romance as his model to delineate the internal motivation of the hero. Realism merely described the external world. Wagner believed he had found a way to penetrate the world beyond reason and the senses. The conflation of myth and romance, also found later in Morris, resulted in the claim for the hero to represent the Christian Everyman. 58 Like the claims of the
56 John Tietz, Redemption or Annihilation?, Love Versus Power in Wagner’s Ring, New York, Peter Lang, 1999, pp. 93-95. 57 Friedrich Nietzsche, ‘The Case of Wagner’ in Basic Writings of Nietzsche, trans. Walter Kaufmann, New York, Modern Library, 1992, pp. 618-620. 58 Wagner, ‘The Romance Versus Drama’, pp. 143-145. 121 romance Everyman is the non-historical figure who its is claimed represents all, but is nobody, having no specific existence in either time or place. Wagner like the other conspiratorial socialists continued to set up the abstract by which to judge the concrete. For Wagner only the ideal has real existence. People only have importance where they express this ideal. This is the importance of the hero.
Previous writers that have focused upon the connection of Wagner to Schopenhauer represent redemption as a form of self-fulfilment. According to Bryan Magee, Parsifal illustrates the role of redemption in transcendence of the self through compassion. Magee asserts that Wagner reached the final expression of his philosophy through the rejection of Schopenhauer’s pessimistic world-view. Wagner sought to express the eternal truth of compassion through myth as the expression of life. In contrast, Schopenhauer accepted death as the end of suffering. 59 Magee believed Wagner did not produce Parsifal as a Christian work but as the combination of various religions and philosophies to expound an underlying religious ideal. 60 Redemption for Magee is the myth by which people begin to feel compassion for each other and avoid Schopenhauer’s pessimistic world. This reduces all religion to the level of universal love by ignoring the specific means by which each religious tradition came into being. It accepts Wagner’s own justification of his creations without criticism.
In contrast to Magee, Wagner’s universal love is predicated on political activism not on any existing religious tradition. Wagner’s difference with Schopenhauer rests on this political activism as against Schopenhauer’s resignation. The instability of a morality constructed on a heroic ethic required the concept of universal love to prevent the collapse into murderous self-interest. Wagner attempts to salvage his work by his use of redemption as universal love. Wagner’s universal love is anti-Christian, anti-Semitic, supported revolution and was to be carried out by moral elites. This is not a mixture of various religions but is a fundamental conspiratorial socialist position. Wagner may have used Christian terminology in the central theme of Parsifal of humanity’s redemption being achieved through compassion but the specific form of redemption he used is derived from socialist philosophy.
In 1850-1851 Wagner championed the mystical basis of the romance. He stated that by reflecting the underlying reality romance dealt with issues of more importance to modern times than other contemporary works. In writing about the medieval romance Wagner understood it as incorporating primal mythical elements. For Wagner the romance inevitably led to politics and the self-determination of the hero, who Wagner chose to typify as Napoleon. 61 Here are all the elements of the socialist theory of redemption. These are the self-determination of the hero who transcends traditional morality, morality being the recognition of ideals, the transference of the moral to the political sphere and the hero as representing everyone and acting in the name of humanity. This also raised the problem of trying to keep universal love in the same doctrine as the actions of the hero. Wagner solved the difficulty by giving romance a mystical basis.
59 Bryan Magee, Wagner and Philosophy, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 2000, pp. 273-277. 60 Magee, Wagner and Philosophy, pp. 278-279. 61 Wagner, ‘Romance Versus Drama’, p. 148. 122
Wagner illuminated the human condition by means of the medieval romance Parzival by Wolfram von Eschenbach. 62 As in the medieval romance the action in Wagner’s Parsifal takes place in a pseudo-medieval utopia where the natural world and the feudal world exist in harmony. Animals are not hunted but live amongst a devout knightly order that spends most of their time in enacting religious rituals. 63 The very setting of this work is the combination of the three influences on Wagner; utopian socialism, idealist philosophy and the medieval romance. The romance is the setting for the realisation of moral ideals with no reference to an external reality. Wagner relies on the appeal to universal love in the struggle to achieve a perfect world to give his vision general acceptance.
In Wagner’s work the emphasis is on an external evil that is overcome by the hero. As in the romance, evil is not part of an internal struggle but is personified in the hero’s opponent. The role of the hero is to destroy these figures of evil and allow those who have strayed to repent. In the work, evil in the form of the magician Klingsor, seeks to gain ultimate personal power through the possession of magical items and the domination of the earthly paradise. Like most of the figures in this opera his agent, the sorceress Kundry, struggles against her past sins in order to achieve forgiveness. However, the forces of power-driven evil are too strong for the characters to defeat on their own. The saviour of their utopian existence comes in the form of Parsifal, the knight without sin and a holy fool. 64 After a few years and the dawning of self-realisation he single-handedly destroys Klingsor and his kingdom of evil, allows Kundry to be redeemed and so to die and restores the world to its utopian origins.
Throughout the opera the grail, a vessel that caught the blood of Christ at his crucifixion, appears as an instrument of mercy. 65 There may be Christian iconography used but it is a warrior, Parsifal, who appears as the agent of salvation. In the strange world of this socialist parody of Christianity, Christ the redeemer is transformed into a medieval knight, who kills all that oppose his mission to return the world to how it ought to be. 66 Likewise, human suffering results not from human actions but from the existence of an evil entity. Whereas Christian theology had advanced past medieval ideas of the devil Wagner equates human suffering with magic. 67 This is a reversion of belief in the devil far more than any appeal to Christ. Wagner stripped away appeals to universal love and reverted to a belief in the role of evil. However, at no time does he analyse what is the relationship between good and evil outside of a basic Manichaeism. 68
The Grail knights mouth Christian virtues but this does not disguise their complete lack of human suffering. They repeat various liturgies but only as a preventative against evil. This has nothing to do with Christianity and represents a return to pre-Christian ideas of shunning the evil eye. They are all that is left of the idea of universal love but this is
62 Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzival, trans. A. T. Hatto, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1980. 63 Richard Wagner, Parsifal, A Sacred Festival Drama, trans. Margaret H. Gwyn, London, Schott and Co., n.d., p. 50. 64 Wagner, Parsifal, p. 44. 65 Wagner, Parsifal, p. 61. 66 Wagner, Parsifal, p. 250. 67 Peter Stanforth, The Devil, A Biography, London, Heinemann, 1996, pp. 147-148. 68 Stanford, The Devil, pp. 86-87. 123 powerless against the forces of evil. Only the hero can save the world. At no point does Wagner address a conflict between traditional values and violence. He simply presents the world as divided between good and evil and the need to fight such evil with a literary hero.
Although not a socialist Nietzsche recognised the links between Wagner’s mystical heroes and the basic utopianism behind Parsifal. When Nietzsche condemned Parsifal for its Christian values he pointed out that Wagner’s idea of redemption is a mechanism to reach perfection. Nietzsche also recognised that Wagner’s use of the heroic ethic did not fit with this appeal to the benefit humanity. 69 The heroic ethic does not lead to perfection, a utopia, but only to a struggle for personal power. Wagner and the utopians inextricably linked universal love with the attainment of human perfection. This pseudo-Christian morality could not be allied to a heroic ethic. 70 Nietzsche recognised that logically there could be no logical connection between perfection and the hero. The connection between these moral ideas and the romance hero is the conspiratorial socialist movement not any existing religious movement.
Wagner’s use of the medieval romance is symptomatic of the attempt to apply mystical understanding to the world of politics. He attempted to develop a new set of moral principles based on socialist redemption. Wagner provided a means to present the world in terms of myths common to all. However, the same problem of the instability between the demands of universal love and the heroic ethic remained. Wagner attempted to reconcile these disparate elements by reference to a common myth that revealed hidden knowledge and the attempt to link the redeemed hero to the preservation of the majority of people in ignorance. Wagner claimed to express, through music, deep underlying truths that cannot be expressed through language. 71 Like Sorel he held that the knowledge of the present only became available through the myth. This meant that any utopian vision of the future would not be the result of rational debate or analysis but would follow from a specific reading of the romance.
69 Friedrich Nietzsche, ‘The Case of Wagner’ in Basic Writings of Nietzsche, trans. Walter Kaufmann, New York, Modern Library, 1992, pp. 616-618. 70 Nietzsche, ‘The Case of Wagner’, p. 647. 71 Magee, Wagner and Philosophy, p. 284. 124
Chapter 6. Morris, Realism and the Romance
Thomas Carlyle
In England, Thomas Carlyle first brought to prominence the idea of the hero as saviour combined with the degeneracy of industrial society and the proposal that society returns to a medieval past. Carlyle proved an inspiration for not only Morris but many contemporary realist writers. 1 Carlyle understood and had contact with German philosophical thought. He helps introduce ideas similar to those of Wagner to Britain. These ideas became fundamental to Morris’ use of the romance to create the literary form of heroic fantasy. Carlyle looked to the hero to preserve a natural social order but Morris’ heroic fantasy portrayed a society devoid of social classes. For Carlyle the hero reinforced a social hierarchy but in Morris the hero helps sweep away such things. Morris tries to retain a universal morality, whereas Carlyle portrays the hero as operating according to a greater good and a hierarchical society. The idea that connects them both is their antagonism to industrial society and the belief in a return to moral values to be found in the medieval past. The hero remains as the means to attain a moral future but Morris’ reliance on socialist utopian though gives his hero an active role in conspiratorial politics.
Carlyle initially held a very important role in nineteenth century socialism. Prior to the 1848 revolutions romanticism provided the sharpest and most damning examination of industrial capitalism. Carlyle associated himself with romanticism and remained the most influential socialist writer and intellectual in Great Britain until the pre-eminence of Marxism. His attitude to the heroic ethos gave him a wide influence over many political strands. Orwell presented Carlyle’s ideas on the hero as fundamental not just to socialism but also fascism. 2 The young Engels translated a synopsis of Carlyle’s work to introduce him to a wider German audience. 3 Engels continued to praise Carlyle’s analysis of industrial capitalism and his revelations of the living conditions of the English and Irish poor in his most influential work The Condition of the Working Class in England. In this work Engels explicitly contrasts Carlyle’s analysis to those of the Free Traders and their lack of concern for working people. 4 Charles Dickens dedicated Hard Times to Carlyle and freely acknowledged his influence. However, Dickens described a need for the application of personal morality in the face of systemic lack of concern with the spread of industrialism. In contrast, Carlyle called for the destruction of the present. 5 Like Wagner and Herzen, Carlyle described the present as irredeemably bad.
1 Simon Heffer, Moral Desperado, A Life of Thomas Carlyle, London, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1995, p. 168. 2 George Orwell, ‘Raffles and Miss Blandish’ in The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, Volume 3, London, Secker and Warburg, 1968, p. 222. 3 Frederick Engels, ‘The Condition of England, Past and Present by Thomas Carlyle, London, 1843’ in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Collected Works, Volume 3, London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1975, pp. 444- 468. 4 Frederick Engels, ‘The Condition of the Working Class in England’ in Marx and Engels, Collected Works, Volume 4, pp. 563-565. 5 Fred Kaplan, Dickens, A Biography, London, Hodder And Stoughton, 1988, pp. 308-309. 125 Although Carlyle did engage in analysis of contemporary society at heart he believed in a return to the superior values from a mythologised past. Carlyle proposed a moral socialism, based on medieval models, which saw useful labour as the basis of honourable society. 6 Like Engels he asserted that laissez-faire capitalism reduced all relationships to the payment of cash and no other form of social interaction could survive this onslaught. Such a system Carlyle saw as the emergence of “Hell” in England and the destruction of any form of morality. 7 Carlyle championed a belief in medieval Christian ideals and saw Free-Trade capitalism as the major threat to its re-establishment. He preached the return to pre-capitalist economic formations that valued labour and morality above the accumulation of wealth. 8
Carlyle tried to employ the hero in a political context and outside of traditional moral boundaries. He talks about the hero in terms of power and preserving social differentiation. Carlyle’s The French Revolution of 1837 sneers at the inability of the French monarchy to keep power and the pretensions of the Girondins to create a more equitable world. 9 Carlyle made no secret of his dislike of organised labour, democracy, liberal values and his support for slavery. 10 In his advocacy of a heroic form of socialism Carlyle drew the logical conclusion that democracy and self-determination do not form part of the heroic ideal. Democratic decisions or agreements would not help form a moral world. A natural authority from leaders flowed from the heroic ethic and non-heroes were expected to obey. 11 Carlyle believed that historical example established the role of the hero as a natural phenomenon expressed throughout time and place. The hero existed as an eternal historical phenomenon and formed the basis for social change. The hero articulated power as the means to ensure the proper functions of society. Carlyle’s socialism incorporated the heroic ethic as the means to establish a hierarchical moral order, which Carlyle considered the natural state of society. Carlyle’s socialism associated political power with social stratification that the hero continually reinforced. This later presented a problem for Morris when he attempted to incorporate the hero into his more equitable moral society.
The role of the moral hero is fundamental to Carlyle’s thought. The hero represented not just a hierarchy of society but also a hierarchy of morality. The hero advanced society through his actions, while others failed to recognise the moral duty he performed. Even The English language resulted from the actions of heroes. 12 Carlyle recognised passivity at the heart of traditional morality. For Carlyle independent moral action represented the basis of ethical action. Traditional morality became less a guide for individual behaviour and more a force for conformity. The idea that the mass of the population nurtured the traditions of morality held no appeal for him. 13 This led him to expand the role of the individual hero in the creation of a moral society. Carlyle did not advocate a return to the
6 Thomas Carlyle, Past and Present, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1932, pp. 202-203. 7 Carlyle, Past and Present, pp. 150-151 and 194-195. 8 Carlyle, Past and Present, p. 302. 9 Heffer, Moral Desperado, pp. 168-170. 10 Heffer, Moral Desperado, pp. 274-275. 11 Heffer, Moral Desperado, p. 206. 12 Carlyle, Past and Present, pp. 136-137. 13 Charles Frederick Harrold, Carlyle and German Thought, 1819-1834, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1934, p. 157. 126 people for guidance but saw the need to enforce previous non-commercial values upon them. The means to achieve this centred on the hero.
Carlyle provided Morris with a means to return the world to a moral past by means of the hero. Carlyle envisioned society as being borne along on the aspirations of great men. These people appeared throughout history as the purveyors of morality in action and differed from others in their determination to enforce social development. 14 Carlyle did not support working people uniting and establishing better conditions themselves or the democratic movement. This led to his disgust over Chartism and his alienation from the socialist movement. 15 The problem existed for Carlyle that an idealised society could not be achieved by existing means, such as democracy or working people. Heroes challenged self-interest and the usual methods of governance and brought about historical change. Carlyle constructed a historical myth based on the centrality of the hero. Whereas non- heroes could not recognise the need for change as they focussed their self-interest, the hero recognised the need for an ordered society and acted for the betterment of humanity. Even popular support for change would be against the moral order Carlyle believed he established.
The need to change society occurred due to the poverty of values in contemporary society. Carlyle proposed that the present social system valued money and wealth over all other considerations. This greed even affected working class movements that only sought to increase their share of wealth and did not look toward creating a better world. 16 A hero would emerge to change society, who acted with the force of justice. The hero would also re-establish a social hierarchy that would give each person their place in that society. The hero could see beyond the world of appearances to the real needs of humanity. 17 This is a religious socialism that recognised its basis in faith. 18 The hero could even challenge the apparently physical aspects of time. Carlyle had steeped himself in German culture, corresponded with Goethe and translated his work. 19 He was aware of the idealist arguments that present dealt with appearances and the physical expression of time and space. The real world beyond appearance was changeless and moral. Faith and justice referred to eternal concepts that operated beyond the purely physical world and made possible a return a past society. Time as experienced by people related only to the change in appearance. Time beyond experience did not have the limitations of social experience on it and existed as an eternal force. The hero also existed independent of experiential time. A return to the past according to eternal time was not impossible.
Carlyle calls upon religious principles from the past in the myth of hero to exclude self- interest. The hero acted as an agent of an historical imperative. Nietzsche recognised the weakness this argument and condemned Carlyle as providing a role for the hero but failing to
14 Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus and On Heroes and Hero Worship, London, Everyman, 1975, pp. 249- 254. 15 Engels, ‘Condition of the Working Class in England’, pp. 461-462. 16 Heffer, Moral Desperado, p. 363. 17 Carlyle, Heroes and Hero Worship, p. 246. 18 Carlyle, Sartor Resartus, pp. 276-278. 19 Heffer, Moral Desperado, pp. 92-93. 127 press for his own elevation amongst the heroes. 20 If Carlyle could recognise the means to become a hero then the question had to be asked of why he failed in his moral duty to become one and help humanity? The obvious but undelivered answer is that the heroic ideal did not match actual social practice. Nietzsche further criticised Carlyle for denigrating the present economic system by believing that the heroic alternative would be based on a Christian morality. Nietzsche realised that a morality based upon great men established itself on power not pity. 21 The role of hero required self-affirmation and belief in ones own abilities alien to the humility of Christianity. As with Herzen, the ability of the hero to rise above self- interest is questionable.
Carlyle appropriated mystical understanding to give the hero the means to know better than ordinary people. The hero had a mission not simply a lust for power. This mission took the hero beyond everyday material concerns to the establishment of things that were good, progressive and beautiful. The hero operated on a plane beyond the talk of power or wealth. They operated in the field of ideals. Carlyle turned to mythological works as a means to understand the world beyond the senses. The belief in heroes sprang from mythological stories about the gods. The special connection between justice and the hero was formed by the use of the myth. 22 When Carlyle sought to establish the link between literature and the hero he turned to the Icelandic saga material for justification. 23 This is the same material that both Morris and Wagner turned to in their work. Like these authors Carlyle mixed romance, history and myth into an undifferentiated blend. He provided this mixture with religious and moral significance. This position is important for Morris and resembles that of Wagner as it gives the romance as myth significance far beyond its literary value.
As with Morris the socialist use of the hero depends on the concept of myth. This myth is not a set of traditional stories or explanations but a collection of beliefs impervious to rational explanation. They are the spurs to action and not an analysis of present society. Such myths have a mystical origin in an understanding of the world available to the few. The exclusive few after attaining this knowledge are not bound by traditional morality but are free to change the world inspired by that knowledge. The political consequences of such myths are boundless. Carlyle saw such figures as even transcending the physical limits of time to recreate the past. The hero has no limit either physical or moral on their actions. The only connection to others is the idea that they still operate from the motivation of altruism. However, this is not normal charity but the taking on of world changing reforms beyond the compass of traditional and popular morality. It is the world of Dostoyevsky’s pawnbroker where the world changes for the better as a consequence of the actions of the few acting as others would see as selfishness. Carlyle’s altruism is a very particular form of the idea and one that corresponded to its usage by conspiratorial socialism.
20 Nietzsche, ‘Twilight of the Idols’ in Basic Writings of Nietzsche, trans. Walter Kaufmann, New York, Modern Library, 1992, p. 521. 21 Nietzsche, ‘Thus Spoke Zarathustra’, in Basic Writings of Nietzsche, trans. Walter Kaufmann, New York, Modern Library, 1992, pp. 200-201. 22 Carlyle, Heroes and Hero Worship, pp. 266-267. 23 Carlyle, Heroes and Hero Worship, p. 269. 128 Carlyle and realism
Carlyle’s idea of the hero transcending reality and industrial society inevitably clashed with realism. Realism and the romance had few points of agreement. A revealing exchange between realism and heroic socialist literature occurred between Carlyle and the realist novelist Anthony Trollope. After the American Civil War and the introduction of ideas on political reform in 1867 Carlyle wrote an article critical of the Union victory and democracy. In Shooting Niagara; And After? he emphasised his hostility to present society. Industrial society eroded the conditions needed for leading a moral life. Carlyle took the idea further by contrasting feudal qualities with the commercial drive for quantity. 24 He saw a need to re-establish the previous economic formations. This included slavery. Carlyle equated slavery with wage earning as part of an eternal need to preserve the master/servant relationship. Slaves differed from wage earners only in their being hired for a lifetime instead of by the hour. Carlyle believed in the need to preserve the relationship between social classes. He found nothing inherently evil in slavery.
Carlyle forecast the collapse of western civilisation as did Herzen and Wagner. The breakdown of class relationships through the rise of the union movement and the freeing of the southern slaves led Carlyle to the conclusion that he stood on the brink of the collapse of western society into catastrophe. 25 The major causes of this collapse rested with the drive toward democracy, Free Trade (the socialist notion of the destruction of non-monetary value) and the deformation of Christianity into support for progress. As a defence against this looming catastrophe Carlyle recommended the rebirth of an aristocracy to challenge the present moneyed leadership. 26 This natural aristocracy of heroes would lead to the formation of a disciplined and regimented society that would prevent any outbreak of union or commercial power. 27 In political terms this divided Carlyle from every political force available. On top of this Carlyle desired a monumental catastrophe that could only be resolved by the actions of heroic individuals. Needless to say this programme could never be popular.
Carlyle’s hero or natural aristocrat resented everything ugly or cheap. Morality linked itself to aesthetics. But he founded this link on the acceptance of the mythical function of the romance. The altruistic behaviour of the hero relied on the rejection of the present. Carlyle helped create the ideas of an aesthetic appreciation of society and a natural aristocracy. This aesthetic appreciation did not refer to literary artistic traditions but to a mystical revelation over the inherent ugliness of the present and the ability of the hero to act beyond self-interest. The hero showed distaste for the commercial production of quantity over quality. According to Carlyle union demands for shorter hours and fair wages expanded such a system by demanding little effort for exorbitant wages. They acted to promote the ugly over the beautiful and thereby acted as agents of what he sought to destroy. 28 The hero did not act on behalf of a social group but in reference to eternal aesthetic, religious
24 Thomas Carlyle, ‘Shooting Niagara; And After?, (August 1867)’ in Critical and Miscellaneous Essays, Volume 3, London, Chapman and Hall, 1907, pp. 201-202. 25 Carlyle, ‘Shooting Niagara’, pp. 204-212. 26 Carlyle, ‘Shooting Niagara’, p. 219. 27 Carlyle, ‘Shooting Niagara’, p. 235. 28 Carlyle, ‘Shooting Niagara’, p. 229. 129 and mystical principles. However, he did not draw the obvious conclusion that the destruction of the present would not necessarily return the world to the values of feudal Christianity. 29
The romance as myth would provide the literary accompaniment to these changes. Carlyle dismissed all literature as differing forms of lies. The exceptions to this were the Bible and the Iliad. 30 These revealed a truth by casting history in an epic form. History did not exist as an investigation or an attempt to accurately explain the past. Rather, history became an exercise in the moral education of people in the ways of the hero. This mythological interpretation of the past revealed the ideals for which the hero struggled. Significantly, the literature of the future would take on the form of the oral epic such as the Iliad. Carlyle discounted contemporary realist literature in favour of a return to extinct forms of literature with mythological significance. Carlyle, Wagner and Morris both indiscriminately combined the epic, romance and myth literary forms and gave this mixture greater importance and significance than they did as separate literary entities. The myth provided the mystical link to knowledge, the epic referred to the morality of the hero and the romance provided the story of the hero acting out of love. The socialist romance provided the hero with knowledge beyond experience, a historical mission and provided an altruistic motivation for the hero. Socialist literature took on a mystical significance far beyond Sue’s original linkage of the romance and utopian thought.
Realist writers recognised the importance of Carlyle’s influence but like George Eliot they saw little of practical value in his work outside of acting as a spur to one’s own work and outlook. 31 The realist writer Anthony Trollope showed great interest in Carlyle and took issue with him in several of his novels. In The Warden (1855) Trollope satirised Carlyle as “Doctor Pessimist Anticant”, having by then lost the respect he formerly held for him. 32 In The Way We Live Now (1875) Trollope drew his own portrait of commercial crime. Rather than directing attention to an underlying antagonism between commerce and morality he tried to show that small indiscretions led to social disgrace but large-scale fraud was often socially accepted. The characters in Trollope’s work accept corruption in the belief that they will gain from it. However, the splendour that corruption can clothe itself in does not hide the fact that it is both immoral and illegal. 33 Trollope did not deal with the abstract disparity between commerce and morality but rather looked at the unacceptable behaviour of criminals working against a generally accepted set of ethics. Morality became a struggle played out in the present not a formulation to be applied from the past or in the future.
Trollope took exception to Carlyle’s Shooting Niagara and printed a reply, An Essay On Carlylism, in his own journal Saint Paul’s five months later. 34 Trollope took particular exception to Carlyle’s deprecation of the present in favour of the past. Trollope found
29 Friedrich Nietzsche, ‘Beyond Good and Evil’ in Basic Writings of Nietzsche, trans. Walter Kaufmann, New York, Modern Library, 1992, pp. 229-230. 30 Carlyle, ‘Shooting Niagara’, p. 222. 31 George Eliot, ‘Thomas Carlyle’ in Rosemary Ashton (ed.), Selected Critical Writings, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2000, pp. 188-189. 32 R. H. Super, The Chronicler of Barsetshire, A Life of Anthony Trollope, Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 1988, pp. 70-71. 33 Anthony Trollope, An Autobiography, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1980, pp. 354-355. 34 Anthony Trollope, ‘An Essay On Carlylism’ in Saint Paul‘s, December 1867, pp. 292-305. 130 Carlyle’s justification of a coming catastrophe, which saw the rise of the saviour-hero, especially annoying and attacked Carlyle’s conception of modern society by pointing out that under contemporary society education had been extended to more people than ever, there had been improvements in public health and that the standard of living had improved.35 Further, Trollope considered that the expansion of industrial society throughout the world changed older beliefs so as to match these higher living standards. The majority of people would not wish to return to a feudal society and the consequent poverty. 36 They would also treat each other better as they would not be in want themselves. Industrial production provided the ability to banish poverty.
For Trollope the problem with Carlyle’s vision of the contemporary world rested on his inability to provide a mechanism to achieve a virtuous world outside of a general catastrophe. Carlyle’s heroes would not seek his restoration of values but the consolidation their own power. 37 Trollope also drew attention to the despotic tendencies in Carlyle in regard to working people. Although Trollope did not support an egalitarian society he actively took part the democratic process, even standing for Parliament. 38 In contrast, Carlyle probably never voted. 39 The socialism that looked to the restoration of past values could not associate itself with any form of democratic movement. Only the complete collapse of society could achieve Carlyle’s vision of the future. The basic political structure of heroic socialism would be tyrannical and would be achieved by inflicting misery on the majority of people. However, none of this altered Carlyle’s opinion. He had a vision of the best possible society that matched his hierarchical division of people into heroes and others. The complete collapse of contemporary society and the institution of an authoritarian regime would be a moral improvement. The authoritarian heroes by their actions would produce a morally superior society even though this would lead to widespread misery. Carlyle’s moral world would be neither equitable nor free from poverty.
William Morris
These problems inherent in Carlyle’s vision of a moral future also beset the English libertarian socialist and craftsman William Morris. He used the romance according to Carlyle’s formula. However, he struggled to use the romance to overcome the hierarchical consequences of Carlyle’s arguments. Morris placed less emphasis on the mystical nature of the romance and believed it to be the literary norm by which to judge other literature. Problems with the heroic ethic posed a problem for Morris. Dostoyevsky had previously indicated the problematic consequences of the heroic ethic as it dissolved into subjective moralities. Such an ethic bore little relationship to universal love outside of the needs of the conspiratorial socialist movement. Without an appeal to altruism the heroic ethic could only operate as a collection individuals with aspirations of heroism. Morris believed he could
35 Trollope, Autobiography, p. 354. 36 Trollope, ‘Essay On Carlylism’, p. 295. 37 Trollope, ‘Essay On Carlylism’, pp. 296-297. 38 Trollope, Autobiography, pp. 292-294. 39 Heffer, Moral Desperado, p. 362. 131 provide a universal ethic for a political movement that would prevent the hero from seeking personal power and gain. His creation of heroic fantasy is part of this project.
The romance formed the means to demonstrate to people how they should live in contrast to a description of how they actually lived. Morris’ romances describe an ideal society from the past by using a medieval literary form. This is not the mystical connection of Wagner between the romance and ideals beyond the senses. Morris grounded his romances firmly in the past. He believed his romances created a vision of utopia unimpeded by the concerns of the contemporary world and so could be constructed on the basis of what is best not what was available. The demonstration of correct moral behaviour in the romance became a template for the future. It also revealed the redeemed hero as acting from altruism not personal greed. Morris’ use of the romance tried to keep a connection between an ideal society and a universal ethic.
Morris moved from the production of the utopian romance to the recreation of the medieval romance and emphasised the relationship between this form of literature and an idealised past. The change from a regulation romance with a utopian vision of the future to the portrayal of a mythologised past that contained idealised moral values is the foundation of Morris’ heroic fantasy. This movement changed the focus from disgust at the idea that technological progress would liberate humanity to the more positive view of presenting a vision of a morally improved society that existed in the past. For Morris the European medieval world represented a time far removed from the ugliness of the present industrial age. The world of greed should be replaced by the simple pleasures of the past. As the romance figured as the literature of the pre-industrial era it represented a literary form by which to judge the literature of the industrial age. 40 Heroic fantasy preserved this link to the past. Morris concentrated on providing a moral vision of society. He recognised that technological improvements would not banish poverty. Rather inequality increased under the spread of industrialisation. He believed greater amounts of technology would not improve this situation. Morris set out to demonstrate a moral answer to the question of industrial expansion rather than looking at the opportunities provided by the expansion in wealth. Morris declared Trollope’s criticism of Carlyle invalid as he was trying to create a morally better world not one materially better off. People would suffer less privation in Trollope’s vision of the future but the causes of injustice would still exist. Morris tried to find a moral remedy for injustice.
Morris stressed the moral justification in his choice of literature. The romance held the advantage over all other literature in not only demonstrating morality in action but by being a production of the past it was totally divorced from commercial imperatives. Like Wagner, Morris believed he made his literary choices on aesthetic grounds. The realist novel could be nothing other than the product of an immoral system of production that also produced everything in the most debased, cheap and ugly manner. 41 In contrast to Chernyshevsky, but like Orwell and Wagner, Morris connected aesthetics to morality as the beautiful should be moral and good. However, Morris’ relationship with the truth was more problematic.
40 L. Sprague de Camp, Literary Swordsmen and Sorcerers: The Makers of Heroic Fantasy, Sauk City, Arkam House, 1976, p. 43. 132 The romance did not deal with a correct depiction of reality but rather with the purity of intention. This is the problem that stalked the romance since the time of Sue. Truth became a matter of sincerity and personal conviction rather than correspondence to an external reality. Morris’ connection of aesthetics to morality rested on industrial production being both ugly and immoral. His aesthetic is negative and cannot show what art should be like outside of resembling the romance or non-industrial production. The return to the romance removes Morris from the attempt to use modern production methods to remove poverty. His vision of the future is not based on human happiness but correspondence to a set of principles. His art attacked the very foundations of contemporary society on the basis of a better morality and not by popular demand.
Morris tries to overcome the objections of those like Trollope that the destruction of present society would see most people worse off. Morris is dealing with moral absolutes not the achievement of material benefits. He is trying to establish a society that would be just and would value people not wealth. Present society that focused on the expansion of wealth repelled Morris. Such a society is not viable and the class divisions in it would lead to its downfall. Morris saw himself as offering an alternative to the collapse of society into savagery. The gains that Trollope pointed to did not alter the basic animosities in industrial society. Morris could not see any alternative to the moral society he offered. He presented himself as offering the choice between a moral society and present barbarism. The present society was based on exploitation and the production of ugly items. Nothing good or beautiful could be produced by something inherently evil. A return to producing things that had a value beyond monetary gain would challenge industrial methods but would need the altruistic hero to achieve such a change.
Morris’ romances excluded any other literature that did not share his view of the future. He believed that all literature except the romance and the utopian novel were fatally compromised by the evils of present society. They have to be rejected. This also included other such socialist utopians such as the influential American Edward Bellamy. Morris made this decision on the basis of aesthetic judgement of the present supported by an appeal to a past moral system. Morris based his political action on the creation of an ideal world coupled with the limitation of other literature as compared to the romance. This formulation of art and morality served to limit debate and artistic production. This is not the expansion of the romance to include all forms of imaginative literature. Rather, Morris sought to exclude literature that dealt with the present, an external reality and rival visions of the future. Other literature did not challenge industrial production, supported democratic reform and the immediate needs of working people.
Morris and medieval aesthetics
Morris’ proposed return to the past did not return his romance or heroic fantasy to a medieval morality or aesthetic. He supported a return to a world, which he portrayed in literary form as
41 William Morris, ‘Society of the Future’ in The Political Writings of William Morris, ed. A. L. Morton, New York, International Publishers, 1973, p. 200-201. 133 opposed to utilitarianism and the factory system. His creation of heroic fantasy stems from this attempt to describe a better world by means of the heroic ethic. The heroic fantasy is an attempt to remould the future by reference to a set of myths about the past. Heroic fantasy not only represented a vision of how the world should be but also the rebirth of superior aesthetic values. However, Morris as an atheist pictured a new world that produced a medieval Christian aesthetic and morality without God. He attempts to strip Christianity of God but then to apply its ethical system to socialism. Even though his main emphasis is on the connection of morality and aesthetics Morris failed to recognise that he reproduced neither a medieval morality nor a medieval aesthetic. He created contemporary literature for a contemporary readership.
A comparison with the major medieval work on art available to Morris clearly shows the difference between his socialist aesthetic with that used by medieval artists. The German medieval artisan and monk Theophilus wrote a treatise on the arts in the twelfth century. This work became an encyclopaedia of medieval European art. 42 In this work Theophilus states the reason for pursuing artistic creation is to glorify the work of God. This is accomplished by representational means. Art is the continual reference to reality, not myth. Artwork should lead worshippers to recognise the glory of what God created. In this way people would see themselves and the rest of the world as part of God’s creation. This should give rise to compassion toward others as they are also part of God’s work. 43 Unlike the heroic ethic Theophilus refers to a universal ethic binding on everyone. Transgressing the universal moral code severs this link to others. This became even clearer with Theophilus’ attitude toward violence. Theophilus states that the act of killing others excludes a person from the work of glorification. 44 Violence cannot be part of representational art without it being condemned. The medieval ethic does not allow for the transcendence of popular morality to attain a better future. Nor does it favour non- representational or abstract art. Realism also combined the idea that morality should also create aesthetic values. However, as with Dostoyevsky, these values corresponded to an idea of truthful representation. It was left to realism to represent people’s lives and appeal to the universal values found in Theophilus.
Morris’ socialist assumptions prevented him from accepting a medieval aesthetic. The two socialist literary forms of universal love and the heroic ethic channelled Morris’ literary efforts into developing further forms of the romance and away from a medieval aesthetic. Morris never resolved the gap between the heroic ethic that led to subjective morality and an appeal to universal love. His use of the romance is an effort to bridge this gap. Morris did not choose the medieval ideas of representational art but turned to the highly artificial style of the romance. Theophilus describes representational art as being able to show everyone the glory of God’s creation. Everyone is part of God’s creation and thereby this aesthetic appealed to a universal morality. Morris takes the romance that expressed an aristocratic ethos and stemmed from classical models as his ideal. Morris believed that he created a popular literary form but it lacked a basis in a universal morality.
42 Theophilus, De Diuersis Artibus, trans. C. R. Dodwell, London, Thomas Nelson, 1961, p. ix. 43 Theophilus, De Diuersis Artibus, pp. 63-64. 44 Theophilus, De Diuersis Artibus, pp. 61-63. 134 The myth is necessary to link the romance to utopian thought. Morris creates a myth of a rustic paradise similar to that in Dostoyevsky’s Podrostok. In Morris’ rural Arcadia some live by the practice of universal love whereas others sacrifice themselves for the benefit of humanity. Morris presents the myth of a pseudo-medieval utopia to overcome the split between the educated hero and the ignorant mass of people but also the differences between his mythologised version of medieval society and historical reality. Morris strives to convince the reader that he is proposing a far better moral society than currently exists. It is a utopia based on the past not the future. Only in this mythologised past can the hero be represented as acting altruistically in an act of redemption. Morris uses the romance to try and preserve the altruistic connection between the two moralities. The romance presents a world in which the hero and the others existed side by side and in harmony because the divisions of class created by industrial production did not exist.
The world of Carlyle and Morris had nothing to do with the representation of the present or the past. They sought to represent what was best for people. This had nothing to do with what was possible or even desirable but with an ideal. This ideal existed independent of the lives of people and is not describable in terms of the existing world. In the attempt to reveal the ideal in literary terms Morris turns to an extinct literary source with connections to arcane knowledge from the past. This is the role of the romance. Heroes and non-heroes alike were left trying to make their lives correspond to an ideal that Morris found in the medieval romance. Unlike Dostoyevsky’s formulation of redemption, Morris’ philosophy does not have a prominent role for forgiveness. All moral action corresponds to an ideal, which is not subject modification. As an ideal it is both changeless and timeless. There is little room for people act wrongly and ask for forgiveness. The hero becomes the judge of incorrect behaviour and acts to pull society back into moral ways. In Morris’ vision of the romance the hero resembles the Calvinist judge rather than a medieval hero.
Morris represents the socialist author most opposed to realism in this work. He castigated realism and held up the romance as the norm. Others such as Mikhailovsky cast slurs on Dostoyevsky for being unable to share the socialist view of the future but Morris denied realism any aesthetic position at all. Wagner may have ignored realism as mere studies in appearances but Morris presented realism as the ally of everything ugly. There could be no use by the conspiratorial socialists of the realist novel. To do so would compromise the moral character of this form of socialism. In this he was correct. Realism and the romance were incompatible as they represented the two extremes between how the world is and how the world should be. With Morris this comes down to an antagonism between the realist emphasis on truthful representation and his sincere belief in doing what you believe is the best for everyone. To Morris if you truly wanted what was best for humanity then you would support his vision of a moral future. The realist could only show the misery of the present without showing a means to overcome such injustice.
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Morris, the romance and the utopian novel
Inspired by the British romantic feudal socialists Carlyle and Ruskin Morris hated both the product and the effects of industrialisation. 45 Morris followed Carlyle’s vision of useful labour to ask why luxury goods should be produced when many starved. Not only are industrial goods devoid of character and life but are also produced under the most appalling conditions. This means they are tainted by immoral methods even when they are superior articles. According to Morris, utilitarianism entailed a terrible cost to working people and supported privilege. 46 Like Herzen and Carlyle, Morris condemned the present as irredeemably decadent. Its very methods produced what was ugly under immoral conditions. Morris drew the conclusion that medieval society provided a model for future society from the aesthetic critique of industrial production.
As with Rousseau, Morris saw civilisation as a destructive force that corroded the natural and artistic life of people. 47 People were born free but had been ensnared in the ugly shackles of industrial production. People did not recognise that a better and more beautiful life existed outside the need to be useful or the drive to provide the greatest pleasure for the majority of people. Like Rousseau, Morris also condemned contemporary literature as supportive of the present regime. 48 The rejection of the present left Morris and the return to a mythologised past as a source that connected the hero to an altruistic ideal. As with Carlyle, the working-class could not recognise a moral ideal. The hero’s role lay in bringing such a world into being.
Morris searched for a literary model from non-capitalist literature and found it in the medieval romance. Alongside his political interests Morris translated medieval texts such as Icelandic sagas as an example of a non-industrial society struggling to express virtuous lives. 49 Morris produced his romance literature based on these translations. Morris’ own heroic fantasies recreate the medieval romance that spawned modern fantasy literature. 50 As such Morris founded the most commercially successful form of socialist literature. Morris did not intend this, rather he saw this literature as part of his desire to return to a more organic way of life. 51 Morris tried to recreate a non-industrial literature that would challenge modern aesthetics and a passive morality. However, the later popularity of such work divorced them from their socialist origins and turned them into industrial products.
Like other conspiratorial socialists, Morris could not abandon the motivation of universal love. He wrote his utopian novel in order to illuminate a society based on a universal ethic.
45 E. P. Thompson, William Morris, Romantic to Revolutionary, London, Merlin, 1975, pp. 27-39. 46 Morris, ‘Useful Work Versus Useless Toil’ in Political Writings, pp. 86-108. 47 Morris, ‘Society of the Future’ in Political Writings, pp. 200-201 and Jean- Jacques Rousseau, ‘Discourse on the Origins of Inequality’, The Social Contract and the Discourses, trans. G. D. H. Cole, London, Everyman, 1993, pp. 119-125. 48 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, ‘A Discourse on the Arts and Sciences’ in The Social Contract and the Discourses, trans. G. D. H. Cole, London, Everyman, 1993, pp. 4-5. 49 William Morris and Eiríkr Magnússon, The Story of Kormak, Son of Ogmund, London, William Morris Society, 1970, pp. 11-12. 50 Sprague de Camp, Literary Swordsmen, p. 43. 51 Thompson, William Morris, p. 677. 136 Alongside the production of the first modern fantasy novels Morris wrote the simple utopian story News From Nowhere (1891). This work echoed the previous novels of Sue and Chernyshevsky with an appeal to a better the social order and the organisation of society according to the theories of those such as Fourier. 52 Morris found no contradiction in the production of both forms of socialist literature. His utopian literature presented the problems of the present counterbalanced with how things should be. This work sets the past as the future hope for humanity. Heroic fantasy sprang from the same rejection of the present and aesthetic repugnance of its own time as utopian literature. The common bond between utopian and heroic fantasy literature lay in their antipathy to the present and any representational description of people’s lives.
Morris imagined himself in continual conflict with the forces of utilitarianism. In this struggle his fantasy literature stood as an aesthetic reaction to utilitarian ideas. However, he also presented contemporary art, meaning realism, as the ally of those forces that engendered ugly self-indulgence. Shortly after writing News From Nowhere, in a letter to the Daily Chronicle Morris declared that art should be “…founded on the well-being of the people.” The art of the past had been “organic” and shared by the people. Although Morris admitted that people’s lives had been difficult in the past they had lived a better and more moral lives. Significantly, Morris stated this view of art placed him in the position of being misunderstood and that his drive against utilitarianism had led to his production of what would seem “make-believe”. 53 However, he justified his use of both the utopian novel and the heroic fantasy as a return to a superior morality with its accompanying literary productions. Importantly, Morris attached no importance to the production by the working- class of literature themselves. Morris believed he had produced the literature of the future for working people. The authoritarian aspect of utopian thought ensured that Morris believed he knew what was best for humanity.
Morris’ choice of literature expresses the difficulty of transforming a functioning society by means of a literary myth. He had no literary means to describe the present or how it could become a better place outside of a dream or reference to literary archetypes. The heroic romance illustrated an alternative set of heroic moral principles to any communal ethic. The utopian message of universal love looked toward the best future that could be imagined but it lacked a means to achieve it. In contrast the heroic romance turned to a myth of the past that emphasised the individual will. This could provide a means to achieve political change but it could provide no check on the use of political violence. This effectively meant that the means to achieve a perfect society could not be expressed ethically. Morris’ literature is an effort to straddle the two positions. As he could not validate his opinions by reference to the present he forced to turn to the past as an example of how he believed society should function. The myth of altruistic pre-industrial society is vital for binding utopian thought, as a return to a moral past, and heroic action together.
52 William Morris, ‘News From Nowhere’ in News from Nowhere and Selected Writings and Designs, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1987 p. 91. 53 William Morris, ‘Art and the Future, The Deeper Meaning of the Struggle’ in News from Nowhere and Selected Writings and Designs, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1987, p. 142. 137 After the completion of his utopian novel and at the time of the production of his heroic fantasy Morris explained his rejection of realism as part of his reaction to of utilitarianism. Unlike Chernyshevsky’s individualistic “rational egoism” Morris explained that his literature reflected the organic communal moral instincts of the common people. 54 Chernyshevsky saw his utopia as reflecting the individual needs of people and that they would be best fulfilled by the rational organisation of society. In contrast, Morris recognised that a communal ethic of duty would not accommodate all individual desires. The communal ethic would take priority over the individual. The creation of the perfect society would require some people to make sacrifices of their individual desires. This included the hero as they had to sacrifice themselves for a greater good. Although he championed the heroic ethic Morris desperately tried to prevent it from sinking into Herzen’s subjectivism. Morris’ revolutionary hero was subject to a morality based on the aesthetic appreciation of altruistic past.
Chernyshevsky looked toward a utopia that would allow people to express their authentic selves. This stressed the ethic of fulfilling one’s own needs. Morris turned to a communal ethic of serving others. Chernyshevsky’s romance illustrated how individuals should respect their own physical and natural desires and accommodate them. The basic urge for the creation of a better world rested in the ability of a person to fulfil their individual desires. Morris developed a morality based on duty to others. In Morris this duty extends into a universal ethic and political violence is an inevitable consequence of the failure of present society. In contrast, Chernyshevsky based his morality on the heroic expression of the will. Both Chernyshevsky and Morris sought to achieve a more equitable society but the problem of preventing the descent into subjective morality haunted Chernyshevsky’s individual ethic. Morris recognised Chernyshevsky’s disregard of aesthetic values as only contributing to the spread of industrial selfish values. Chernyshevsky’s aesthetic progress of seamstresses being able to enjoy Italian opera after being enlightened and educated held no appeal for Morris. 55 He recognised that Chernyshevsky’s vision of the world would lead to the expansion of capitalism and greed. Not only that but it would produce articles that would have little aesthetic value.
Morris’ vision of the future appropriated a traditional morality as opposed to the creation of a new set of moral principles found in the other socialists considered in this work. Morris put a priority on a universal ethic. Morris also equates capitalism with the transcendence of Christian moral values. Industrial society created unimagined wealth but reduced all relationships between people to commercial transactions. Capitalism was the antithesis of an altruistic society. Morris sits apart from other socialists novelists considered in this study by trying to find a basis to create a fairer society. Like Sand he is a more sympathetic character than those that supported the extremes of the heroic ethic such as Wagner and Bakunin. The legacy of Bakunin and Wagner flourished in the field of authoritarian politics. The problem for Morris is how to bring about a moral society without a descent into destruction. His major contribution to modern society has been the heroic fantasy and the idealisation of the altruistic heroic ethic. Morris faced the task of making the heroic ethic
54 Morris, ‘Art and the Future, The Deeper Meaning of the Struggle’, p. 142. 55 Nikolai Chernyshevsky, What is to Be Done?, trans. Laura Beraha, Moscow, Progress Publishers, 1983, p. 215. 138 subservient to a universal ethic. A failure to achieve this would lead Morris to the same conclusions as Wagner and Bakunin.
Morris and the present
Morris attacked realism on the basis that it did not serve the interests of future society. In The News From Nowhere Morris made reference to Charles Dickens’ character Boffin in Our Mutual Friend. 56 Dickens constructed his character, the newly rich Boffin, as a comic figure, unable to read but intent on gaining an education by having someone read to him. 57 The comedy results from his hiring the ignorant tinker Silas Wegg to read to him. Morris contrasted Boffin’s desire to enjoy realist literature with his own ideal of an essentially oral tradition of romance and heroic fantasy. In contrast to Dickens, Morris presents his Boffin as “The Golden Dustman” from his habit of wearing ostentatious clothes while collecting rubbish. He is the representative of the past, which is Morris’ contemporary world, in his old outmoded ways of life in both dress and literature. The future should be ascetic and reserved for the romance. Realist literature may have appeal in the present but the achievement of socialism would render realism irrelevant.
Morris portrayed realism as motivated by the need for a profit. The contemporary realist novel achieved high sales and Anthony Trollope prospered from his novels. 58 However, Morris dismissed the realist novel as he believed that a motivation of earning a living by writing compromised realism. The content of the realist work did not concern Morris as much as the motivation behind its production. Morris’ aesthetic appreciation of morality precluded art from having a commercial motivation. Morris did not believe that art and commerce could mix. Commerce only produced the ugly. While politics relied on universal love it produced things of beauty. After commercial motivation had disappeared in Morris’ medieval Arcadia, literature would return to the natural form of mutual story telling. This natural form of literature corresponded to the romance.
Morris’ attachment to the romance and utopian literature grew from his antipathy to realist literature. 59 This antipathy rose from two observations. Firstly, that realism had its origins in bourgeois social conditions by the “introspective” middle class and therefore contained the seeds of industrial society. Secondly, the creation of socialism required people themselves to produce “authentic” stories about themselves. Morris’ new literature supposedly revived oral traditions, which he portrayed as having a greater authenticity and stemming from a society that did not rely upon an individual ethic. A return to the older literary forms also marked a return to dreams of an altruistic future. Morris believed that socialism could combine both fantasy and utopian literature because the past stressed the
56 Laura Donaldson, ‘Boffin In Paradise, Or the Artistry of Reversal in News From Nowhere’ in Florence S. Boos and Carole G. Silver (eds.), Socialism and the Literary Artistry of William Morris, Columbia, University of Missouri Press, 1990, pp. 27-29. 57 Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1989, pp. 45-53. 58 Anthony Trollope, An Autobiography, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1980, pp. 362-366. 59 Carole G. Silver, ‘Socialism Internalised, The Last Romances of William Morris’ in Florence S. Boos and Carole G. Silver, Socialism and the Literary Artistry of William Morris, Columbia, University of Missouri Press, 1990, pp. 118-119. 139 moral perfection of an altruistic society and therefore functioned in a rational manner. The pursuit of beauty and mutual welfare in a rural society with small-scale industry represented a past ideal for the future. For Morris the rational path to the future came from the application of his utopian vision and the romance. No conflict occurred between these two literary trends in their achievement of a moral future. 60
By his rejection of any reference to the present Morris had problems for the creation of a viable political platform outside of the heroic ethic. Morris relied on the catastrophic collapse of society that required the heroic ethic to transform it to a moral world. Morris tries to prevent the descent into subjective morality by the altruistic virtues of the hero. In Morris’ last work of heroic fantasy, printed after his death, Story of the Sundering Flood (1897) the hero serves the honest free peasantry to ensure the rule of justice and the proper organisation of society. 61 The role of the hero became that of ensuring the transformation of society. Inevitably this involved sweeping away those hindering this process. The reversion of society to a rural paradise involved the heroics of an altruistic benefactor. Morris reconciles the conflict between a subjective ethic of the hero and the universal ethic of a free peasantry with the collapse of present society. In News from Nowhere a utopia is born from some unnamed disaster. Like The Sundering Flood the utopian romance had no position in time. Morris’ utopian work and his romances being ideal structures exist outside of neither the past nor the future. The connection in Morris of the utopian ideal and the romance is the use of mythology to create a pseudo-historical past and future. The present, which is the realm of action, is ignored. The political action of Morris’ hero reproduces a mythology based on a literary archetype.
There could be no popular political programme built on the call to dismantle all industrial production. In contrast to the Russian socialists considered in the present work Morris attempted to banish industrial production on moral grounds. Marx indicated the vast productive capacity of the industrial age should mean that material want no longer occurs. Not only that but modern industrial capacity would rescue people from being a slave to circumstance. 62 Morris’ vision would involve poverty. A vital component of the heroic ethic of sacrifice was universal asceticism. Such an idea remained completely outside the aspirations of any social group. The very literary forms Morris used worked against the creation of a popular socialist party and co-operation with other social movements.
The catastrophic dimension of Morris’ thought is no accident but reinforces his belief in the moral vocation of the hero. This form of utopianism led Morris to construct socialism according to a deterministic and catastrophic pattern. The evils of the industrial world would lead to the destruction of civilisation from which only the hero could establish a just world. Class conflict resulted from the creation of industrial society and the deformation of a natural morality. This recalls Rousseau’s clash between civilisation and natural existence. 63 The destruction of industrial society would usher in a natural society and its
60 Morris, ‘The Society of the Future”, pp. 199-201. 61 William Morris, The Sundering Flood, London, George Prior, 1979. 62 K. Marx, ‘The British Rule in India’ in K. Marx and F. Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 12, London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1979, p. 132. 63 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract and The Discourses, trans. G. D. H. Cole, London, Everyman, 1993, p. 115. 140 attendant human happiness. The unnaturalness of industrial society not only gave the justification for its overthrow but actions taken against it hastened the inevitable. Morris does not use the word “degenerate” but it matches Herzen’s condemnation of the present. The destruction of the present becomes a moral act in itself and thereby beyond discussion or compromise. Unfortunately for Morris this amplifies the role of the redeemed hero as against universal love no matter how much he acts out of altruistic motives.
Through his support for revolutionary socialism and friendship with the Russian nihilists Morris actively sought to fuse the roles of the artist and hero. This meant little or no support for the democratic movement. Morris had little sympathy for the organised labour movement. 64 Nor did he support their literary productions by his press. Morris turned to the connection of morality and aesthetics embodied in the hero to effect social change. The artist envisions the future and the hero sets out to accomplish this vision. At no point in this political programme is there room for popular needs or participation. Morris does not move beyond Carlyle’s hierarchical society.
Heroic fantasy as a literary tradition
In both Carlyle and Morris the humanitarian impulse is compromised by their inability to deal with the present in anything but mythological terms. They deal with abstract ideals inexplicable to most people and only able to be realised through the world of the literary romance. They describe human existence in abstract terms that require all matters to be mediated by reference to the myth and not experience. When experience contradicts the myth Morris finds experience at fault. The operation of Morris’ scheme for imparting knowledge does not refer to empirical data but knowledge of the myth. Oral storytelling of the romance repeats belief in the myth.
Sue in his The Mysteries of Paris describes the hero as a prince disguised as a humble workman. This hero seeks to make a better world through his model farm and philosophy of those with “knowledge, will and power” overcoming injustice. 65 Morris goes beyond a simple repetition of this formula by presenting socialism is a mythological urge to create a perfect moral society. All political movements are to be judged by their relationship to this myth. Morris believed that the Völsunga Saga, the inspiration behind the Ring cycle, represented a hallowed and foundational literature like the Homeric epic poems. 66 He drew no distinction between the oral epic, the medieval romance and mythology. He bundled all these together as a literature of the past to illustrate the shape of a moral future society. The sole means of judging this mass of historical literature is that they had been created by non-commercial means. There is no independent past to be studied for its own sake. For Morris the past is unmediated by time and changed circumstance and is directly relevant to the future. By the use of a mythological past Morris transposed the literary
64 Ford Madox Ford, A History of Our Own Times, Beinfeld, Solon and Sontag, Sondra (ed.), Manchester, Carcanet, 1989, pp. 165-168. 65 Eugene Sue, The Mysteries of Paris, London, George Routledge and Sons, n.d., pp. 55-57. 66 William Morris, ‘Translators Preface’ in Völsunga Saga: The Story of the Volsungs and Niblungs With Certain Songs From the Elder Edda, trans. Eiríker Magnússon and William Morris, New York, Walter Scott Library, n.d., p. xiv. 141 figure of the romance hero into the future without recognising the incongruity of such a position.
Morris had no first hand experience of folk or epic production. This enabled him to indiscriminately mix epic, folk and romance literature together. In contrast, epic, mythological and folk literature still existed in the Russian empire. Russian socialists while exiled in Siberia had undertaken the recording of Siberian folk and epic work. The Narodnik exile Ivan Khudyakov taught himself the Siberian Yakut language, wrote an alphabet and grammar for their language and became responsible for the first publication of the major Yakut epic The Olonho. Other socialists followed in recording the folk-stories legends and myths of the other tribal groups. 67 They had an appreciation of the differences between the categories of romance, epic and folk literature. 68 They recognised them as products of a society far different from the Russia they knew and not directly applicable to contemporary Russia.
Separating myth, epic and history from each other had a profound affect on the different types of socialist literary productions. Russian socialists had no intention of returning Russia to a medieval society. Like Chernyshevsky, they sought to drag Russia out of what they saw as its primitive condition. The Russians did not want a return to the past. Much of Russia still existed as a feudal society. It would be hoped that new production processes and technology would alleviate poverty and ignorance. The London of the Crystal Palace represented an improvement to the unpleasantness of rural Russia. The Russians, such as Chernyshevsky, could appreciate that technology held a hope for a better future for most Russians. The past held a different contemporary relevance in Russia to that in England. Morris would recognise Herzen’s and Chernyshevsky’s new morality as corresponding to the values of capitalism, but it would probably still be an improvement on feudalism for most people. Chernyshevsky’s rejection of aesthetic values would also rule out the return to past literary productions as a model for the future.
Morris differed from other socialists in his attitude to progress and industrialisation. 69 He took the romance back to its origins and stripped utopian themes of any appeal to technological change. Morris’ less materially wealthy but ideal society not only banished the division of rich and poor but also aesthetically enriched the lives of its citizens. Other socialists, such as the anarchist Pytor Kropotkin, disagreed with Morris’ dim view of technology. 70 Kropotkin, like the nihilists, described technology as a liberating force. Science and technology provided “the poetry of machinery” for the enjoyment of doing a worthwhile job. Significantly, when arrested Kropotkin turned immediately to Sue’s The Mysteries of Paris to express his positive view of society. 71 The utopian aspects in Sue’s work looked to model farms and better wages. Morris by his connection of morality and
67 Benson Bobrick, East of the Sun, The Conquest and Settlement of Siberia, London, Heinemann, 1992, p. 306. 68 For a description of the recitation of the Olonho see James Riordan, The Sun Maiden and the Crescent Moon, Siberian Folk Tales, Canongate, Edinburgh, 1989, pp. ix-x. This work contains variants of some of the original recordings. 69 William Morris, ‘How I Became a Socialist’ in Political Writings of William Morris, A. L. Morton ed., New York, International Publishers, 1973, pp. 243-244. 70 Peter Kropotkin, Memoirs of a Revolutionist, London, Cresset, 1988, p. 93. 71 Kropotkin, Memoirs of a Revolutionist, p. 324. 142 aesthetics could not even accept this modified form of industrial production. His view of socialism necessarily involved universal asceticism.
The Russians lived with a heritage that had virtually ceased to exist in Morris’ England. The Russians did not look to the production of the folk epic or myth. Their literary world is the utopian manifesto and the personal epic of political struggle. As Richard Freeborn noted, What Is To Be Done? provided a rational model for a new society. The nihilists deliberately flouted realist and literary conventions to concentrate on the theme of a perfect society. 72 The utopian novel did not try to exert influence in the field of literature but rather sought a place for itself as a manual for the future. In Russia the conflict between the realists and conspiratorial socialists centred on the effects of capitalism. The utopians accepted technological progress and the realists, like Dostoyevsky, wanted to modify the effects of unrestrained capitalism by the use of the state. Both the utopian socialists and Dostoyevsky recognised the social injustice in Russia but neither would aspire to a return to the past.
Morris did not turn to actual contemporary or past folk productions but appropriated the artificial world of the romance. This differs from the Russian experience. While exiled to Siberia Dostoyevsky witnessed the convict theatrical productions and included them in his work Notes From the Dead House. He described these theatricals and included a discussion of the play Kedril the Glutton. Dostoyevsky enjoyed the performance and held it to be of merit. Importantly, he recognized that this work had not been transmitted through print but by memory and hand written manuscripts. 73 Compared to socialist literature, which was metropolitan, utilitarian, printed and mainstream, folk performance remained anonymous, provincial, amateur, memorised or hand written and had little contact with the literary world. This type of literature also disappeared with little to record its passing. The collection of folk work formed a major part of activities of Russian composers and artists such as Sergei Liaponov. 74 Morris avoided the collection of this material although other artists in England such as the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams contributed to its collection and incorporated folk material into their work. 75 Morris like Wagner and unlike the Russian and English composers looked to the past but had no interest in the collection of pre-industrial material. Morris’ approach to the past did not deal with the remnants of folk production that still existed. Instead he turned to an extinct aristocratic literary form that revealed ideals.
Morris’ literary works stand apart from folk material. His use of the romance is part of the abstraction of the past from historical specifics to representations of eternal ideals. He is not dealing with either historical analysis or the preservation of pre-industrial literature. His romances stand as works of fiction with an author, publisher, clientele and a specific political purpose. In spite of Morris’ claim, his works sat in the framework of commodity production as much as any realist novel. Try as he might Morris could not move out of the
72 Richard Freeborn, The Russian Revolutionary Novel, From Turgenev to Pasternak, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1982, p. 27. 73 F. Dostoyevsky, Notes From A Dead House, Moscow, Foreign Languages Publishing, n.d., pp. 170-172. 74 Nicolas Slonimsky, ‘Liapunov, Sergei’ in A Biographical Dictionary of Composers and Musicians, London, Simon and Schuster, 1988, p. 738. 75 Wilfred Mellers, Vaughn Williams and the Vision of Albion, London, Barrie and Jenkins, 1989, pp. 30-32. 143 existing economic relationships he so railed against. Therein lay the basic contradiction of his romances. While claiming to represent a foundational literature, Morris’ romances could not exist without the printing of translations and copies of earlier romance literature. Morris’ romances relied on capitalist production as much as realist literature. He lived and involved himself in the present world as much as the realists. However, his literary work scorns the foundation of his achievement.
Socialist literary values
Although Morris directly connected morality to the improved welfare of the poor and aesthetics he varied from other contemporary British fantasy writers with similar themes. Other fantasy novelists such as Richard Jefferies and George MacDonald explored the collapse of the industrial society and the relationship of humanity to nature. However, Morris stressed contrary moral and political positions to them. The birth of heroic fantasy literature from the socialist movement required a role for the revolutionary hero lifted from the romance. The heroic fantasy referred to knowledge outside of historical example, rationality or an external reality. It forms a distinct progression from the romances of Sand and Sue. In contrast, Jefferies and MacDonald looked to the consequences of industrial expansion on the environment and mystical Christian values.
The commercial success of heroic fantasy may seem a contradiction of Morris’ ideals. Compared to his contemporary realist novelists Morris could not be described as commercially successful. The literary form of heroic fantasy remained the preserve of the specialist magazine trade until the success of Tolkien in the 1960’s. 76 The most successful writers of the time were the realists. They were very popular and widely read. George Orwell noted with sad reflection that Trollope and Eliot earned large incomes from their writing as it seemed incomprehensible by the 1930’s and 1940’s. 77 Trollope calculated that he earned about £70,000 in twenty years from his writing. 78 Although the work of Morris and reprints of older romances by the Kelmscott Press sold over 18,000 volumes their high prices prevented their accessibility to a wide audience. 79 Morris believed that he wrote what people should read but this did not translate into a wide readership. This only occurred with the death of literary realism.
Morris did not write working-class literature but the literature he believed working people should read. Contemporary working-class novels did not follow Morris’ lead. When the first novels by working-class author’s novels were produced in England they took the form of the realist novel. Robert Tressell’s The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, published in 1914, consisted of a realist narrative concerning a gang of construction workers. The need for unionism is demonstrated through the hardship endured by their families not by the description of an alternative world. 80 The tragedy of the story centres on the need to
76 Sprague de Camp, Literary Swordsmen, pp. 27 and 216-222. 77 George Orwell, ‘As I Please’ in The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, Vol. 3, London, Secker and Warburg, 1968, p. 104. 78 Trollope, An Autobiography, pp. 363-365. 79 Jack Lindsay, William Morris, His Life and Work, London, Constable, 1975, p. 359. 80 Robert Tressell, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, London, Flamingo, 1993. 144 support a family while being ill. Like Dostoyevsky, Tressell concentrates on family responsibility struggling against those that use people for their own profit. Tressell, although a member of the Social Democratic Federation, did not follow Morris or Carlyle in the use of either utopian or fantasy literature. Unlike them he used straightforward English to present an accurate picture of working-class life. Like them he believed that capitalism deformed human life but he did not meditate upon visions of the past and future. The concerns of Tressell and working people centred on their immediate needs. Tressell saw working people defined their own fate and were not reliant on the impersonal activities of a cataclysm. Morris’ use of the romance denies the working class a role in their self- determination as a political force as they would only concentrate on their material betterment.
Six years previous to The News From Nowhere, the naturalist, journalist and socialist Richard Jefferies published After London in 1885. 81 The first part of this novel imaginatively describes the change in the English countryside after a cataclysmic event destroys industrial society. The second half of the work turns to a tale about a re- established medieval society. Jefferies did not present such a world as a paradise. The destruction of the present resulted from the internal divisions and environmental destruction wrought by industrialisation. The world after the catastrophe resembles a new medieval world because of the loss of technology and knowledge. It is not an improved moral world but has a new system of values based on the scarcity of certain goods and constant feuding between one’s immediate family and neighbours. As with Morris, Jefferies created a future world based on the destruction of industrial production. However, Jefferies warns readers this would be an undesirable outcome.
The need to preserve his moral vision led Morris to use a literary form that would not discuss the results of the collapse of industrial society. The major difference between Morris and Jefferies lies in Morris’ incorporation of the medieval romance into his stories. In the story of Child Christopher and Goldlind the Fair (1894) Morris simply retold The Lay of Havelok the Dane, which had been recently rediscovered. 82 The models for Morris’ fiction are the remnants of medieval romantic literature. The act of imagination in Jefferies’ story is removed. What interested Morris was the correspondence of his work with the medieval romance. Particularly attractive in Jefferies’ story is the description of the new species of animals that evolved from domestic animals run wild. 83 Jefferies attempts to look at the consequences of the descent of industrial civilisation into chaos. None of this occurs in Morris’ work. Morris’ formulation of fantasy serves to exclude imagination in favour of faithful reproduction of the formulations of the ancient romance.
Jefferies understands that the reversion to feudalism cannot mean that the effects of the present will cease to exist as occurs in Morris. The new feudalism will have the marks of its origin from an industrial society all through it including the natural environment. Morris, by staying in the confines of the romance, eliminates this inevitable conclusion from his fiction. The superiority of the return to a moral society cannot be questioned. Morris chooses a
81 Richard Jefferies, After London, Amaryllis At the Fair, London, Dent, 1948. 82 Walter W. Skeat and K. Sisam, (eds.), The Lay of Havelok the Dane, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1973, p. v-vi and Lindsay, William Morris, pp. 367-368. 145 literary medium that would not question whether the return to such a society would be materially disastrous. Morris’ literature focuses on the attainment of a moral end. His works function to exclude any conclusions other than what he found acceptable. The romance is the literary form that he found that most adequately performed this task.
A comparison of Jefferies and Morris reveals their differing assumptions. Jefferies recognised the threat of industrialisation but he did not ally himself with any political party or movement. 84 Jefferies described a sombre and bleak world that bred superstition and brutality. He understood that a return to a feudal system would involve hardship for most people. This was a world best avoided and he wrote to point out the dangers of unrestrained industrial expansion. In contrast, the appeal to a utopian political programme gave Morris’ mixture of romance and myth an optimistic flavour. In addition Jefferies, as a journalist, wrote far more accessible fantasy than Morris. He sought to warn that the countryside and its way of life were in danger. The main difference between the two is Morris’ moralising crusade against the present. His drive to establish a moral society justified all means to achieve it. Such an approach is lacking in Jefferies. He sought to warn people about present dangers not picture an ideal future.
While Morris struggled to create a moral romance he avoided the contemporary Christian example of this work. George MacDonald, a Scottish minister, strove to create an alternative moral fantasy that incorporated mystical elements into a consciously Christian fantasy. MacDonald was instrumental in the creation of modern fantasy literature. The fantasy author C. S. Lewis admitted MacDonald’s limitations but recognised the debt he owed him in the construction of the moral fantasy. 85 In Phantastes MacDonald recounts a dream sequence involving not just fantasy creatures such as fairies and trees becoming human but the idea that evil exists from being spiritually crippled. 86 Evil is not just external but part of a disjunction of the individual from the natural and social worlds that a person lives in. This is not the literature of the heroic individual struggling to change the world against ugliness. It is the challenge to connect with the world and people surrounding oneself.
Unlike Morris, MacDonald turned to the tradition of the German romantic literary fairy tale to create his fantasy. MacDonald tried to link the exterior world with morality. This form of the fantasy novel led not to the expression of morality in terms of duty or the law but as a mystical union with God or Nature. 87 Macdonald quoted Novalis’ Heinrich von Ofterdingen as a model for his work in regard to forging a unity between people and nature. 88 Novalis’ work tries to show a moral world in harmony with nature. Morris produced his moral ideals from the aesthetic rejection of industrial society. Morris avoided the creation of a personal relationship with either nature or God. He set out an ideal pattern for a moral society.
83 Jefferies, After London, pp. 10-14. 84 W. J. Keith, Richard Jefferies, A Critical Study, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1965, pp. 38 and 118. 85 C. S. Lewis, ‘Introduction’ in George MacDonald, Lilith, Grand Rapids, William Eerdmans Publishing, 2000, p. xi. 86 George MacDonald, Phantastes, London, Dent, 1983, pp. 33-37. 87 C. S. Lewis, ‘Introduction’, p. xi. 88 MacDonald, Phantastes, pp. xxix and 7 and Novalis, Henry von Ofterdingen, trans. Palmer Hilty, New York, Frederick Ungar Publishing, 1982. 146 Novalis describes a personal spiritual response to the world around him. Morris lays out a utopia that incorporates the heroic ethic.
MacDonald shared Novalis’ concern for a state based on Christian virtues purged of political expediency and founded on a unity of believers. This would provide the means to achieve repentance. 89 MacDonald turned toward Novalis in the attempt to give the irrational stream of a dreaming a deep spiritual significance. 90 MacDonald cannot accept that violence can be justified. Although Morris’ moral society has the outward trappings of traditional values it incorporates the ability to kill for the sake of a perfect world. The hero does act from political expediency to create a better world. The moral divisions between MacDonald and Morris cannot be overcome.
However, there is a covert mysticism in Morris’ use of the socialist myth that resembles MacDonald’s methods. MacDonald reached an understanding of the world through a direct communication with God through such methods as dreaming. His fantasy reaches to a world beyond experience. He does not have to apologise for the unreality of his work as it is beyond normal comprehension. Morris’ use of myth also goes beyond the ideas of analysis and logic. Morris’ work survived because as Sorel pointed out myth, ideology, is impervious to reason and avoids dealing with practical questions through an analytical method. 91 Both Morris and MacDonald use direct knowledge beyond the world of experience to express a true morality. Universal morality can only exist in mysticism with difficulty as it relies on the division of humanity between the knowing and the ignorant. MacDonald attempts to overcome this by his use of dreams to link the existing world with the knowledge of what is good. Morris also used the dream but unlike McDonald it reproduces utopian thought and rejects the present. Morris’ rejection of the contemporary world rests on mystical understanding not analysis. His inability to come to terms with the present means he is unable to overcome the division of people into the knowing and ignorant and supply a universal ethic.
Morris applied mystical reasoning to socialism through the romance. There was no other way for Morris to resolve the tensions between an altruistic basis of society and the heroic ethic. The romance takes on a mythological role as an explanation of why things were ethically better in the past. Such a position cannot be criticised on the basis of reason or historical knowledge as Morris’ myth relies on aesthetic revulsion over the products of industry. Morris relied on the linkage of aestheticism and morality to form the basis of a socialist critique of the present. Any reference to an external reality or the immediate needs of people threatens this core relationship. The use of the romance extracted its historical context in the medieval and ancient worlds remove a reference to any external reality.
Morris resembled other contemporary authors in his ideas of a return to the past and the moral basis of a future society. What he brought to heroic fantasy is the literary form of the medieval and classic romance. Only in this particularly restricted literary form he can
89 Novalis, ‘Christianity Or Europe’ in Fredric C. Beiser, ed., The Political Writings of the German Romantics, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1957, pp. 78-79. 90 George MacDonald, Lilith, Grand Rapids, William Eerdmans Publishing, 2000, p. 252. 91 Georges Sorel, Reflections on Violence, trans. T. E. Hulme, London, George Allen and Unwin, 1915, pp. 23-24. 147 incorporate the heroic ethic alongside an appeal to universal love. The popularity of this literary form demonstrates that such a scheme’s simple morality still has appeal. In comparison with Jefferies and Macdonald, Morris lacks any concept of time or a relationship to the outside world. The idea that a near perfect moral world existed in the past has to be accepted before Morris’ literature can be taken seriously as a political programme. Morris’ literature then strains to prevent the heroic ethic from overwhelming an appeal to universal love.
Morris and the heroic aesthetic
Morris’ aesthetic values exist as part of the moral critique of industrial society. He measures all issues by reference to his moral utopia. In News From Nowhere the people of the future criticise their predecessors as greedy and prefer to model themselves on medieval morality. Industrial capitalism emphasised self-interest and so destroyed sincerity and collective morality. In this future moral world people would be enabled to act according to their consciences not according to their desires. 92 The return to medieval literary models would also provide for a moral literature and not those based upon realistic accounts of squalor. 93 The romance by its lack of reference to an external reality could portray a society survived without a priority on production for human needs.
The period of composition of heroic fantasy saw the foundational debates over violent methods of establishing a socialist society. Stemming from the Russian utopians, the Narodnik Pytor Tkachov advocated the duty of socialists as immediate action to precipitate revolution. Later the revolutionary state would be used to suppress dissent and the creation of communal property. 94 Tkachov’s methods openly included violence and terrorism. Engels wrote a series of articles in 1874 against Tkachov and his Blanquist conspiracies. Engels stressed that certain conditions have to be met before any society can be transformed from the rule of one class to that of another. Any wild adventurism based on revolutionary will would not be able to secure the support of the Russian populace and could doom any significant social change. 95 The encouragement of the formation of a revolutionary society relying on moral outrage without analysis of the present is not only doomed to failure but also hurts a great many people. Morris’ disgust at industrial society would not lead to immediate change and would result in needless deaths through material want. From the point of view of literary realism it was not only a fruitless pursuit it but also immoral.
By his distaste for technological determinism and favouring of the will to change society Morris associated his heroic fantasy with the conspiratorial version of socialism. Whereas, more democratic versions of socialism could co-operate with realism conspiratorial groups chose the literary form of the utopian novel and the romance. 96 Morris did not interest
92 Morris, ‘News From Nowhere’, p. 43. 93 Morris, ‘News From Nowhere’, p. 22. 94 Frederick Engels ‘Refugee Literature-V. On Social Relations in Russia’ in K. Marx and Frederick Engels, Collected Works, Volume 24, London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1989, pp. 34-49. 95 Engels, ‘Refugee Literature-V’, pp. 49-50. 96 Engels, ‘Refugee Literature-V’, p. 35 for Tkachov’s reference to Chernyshevsky’s What Is To Be Done? 148 himself in the material welfare of the poor. The working class struggle for the redistribution of wealth would not lead to a moral change. Even in his choice of political association he supported the intellectual anarchist Socialist League and did not fully approve of the more populist organisations like the German Social Democratic Party. He resented the drive by working-class membership to gain shorter hours and more pay. 97 The lack of a democratic aspect to his ideas and the role of the will left no alternative but the use of force such as Tkachov advocated. Morris’ lack of social analysis in favour of moral condemnation excluded him from other forms of change such as the democratic process.
Socialism and myth
At the beginning of the twentieth century the French proponent of revolutionary violence, Georges Sorel, noted the indebtedness of socialism to both utopianism and myth. He redefined socialism and looked favourably on the growth of fascism, which he understood as breaking totally with bourgeois values. 98 Sorel believed contemporary society to be decadent. He further believed in the beneficial role of violence, especially class violence, which cleansed society. 99 The myth was the specific ideology that drove social classes to attack each other and thereby stay vigorous and able to generate a new society. While Sorel knew socialism developed from utopian ideas he indicated that a new set of ideas, the myth, had taken over from them and proved more important for present circumstance.
Sorel defined utopias as intellectual formulations that set up moral alternatives to the present world. The utopia represented a rational response to reality and parts of it could be incorporated into future societies. In contrast, myth represented an anti-scientific ideology of a specific social group. It could not be refuted nor could it be the basis for a rational response to the present. Whereas utopias appealed to the intellect, reform, morality and reason myth appealed to the will, revolution, violence and irrationality. 100 The myth plays precisely this role in Morris’ heroic fantasy. Sorel recognised that the logic of mythology led to the wilful exploitation of social unrest by any means possible. Behind the rhetoric of acting for the common good lurked the justification of acting according to political expediency. Herzen would agree with such a position and, in contrast to Morris, he understood once the present is deemed completely without virtue then any action becomes justifiable.
Morris also supported a similar attitude to Sorel towards scientific knowledge and empirical understanding but he differed from Sorel by linking aesthetic sensibility to morality. Sorel questioned scientific certitude and proposed the need for myth and a revolutionary will to power. 101 Sorel lacked any reference to a universal ethic as violence served as a positive virtue. Sorel used the myth as a means to generate a positive view of the future. Morris
97 Lindsay, William Morris, pp. 331 and 338-340. 98 J. R. Jennings, Georges Sorel, The Character and Development of His Thought, London, Macmillan, 1985, pp. 158-160. 99 Sorel, Reflections on Violence, pp. 82-84. 100 Sorel, Reflections on Violence, pp. 31-34. 101 Georges Sorel, ‘The Religious Character of Socialism’ in From Georges Sorel: Volume 2, Hermeneutics and the Sciences, ed. John L. Stanley, New Brunswick, Transaction, 1990, pp. 77-79. 149 wanted the hero to be subject to an altruistic ethic. Working against this was both the immoral nature of the redeemed hero and of Morris’ vision of the destruction of the present. While Sorel sacrificed a universal morality to the heroic ethic, Morris struggled to keep the connection intact through aesthetic intuition.
As with utopian thought, the myth justifies intervention in society. Sorel recognises this and its connection to the heroic ethic. Morris’ use of the romance as myth eventually discredits his attempt to demonstrate the basis of the heroic ethic in altruism. Morris tried to find the basis of a moral foundation for society but the redeemed hero offers no rational answer to injustice. No matter how hard they tried Carlyle and Morris could not establish a moral society as long as they turned to the redeemed hero. Carlyle and Morris sincerely believed they had found a means to create a moral world and saw flaws in the utopian systems proposed by the Russian. The fragmentation of morality into subjective idealism destroys all social morality and institutions. This includes religion, the state and family. Morris believed he uncovered a means to found a communal ethic based on previous moral traditions. However, this belief excluded improvement of living standards and would return Europe to rural poverty. Morris revealed the inadequacies of the Russian moral position but only by proposing an impossible alternative. The fault lies with the enterprise of creating a morality based on a literary romance and literary archetypes. Utopian and romance literature have only a tenuous connection to overcoming injustice. No matter how hard he tried Morris demonstrates that the authoritarian tendencies in this literature contributed to the inability of a conspiratorial socialism to find an acceptable answer to injustice.
Carlyle and Morris tried to find a means to found a moral society. There were sincere in this effort. They are seeking to overcome the inadequacy of realism that would not result in a moral society but rather the acceptance of a flawed society. The problem continually reoccurs that immoral means would have to be employed to achieve their visions of a future society. To overcome this both Carlyle and Morris abstract ethics to the world of ideals which bear no relation to existing circumstances. The romance performs the vital task of excluding any reference to the present while holding itself up as a model for the future. By appealing to abstract ideals the romance becomes a myth that can be used to intervene in people’s lives without regard to people’s own wishes. Morris’ morality and use of the romance cannot escape its authoritarian origins. 150
Chapter 7. Socialist Literature and Political Change
The decline of realism
Bakunin recognised that conspiratorial socialism dealt more with the destruction than the creation of appropriate moral values. Marx spelled out the similar role of capitalist production in sweeping away older production methods and values. 1 Marx’s condemnation of capitalism in that “…everything sacred is profaned” could equally be applied to conspiratorial socialism. 2 Conspiratorial socialism attempted the destruction of previous literary and moral values. The conspiratorial socialist rejection of realism and traditional values did not lead to the creation of more profound literary values. Neither did conspiratorial socialist literature lead to the creation of a more equitable or just society. The poverty of positive values in conspiratorial socialism could not deliver an alternate set of ethics. The very denial of literary traditions did not lead to a greater exploration of the relationship of the individual to society. Rather conspiratorial socialism attempted to make an external reality conform to the archetypes contained in the romance.
With heroic fantasy Morris took the romance back to its medieval origins in attempt to retain the connection to a universal ethic and utopian though. However, the evolution of the socialist romance into the socialist adventure novel emphasised different features of the romance. The creation of the socialist adventure novel has a profound effect on the relationship of utopian thought to the romance. The simple desire to work for the betterment of humanity with an appeal to universal love has no ability to generate preordained social change. Utopian ends rely on the heroic ethic to enforce change. An ideology based on the political hero leads to the domination of others and would seem to exclude any idea of universal love. However, the disparity of the utopian novel and the romance are reconciled by the needs of the underlying ideology. While a political movement refers to a utopian future the hero is required to implement that vision. When a political movement relies on the hero taking power he has to proclaim he does so out of love for humanity. This is the basis of the relationship between the romance and utopian thought. The change from the romance to the adventure novel results in a changed relationship between the romance and the utopian novel. The adventure novel dispenses with a reference to a universal ethic. The utopian novel can continue to exist as a moral critique but without the hero it lacks a means to create its vision of a better world. It is stuck in the realms of the dream or wishful thinking and as it lacks an active intervention in society it has a greatly reduced political impact.
The split between democratic and conspiratorial socialism allowed the romance and utopian novel to evolve as separate entities. The literary hero no longer acted out of
1 Karl Marx, ‘Speech on the Question of Free Trade’ in K. Marx and Frederick Engels, Collected Works, Volume 6, 1845-1848, London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1976, p. 465. 151 selfless love for humanity. Socialist terrorism made any appeal to universal love (while acting as an agent of heroic virtue) problematic as a single literary expression. This does not mean that the socialist romance and utopian thought faded from production. Rather, they could no longer be combined as they were in Sue’s Mysteries of Paris. They had now become separate entities pursuing their own ends. The heroic romance evolved toward the heroic fantasy and adventure novels. The utopian novel continued as the herald of the future that castigated the present for its inability to conform to socialist ideals. The two split along the lines of an appeal to either the hero of romance or universal love. This chapter looks at this split in socialist literature and the consequential failure of these forms to provide social analysis.
The changes in the socialist romance to the adventure novel did not alter its basic disposition. The socialist adventure novel continued efforts to invert traditional values. The adventure novel and heroic fantasy still extolled the virtues of the criminal and medieval hero. Jack London’s The Call of the Wild reprises Rousseau’s “noble savage” opposed to the effects of civilisation. 3 The adventure novel not only challenges traditional values but continues to emphasise literary content that is removed from most people’s experiences and beliefs. It repeats the romance’s emphasis on the actively engaged hero outside of moral concerns. It is a continuation of the romance hero’s struggle but it lacks any appeal to universal ethics.
Even though it became separated from the heroic fantasy and adventure novel the utopian novel did not disappear. It still continued to be produced and found popularity. The American utopian novel by Edward Bellamy, Looking Backwards, found appreciative readers in most of the English speaking world. Along with Morris’ work it even inspired Australian socialists to try and set up a better world in South America. 4 In common with romance-based fiction it justified ethical positions that do not correspond to commonly-held moral principles. As with Wagner, reality is not the province of the senses or experience. Humanity’s destiny is revealed by other means. In the case of Bellamy this is instrumental reason. Bellamy appealed to abstract ideals beyond experience and so remained of limited applicability. The division of the utopian novel from the romance caused it to lack any credible means to be ushered into existence. The lack of appeal to the values of most people and the wayward nature of most schemes caused the utopian novel to cast its visions in the form of a dream. However, it did retain the dimension of condemning the present in favour of literary prophesy. In doing so it remained ignored social analysis but favoured the application of ideology to a situation.
The utopian novel does not undergo major change after the split with the adventure novel. It no longer reveals an alternative world that is compromised by the immoral acts that would be required to put it in place. The utopian novel remains as a critique of reality but it has no reference to reality. It may claim a humanitarian impulse and try to ally itself with such
2 Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, ‘Manifesto of the Communist Party’ in K. Marx and F. Engels, Collected Works, Volume 6, 1845-1848, London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1976, p. 487. 3 Jack London, Call of the Wild, with an Illustrated Reader’s Companion by Daniel Dyer, Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1995, pp. 73-74. 4 Lloyd Maxwell Ross, William Lane and the Australian Labor Movement, Sydney, Forward Press, 1935, p. 190. 152 ideas as Sand’s universal love but this does not equate with popular will or democratic change. The utopian novel does not have room for the idea of self-determination of people but presents people with the world as it should be. The utopian novel without the support of the romance becomes a negative critique of the present without the means to bring about a better world.
Morris attempted to keep the romance and utopian thought combined and integrate traditional values as socialist principles. However, the success of democratic socialism makes such a position untenable. The American socialists Edward Bellamy and Jack London illustrate the results of this split. Bellamy’s world left very few material needs unsatisfied but his vision of popularity translates as utilitarianism. People are presented as objects to be supplied with material needs. In his utopia people exist with their desires filled but with no way to reach such a position except the expansion of technology. There is no examination of the role of technology in the expansion of exploitation such as occurs with Morris. Like Chernyshevsky, Bellamy presents the production of “New People” as arising from new technology and social organisation.
As Frank commented the socialist vision of universal utilitarianism had its counterpart in the acetic revolutionary hero. In his dystopia Iron Heel London assumed that the triumph of a perfect society would not be achieved without a major struggle and a lot of bloodshed. This movement is to be led by ascetic terrorists against a background of the masses only interested in immediate gain. He does not negate Bellamy’s vision of the future but emphasises the theme of justified violence from the romance. The romance based literature of the heroic fantasy and adventure novel had purged itself of the reliance on the idea of universal love and concentrated on the heroic ethic. Unlike Bellamy, London recognised that when socialism concerned itself with a utilitarian version of people it lacked the heroic ethic to achieve such a society.
Bellamy
Bellamy found ways to incorporate an intrusive state into a utopian programme. Utopian works exerted a cosmopolitan importance throughout the international socialist movement because of their appeal to abstract concepts. Utopian thought did not deal with concrete ideas of country, historical circumstance or language. They had a universal appeal but floundered when set up as concrete schemes. The abstract values expressed by utopian thought coincide with the abstraction of value from objects. When such values are divorced from reference to social circumstance they also lack reference to accepted social and moral values. The American socialist Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backwards (1887) provides an example of the coercive nature of utopian values. The world had changed since the appearance of The Mysteries of Paris but the message of the inferiority of the present world remained. The appeal to a perfect moral world still relied on abstract principles.
Morris emphasised the role of the ascetic hero to achieve a moral society. In contrast, Looking Backwards represents the use of the state to achieve the equitable distribution of material needs. Bellamy emphasises the utilitarian aspects of the state to boost production 153 of socially responsible goods and services. Unlike Jack London, Bellamy composed a picture of socialist paradise that could be achieved in the near future. Like Morris he tried to associate his utopian thought with Christianity and portrayed a world purged of the effects of the market. This corresponded to his belief that an absolute duty to others overrode all other ethics. 5 Wealth distribution became a coercive act. The state represented a collectivist ethic in action to provide for people’s material needs. Any opposition to this ethic threatened the welfare of oneself and others. According to Bellamy opposition to such an ethic represented a sick or self-destructive element in the individual’s personality.
The state not only mobilised labour and held a monopoly of production but also investigated any complaints. 6 The achievement of a communal social order came with the domination of the state over every aspect of life and the use of a police force to ensure co- operation. In fact in Bellamy’s paradise has no legislation. Bellamy expects that with state direction of the economy the only government functions will be the judiciary and police. Mill struggled to avoid of the state dominating individual rights but Bellamy envisions a state that distributes wealth on a rational basis. Bellamy’s idea of a government that functions through the courts becomes even more disturbing when his ideas on crime are examined. He states that in the future there will be no need for charity and the Ten Commandments will be obsolete as in a perfect world there cannot be any temptation or any need for dishonesty and violence. Bellamy consciously adopts the Calvinist idea of crime as a hereditary or pathological problem. If there is no private property then stealing or any other crime represents an assault on the whole community. In this manner crime has no excuse and has to be seen as an individual disorder. 7 To act against the interests of humanity means self-hatred and defines the criminal as suffering from irrational behaviour. A crime against the state becomes by definition an act against humanity and thereby a psychiatric disorder. In Bellamy the continual subordination of the individual to the collective good is achieved by conceiving the state as an ethical entity. The state functions to regulate the economy and ethical behaviour.
Looking Backwards presents the state domination of ethical values as positive and progressive. It is left to the later dystopian works of Orwell and London to represent state coercion as a failure to adhere to ‘true’ socialist ideology. Utopianism holds up the failure of humanity to measure up to what is best for them as an eternal truth. Bellamy presents past failures to establish a better world as the result of pathological criminality and ignorance. Sue already personified this in The Mysteries of Paris with the “Schoolmaster” and the ‘Screech-Owl’. Bellamy’s position takes this further and rejects Bakunin’s claim that criminals are allies in the struggle against traditional values. The state operates outside of any set laws and criminals are those it defines as suffering from a form of sickness.
The difference between accepting Looking Backwards as a positive guide for the future or seeing it as a dystopian threat depends on whether one agrees with the moral premises
5 Edward Bellamy, Looking Backwards, 2000-1887, New York, Modern Library, 1951, pp. 47 and 230. 6 Bellamy, Looking Backwards, pp. 43, 46 and 155. 7 Bellamy, Looking Backwards, pp. 162-163, 169 and 234. 154 behind the work. Orwell took such a society as a threat as he also could not accept the confusion of ideology with a social ethic. In contrast, London’s Iron Heel provides a very sketchy vision of the perfect future and concentrates on the flaws of in non-socialist society. The very real dangers of Looking Backwards are disguised as a moral choice. Ethical choice is limited to the acceptance of a rational communal ethic or the present individual values of the market. To disagree with the idea of a utopian ethical future is to put oneself in the role of the misanthrope, as in Dostoyevsky’s Notes From the Underground. 8 This is an important point that Orwell recognises in 1984. Utopian tracts allow no variation from what is proclaimed as a collective good. The collective vision of a specific utopia sets itself as the sole alternative to a supposed degeneration into barbarism. 9 The failure to achieve a utopia is dismissed as people failing to adhere to abstract ideals. There is no reference to circumstance or relating the principle to people’s behaviour.
However, unlike Chernyshevsky and Morris, Bellamy remained open to the influence of the realist authors. He especially prized Dickens and regarded him as a forerunner of a socially progressive movement that combined socialism and realism. Unlike Mikhailovsky he saw the revelation of social ills as a positive purpose for literature. 10 Bellamy regards Dickens as an ally in the deprecation of the present. In Bellamy’s perfect world the literary realism of Dickens and Dostoyevsky demonstrate the evils of the past and thereby justify the actions to create a better future. However, as Morris and Dostoyevsky realised, the ethics of realism and socialism fundamentally conflicted. Bellamy does not use literary realism as an alternative source of values as he remains in the orbit of utopian thought.
Bellamy makes the superiority of abstract values very obvious. In Looking Backwards he describes everything positive in terms of common values but anything negative as the fault of the individual. There is no room for free will. In fact Bellamy takes his all-pervading coercive humanity further by equating it with efficiency. The achievement of socialism is to be attained not by violence but by the demonstration of the superior efficiency of his system. 11 The Russian playwright and biographer Edvard Radzinsky in his biography of Stalin makes the point that Stalin committed atrocities on the basis of an appeal to common humanity coupled with efficiency. Labour camps functioned not only to retrain those committing social crimes but as an efficient means of gathering the greatest output for the least input. 12 The utopian belief in universal love developed into the substitution of efficiency for moral values. Bellamy confirms Frank’s observation that the idea of universal love was in reality all pervading utilitarianism.
Many revolutionary Marxists looked to capitalist production methods to create socialism. They sought to combine political power in the hands of revolutionary socialists with the most refined methods of capitalist production to enable the creation of “New People”. The drive for efficiency took the form of support for the founder of ‘scientific’ management, the American Frederick Taylor. The Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci linked Taylor’s methods
8 Fyodor Dostoyevsky Notes From the Underground, trans. Jane Kentish, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1991, p. 33. 9 Orwell, 1984, p. 858. 10 Bellamy, Looking Backwards, pp. 117-120. 11 Bellamy, Looking Backwards, p. 43. 12 Edvard Radzinsky, Stalin, trans. H. T. Willets, New York, Doubleday, 1996, pp. 237-238 and 414-415. 155 with the Soviet militarization of labour. Gramsci stated that “The principle of coercion, direct or indirect, in the ordering of production and work, is correct…”Such production methods required the worker to voluntarily renounce their individual needs in favour of efficient production. Individual desires would be fulfilled by the greater volumes of production for all. The introduction of these methods would destroy an older traditional morality and lead to a new morality. 13 The militarization of labour by destroying traditional values would create Chernyshevsky’s “New People” needed for the transformation of capitalism into socialism. The transformation of the present to a socialist utopia required coercion. Lenin looked forward to the role that Taylor’s methods, “the last word in capitalism”, would play in the transformation of the Russian working class. He saw the militarization of labour as a positive change. “The possibility of building socialism depends exactly upon our success in combining the Soviet power and the Soviet organisation of administration with the up-to-date achievements of capitalism”. 14 The transformation of the working class would be achieved by both overt political coercion and the drive for more intense and efficient production. There is no idea of the self-determination of working people in the formulation of socialist efficiency.
While Morris’ future cannot fulfil people’s material needs he recognised that industrial production was unable to create human happiness. The contemporary English art critic John Ruskin was particularly scornful of the attempt to link the collectivist ethic and the idea of efficiency. 15 As Ruskin points out, efficiency ignores any reference to the idea of justice or self worth. The socialist preoccupation with utilitarianism effectively narrowed discussion of morality to abstract or commercial values. Morris and Ruskin recognised that the drive for efficient production would destroy any values outside of individual gain. Morris attempted to subordinate production to ethical values. In contrast, Bellamy’s efficient production would ensure that such values would be destroyed. Utopian thought could only produce ethical values and production at the cost of universal poverty.
Frederic Jameson imagines that utopian works spawned the science fiction novel and create an alternative vision of the future. He assumes that the utopian romance holds an exemplary role in literature as it outlines what is possible. The supposed sterility of contemporary society implies a renewed need for another spate of utopian novels. 16 This is a repeat of utopian thought finding present society wanting. Unfortunately, there is nothing in this vision of the future that ensures that utopian societies would be an improvement for most people. Jameson refers to Mannheim but ignores his description of the authoritarian content of utopian thought. 17 Mannheim drew attention to linkage between utopian thought and the tendency to describe everything as bound by the interests of particular social groups. Utopian thought describes reality in terms of ideology. The stimulus to change is driven not by analysis but by intellectual will and ideology. 18 Utopian
13 Antonio Gramsci, Selections From the Prison Notebooks, trans. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith, London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1971, pp. 301-304. 14 V. I. Lenin, ‘The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government’ in Collected Works, Vol. 27, Moscow, Progress Publishers, 1965, p. 259. 15 John Ruskin, Unto This Last and Other Writings, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1997, pp. 169-170. 16 Fredric Jameson, Archaeologies of the Future, The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions, London, Verso, 2005, pp. xii-xii. 17 Jameson, Archaeologies of the Future, p. 3. 18 Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia, pp. 36 and 123. 156 thought is inherently antagonistic to the existing society but imagines itself on a higher moral or rational plane. It is not the adoption of a better life but the articulation of already existing ideology. The utopian proposition that people will become attracted to the possibility of a better world dissolves into the service of a particular social group’s interests.
The comparison with Bellamy’s and Morris’ solutions to an unjust world illustrates the inability of utopian thought to produce a vision of a world that would appeal to the majority of people. In Bellamy, the fulfilment of material desires becomes translated into state control of every aspect of life. However, with Morris the generation of an ethical society becomes the desire to see the world collapse into small scale production. This is not the revelation of possible worlds but the use of utopian thought to press for change based on the ideology of non-democratic socialism. Jameson’s return to the production of new utopian works would not alter their use by predetermined ideologies. Nor would they create a viable alternative. This is not their nature.
The authoritarian nature of utopian thought leads to the position where each utopian writer denies the vision of every other utopian. Morris’ rural communes involve small-scale production and clashes with Bellamy’s support of an intrusive state that monopolises industrial production. 19 These two socialist utopias represent different ends of socialist ideology. There is either an ascetic moral society or one with utilitarian values. Bellamy portrays the unpleasant alternative to a collapse into medieval conditions whereas Morris fears the transfer of the control of one’s own destiny to the industrial state. They propose moral answers to the problems they see around them. At no point do they offer a concrete means to tackle problems facing existing people.
Orwell recognised the danger of ideology in distorting the view of reality contained in utopian thought. Unlike the utopian novels, Orwell’s 1984 contains the message that this is a possible world and it is not an answer. Support for a democratic movement based on values of justice can prevent this. 20 Orwell makes the significant point that the utopian dream supports itself by denigrating any other alternative as leading to a much worse situation that presently exists. Utopian thought not only denigrates contemporary society but also subjects other utopian alternatives to unremitting criticism. 21 Critics like Jameson have neglected to analyse utopian thought’s attack on traditional values while being unable to generate alternative values. The split from the romance by the utopian novel demonstrates its fundamentally negative character. It can criticise but by lacking any position in the contemporary world it is unable to generate alternative values.
The split between the adventure novel and the utopian romance enables the growth of the dystopian novel. Utopian romances have presented a pessimistic view of the present world and they present tyranny and slavery as the only alternatives to their utopian schemes. After Wagner and Morris this negative aspect of the utopian novel becomes more important. The attack on the idea that there is no alternative to a utopian vision of the
19 William Morris, ‘News From Nowhere’, in Collected Works, Vol. 16, London, Longmans, 1910 and Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward, 2000-1887, New York, Modern Library, 1951. 20 George Orwell, ‘Writers and Leviathan’ in The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, Vol. IV, ed. Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus, London, Secker and Warburg, 1968, p. 410. 21 George Orwell, ‘1984’ in The Novels of George Orwell, New York, Heinemann, 1980, p. 854. 157 future in socialism finds its literary form in the satiric dystopia such as Orwell’s 1984. Each new utopian scheme that invalidates the previous ones sets the utopian romance itself up for satire. Dystopias function to show that utopian thought itself is a mechanism to establish authoritarian societies. The present world is not degenerate and does hold hope for the establishment of a more just society. 22 This attack on utopian thought does not come from literary realism or social analysis but from socialists satirising the credibility and desirability of the utopian romance. It can occur once the utopian romance loses its credibility as a force for social change.
In the dystopian novel the heroic ethic is no longer the natural alternative to utopian thought. Socialist redemption no longer forms the basis on which to justify violence to change the world. However, the dystopian novel retained a political motivation. It represented another possibility of the future based on the failings of utopian thought. The dystopian novel destroyed the older connection of utopian thought with what “is” and what “should” be. The destruction of the present would not guarantee the emergence of a better world. This not only demolishes the claims of Bakunin and Morris but also Bellamy’s claim to be working for a better world. The split between the socialist romance and utopian thought allows the dystopian novel to find an ally in the realist novel. After this split Orwell can champion realist literature and compose a dystopian novel. The chains that prevented this movement no longer exist. This changed the dynamic between utopian principles and the heroic ethic can also be seen in the work of Bellamy’s fellow American Jack London.
Jack London
The romance as a literary form divided socialism. Those that advocated democratic change preferred a literary form resembling the realist novel whereas those using the older ideology of revolutionary elites clung to the romance. The emergence of the adventure story did not lessen the antagonism between romance based literature and the realist novel. The American socialist novelist, Jack London, died during the First World War. He was a contemporary of the British working class writer Robert Tressel but whereas Tressel gravitated toward realism London turned toward the adventure story. He produced The Call of the Wild (1903), and the tale of a failed utopia, The Iron Heel (1908). Like conspiratorial socialism, London produced an openly violent variety of romance fiction. The ethic of the romance hero invigorated conspiratorial socialism to be able to take advantage of any favourable situation. The romance and adventure novel encourage revolutionary opportunism in contrast to the long term vision of the future contained in utopian tracts. The previous support of utopian thought in the inevitable triumph of socialism linked to a broad humanitarian intention no longer exists with the split between it and the adventure novel. The rise of the adventure story provided little that would hamper the drive toward political opportunism should circumstances be favourable.
22 George Orwell, ‘As I Please’ in The Complete Works of George Orwell, I Have Tried To Tell the Truth, 1943-1944, London, Secker and Warburg, 2001, p. 35. 158 The unresolved problem for socialism continued to be how to bring a perfect future out of an impure present without resorting to an ideology of power politics. This problem had a different slant for realism. Dostoyevsky, as a realist, could not rely on the ideology of the end justifying the means. Realist ethical behaviour had to rely upon actions in the present conforming to generally accepted ethical principles. They were not guided by reference to an idealised future. At all times matters of principle would have to relate to immediate needs and be seen to be acting justly. Realism could not transcend the present. For realism this presented a balance between unprincipled pragmatism and inflexible ethical principles. This mixture did not make for a simple or straightforward political programme. In contrast, London demonstrates the unresolved tension in socialism as he hovered between describing the world as it is and how it should be. London faced the same criticism as Dostoyevsky that he described the pathological. He did not describe a morally or socially perfect world. Socialism had great difficulty in dealing with the present as it is always tainted and only the future and the ideal are of real concern. This led London away from his initial descriptions of working class people to a vivid dystopia that assured adherents that they would finally triumph. He was also instrumental in the creation of the socialist adventure story which emphasised the triumph of heroic virtue.
In London the utopian romance and the adventure novel operate independently. London tried most literary forms but still could not bridge the gap between the present and the future. He produced both social reportage and appeals to a utopian future. He felt genuine sympathy for the poor but mixed it with the justification for the elimination of “racially inferior” people. The connection between the ascetic hero and the universal love of humanity had started to unravel. The dynamism of heroic action with an ethic based on the myth and utopian appeals to the end justifies the means were all combined in London. However, none of his moral positions relied upon an analysis of the present or on how the individual reacts to moral problems. Objective truth holds no importance for his form of socialism. London wrote at the turn of the century when these internal tensions worked to adjust the politics of the right and left to a pessimistic moral framework. In London’s work utopian thought condemned the present alternating with the heroic ethic appealing to elites.
Although London used similar literary forms to Orwell there is a marked difference in worldview between them. Both wrote journalistic reports on the state of the English working class. Orwell in The Road to Wigan Pier described the condition of Northern England during the 1930’s depression. London described the poverty in the East End of London in the boom times of 1903 with People of the Abyss. Orwell and London also produced future fantasies about the fate of socialism. Orwell in 1948 outlined a totalitarian socialist nightmare, 1984, and London described how the reaction to socialism generated a totalitarian state in Iron Heel from 1908. Their principles did not prevent them from being disillusioned in the prospects for socialism. As with Dostoyevsky, this led to Orwell’s marginalisation from the socialist movement. London tried to find solace in the idea of an inherent drive toward a better society that involved the revolutionary hero. London’s work undermines the traditional political division of left and right. The incorporation of violence into a political programme divided socialism into a humanist democratic tradition and forms that concentrated on the discussion of power. The success of social democratic parties ensured that these doctrines would pull 159 apart. London’s work is the struggle to find a literary form that can generate a popular appeal for conspiratorial socialist enterprises.
London wrote in a literary form that united democratic and heroic strands in socialism in the journalistic reportage of the situation of the poor. However, there was always a tension in his work between sympathy for the poor and the doctrine of romance heroism. In People of the Abyss London describes the life of a destitute American sailor in the slums of the East End. He describes how one’s moral strength is sapped while living a degrading existence trying to find the basics of food and shelter. 23 London expresses sympathy with people that are completely destitute. However, these are not the organised working people found in Orwell’s Road to Wigan Pier. These are people that are desperate and completely emptied of human values. They are the extremely poor who have nothing left not even their dignity. London recognises this and terms them “people of the abyss”.
As an answer to contemporary injustice London falls back on the old ideas of the revolutionary elites. “The people of the abyss” turn up again in London’s dystopia Iron Heel as a desperate force seeking revenge on any one in respectable clothing. They are extremely violent, without direction and incapable of restructuring society. 24 The totalitarian state, called the “Iron Heel”, functions by extreme repression that “the people of the abyss” cannot overthrow. Revolutionary heroes fight against the repressive state on their behalf. London modelled his vision of socialist defence groups fighting the forces of tyranny in this work on the Russian Social Revolutionary terrorists. 25 London acknowledged the role of trade unions and democratic socialist parties. However, he assumed that tyranny could only be overturned by terrorism. London may have felt empathy for the poor but held out no hope for their self-determination. The heroes who will change matters came from the intelligentsia and were fired by revolutionary asceticism. London did not favour democratic reform as capitalism has drained the moral being from those who suffer the worst degradation. As such they are incapable of acting in a manner that will go beyond the struggle for immediate individual gain. The mass of people cannot rise above utilitarianism. Only the revolutionary ascetics can achieve the ability to transcend their existing world. Orwell was left wondering if London would have supported fascism if he had not died in 1915. 26
The inherent contradictions in socialism of the appeal to an assured better future and immediate political expediency gave socialism stability in the face of reverses. However, it also worked to reduce the role of the majority of people in the political process. London’s dystopian novel, Iron Heel, reshaped the utopian novel by concentrating on the heroic means required to achieve a perfect world. His dystopian novel no longer appealed to reason or the betterment of humanity. Instead it showed the only salvation for humanity lay in socialist heroes. The People of the Abyss presented the horror of the present world and the later Iron Heel demonstrated the mechanisms required for salvation. Iron Heel
23 Jack London, ‘The People of the Abyss’ in Novels and Social Writings, New York, Library of America, 1982, pp. 58-59. 24 Jack London, ‘The Iron Heel’ in Novels and Social Writings, New York, Library of America, 1982, pp. 534-538. 25 London, ‘Iron Heel’, p. 483. 160 presented the story of utopia delayed. As such it had not acknowledged the later dissatisfaction with the authoritarian tendencies in socialism expressed by Orwell.
London uses the form of an unfinished memoir unearthed in the distant perfect future that tells of the struggles during our own imperfect times. The forces for a better society have tried many times to overthrow capitalism but failed. This is an anthology of impressive failure that gives consolation in the assurance that the forces of socialism will triumph finally over terrible odds. As a work it has been issued and reissued at every socialist reverse. Orwell noted that it had been reissued for the rise of fascism. A copy was reissued for the fall of the Allende government in Chile in the 1970’s. 27 Even the dystopia can serve the purpose of deterministically preserving the hope that by following the correct programme a better world will follow.
The political ideal of a utopia has several dimensions that cannot be ascribed to their literary value. The determinist belief in a socialist victory transcends both defeat and rational argument. The defeat of socialism cannot be the fault of socialism itself but of outside viscous reactionary forces. As with Wagner’s evil it is an external force. The political creed it encourages thereby becomes impervious to events around it and any critical assessment of its failure. The ideal toward which all action, logic and literary merit are directed has become all-important. This way of thinking is of major significance for utopianism, as it does not allow for any kind of compromise or development in the political movement. Utopianism, even London’s version, condemns socialism to sterility as it can only approach matters with reference to the future. The mundane things of this world cannot compromise the ideal future. Like “the people of the abyss” the present is tainted and cannot attain perfection. The corollary of this is that people had failed the ideology. The belief in the future has been compromised by the actions of people in the present. Only those that can transcend the present can usher in the new world. This reinforces their role as heroes and their distance from other people.
As Gramsci explained, such determinism is most important for a political movement during failure as it ensures survival of the movement by rendering momentary failure unimportant in the larger scheme of things. However, the problem arises that by excluding any analysis of reality such a political movement becomes based upon faith or pure ideals. Like Sorel, Gramsci mistakenly attacks utopianism for supporting passivity instead of promoting rebellion. 28 However, as Mannheim explained utopian thought is driven by an expression of the will to make the present resemble the ideal. This is the link to utopian thought that drove the followers of Chernyshevsky to found conspiratorial groups. Violence is justified as a temporary aberration before the triumph of a society that does not need such methods. This is why utopianism is pivotal to the creation of the socialist movement and its choices of literary forms. As Dostoyevsky described in Devils, far from being passive, utopianism unleashes the ability to use any extreme of violence. London’s Iron Heel reinforced the importance of the utopian novel to the political movement in its use of
26 George Orwell, ‘Introduction to Love of Life and Other Stories’, in The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, Vol. IV, London, Secker and Warburg, 1968, pp. 28-29. 27 Orwell, ‘Introduction to Love of Life’, p. 26 and the author’s personal experience. 28 Antonio Gramsci, Selections From the Prison Notebooks, trans. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith, Lawrence and Wishart, 1971, pp. 336-338. 161 violence. However, the split between the two literary forms prevented an appeal to immediate moral values. Violence is portrayed as the inevitable result of a society that operates according to injustice.
London assumed, and Orwell agreed, that the Oligarchs’ belief that they acted according to moral principles constituted the reason for the sustained existence of their tyranny. 29 “The great driving force of the Oligarchs is the belief that they are doing right. Never mind exceptions, and never mind the oppression and injustice in which the Iron Heel was conceived. All is granted. The strength of the oligarchy today lies in its satisfied conception of its own righteousness.” 30 Orwell recognised that London had realised something that most socialists had not, that the power of a social system is controlled by its morality not by cynical strength and direct violence. Orwell recognised this also existed in socialism and the socialist appeal to morality also coerced the population. 31 Even Stalin believed he acted for the good of humanity. During the Russian show trials the victims admitted to the unjust charges brought against them for the good of the party. 32 Based on utopian claims of degeneracy no truth existed that could not be denied and no crime was too horrendous that could not be justified. London saw that the creation of a totalitarian society needed a morality that would be totally responsive to its every need and every political change. Orwell depicted this theme in 1984. London died before he could recognise that the use of the forms of morality he advocated would also achieve the same ends as the Iron Heel.
London and race
London extended the split between the knowing and the ignorant in conspiratorial socialist thought. The world relied on the activism of revolutionary elites as the only alternative to barbarism. Those who held back the progress toward a better world, or threatened socialism, acted against the interests of a universal moral principle. In his creation of the socialist adventure story London splits a common morality from a universal moral purpose. Traditional values have to make way for the creation of a socialist world and London incorporated violence into his vision of what is moral. However, London added social Darwinism to universal moral principles. This is an attitude quite different to Sand’s rejection of violence in her doctrine of universal love. A difference now appears not between what is and what should be but what should be and moral and social degeneracy. London gave progress a moral dimension as a good in itself and the only no alternative is tyranny.
London did not follow the other earlier utopian interpretation of natural selection expounded by Darwin’s rival, Alfred Wallace. As a socialist Wallace proclaimed natural selection as the march of progress and the belief that a perfect man could evolve. 33 Such a position
29 George Orwell, ‘Introduction to Love of Life’, pp. 24-25. 30 London, ‘Iron Heel’, p. 519. 31 Orwell, ‘1984’ pp. 853-867. 32 George Orwell, ‘Arthur Koestler’ in Collected Essays, Vol. III, pp. 239-241 and Radzinsky, Stalin,, pp. 237-239 and 374-381. 33 Adrian Desmond, Huxley, The Devil’s Disciple, London, Michael Joseph, 1994, p. 245. 162 owes much to utopian thought and the idea of progress since it follows a basic deterministic belief in the creation of a better world and a design to nature. Darwin himself distanced himself from such a position and saw no evidence of a rational design in nature. London promoted another vision of the future in a combination of adventure story and literary utopia that advocated the eradication of lesser beings. London used social Darwinism to shatter the idea of the unity of humanity. This also entailed the loss of the idea of universal love. London did not consider Chinese people equal to Western people. 34 The sympathy London exhibited to “the people of the abyss” did not extend to the Chinese, for example. There was a limit to London’s interpretation of fraternity. London’s efforts at changing the utopian novel to a dystopia dismantled the doctrine of universal love. It was no longer universal. Only the heroic ethic had universal significance. As with Wagner the expansion of the role of the hero diminished any reference to ideas of justice and freedom. Power and the struggle against tyranny became the principal focus of conspiratorial socialism.
Few socialist theorists had much influence on London. The most profound thinker whose influence he acknowledged was Nietzsche. 35 London followed the logic of the lineage Bakunin-Wagner-Nietzsche-Sorel. A revolutionary elite stood apart from a debased humanity in order to lead it toward a more equitable society. The use of violence simply reflected the natural order of the world. While he sympathised with the disadvantaged, London presented violence as a natural response to oppression. He also began to believe that the social classes resulted from genetic differences that could be removed by selective breeding. 36 He even supported the First World War as a massive cleansing that would improve the fate of everyone. 37 One of his late fantasy stories, The Unparalleled Invasion (1913), describes how the threat of world domination by China leads to mobilisation of other countries. These countries release a plague that kills most Chinese. 38 In this scenario the Chinese represented a threat to the well-being of the rest of the world and have to be eliminated. The grim future he predicted in Iron Heel becomes much grimmer in this story.
As well as being a socialist London took part in racially-motivated ideology. He stood not only in the camp of those proclaiming universal justice and a fair deal for all but also appeared as a proponent of racial superiority. London recognised the problems of the poor. He generously gave to the American Socialist Party but he could not escape from the ethical consequences of his literary worldview. As Orwell pointed out, the only thing that would have stopped London from emerging later as a fascist were his early death and his genuine sympathy for the down trodden. 39 The tension between a love of humanity together and heroic adventure breaks down with works such as The Unparalleled Invasion. The morality of “reasons of state” and the unlimited use of force in the name of preventing tyranny in this work became customary amongst later political movements.
34 Jack London, ‘The Unparalleled Invasion’ in I. F. Clarke (ed.), The Tale of the Next Great War, 1871- 1914, Liverpool, Liverpool University Press, 1995, pp. 257-270. 35 Alex Kershaw, Jack London, A Life, London, HarperCollins, 1997, pp. 154-155. 36 Kershaw, Jack London, pp. 214-215. 37 Kershaw, Jack London, pp. 272-273. 38 London, ‘The Unparalleled Invasion’, pp. 257-270. 39 Orwell, ‘Introduction to Love of Life’, pp. 28-29. 163 London recognised that no exterior truth, value, reality or choice could resist the drive to conformity and repression behind a political morality. The oligarchs’ professed sympathy for the less well off and idealised morals did not prevent them tyrannising others. This echoes Dostoyevsky’s Grand Inquisitor. However, London can offer no solution to this other than political terrorism. The belief that violence was a natural response to oppression prevented London from supporting a more democratic ideology. His belief in the necessity of the hero led him to support revolutionary elites with an unlimited brief to kill. The hero supplied a heroic ethic of change and sacrifice, whereas, the love of humanity prevented the earlier socialist literature from collapse into mindless violence. However, with the elimination of universal love and selective sympathy for the oppressed the role of the hero becomes judge and executioner. Marx and Engels pointed out that the redemptive hero in The Mysteries of Paris justified illegal acts out of love. In contrast, London extended unbounded violence on the basis that it is a natural reaction and one necessary to overcome degeneracy in the pursuit of progress. This point of view becomes the starting point of the adventure novel in contrast to the romance. Conspiratorial socialism through the romance fostered both Morris’ ethical heroic fantasy and London’s violent adventure novel.
London marks the point at which the concerns of the radical right and left combined in an outpouring of moral indignation over the present world. The concerns of those like Morris for whom the present was ugly and should be swept away became combined with Carlyle’s belief in the hero. Thus the doctrine of socialist redemption overcomes provisions against killing. It also marks the split between the demands of humanitarianism and immediate action. Both the left and the right adopted a morality of reasons of state that appealed to a broad-based moral regeneration by a conspiratorial terrorist group. Sorel recognised a clash in socialism during the period prior to and after the First World War between the educational methods of utopianism and the violent ideological methods of myth. 40 The earlier utopianism could look to universal moral behaviour but the political movement, represented by London, rejected such an approach. This approaches Sorel’s position where Mussolini and Lenin become common enemies of bourgeois society and degeneracy. The final ignominy of socialist literature was its inability to appeal to a common humanity.
40 Georges Sorel, ‘The Decomposition of Marxism’ in Irving Louis Horowitz, Radicalism and the Revolt Against Reason, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1961, pp. 226-227. 164
Conclusion
This study has focused on the conflict between literary realism and romance in the nineteenth century. As Orwell noted, the literary realists were not socialists. Furthermore, the conspiratorial socialists chose the romance and utopian novel as their means of literary expression against the realist novel. It has been argued that conspiratorial socialism’s use of the romance precluded the use of the realist novel. The romance offered conspiratorial socialism the opportunity to advance a programme of social change without concerning itself with traditional moral values. In contrast to the realist novel, the romance facilitated the advocacy of an ideal society by the application of a morality of “reasons of state”. The romance and utopian novels provided complementary approaches to a secular socialist morality. Utopian thought justified social change as acting in the best of people for conspiratorial socialism. Such a position presented conspiratorial socialism with the belief in its ability to access knowledge that could create a perfect world.
In contrast, the romance generated the principle of the self-development of the hero as a guiding ethic. The individual socialist hero acted not from compassion but out of superior knowledge and ability as he developed as a person. According to this reasoning the hero was no longer bound by a traditional morality as he acted from superior values and understanding. Carlyle recognised these people as a moral aristocracy prepared to use the morality of “reasons of state” for the advancement of society. The hero created a better world as he developed as a person in line with the expression of historical necessity. However, neither the romance not the utopian novel supported the self-determination of people.
The relationship between the romance and the utopian novel took on two distinct forms. The most simple and straightforward of these came from George Sand. Sand rejected political violence as immoral and gave priority to a doctrine of universal love. The love between people took on a political complexion as she equated universal love with fraternity. Sand’s universal ethic could not justify the use of immoral methods to gain a moral end. During the French 1848 revolution Sand’s influence declined as the revolution sought to defend itself against its enemies. Dostoyevsky recognised that with the diminution of her influence a brake on political violence disappeared. Sand’s universal morality resembled that of popular French Christian morality but differed in that it relied upon mystical inspiration rather than social practice. Her beliefs found themselves at a disadvantage when confronted by forces prepared to use force. A universal morality could appeal to a democratic set of programmes but in a revolutionary situation it limited the ability to exploit opportunities as they presented themselves.
Sue’s formulation of the romance offered more scope for political pragmatism than Sand’s moral standpoint. Sue’s hero still acts from what appear at first to be altruistic motives and moves amongst the criminal world in an effort to redeem the world and himself. Sue linked his romance more closely to the utopian novel than Sand’s work with the description of the ideal society that gave criminals a worthwhile life. Sue’s hero, Rodolphe, creates a model farm that gives higher wages and gains greater production because of his enlightened ideas. From the utopian Fourier, Sue provides a vision of people fulfilling their own 165 interests and thereby the betterment of society. The ultimate vision of political action is the idea of a perfect world and idealised people. This is the important connection between the romance and the utopian novel. Utopian thought provided the moral end to which all political action should be directed. The romance provided the personal ethic by which the revolutionary can intervene in society. The most extreme proponents of the heroic romance, Wagner and Morris, still retained the idea that a perfect world is achievable. Utopian thought provided the justification and will for socialist action. The romance provided the means to achieve socialism.
Sue differentiated himself from Sand in the suggestion that the hero can act in ways that are immoral in order to achieve this perfect world. Sue is the starting point for the growth of the idea of the redeemed hero. This person sins in order to bring about a better world in the future. The hero sacrifices himself to promote the enrichment of other people’s lives. By this selfless act he transcends popular morality and acts according to a higher set of ethics. The romance lends itself to the promotion of the idea that the selfless hero acts as an agent of social change at the cost of transgressing the moral beliefs of all those around them. The redeemed hero presents himself as the agent of a moral future but in so doing he alienates himself from everyone around them. The realist condemnation of the “superfluous person” is an attack on this self-alienation based on the hero’s supposedly superior ethical position. It also highlights the realist criticism of utopian thought’s connection to the ideology of a social class. Realism presented the doctrine of the redeemed hero as substituting social interests for a universal ethic. Nor could it justify anyone using immoral means to build a better future.
Marx and Engels recognised that Sue had set up a dual morality reflecting the moral divisions present in utopian thought. One morality existed for those ignorant of how the world should be and yet another existed for those with the knowledge of how society should be constructed. Sue’s dual moralities threaten to develop into elitism and the pursuit of power. The conspiratorial socialist rejoinder to such criticism stressed the altruistic foundation of the redeemed hero. The romance hero justifies revolutionary action on the grounds of a better future for all. Sue’s redeemed hero cannot exist as a revolutionary without the appeal to a utopian future. The doctrine of the redeemed hero and utopian thought combine to reject analysis of the present in favour of appealing to the future. Both the romance and the utopian work unite in the rejection of any effort to provide immediate relief for matters of everyday concern.
The relationship between utopian thought and the romance changed with the advance of industrialisation. Wagner and Morris both took Sue’s romance and forged it into a weapon against the present. Both appropriated the medieval romance to convey a socialist message. In two industrially well-developed countries of Germany and England, a section of the socialist movement returned socialist literature to the ancient and aristocratic romance and fashioned it as the means to reveal universal political truths. Conspiratorial socialism undertook this act when threatened by the influence of large democratic political parties. The expansion of production and the birth of mass democratic movements challenged the utopian aspirations of the romance hero. The growth in productive capacity could prevent poverty and want in the present. People did not have to rely on promises 166 that would come into fruition in the distant future. Material improvements could be achieved democratically by people themselves and did not rely on a hero. The growth of democratic movements relied on people’s self-determination and a universal morality, which threatened the deepest beliefs of conspiratorial socialism.
Conspiratorial socialism and the romance do not appeal to democratic change. The romance became associated with the idea of enforcing a morality over and beyond the resolution of social needs. It continues the divisions in morality inherent in utopian thought. The romance does not serve to destroy inequality but fosters a morality based on “reasons of state” and in opposition to traditional forms of morality. It is basically an authoritarian morality given the negative task of destroying what exists in the name of personal salvation. It does not necessarily have a goal of social advancement. Carlyle advocated the preservation of older social relationships such as slavery and serfdom. Like the utopian novel, the socialist romance is an appeal to how the world should function but it is an appeal to past social formations such as feudalism.
The doctrine of the redeemed hero required the hero not to benefit materially from the action of transgressing traditional morality. The doctrine contains an appeal to asceticism, which found expression in the works of Morris. For him not only did the revolutionary hero reject the benefits of greater production but he enforced people to live frugal but moral lives. Conspiratorial socialism contained an asceticism that prized the lack of material possessions and presented greater wealth as a vice. The improvement in living standards of the majority of the population became a symbol of moral decadence not a basic socialist demand. This led to the position where the greater the reliance of conspiratorial socialism on the romance the less popular appeal it generated. Conspiratorial socialism fuelled the antagonism between it and popular political movements.
The political ideal of a utopia became further divorced from reality when Morris and Wagner reinvigorated the romance through the addition of the political myth. For Sorel, the myth had no basis in objective reality but nevertheless provided the motivation for revolutionary action. He accepted that the myth equated with ideology and so political action did not refer to any purpose outside of the exploitation of an opportunity. This disconnected the romance hero from demonstrable truth, moral actions and the sanctity of human life. Truth for the romance hero became an ideal beyond historical, economic or sociological understanding. The myth became a mystical moral absolute. The passage from utopian emphasis on rationality to socialist romance motivation of expediency romance represented a change in socialist redemption from self-sacrifice to a mystical revelation of a moral purpose. The romance without the influence of Sand’s universal love turned to political opportunism without any reference to moral principles.
Wagner, Morris and Carlyle enabled the hero to gain this mystical knowledge through aesthetics. They understood the romance as revealing not only a better world in the past but also it carried a direct connection to ancient knowledge. The romance became the means to illustrate aesthetic and moral ideals without reference to an external reality. As this process developed the romance became a literary archetype to which society should resemble. Earlier utopian thought described how the world should be as against how it is. The later 167 socialist romance provided a direct connection to the world of ideals beyond the experience of reality. The truthful description of reality contained in realist literature was completely outside such projects.
The relationship between the utopian novel and romance took on a different approach in Russian conspiratorial socialism. The Russians believed that the self-development of the individual can ensure knowledge of how the world should be altered and so avoided an aesthetic vision of society. They emphasised the idea of individual self-fulfilment. Chernyshevsky, Mikhailovsky and Herzen accept that behind the goal of self-fulfilment lies the idea that working co-operatively is more pleasurable and profitable than the acquisition of personal material possessions. This would be obvious in a perfect society. The Russians did not reject material wealth but subordinated it to an idea of personal growth.
However, this presented an insoluble problem for Herzen. He admits that he cannot show that his epic of revolutionary struggle, My Past and Reminiscences, is not self-adulation, other than through reference to his motivation to do the best for other people. He attempts to justify his efforts to describe his personal role as a revolutionary hero by his declaration that the Russian state is beyond redemption. He believes there is no alternative to his position as the Russian state was decadent. The problem is that there is no relationship between Herzen’s motivation and a better outcome for other people. Herzen believed he acted in the best interest of all by revealing that the present as irredeemably degenerate. He has no basis for this opinion outside of a subjective understanding of society. In the end, he only operates for his own redemption and from the belief that he has a superior understanding. Further, Russian conspiratorial socialism specifically excluded any connection to the non-heroic populace. The heroic ethic in Russian conspiratorial socialism presents the hero as part of a moral elite.
Herzen’s revolutionary self-fulfilment collapsed morality into a subjective morality. Bakunin took the logic of a degenerate state to the position where the revolutionary surrendered his personal will to the effort to destroy existing society. He merged this idea with the claim that destruction is a form of creativity. By this reasoning Bakunin fused the Russian and German positions on the redeemed hero. The hero’s aesthetic understanding not only provides direct access to the world of ideals but allows him to destroy as a creative act. As Bunin recognised, the appeal to the present as being degenerate fostered the idea that the worse things are in the present the better they will be in the future. The idea of decadence holds the hope that present discomfort will be remedied by a promise in the future and follows from the split between the knowing and the ignorant. Russian utopian thought coupled the actions of the romance hero with the desire to make present society untenable. The use of the romance became the justification to enforce compliance on those not revolutionary heroes. The socialist romance becomes the expression of a completely negative set of principles.
However, this did not mean that Conspiratorial socialists rejected an appeal to a universal ethic. In times of political failure the conspiratorial socialist found solace in the utopian argument that the future world could not avoid resembling utopian visions. No alternative existed for conspiratorial socialists as they saw themselves as acting for the good of 168 humanity. To deny this undermined the role of the romance hero in changing society. Conspiratorial socialists equated the good of humanity with the utopian programme they intended to install. They did not reject Sand’s universal love but modified it by allocating such a morality to the future.
Every political reverse and success reinforced either of the two prongs of the conspiratorial socialist ideology. Success revealed that the ideology must be correct and failure demonstrated the inability of the majority of the population to understand their own best interests. Neither argument questioned socialism’s ultimate benefit for humanity. Nor could the idea that socialist morality did not operate for the benefit of humanity be addressed. Socialist literature functioned to create an ideology that required no reference to an objective truth or reality. It provided an answer by relying on absolute truths about morality and individual motivation. The romance became the means to state moral ideals without reference to how they would be applied. The heroic ethic in the romance also challenged traditional values so as to enable the institution of conspiratorial socialist values.
The alliance between the romance and the utopian novel fell apart before the First World War. After the successes of democratic socialist parties each literary form developed without regard to the other. Through the efforts of Morris and London the romance evolved into heroic fantasy and the adventure novel. Morris may have attempted to incorporate a universal morality into his work but this could not overcome the role of the heroic ethic. London recognised opportunities provided by the romance’s inherent violence in his adventure novels and dystopia. London’s dystopia Iron Heel preserves the claim that a better future will occur but describes how terrorism has to be used to achieve this future. Bellamy’s utopian novel describes a state that has moral powers in distribution of wealth. However, Bellamy lacks any means to achieve his utopia outside of the dream. The adventure novel lacks the appeal to a better future contained in the utopian novel but it retains the temptation to use violence from the romance.
Although it would seem a natural ally in the struggle against injustice, literary realism challenged conspiratorial socialist assumptions. Dostoyevsky denounced conspiratorial socialism claims to transcend universal values. Conspiratorial socialism provided no set of universal values but only a multiplicity of political responses to a situation. Dostoyevsky defended a universal ethic. Everyone being bound by the same ethic prevented the growth of an elite that claimed moral superiority. It also stressed the duty owed to family as against the abstract duty toward humanity. Those like Morris and Carlyle acted from a sense of outrage but could not offer any immediate advantage to those in most need. It was left to the literary realists to describe the lives of those in need. In contrast, the poor in Sue’s romance function as a backdrop to the actions of the hero. Novels such as What Is To Be Done? justified the birth of “New People” not the struggle of people facing poverty as in Crime and Punishment.
Conspiratorial socialism inverted traditional values to attain a political aim. The romance favoured means outside of accepted morality to purify society. Conspiratorial socialists claimed to be able to kill to create a better world. In contrast, literary realism could not accept this as a legitimate moral position. Literary realism favoured forgiveness in order to prevent 169 worse problems. Dostoyevsky examined the ethical means required to prevent an escalation of violence. The realist novel and a universal morality preferred the acceptance of other people’s failings and the effort to forgive them before attempting to create a better world. Literary realism cannot create new moral values but retains traditional beliefs. These beliefs may have a democratic appeal but do not give the ability to adopt the full armoury of political weapons. Realism limits political activism to immediate goals. It lacks the vision of conspiratorial socialism by its refusal to compromise traditional values. Both conspiratorial socialism and realism would recognise that the poor have a justification in feeling aggrieved. However, realism questions whether this justifies harming another person.
The use of the romance and the utopian novel were not benign exercises of the imagination. They did not allow the imagination to roam amongst ideas and construct alternative futures. They limited the possible outcomes to certain preordained ideals. They also shaped society to the detriment of most people. Commentators such as Jameson ignore the connection of utopian thought to ideology. Mimesis (realism) and poeisis (romance) do not exist as ideals outside of political circumstance. They exist in modern society as justifications for taking definitive political positions. Poeisis, after 1848, became a means to recommend the rejection of traditional values in favour of radical political change. Its support rested on a supposed superior moral vision by a specific social group. The romance and the utopian novel argue for a natural superiority for non-representational art based on idealist moral arguments. They reproduce the arguments that contemporary society is not only degenerate but fatally flawed and should be destroyed on the basis of moral ideals.
The clash between realism and conspiratorial socialism demonstrates the inadequacies of the romance as both a literary form and a model for human behaviour. The enterprise of modelling society according to the romance held tragic consequences. There is no superiority of imaginative literature. The idea that utopian conjectures or heroic behaviour can be a model for society in the present or the past is flawed. The struggle against injustice requires an analysis of an exterior reality not the appeal to abstract ideals. Wagner presented the romance as a study in tragedy. The role of the romance in the propagation of conspiratorial socialism would justify such a position. However, Wagner’s sacrifice of the hero is not the core episode in this tragedy but rather the consequences that flowed from conspiratorial socialist’s efforts to present the romance as a moral exemplar. 170 Bibliography
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