(Download) "Olaf Stapledon: Utopia and Worship * (Critical Essay)" by Utopian Studies # Book PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Olaf Stapledon: Utopia and Worship * (Critical Essay)
- Author : Utopian Studies
- Release Date : January 22, 2005
- Genre: Religion & Spirituality,Books,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 195 KB
Description
THERE IS A DEEP VEIN OF MELANCHOLY in the utopian. It resonates in Ernst Bloch's phrase "not-yet"--the ever-receding horizon. It's there in that classic utopian paradigm of the Exodus narrative--Moses cheated of seeing the promised land, his people finding the land already occupied, and war ensuing. This is Olaf Stapledon territory. (1) There can seldom have been a more pessimistic utopian. Time is his great theme--not the benign time of Enlightenment optimism, a feral time rather, harsh, and uncompromising. Time passing is the central structuring device of his novels, be it biographical time or cosmic time. But there is also a craving to find the eternal in this relentless change--the "now," the fulfilled moment--not as a substitute for utopian yearning, but as a way of experiencing endlessly deferred hope. In his fictional cosmic narratives, notably Last and First Men (1930) and Star Maker (1937), Stapledon depicts the slaughter-bench of history, with painfully acquired achievements swept away time after time, and in his frequent speculations about future history he contemplates the death of the universe itself and the real possibility of a consequent total and irretrievable loss of all memory--nothing left of those aeons of time. This contemplation evokes two responses from Stapledon. There is a resolutely utopian approach--albeit he usually uses other terms to designate this orientation. His literary works are full of depictions of better worlds, and his theoretical and political works are suffused with a whole range of plans for improving society. But there is a second response, which he frequently refers to as "worship"--a form of delighted contemplation of the universe in all its aspects, good and bad. This is the universe as numinous and awesome, with processes, and possibly purposes, far beyond the theoretical and moral understanding of mere humanity. In articulating this vision, as astral poet, and philosopher of the immensities of time and space, he produces his most effective artistic results. But it is also the element which gives him the most headaches to justify, for he sees a tension between this amoral contemplation and his utopianism. This juxtaposition is at the heart of his artistic and theoretical concerns, and the strains and stresses of attempting to effect a reconciliation between the two elements are evident in virtually everything he ever wrote.
 "Olaf Stapledon: Utopia and Worship * (Critical Essay)" by Utopian Studies # Book PDF Kindle ePub Free){kind=link}