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THE ETHICS OF ESCAPE:
Part I
By Charles A. Coulombe
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MY LORDS, LADIES, AND GENTLEMEN:
"Get your head out of that book!" "Come
back to reality!" "You can't solve the world's
problems by ignoring them!" "Just what good
is fantasy, anyway?" If you are a lover of fantasy
literature, or of its kindred genres of science fiction
and/or horror, this is a criticism which you may well
have heard over the course of your life. It is an easy
one to make. Those of us who from time to time seek sanctuary
from the press of every-day life in the confines of our
own minds---often in the company of talented writers---are
often accused of being escapists, of being unrealistic.
For those of us whose ordinary lives are perhaps a tad
humdrum, it is declared that we attempt to escape boredom
via heroic tales; those whose lives are in fact chaotic
or overly agitated receive similar criticism for seeking
an interior realm of tranquillity. In either case, those
who make such criticisms are of the opinion that we ought
to take whatever our lot in life might be and live with
it on its own terms. If we do not, they charge, then we
are somehow false to our society, to our fellow man, and
to ourselves.
The obvious reply to this charge is that of the great
Tolkien, for whom this august society is named: "it
is easy to debunk escapism; but notice that the ones who
do so are usually the gaolers!" Certainly, no one
is interested in literature of the three genres who is
completely pleased with the current status quo---whether
personal or public. "Escapist" fans, it must
be admitted, tend to look to the past, the future, or
far away places for something they find lacking in the
here and now. They are not content. As with Tolkien, those
who agree with them find themselves, in a very real sense,
"imprisoned"---in a world, in situations, over
which they have no control. Is it a crime, in such a predicament,
to seek to escape?
Moreover, it must be denied that the gaolers are correct
in presuming either that that which they manage is the
best of all possible situations, or that they who seek
to escape it do so with no further thought than mental
self-gratification.
I am fortunate enough to possess a complete set of the
eleventh edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannuica, issued
in 1910-1911, copyrighted by "the Chancellor, Masters,
and Scholars of the University of Cambridge," and
"Dedicated by permission to His Majesty George the
Fifth, King of Great Britain and Ireland and of the British
Dominions Beyond the Seas, Emperor of India, and to William
Howard Taft, President of the United States of America."
This set has been a great boon to me in my work as a writer,
to no small degree because its articles on literary, historical,
folk-loric, and religious topics (the areas in which I
write) tend to be better researched and more detailed
than those of the present edition (which I also use for
everything since 1911!). But it has a higher value than
that.
More even than its continuing value as a reference work,
this encyclopaedia is a window on a vanished world more
evocative than a Merchant and Ivory film. In article after
article, the hopes and dreams of the dominant circles
in the Anglo-Saxon world before the slaughters of the
two World Wars are revealed. In the preface, we are informed
that the present edition has been much influenced by the
sociology of Herbert Spencer. This Englishman was the
foremost promoter of the Manchester School and Social
Darwinism in America, of whose philosophy Andrew Carnegie
wrote in his autobiography, "Light came as in a flood
and all was clear." Professor Clinton Rossiter put
it in his Conservatism in America: The Thankless Persuasion,
"The greatest of American laissez-faire conservatives
was an English Liberal." Something to consider when
comparing American and English (or European) political
labels. In a nutshell, Spencer was the spokesman for what
we call in the States the "Gilded Age."
The dictates of Social Darwinism are exemplified throughout
the 1911 Britannica, but never so clearly, perhaps, as
in the article on "Civilisation." Written by
one Henry Smith Williams, formerly lecturer in the Hartford
School of Sociology, it offers some opinions worth considering
as those of the dominant mindset of the era. Dr. Williams
sketches out the history of Civilisation as an inevitable
story of progress, with mankind moving up through nine
carefully defined different steps. The last of these,
"The Upper Period of Civilisation" is nearing,
he suggests, its termination. Along these lines he offers
some rather intriguing observations:
| Today the thesis that all men are one brotherhood
needs no defence. The most primitive aborigines
are regarded merely as brethren who, through some
defect or neglect of opportunity, have lagged behind
in the race. Similarly the defective and criminal
classes that make up so significant a part of even
our highest present-day civilisations, are no longer
regarded with anger or contempt, as beings who are
suffering just punishment for wilful transgressions,
but are considered as pitiful victims of hereditary
and environmental influences they could neither
choose nor control. |
Were Dr. Williams writing today, of course, he would use
less pompous diction and be a bit more Politically Correct.
But he would have no need to substantially alter his convictions
for a contemporary audience. Further on, however, he launches
into a description of a kindred development which has
great implications for fantasists:
| The essence of the new view is this: to recognise
the universality and the invariability of natural
law; stated otherwise, to understand that the word
"supernatural" involves a contradiction
of terms and has in fact no meaning. Whoever has
grasped the full impact of this truth is privileged
to sweep mental horizons wider by far than ever
opened to the view of any thinker of an earlier
epoch. He is privileged to forecast, as the sure
heritage of the future, a civilisation freed from
the last ghost of superstition---an Age of Reason
in which mankind shall at last find refuge from
the hosts of occult and invisible powers, the fearsome
galaxies of deities and demons, which have haunted
him thus far at every stage of his long journey
through savagery, barbarism and civilisation. |
Indeed! And with the banishment of the supernatural (the
very stock-in-trade of our three genres, whether or not
one believes in everything that goes under that term)
goes every scrap of refuge dwellers in the new "Age
of Reason" Dr. Williams praises might have from its
unrelenting optimism, its insistence on rational explanations.
From this attitude comes the Brittanica's verdicts on
various fantasy writers of the period. Time and again
we read that they were "morbid" or "sickly;"
when sheer force of talent, as in Hoffman, for example,
compels the author of the article to admit the writer's
real genius, then inevitably his greatness lies not in
his subject matter, but in his style of execution: with
Hoffman, this shows a praiseworthy realism, whereas the
gruesome subject matter of his work represents a "descent
from the high ideals of the Romantics"---forgetting
that the macabre and the bizarre interests of so many
of the Romantics were precisely an "escape"
from the Rationalism of the 18th century---which Rationalism's
basic inhumanity was revealed as much in the Revolutions
it inspired as in the Voltairean "benevolent despots"
whom they overthrew.
But let us return to Dr. Williams. Putting on his prophet
hat, the good doctor goes on to explain away the advanced
weaponry which the growth of the technology he extols
has made possible:
| Formidable as these weapons now seem, however,
the developments of the not very distant future
will probably make them quite obsolete; and sooner
or later, as science develops yet more deadly implements
of destruction, the time must come when communal
intelligence will rebel at the suicidal folly of
the international attitude that characterised, for
example, the opening decade of the 20th century. |
Must it come indeed? In any case, Dr. Williams assures
us that patriotism must inevitably give way to humanitarianism,
which will banish all the evils and barbarisms of the
past. And just what will be the result of that humanitarianism?
Mark well:
| Equally obvious must it appear to the cosmopolite
of some generation of the future that quality rather
than mere numbers must determine the efficiency
of any given community. Race suicide will then cease
to be a bugbear; and it will no longer be considered
rational to keep up the census at the cost of propagating
low orders of intelligence, to feed the ranks of
paupers, defectives, and criminals. On the contrary
it will be thought fitting that man should become
the conscious arbiter of his own racial destiny
to the extent of applying whatever laws of heredity
he knows or may acquire in the interest of his own
species, as he has long applied them in the case
of domesticated animals. The survival and procreation
of the unfit will then cease to be a menace to the
progress of civilisation. |
Ah, the joys of smugness! It did not occur to the good
doctor that the very mindset he espoused was in itself
a threat to the "progress of civilisation."
He did not predict the horror of the trenches which the
governments of Europe, inspired by the principles he espoused,
flung a generation of youth into, just four years after
he pontificated. Our first great dystopia, Brave New World,
extrapolated these same principles, and came up with both
fantasy and horror on its hook. Huxley "escaped,"
but did so with a purpose. "Escapist" literature
not being worth one's time, however, his warning was ignored.
Eugenics were practised with a vengeance in the Third
Reich,and in China to-day. Yet modern despotism cannot
be called to account by the world-view incarnated in Dr.
Williams, because, having denied the irrational and, as
it were, unseen nature of man, it has reduced him to an
economic unit, an animal whose masters may use him as
they are able and as they choose.
Nor has this view subsided amongst those who dominate
in government, learning, or media. Neither World War has
taught them anything; nor did the fall of Communism. Communism
and Capitalism were at one in looking at man in strictly
rational and economic terms---thus it is not surprising
that the end of one dictatorship has paved the way for
nascent mini-despotisms, as well as ethnic cleansing,
economic chaos, and so on. Theodore Roszak described the
society this world-view has created rather well back in
1969 in his perceptive The Making of a Counter Culture:
| Understood...as the mature product of technological
progress and the scientific ethos, the technocracy
easily eludes all traditional political categories.
Indeed, it is a characteristic of the technocracy
to render itself ideologically invisible. Its assumptions
about reality and its values become as unobtrusively
persuasive as the air we breathe. While daily political
argument continues within and between the capitalist
and collectivist societies of the world, the technocracy
increases and consolidates its power in both as
a trans-political phenomenon following the dictates
of industrial efficiency, rationality, and necessity
(p. 8). |
Just as the Romantics rebelled and "escaped"
from the Enlightenment and the ensuing Revolutions; as
the "Decadents" and "Symbolists" did
the same from the Gilded Age produced by the Industrial
Revolutions, so too did the Counter-Culture of the 1960s
which Roszak describes attempt escape from the Technocracy.
It is no great wonder that Tolkien and fantasy in general
became wildly popular at that point. Escape betokens freedom,
liberation; and that which comes from fantasy literature
is a poor relation (but none the less a legitimate relation)
to that derived from mystical exaltation. As Valentin
Tomberg reminds us:
| For vagabonds, gypsies, and nomads [freedom] is
the possibility of roaming and moving about without
walls and fences; for a resident farmer it is self-government
or rule of his own house, household and fields;
for the enlightened humanist it is knowing what
he does and doing what he knows---autonomy of consciousness
and self-responsibility; for the seeker after God
it is the fulfilment of his free vows of poverty,
chastity and obedience (Covenant of the Heart, p.
13) |
But freedom may be abused, as prisoners in a gaol may
sometimes riot and kill their fellow-inmates. One cannot
help but wonder if the dark and bloody gods of Nationalism
which have animated the Balkans once again were called
forth by the fact that, forced to live in a dreary present,
without any "escape," the young folk who are
the instruments of ethnic cleansing there might have been
less willing tools had they been permitted wider access
to the nobler side of their heritage in peacetime. Man
must dream; if not dreams of light, they will be dreams
of darkness.
The point to be made is that the "escape into fantasy"
so often condemned by so-called "right-thinking people,"
is not without a real utility in solving problems in the
here-and-now, especially the political here and now. Being
devoted to the literature of escape does not preclude
a deep and abiding interest in reality; quite the contrary.
It allows one to meditate, as Huxley did with the ideals
of Dr. Williams, on hypothetical questions in a constructive
way. Not that fantasists are unanimous in their political
or religious views---far from it. Yet they do have a commonality
of perspective which transcends mere party labels---even
as do the Technocrats. Tolkien was a Catholic, Royalist,
Tory (as indeed, am I myself); but the chapter of The
Return of the King called "The Scouring of the Shire"
would be very pleasing indeed to any self-respecting Green
or Anarchist. William Morris was considered a radical
in his time, George Wyndham a reactionary; yet their taste
in literature mirrored the fact that their politics contained
a great deal of mutuality. Rudyard Kipling and Hilaire
Belloc were in quite opposite camps when it came to the
Empire---but as one when it came to England herself, as
a comparison of the one's Puck of Pook's Hill with the
other's Four Men will show clearly. Not for nothing did
our old friend Herbert Spencer call the nascent Labour
Party "the New Toryism," and would no doubt
have made the same accusation against not just R. H. Tawney,
but Tolkien and Henry Massingham as well. I have myself
found much more in common in terms of basic values with
other lovers of fantasy whose party labels are supposedly
opposed to mine than either of us do with those who share
those labels---but are committed believers in the truth
of the gaol in which we live.
That gaol, I submit, is made up of one part secularised
Calvinism, one part Enlightenment Rationalism, and one
part Technology (considered in its function not as means
but as end). Certainly its first easily agreed upon manifestation
in England was Puritanism, continuing as the Whig opposition
to the Stuarts. Regardless of one's opinions regarding
the specifics of the Stuart programme, one has a hard
time denying the truth of the remarks of King Oberon in
Poul Anderson's fantasy novel, A Midsummer Tempest, in
which the Fairy monarch explains to Prince Rupert why
he and his subjects have chosen to ally with King Charles
I in his struggle with Cromwell:
"The Christian faith, whatever else it changed,
made small discord within that harmony," Oberon
went on. "As long as no one worshipped us as
gods---a star-cold honour we have never sought---the
priests did not deny our right to be, and let the
people dwell at peace with us and with the land.
Meanwhile, their bells rang sweet." "They
did but change the names---" Puck muttered,
"the names---the names." Both Rupert and
Oberon frowned at him, and the king continued hastily:
"When Henry Eighth cast off the rule of Rome,
to us 'twas naught but mortal politics. The Church
of England did not persecute us, nor care to end
the Old Ways in the folk. But then---" "The
Puritans arose," said Rupert, for Oberon faltered
at the uttering. "They did." The king
lifted a fist. No matter his height and handsomeness,
it looked strangely frail, almost translucent to
moonbeams and encroaching shadows. "That wintry
creed where only hell knows warmth; where rites
which interceded once for man with Mystery, and
comforted, are quelled; where he is set against
the living world, for he is now forbidden to revere
it in custom, feast, or staying of his hand; where
open merriment's condemned as vice and harmless
foolery as foolishness; where love of man and woman
is obscene---that's Faerie's and Old England's foe
and woe!" ...
Meanwhile, Rupert said, to those twain who were
like swirls and currents in the moonlight that poured
around him: "Your Majesties are not of human
blood. What have theologies to do with you?"
Oberon drew his cloak tight, as if a wind had arisen---in
the white wet stillness of the night---from which
its gauze could shield. He spoke nearly too low
to be heard: "A creed which bears no love for
Mother Earth, but rather sees her as an enemy which
it is righteous to make booty of, to rape, to wound,
to gouge, to gut, to flay, then bury under pavement,
slag, and trash, and call machines to howl around
the grave...that creed will bring that doom."
... Elven swift, his resolve returned. He straightened
and declared aloud: "The Royal cause defends
the Old Ways, knowing it or not. Whatever be the
faults---the arrogance of King and bishops, squalid
greeds of nobles, lump-stodginess of yeomanry and
burghers, and gross or petty tyrannies these breed---still,
such are found in every human clime; and you'd at
least preserve what keeps your kind from turning
to a pox upon the globe, and would not scour the
Faerie realm from off it." |
In Anderson's England, the Puritans already possess tools---like
railroads---which their ideological descendants would
invent and exploit. But rather than crushing the Cavaliers
at Naseby, the Roundheads are themselves defeated at Glastonbury
Tor, through the intervention of Faerie.
Part II
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2004
© Charles Coulombe
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