The dream of a more beautiful life

“The aspiration to a more beautiful life has at all times had before it three paths to the distant goal. The first leads out of the world… The second was the path that leads to the improvement and perfection of the world itself… The third path leads into the world of dreams… ” J. Huizinga, The Autumn of the Middle Ages

A preface by Paola Urbani

The myth of the golden age

Section edited by Giuseppina Florio

Maximus of Tyre, a Greek writer of the 2nd century AD, compared in a dissertation (XXXVI) the ideal life of the Cynics to that of the Golden Age: these, in fact, he says, strove to live as close as possible to what they believed to be the state of nature, living frugally, considering the arts and sciences useless, eating raw foods. Civilized life is a prison in which men pay for frivolous pleasures with terrible evils. ‘Who is mad enough,’ he asks, ‘to prefer frivolous and ephemeral pleasures, insecure goods, uncertain hopes, equivocal successes to a kind of life which is certainly a state of happiness?’. The origin of humanity is shrouded in legend. It is said that in the time when Cronus still reigned in the sky, men lived free from worries and sheltered from toil, ‘all goods belonged to them spontaneously, the earth naturally produced abundant harvests nourished only by a very mild climate, did not know the wounds inflicted by the rake, the oxen were free from the torment of the yoke: in this fabulous world men enjoyed harmony with the universe. The myth of the golden age has become over the centuries a commonplace of morality that represents the beginnings of humanity as the reign of Justice: among men lived the Virgin, of the lineage of Astraeus who sang to the people in agreement the laws regulating society and who distanced herself from them only when with the age of silver and then of bronze men became warlike and carnivorous; from then on she appears only at night in the sky near Bootes of great splendor (Arato, Fen., 96-129). In Rome, where Chronos was identified with Saturn, the golden age was set at the time when this god reigned over Lazio: the gods lived in intimacy with mortals and in a state of peace and people ate exclusively legumes and fruit. The belief in a golden age and the hope of a return to that original paradise was so alive among the ancient Greeks and Romans that one might think that the Saturnalia were instituted to represent the peace, abundance and equality enjoyed under the reign of Saturn and to renew the memory of those happy times. Writers and poets have spoken of it since ancient times, presenting us with some recurring characteristics. The myth of the four ages distinguished by the names of the metals is also found in ancient astrologers who, persuaded of the influence of the celestial bodies on things on earth, were convinced that the various aspects that the constellations took continually modified life on earth; the repetition of moments causes alterations in the customs of men, so that one passes from a state of happiness to a state of torment due to the arrival of needs and passions. Not being able to delve into this subject which would take us, in retracing the history of philosophical thought, off topic, it is enough to say that from Hesiod to Virgil, to Ovid, there is talk not of a true continuous decline, but of a return to the golden age; proceeding from period to period, one passes from the spring of nature, the golden age, to summer, to autumn and winter, and similarly to the age of silver, copper and iron to give place once again to the golden age and so on to infinity. On this ‘fable’ Plato founded his idea of the world which, created perfect, with time alters and wears out and would destroy itself if its own creator did not restore it from time to time. Over the centuries, reference has always been made, even indirectly, to that fabulous period of prehistory in which man led an innocent and happy life, in communion with nature. In the second half of the 18th century, Rousseau in his Discours sur les sciences et les arts also says that civilization is nothing but decadence, ‘nature has made man happy and good, but society ‘makes him unhappy’. Since it is impossible to go back along the path of civilization, we must get closer to nature, restore in civilized man those goods that were the prerogative of primitive man, goodness, freedom, happiness. In a dissertation prepared for a competition of the Academy of Dijon on the question ‘whether the progress of science and the arts has contributed to corrupting or amending customs’, Rousseau said that he could not accuse science, but rather defend virtue. It cannot be denied that this is an eternal and ever-present truth: it is man’s duty not to destroy the state of happiness, not to alter that balance between nature and the human race, necessary for its survival, to restore it when excesses could destroy not only nature, but man himself.

The utopias of reason

section edited by Paola Urbani

Imagining a rational social organization, which is such as to guarantee the maximum happiness for all its members: this is the dream of those we might call the utopians of reason. They invent cities on the basis of their own philosophical or moral ideals, perfect worlds in which nothing is left to chance, and which are at least in principle realizable. A marriage between imagination and rationality from which we might expect a lot. And instead, as soon as we read The Republic, or The City of the Sun, or the Worlds of Doni, we realize that only reason has dictated the law while imagination has been penalized in this encounter: its airy and light plot has been harnessed by rigid uniform chains. And these perfect cities in fact all resemble each other, connected to each other by some general ideas, and by an indisputable presupposition: the primacy of the general over the particular, of society over the individual. Individuals are only parts of an organism, instruments for its common purpose. And where they try to rebel and claim their autonomy, they must be sacrificed, like an infected limb that could contaminate the entire body. Because in these societies ethics has primacy over individual morality, and the sacrifice of the private for the benefit of the public is a must. Order as social harmony, as a principle of authority, as a warp and woven fabric of rules, is the key word to ensure their survival. For this reason it is often difficult to enter and exit their borders: foreigners could disturb the harmony by introducing new and dangerous customs, the inhabitants could come into contact with diversity. It is important instead that everything in these societies resembles each other, that the cities within the state and the houses within the cities are similar, the clothes of the inhabitants are similar, the food served in the common rooms is similar, the number of children and the type of education they must receive is similar. Of course, even these societies differ in some details: in deciding whether or not to put women in common, whether or not to allow adultery, whether to force marriage and at what age, whether to allow divorce, which subjects to give priority to in teaching. In Bacon’s New Atlantis, science is sovereign, it is constantly experimented and studied, while in Mercier’s Paris we will no longer find many books because they have been burned, but if we want to work in Olbia we will be forced to know political economy by heart. And if we live in the Phalanstery, we forget the passion for foreign languages: a completely useless and very tiring study that should be abolished according to Fourier. But in all of them, anyone who does not agree, who wants to speak in favor of private property, or move from one city to another without permission, perhaps even dedicate himself to forbidden studies, will receive a terrible punishment. He may be locked up in inaccessible places far from human pity, fed only by slaves in Plato’s society, enslaved and chained in Utopia, locked up for life in a cave built inside the cemetery in the city of Morelly. Until in the last text of this brief review, The Year 3000, the perfect realization of utopia finally comes true: the psychoscope has been invented, which allows one to read thoughts in order to banish lies from the world. Who will now be able to escape the control of the perfect society? It is the dreams of reason, this time, that have generated monsters, that have transformed imagination into a prison. What then is left for us, orphans of utopia? After having visited the inhospitable districts of the horseshoe-shaped island, descended the seven circles of the City of the Sun, escaped from Olbia and its temples praising virtue, and from Andropolis where we are not even free in our thoughts, perhaps we are left with only two choices. We can visit the island of Agathotopia, by James Edward Meade, not a perfect state, he tells us, but a ‘Good Place to Live’: the pragmatic model of a liberal socialism in which competition and collaboration are allies. Or we can believe that Robert Nozick’s minimal state, a society built around the individual and his free choices in life, is the only ‘morally justified’ one, the best of all possible worlds, beyond the confines of utopia.

The utopias of fantasy

section edited by Paola Urbani

In this section are collected heterogeneous texts, they speak of non-existent and futureless places, they are unrealizable utopias conceived under the sign of imagination and freedom. ‘Be wary of those who want to put things in order – wrote Diderot – To put things in order is always to want to make yourself master of others by oppressing them’. Making his words their own, these fables, dreams, pamphlets, reflections on real society or on an imaginary society, do not take themselves seriously, they do not pretend to replace real society with a perfect society, but only, at most, to improve it, they are disguises, satires, games. We find streets paved with diamonds in Voltaire’s Eldorado, a tree of gold and gems that comes to life in Cyrano’s regions of the sun, we visit an abbey where the only rule is the lack of any rule, an island where slaves rule, another where women rule, and yet another where horses are in power, we meet, as on the island of Cyclophilus, inhabitants with bodies that have taken on the bizarre form of their vocations. These utopians often use their imagination to have the possibility of freely saying what they think, to manifest an anti-dogmatic thought, like Voltaire who bans priests from Eldorado, or Cyrano who contests the arrogance of man who alone among all creatures believes himself created in the image of God, or anti-Catholic like Hall who in his Moronia Felice overshadows the pompous Catholic Church dispenser of illusions, or like Fontenelle who describes a fanciful war in Borneo, to have the pretext to denounce its hypocrisy. Others, even more numerous, dream of a return to a free and innocent state of nature that civilization would have corrupted forever. Bougainville’s Voyage autour du monde, published in 1771, the account of a real journey in which the author described the free customs of the Tahitians, had made a deep impression, and the theme of a simple and joyful life lived in the midst of a friendly nature returns in Montesquieu’s L’Histoire des Troglodites and Diderot’s Supplement à Bougainville, which, in Dossi’s Colonia Felice, seems capable of redeeming men from all sin. And yet, just as the freedom of the Troglodytes, as soon as they grow in number, must give way to order and the creation of laws, a similar undercurrent of bitterness runs through these utopias and cuts off the wings of their dreams while the initial impetus folds and dies in a bitter, but ultimately consoling, acceptance of the limits and contradictions of the society of the time. In fact, these stories often end with a reconfirmation of the current social order, which seems to be the only one allowed by human nature, as if, similar to Baudelaire’s Albatross, the utopians were unable to take flight. And even when they venture to imagine a truly different world, like the one ruled by slaves or women in Marivaux’s two plays, they quickly return to the pre-established boundaries: no one can change their clothes for someone else’s, nor their role in society. Pirandello’s New Colony, in its catastrophic ending, seems to recapitulate the impossibility of change: the island where the smugglers have taken refuge to rebuild a better life sinks into the middle of the ocean after having become another hell, and only one woman, thanks to her maternal instinct, will be saved. In the reconfirmation of traditional values, and of the dangers of the imagination that Teresa of Avila already called the madwoman of the house, the dream of a more beautiful life clashes with the harshness of reality and utopia becomes a place that does not exist, an unachievable dream.

The Lost Wonders

Reconstructions of ancient cities between archaeology and dreams section edited by Renata Procacci

Few subjects have aroused such deep interest as the great past civilizations and the splendid metropolises that were their centers. The causes of their destruction may have been many: natural disasters, wars, enemy invasions or a slow decline due to the changing political and economic balances in their geographical area. Of some great centers the ruins remain; in other cases it is necessary to rely mainly on the imagination. But the charm of what was once superb and grandiose, and is irretrievably lost, attracts scholars of antiquity (ethnologists, art historians, geographers, archaeologists) and also the so-called ‘general public’. Thebes of Egypt, Babylon, Knossos, Jerusalem, later the capitals of the Aztec and Inca empires – to name but a few examples – have been the object of countless attempts at ideal reconstruction; they have been discussed in many ‘technical’ works but in an even greater number of books, documentaries and films with popular intent. The works of this second type are infinitely better known and still arouse lively interest today. The temptation to occasionally escape into the past may seem typical of a disenchanted age like ours; in reality we find traces of it already in very ancient texts, such as Homer and the Old Testament, where the memory of Troy or Knossos, Sodom or Babylon, appears already shrouded in the colours of myth. And numerous legends that have been handed down, in various parts of the world, about the ‘vanished cities’, date back to remote times. In this section we will not dwell on the archaeological discoveries of famous personalities such as Howard Carter, Arthur Evans etc. In accordance with the general theme of the exhibition, we try to highlight above all the element of dream and nostalgia that often accompanies the recollection of ancient worlds. The scholars of past centuries lacked today’s means of excavation and research; most of the time they were unable to go to the sites personally; but they spent years consulting Greek and Latin authors, the Old and New Testaments, the forgotten reports of ancient travellers, the letters or diaries of the conquistadors, with the aim of ideally recovering and reviving the lost ‘wonders’.

Reading suggestions: texts

Tommaso Campanella The City of the Sun

‘[…] Grand Master: Generous man, explain to me the form of government of these people, I have been waiting for you with impatience on this point. Admiral: The supreme ruler of this city is a Priest in the language of the inhabitants called Hoh. We would call him Metaphysician. He enjoys absolute authority, the temporal and the spiritual are subject to him, and after his judgment all controversy must cease. He is incessantly assisted by three other leaders called Pon, Sir and Mor, names which among us are equivalent to Power, Wisdom and Love. Power has the government of what concerns peace and war, as well as all military art. This triumvir does not recognize superiors in military matters, except Hoh. He presides over the military magistrates, the army; it is up to him to supervise the munitions, the fortifications, the buildings, in short everything that concerns this kind of thing. Wisdom has the direction of the liberal arts, mechanics and all the sciences, as well as of their respective magistrates, doctors and schools of instruction. Therefore as many magistrates obey him as there are sciences. There is one magistrate called Astrologer, others Cosmographer, Arithmetician, Geometer, Historiographer, Poet, Logician, Rhetorician, Grammarian, Physiologist, Politician, Morals, and for these there is one book called Knowledge, in which all the sciences are written with wonderful conciseness and clarity. This is read by them to the people according to the method of the Pythagoreans. Wisdom then with admirable order adorned all the external and internal walls, upper and lower, with most precious paintings representing all the sciences. [‘] The third of the triumvirs is Love, and his principal duty is to supervise all that concerns generation. Its main purpose is that the union of love should take place between individuals so organized that they can produce excellent offspring, and they mock us who, toiling for the improvement of the breeds of dogs and horses, totally neglect that of men. To its government are subject the education of children, the art of pharmacy, as well as the sowing and harvesting of grain and fruit, agriculture, herding, the preparation of tables and food. Finally, Love regulates everything that has to do with food, clothing and procreation, as well as the many masters and mistresses assigned to each of these ministries. These three deal with the aforesaid things together with the Metaphysician, without whom nothing is done; and so the republic is governed by four, but generally where the will of the Metaphysician is inclined, that of the others also consents. Grand Master: But tell me, my friend, are the magistrates, the offices, the charges, the education, the whole way of life proper to a true republic, or to a monarchy or an aristocracy? Admiral: These people took refuge here from India, which they abandoned to escape the inhumanity of the magicians, the thieves and the tyrants who tormented that country, and they all agreed to begin a philosophical life by placing everything in common; and although in their native country the community of women is not in use, they too adopted it solely on the established principle that everything should be common, and that only the decision of the magistrate should regulate its equitable distribution. Therefore the sciences, the dignities and the pleasures are common in such a way that no one can appropriate to himself the part that belongs to others. They say that every kind of property draws its origin and strength from the separate and individual possession of houses, children and wives. This then produces self-love, and each one loves to enrich and enlarge his heir: and therefore, if powerful and feared, he defrauds the public property; if weak, of obscure birth and without riches, he becomes avaricious, intriguing and hypocritical. On the contrary, when self-love is lost, love of the community always remains. […]

Tommaso Moro Utopia

Of the cities and especially of Amauroto. “[…] Whoever has seen one of these cities has seen them all, so similar are they to one another, where the place allows. I will therefore paint one; and although it is not necessary to describe this one more than that one, nevertheless I will speak of Amaurotum as the most worthy. Which, because it has a senate there, is honoured above all the others; and I have greater knowledge of it, because I have been there for about five years. Amaurotum is situated on a mountain slope, and is almost square because its width begins a little below the top of the hill, and for two thousand paces it extends along the river Anidro, along the bank of which it widens somewhat more. Anidro rises from a small spring eighty miles above Amaurotum, but increased by the concurrence of other rivers, passes in front of Amaurotum five hundred paces wide and from there widens to six hundred, and flows into the ocean. In this space of some miles between the sea and the city, the water comes and goes with great haste every six hours. The sea, when it enters, fills the bed of the river for thirty miles, and pushes back its waters: and sometimes it corrupts them with salt. But then returning, the river usually runs with sweet waters, irrigating the city: and a bridge, not of beams or wood, but of finely worked stone, serves to cross it to that part which is furthest from the sea, so that ships may pass before that part of the city without danger. They have also another river, not large, but calm and pleasant, which, rising from the mountain on which the city is built, passes through the middle of it and empties into the Anhydrous. The Amaurotans have transported the source of this river, which was not very far away, into the city, and have fortified it, so that the enemy cannot change the course of the water or contaminate it. Then with cannons of baked stone (terracotta canals) they bring the water to the lower parts and in those places where it cannot be brought, they build cisterns in which the rain is collected and the people use it with the same convenience. The wide and high wall surrounds the city with towers and pivellini: the dry but wide and deep ditch and with thorns and hedges on three sides surrounds the walls, and on the fourth the river serves as a ditch. The squares are made appropriately both to carry the necessary things and to be safe from the winds: the buildings are not vile and pulled straight, as long as each village is long, with the houses facing one another: the fronts of the villages have for them a street twenty feet wide. Behind the houses, as wide as the village is, there is the garden, wide and closed by the rear walls of the villages: each house has a back door and a window that opens easily in two parts and closes by itself: everyone can enter. They all have everything in common, and every ten years they even change their homes. They hold gardens in high regard, in which they plant vines, fruit, herbs, and flowers in great order and beauty. Villages compete with one another to have the most beautiful gardens, and nothing is more useful or pleasing to them than these, which their creator seems to have cared more for than for anything else […]”.

Morelly Code of Nature

Model of legislation in accordance with the intentions of nature ” […] I give this outline of laws in the form of an appendix and as an accessory part because unfortunately it is very true that it would be practically impossible, in our days, to form such a republic. Every sensible reader will make his own judgment on this text, which does not need long comments, and will understand from how many kinds of miseries these laws would free men. I have just proved that it would have been easy for the first legislators to ensure that the people had not known any other; if my proofs are complete, I have achieved my aim. I have not the temerity to pretend to reform the human race; but enough courage to tell the truth, without worrying about the uproar of those who fear it, because they have an interest in deceiving our species, or in leaving it in the errors of which they themselves are the victims. Fundamental and sacred laws Which will cut off at the root the vices and all the evils of a society I. Nothing in the society shall belong individually or as property to anyone, except the things of which he will make habitual use, whether for his needs, his pleasures, or his own possessions. or his daily work. II. Every citizen will be a public man, supported, entertained and occupied at public expense III. Every citizen will contribute for his part to the public utility according to his strength, his talents and his age; it is on this that his duties will be regulated, in accordance with the distributive laws […]”.

Jean-Baptiste Say Olbia

The language of monuments “[…] The language of monuments is understood by all men, because it addresses the heart and the imagination. The monuments of the Olbia people rarely recalled purely political duties, because public duties are abstract, based on reasoning rather than on feeling and finally because their observation necessarily follows the observation of private and social duties, which, like the strands that make up the largest cables, together form the most solid bond of the political body. The Olbia people had only one Pantheon of great men and several Pantheons for virtues. They did not limit themselves to erecting a temple to friendship and placing above its portal a wooden inscription with these words: To friendship. One entered it and everything reminded the soul of the sweetness that this delicious feeling provides and the duties that it imposes. The eyes stopped on the statues of Orestes and Pylades, of Henri and Sully, of Montaigne and Laboétie. The main features of their lives or their memorable words were engraved on their pedestals. Among the inscriptions that adorned the walls of the temple were these Love to be loved What a sweet thing a true friend is! Friendship is not made for corrupt hearts The friendship of a great man is a favor from the gods Adversity is the crucible in which they test friends Let your friend see your heart to its most hidden folds and be sure that you must remove from it the feelings you fear to show him The friend we need is not the one who praises us We must expect anything except the ingratitude of a friend A hundred other temples rose to celebrate other virtues. And it was not only within the cities that the monuments spoke to the people, it was also in other frequented places, in the middle of the promenades, along the great roads. The stone, the bronze, everywhere recounted praiseworthy actions, or proclaimed useful precepts. Statues and tombs taught the people what they should imitate, what should excite their regret, what deserved their homage. Precepts were always chosen from among the most useful and the most common. We have seen how correct notions of political economy were favorable to morality: well! Notions of this kind were mixed with all the others: the farmer, the merchant, the manufacturer, walking, traveling, clarified their ideas about their true interests; they encountered, for example, the following maxims whose simple yet living refrain is easily remembered and repeated in the same way: Help yourself and heaven helps you. The follies of the morning are paid dearly in the evening. If you love life, do not waste time because life is made of it. Laziness advances so slowly that poverty overtakes it at a stroke. Have you something to do tomorrow? Do it today. It costs more to nourish a vice than to bring up two children. Don’t spend your money buying repentance If you don’t want to listen to reason, it will not fail to make itself heard. In addition, there were, according to the places, precepts applicable to different professions and even to different social occupations: but it is enough, I think, that I have indicated those that we have just read. The fathers of families gradually followed the example given by the public authority; for the example which, at the beginning, is so little imitated, is the one which is most infallibly imitated in time. One can read in their homes maxims applicable to the internal order of families, and the children, nourished by these maxims, which experience confirmed in their place, drew from them the rule of their behavior, and transmitted it to their children. The people were happy because they became wise: men and nations cannot be otherwise.

Jean Baptiste Godin True Socialism in Action

The home, the woman and the child “[…] The home, in the still rudimentary form it has today, forcibly keeps the woman in a state of general inferiority with respect to the man; the latter is led to consider the wife as the guardian of the home and the family: from here to the role of servant of the master there is only a small distance to travel. This is more or less what facts and customs consecrate. If the woman does not yet have any political rights it is because, according to the opinion of the male part of society, this would distance her from the duties of the household. Let us say at once that for those who cannot conceive of the serious progress of the world, this way of seeing is justified by the facts. The woman brings children into the world, it seems natural that she raises them. The care of the children keeps her at home; it therefore seems natural that she is charged with the care of the husband. Nature often protests, it is true, against this interpretation: it makes many mothers who are incapable of fulfilling all the duties of motherhood well. The family, once formed, needs external help, from which it often needs to resort to help for the care due to children. This simple fact would be sufficient to demonstrate that the laws of life do not absolutely impose on the mother to raise the child. It is so in order to establish in society bonds of affection and solidarity and brotherhood between its members. Because Life orders everything in human existence in such a way as to involve reciprocal services. If the family were perfect, and had no need of the help of others, it would be led to close itself in a cold selfishness: the assistance of others being useful for the education and instruction of children, is a cause of multiplication of fraternal relationships […]”.

Anton Francesco Doni The wise and mad world

Dialogue between Wise and Madman on love, work and the way of feeding SAVIO: Having one, two, three, a hundred, and a thousand females at the command of Your Holiness will never make you go crazy, because love is lost, especially since man has become accustomed to that law, to that loveless ordinariness. MADMAN: That’s how it must be done, leaving things to the benefit of nature. But what if someone had fallen in love? SAVIO: Don’t you know that love consists in the privation of the beloved thing, in that rarity, in that difficulty, similar appetites quickly pass, and that habit of not having to suffer immediately erases similar matches. MADMAN: I don’t like that order, to be deprived of an ardent amorous desire, and of a fervent desire. SAVIO: If you considered how many evils are erased, you wouldn’t say so; Disgrace would not be there; Honor would not be disfigured; Parents would not be reviled, wives would not be murdered nor husbands killed, no disputes would arise every day, women would not be the cause of infinite evils, the wedding riots, the hidden frauds of the husbands, the pimping, the disputes of the refusals would be extinguished; the murders of the dowries and the traps of the deceits of the wicked; even women, for this rape they have killed their husbands; of which there are ancient and modern examples, and for one woman, for another love, honorable families, and the most noble houses have been extinguished. FOOL: Your reasoning has indeed a certain probability, but whoever does not want to work, how would it go. SAVIO: Whoever is lazy. And if he had been tolerated once, two and three, it was ordered that he should not eat unless his work was done. FOOL: He who does not work does not eat then. SAVIO: Lord, and each had as much to eat as the other, as I told you. FOOL: A glutton, it would have been bad. SAVIO: What gluttony did you expect him to have, or appetite if he had tasted nothing but six or ten kinds of food at most. FOOL: It is well done, well: and I like this order of having extinguished that disgrace of drunkenness, of that five or six hours of carousing at the table. Yes, this thing is fine. I know that the compotes, the sugared ones, the favored ones, the mosquito-flavored ones Did not give too much trouble to the voracity of our insatiable gluttony. […]

Jonathan Swift Gulliver’s Travels

Virtues of the Houyhnhnms “[…] The noble Houyhnhnms, endowed by nature with a general inclination to every virtue, and devoid of any conception or idea of any evil that can inhabit a rational being, have as their fundamental maxim the cultivation of reason and the entire government of it. Nor is reason among them, as among us, something problematical by which a man can prove equally plausible opposite arguments: it penetrates and immediately convinces, as it must when it is not disturbed, obscured, or discolored by passions or interests. I remember that it was with great difficulty that I succeeded in making my master understand the meaning of the word opinion, and how any subject can be controversial: for reason teaches us to affirm or deny only that of which we are certain, and, beyond our knowledge, we can do neither the one nor the other. Controversies, polemics, disputes, punctiliousness about false or doubtful arguments are therefore evils unknown among the Houyhnhnms. In like manner, when I used to expound to my master our various systems of natural philosophy, he laughed that a creature with any pretensions to reason should judge of his own worth by a knowledge of the opinions of others, and on subjects where such knowledge, even if it were certain, would be of no avail.[‘] Friendship and benevolence are the two principal virtues of the Houyhnhnms, and not confined to this or that individual, but universally extended to the whole race. A stranger from the most remote regions is treated as the most intimate neighbor, and wherever he goes, he feels at home. They observe decorum and civility with the utmost rigour, but are entirely ignorant of ceremony; they do not indulge in immoderate tenderness towards their colts and fillies, but educate them in all things according to the dictates of reason. And I observed that my master showed the same affection to his neighbor’s offspring as to his own. They maintain that Nature teaches them to love the whole species, and that reason alone leads them to distinguish persons according to their excellence in virtue. When the Houyhnhnm matrons have given birth to a male and a female, they no longer mate with their husbands unless they lose, by some misfortune, one of their offspring, which happens very rarely: but in that case they mate again. If the same misfortune happens to someone whose wife is no longer of an age to bear a child, a noble couple gives him one of their own colts and then mates again until the mother is again pregnant. These precautions are necessary to prevent the country from becoming overpopulated; but the inferior races of the Houyhnhnms, destined for servitude, have, on this point, no such rigorous limits; they are allowed to generate three males and three females, who will become domestics in noble families […]”.

Francis Bacon The New Atlantis

The New Atlantis Appears “[…] After staying a year in Peru, we set sail for China and Japan, having with us provisions for a year. Fairly light winds from the East favored our navigation for five months and more, but then contrary winds blew so fiercely from the West that the slowness with which we advanced made us think several times that we would have done better to return whence we came. In the meantime other very violent winds had arisen from the South and East, and we were dragged towards the North, in spite of our resistance; and our provisions, until then administered with great economy, were completely lacking. Reduced to such a deplorable state in the midst of the largest and least frequented of the seas of the Universe, we believed ourselves lost and expected nothing but death. However, we did not cease to raise our hearts and our prayers to Him who, dwelling in the Heavens, makes His wonders shine in the deepest seas, to obtain from His mercy that as after having gathered the waters at the beginning, had ordered the Dry Mass? to appear, deign to discover some land where we could save ourselves. The next day towards evening we saw to the North a sort of black and thick cloud and we flattered ourselves that we were not far from the land, not doubting at all that the Southern Sea in which we were, until then unknown, could contain islands and continents of which we had never heard. So we rowed, during the whole night, towards the point where we thought we could land. At the beginning of the day our own eyes informed us that we had not been mistaken in our conjecture and that what we had seen was in reality a land quite low and covered with forests, which from a distance had made it seem so dark […]”.

Cyrano de Bergerac The Monarchy of Birds

Speech made in the Parliament of Birds, in joint chambers, against an animal accused of being a man “[…] The crux of the matter is to know whether this animal is a man, and then, and if he is, whether he deserves death for this. As far as I’m concerned, I have no difficulty in believing that he is: first of all because of the feeling of horror that has assailed us all at the sight of him without being able to say the reason; secondly, because he laughs like a madman; thirdly, because he cries like a fool; fourthly, because he blows his nose like a peasant; fifthly, he is feathered like a mangy cat; sixthly, he always has a quantity of small square grains in his mouth, which he does not have the courage to spit out or swallow; seventhly, and finally, every morning he raises his eyes, his nose and his large beak, glues his open hands together, points them to the sky, palm against palm and makes them one thing as if he were bored of having two free ones, cuts himself in half his legs, so that he falls on his knees, then thanks to some magic words that he whispers, I notice that his legs reattach themselves once more and he gets up again as happy as before. Now you know, gentlemen, that of all the animals there is only man who has a soul so black as to devote himself to magic and consequently, this is a man. We must now examine whether, in order to be a man, he deserves death. I think, gentlemen, that no one has ever questioned that all creatures are produced by our common mother, to live in society. Now if I demonstrate that man seems to have been born only to break her, would I not prove that by going against the purpose of creation, he deserves that nature repent of her work? The first and most fundamental law for the maintenance of a republic is equality; but man could not make it last forever: he throws himself upon us to eat us; he makes it understood that we are not made for him; takes as an argument for his alleged superiority the barbarity with which he massacres us and the scant resistance he finds in overcoming our weakness, and yet he does not want to admit it to his masters, the eagles and condors, by whom the most robust of them are surpassed. But why should this size and disposition of the limbs mark a difference of species, since even among them there are dwarfs and giants? Again, this sovereignty of which they boast is an imaginary right: they are, on the contrary, so inclined to servitude that for fear of not being able to serve, they sell their freedom to one another. Thus it is that the young are slaves to the old, the poor to the rich, the peasants to the gentlemen, the princes to the monarchs, and the monarchs themselves to the laws they have established. But in spite of this, these poor servants are so afraid of lacking masters, that, as if they feared that freedom would come to them from some unexpected place, they forge gods for themselves on all sides: in the water, in the air, in fire, under the earth; rather than not having them they would make them of wood and I also believe that they are tickled by false hopes of immortality less for the horror of not being than for the fear of no longer having anyone to command them after death. This is the beautiful effect of this fantastic monarchy and of this so natural command of man over animals and over ourselves since their insolence has reached that far. […]

Platone The Republic

The Education of Guardians “[…] The surest way to protect them against temptation is to give them a good education. Well, have they not received it? he said. To which I replied: there is no sufficient reason to say so, my dear Glaucon: what can be maintained, as I have just said, is that we must give them the true education, whatever it is, to dispose them as best as possible to be gentle to one another and to those who are under their guidance. You are right, he said. In addition to this education, common sense says that we must assign them houses and possessions that do not prevent them from being the most perfect guardians possible and that do not lead them to mistreat the other citizens. Indeed it is appropriate. See then, I said, whether to make them such it is not necessary to impose on them the regime and accommodation that I am about to tell you. First of all, none of them will have anything that belongs to him, except the objects of first necessity; secondly, none of them will have a dwelling or cell that anyone cannot enter. As for the food necessary for sober and courageous warrior athletes, they will come to an agreement with their fellow citizens who will provide them, in return for their services, with food exactly as is necessary for a year, without there being either excess or deficiency; they will come regularly to public meals and will live in community like soldiers on campaign. As for gold and silver, they will be told that divine gold and silver are always in their souls and that they have no need of the gold and silver of men; that it is impious to contaminate the possession of divine gold by uniting it with that of earthly gold, since countless crimes have been caused by the gold coins of the common people, while the gold of their souls is pure; that they alone of all citizens must not handle or touch gold and silver, nor enter under a roof that protects it, nor carry it on their person, nor drink from silver or gold, which is the only way to ensure their health and that of the state. Since they have as their property a field, houses, and gold like the rest, they will change from being guardians to being thrifty and industrious, and from being defenders of the city to its enemies and tyrants, who hate and are hated, who deceive and are deceived, this is how they will spend their whole life, they will fear internal enemies much more than external ones, and will then rush to the bottom of the abyss, both they and the city. These are the reasons why, I continued, I thought it necessary to make this regulation regarding the lodgings and possessions of guardians. Should it be sanctioned by law or not? It absolutely must, said Glaucon [..]”

Platone Crizia

Atlantis “[…] The head of the one group, it was said, was this city, which maintained the war throughout the whole time, while the other groups were under the command of the kings of the island of Atlantis, which, as we have said, was then larger than Libya and Asia, but now, submerged by earthquakes, is an impassable mire that blocks the passage of those who sail from here to the open sea, so that the journey goes no further. […] For the gods once divided the whole earth by lot according to the places – not by strife […] And so this was more or less the beginning of this long story. As was said before, about the lot of the gods, who divided the whole earth among themselves, some in larger, some smaller lots, and instituted offerings and sacrifices in their own honor, so also Poseidon, who had received the island of Atlantis by lot, settled his own sons, begotten by a woman mortal, in a certain place of the island. Near the sea, but in the middle of the whole island, there was a plain, which is said to be the most beautiful and the guarantee of prosperity of all; and near the plain, but in the middle of it, at a distance of about fifty stadia, there was a mountain, of moderate size on each side. This mountain was inhabited by one of the men who were originally born here from the earth, whose name was Euenor and who lived there with a woman, Leucippe. They begot an only daughter, Clito. The girl was now of marriageable age, when her mother and father died. Poseidon, having conceived her desire, had intercourse with the girl and fortified the hill on which she lived, made it steep all around, forming belts of sea and land, alternately, smaller and larger, one around the other, two of land, three of sea, as if working on a lathe, starting from the center of the island, everywhere at equal distances, so that the island was inaccessible to men; for at that time there were neither ships nor navigation. He himself also easily beautified the island in its central part, as a god can, by causing two springs of water to flow from the earth, one flowing hot from the spring, the other cold; then he caused the earth to produce food of every kind and in abundance. He begot five pairs of sons, raised them, and having divided the whole island of Atlantis into ten parts, to the son born first of the two eldest he assigned his mother’s house and the lot around it, which was the largest and best, and made him king of the others, the rest he made chiefs, and to each he gave authority over a great number of men and a vast territory. He gave names to all of them, and to him who was the eldest and king he gave this name, which is also the name of the whole island and the sea, called Atlantic, because the name of the one who first reigned then was Atlas. […] The lineage of Atlas was therefore numerous and honourable, and since it was always the eldest king who handed down the power to the eldest of his sons, they preserved the kingdom for many generations, acquiring riches in such quantity as never before had been in any king’s dominion, nor ever easily will be in the future, and on the other hand being able to dispose of everything that was necessary to be disposed of in the city and in the rest of the country. : For many things, thanks to their predominance, came to them from outside, but the greater part of them was supplied by the island itself for the necessities of life: first of all all the metals, solid or molten, which are extracted from the mines, both that of which today only the name is known – at that time the substance was more than a name, orichalcum, extracted from the earth in many places of the island, and was the most precious, apart from gold, of the metals then existing – and all that the forests provide for the work of the carpenters: all of which it produced in abundance, and then sufficiently nourished domestic and wild animals. In particular the species of elephants was well represented here […] To this must be added that the fragrant essences that the earth produces in our days, of roots, of shoots, of wood, of the juices exuded by flowers or fruits, it produced all and made them grow well; and again, it furnished the cultivated fruit and the dry fruit which is our food, and those fruits which we use to make bread – all the kinds of this product we call cereals – and the woody fruit which provides drink, food and perfumed oils, the fruit with the hard rind, used for amusement and pleasure, difficult to preserve, as well as those which we serve after dinner as pleasant remedies to those who are tired from satiety: such products the sacred island which then existed under the sun, furnished, beautiful and wonderful, in endless abundance. Taking therefore from the earth all this riches, they built temples, royal houses, ports, shipyards and the rest of the country, arranging everything in the following way. The sea walls which were around the ancient metropolis they first made passable by means of bridges, forming a road outward and to the royal palace. They built the royal palace from the very beginning in this very residence of the god and of the ancestors, receiving it as an inheritance from one another, and adding ornament to ornament they always tried to surpass, as much as they could, their predecessor, until they created a dwelling extraordinary to behold for the grandeur and beauty of the works […]

Antonio de Guevara Golden Book of Marcus Aurelius

Speech of the wise men of Garamantes to King Alexander. “[…] It is the custom among the Garamantes, O king Alexander, to speak little with one another, and almost never to speak with strangers, especially if they are scandalous and rebellious men, because the tongue of the wicked man is nothing but the public demonstration of his evil and unpleasant heart. When they told us that you were coming to our country, we immediately decided not to receive you, nor to resist you, nor to raise our eyes to look at you, nor to open our mouth to speak to you, nor to move our hands to annoy you, nor to declare war on you to offend you: because the contempt that we have for the riches and honors that you love is much greater than the love that you have for these riches and honors that we despise. You wanted us to have seen you by not wanting to see you, and to have served you by not wanting to serve you, and to speak to you by not wanting to speak to you; we are content to do so on condition that you have the patience to listen to us and that what we say will serve more to amend your life than to make you desist from conquering our country because it is only right that the Princes of the ages to come know why we hold in such little regard what is clearly ours and why you die toiling and taking so much pains to take what is clearly someone else’s. O Alexander, I ask you something, to which I doubt you will give me an answer because proud hearts always have a clouded spirit. Tell me where you are going, where you come from and what you want, what you think, what you desire, what you ask, what you ask for, and what you seek, what is it then that you desire, that you procure for yourself and up to what kingdom or province do your disordered appetites and desires extend? Not without reason do I ask you what I ask, what you ask, what you ask, what you seek, because I think that you do not know what you seek because proud and ambitious hearts do not themselves know what satisfies them. Because you are ambitious, honor disappoints you, because you are prodigal, greed leads you into error, because you are young, ignorance deceives you, and because you are proud the world openly laughs at you so that you chase people, and you do not chase reason, you chase your own opinion and neglect the advice of others, you love flatterers and push away from you virtuous and wise men, because Princes and great Lords prefer to be praised for a lie than to be blamed according to the truth […]”.

Charles Fourier On Industrial and Scientific Anarchy

The Law of Attraction

” […] But if God wants us to emerge from this abyss of falsity and misery called Civilization, Barbarism, etc., what way out has He prepared? It can only be the opposite method to that from which evil arises, that is, the state of association and truth. Now, how to organize it, what resources to employ, what oracle, what theory to consult? This is the great problem that should have occupied the scientific world. The resource is Attraction; the oracle is Attraction; in fact God has chosen it because it is both interpreter and motor. It is through the analysis and synthesis of Attraction that one can discover the mechanism assigned by God to industrial relations. If He wanted to employ a resource other than Attraction, it would therefore be constraint since God can only choose between these two levers. If God had wanted to direct us otherwise than by Attraction, it would have been very easy for Him to use coercive means, creating scaly giants 100 and 150 feet high, giants so easy to create that the great cetaceans, whose volume developed in human form would give colossi of 150 feet, scaly, amphibious, invulnerable. These giants, initiated into our arts and shut up on some island where they would form their arsenals, supplying themselves with materials in our ports, could emerge unexpectedly to come and punish the kingdoms rebellious to the divine will, destroy their fleets, set fire to their cities, without anyone being able to try to resist: because with rifles or culverins with a barrel of 100 feet and a diameter of 5 feet they would launch, from a distant place, on our armies, a thousand cannon balls, which would be for them what lead shot is for us; and then they would mow down the forests and throw them like burning faggots on our surrounded capitals. Besides, God does not have the way of lightning or earthquakes. If he did not deign to resort to these oppressive means of human legislation, it is a proof that he does not want to operate except through the Attraction that combines the two properties of interpreter and charming engine. He is the only agent worthy of a thrifty and benevolent God […]”

Louis Sebastien Mercier The year 2440

I am seven hundred years old.

“[…] It was midnight when my old Englishman retired. I was a little tired: I closed my door and went to bed. As sleep spread over my eyelids, I dreamed that it was many ages since I had been asleep, and that I was waking up. I got up and felt in my limbs a weight to which I was unaccustomed. My hands were trembling and my feet were tottering. Looking at myself in my glass, I could hardly recognize my face. I had gone to bed with blond hair, a white complexion and red cheeks. When I got up, my forehead was furrowed with wrinkles, my hair had turned white, I had two bones protruding below my eyes, a long nose and a pale and faded color was spread over my whole figure. When I wanted to walk, I mechanically supported my body on a stick, but at least I had not inherited the bad temper, which is too common in old people. Coming out of the house, I saw a public square to me unknown. A pyramidal column had been erected there which attracted the gaze of the curious. I went forward and read very distinctly: the year of grace MMIVCXL. These characters were engraved on the marble in gold letters. At first I imagined that it was a mistake of my eyes, or rather a mistake of the craftsman, and I was preparing to observe it, when my surprise became greater, on casting my glance at two or three edicts of the sovereign attached to the walls. I have always been a curious reader of the posters of Paris and I saw the same date MMIVCXL faithfully printed on all the public papers. And what – I said to myself – I have become very old without realizing that I have slept six hundred and seventy-two years! Everything had changed. All those neighborhoods which were so familiar to me presented themselves to me in a different and recently renewed form. I was lost in so many beautiful and magnificent streets perfectly leveled. I entered spacious crossroads where such good order reigned that not the slightest embarrassment was visible. I heard none of those confusedly bizarre cries that once lacerated my ears. I met no carriage ready to crush me. A gout-stricken person might have walked in it at ease. The city had a lively air, but without traffic and without confusion. I was so amazed that I did not see the passers-by who stopped and looked me up and down with the greatest surprise. They shrugged their shoulders and smiled as we do when we meet a mask: in fact, my dress must have seemed original and grotesque to them, so different was it from theirs. A citizen, whom I later recognized as a man of letters, approached me and said politely, but with a sustained gravity: “Good old man, what is the use of this disguise? Is your project to go back to representing to us the ridiculous customs of a bizarre century? We have no desire to imitate them. Leave this vain joke.” “What?” I replied. “No, I am not disguised at all. I am wearing the same clothes I wore yesterday. It is your columns, your posters that lie. It seems that you recognize another sovereign than Louis XV. I do not know what your idea may be, but I believe it to be dangerous and I warn you of it. One does not joke with such masquerades. No one is so mad. In any case, you are impostors without any foundation, since you cannot ignore that nothing prevails against the evidence of its own existence.” Either this man was persuaded that I was delirious, or that he thought that the great age I appeared to be making me delirious, or that he had some other suspicion, he asked me in what year I was born. “In 1740,” I replied. “Well, by this account you are precisely seven hundred years old. We must not be surprised at anything,” he said to the crowd that surrounded me. “Enoch, Elijah are not dead; Methuselah and some others have lived to be nine hundred years old; Nicholas Flamel travels the world like the wandering Jew and perhaps the lord has found the immortal elixir or the philosopher’s stone.” As he said these words he smiled at us and each one approached me with a very particular complacency and respect. They all longed to question me but discretion chained their tongues and they contented themselves with saying in a low voice: “A man of the century of Louis XV! Oh, that’s curious!” […]”.

Victor Considerant and the Phalanstery [nota di Paola Urbani]

Considerant succeeded Fourier as head of the newspaper La Phalange and was one of the most convinced supporters of his ideas. What was the Phalanstery? The Phalanstery, where the Phalanxes made up of between 1600 and 1800 people lived, is a horseshoe-shaped building, which includes various types of accommodation depending on the possibilities and tastes of each person, and common areas. It was built on irrigated land suitable for different crops, near a forest and not far from a large city. It consists of a central body, with the watchtower in the middle with the clock, bells and means of communication (telegraph and carrier pigeons), on which the flag of the Phalanx flies. Near the watchtower there is the court of honor where parades and industrial maneuvers are carried out, the hotel for foreigners, the reception rooms. Behind the tower, the winter garden. Noisy activities, such as workshops and music schools, are relegated to the outer wings. The residents’ quarters are distributed as follows: the elderly on the ground floor, the children on the mezzanine and the adults on the upper floor. A street-gallery runs through the building, an artery sometimes uncovered, sometimes closed by glass, which puts all parts in easy communication. There is an abundance of water and heating and lighting are centralized. Public life The Falange operates as an economic and industrial unit, replacing individual competition with corporate and supportive competition to the great advantage of all, and uses a single language. It is made up of series of classes, which are subdivided into series of orders, which in turn are subdivided into series of genera, species, etc. so that all activities are organized within a logical structure. The fundamental law it obeys and its main resource is attraction and for this reason ‘frequent and joyful social gatherings’ are essential to its life. Private life The education of children is of great importance and is considered a collective task that has the aim of helping each person to develop their potential and indulge their natural interests. Only the national language is taught: the study of languages is one of ‘those very tiring jobs that produce less than nothing’. Great importance is instead attributed to the teaching of gastronomy: in Armonia ‘it is the main resource for balancing the passions’ Clothing and food Food must be genuine and represent a pleasure. The people must become gastronomes. Why accept adulterated wine or Burgundy flour? Why should a good republican eat only black cabbage or turnips and drink water, scorning the pleasures of the table? Entertainment and celebrations The way in which work is organised must be such as to make it attractive and varied so that it becomes ‘synonymous with pleasure’. This will happen if the work is carried out in numerous meetings and in short and varied sessions. Religion Belief in the immortality of the soul and in God’s rewards for unfortunate generations.

Pierre Benoit and the Atlantis [nota di Sabina Fiorenzi]

Atlantis, the lost continent, or rather, the lost paradise. Its traces lead very far: Plato was the first in the Western world to mention this myth, placing that civilization in a very remote past even compared to the Athens of 2300 years ago. It can be said that, in the light of current geological knowledge, the catastrophic events to which Plato seems to refer when he alludes to the cataclysm that swallowed Atlantis, can be placed around 10-11,000 years ago, at the end of the last glaciation. The two Platonic dialogues partly or completely dedicated to Atlantis are the Timaeus and the Critias. In the first one of the protagonists, the old Critias, explains to the others – all Athenians – how the current geographical and political structure of the known lands was reached. Indicating Solon and the Egyptian priests as his source, Critias narrates how in a remote time a formidable power had attempted to conquer Europe and Asia. They were a people of highly advanced civilization from Atlantis, a large island outside the Mediterranean Sea, which, by virtue of its geographical position in front of the Pillars of Hercules (the Strait of Gibraltar), acted as a bridge between the various continents. An insatiable desire for conquest had pushed the rulers of Atlantis to attempt – after the colonization of many areas of the Mediterranean – also that of Greece and only the courage of the Athenians averted this event. In fact, they not only strenuously defended their territories when they were attacked, but also freed the others already subjugated and drove the invaders back beyond the Pillars of Hercules. But the effort was in vain because in the sudden passing of a day and a night the contending armies were swallowed up by a terrifying earthquake and at the same time Atlantis sank forever into the ocean, settling in the depths of the abyss, which made navigation in that part of the sea impossible forever. The paragraph dedicated to Atlantis in the first book of Athanasius Kircher’s “Mundus subterraneus” (1665) fully accepts Plato’s version of Timaeus. The German Jesuit publishes an ancient Egyptian map that places the island of Atlantis in the Atlantic Ocean with Spain and Africa on the left and America on the right. The Latin caption reads “Position of Atlantis, now under the sea, according to the beliefs of the Egyptians and the description of Plato”. The Egyptians, however, believed that the south, not the north, was located at the top of the earth, since the Nile, the primary source of life, flows in that direction and therefore its source must necessarily be at the top of the world: for this reason Kircher points his ‘modern’ compass downwards. By turning the map upside down, we have Africa and Spain to the east and America to the west, so that the island of Atlantis turns out to be a sort of southern offshoot of Greenland, to be considered together with the Canaries and the Azores, an emerged remnant of the ancient continent. But by interpreting this same map differently, theories have been formulated on a diametrically opposite position of Atlantis (Atlantis = Antarctica), which however there is no space to dwell on here. But let us follow Plato again, because Critias’ description continues in great detail in the dialogue dedicated to him. That happy island, in the division of the world made among the gods, had fallen to Poseidon, who, by marrying the orphan Clito, fathered that royal dynasty of demigods from whose firstborn Atlas, the island took its name. The same king of the sea immediately impressed on the territory that singular configuration of concentric rings land-sea, land-sea that determined the inaccessibility of the royal palace on the acropolis. Poseidon was truly lucky: it was a very fertile land, rich in water, woods, wonderful animals of the most varied species, precious metals (including the famous and mysterious orichalcum) and his 10 noble sons rivaled each other in magnificence and sumptuousness, having colossal buildings built with sophisticated techniques. A powerful army and a sheltered and superbly equipped port guaranteed the inhabitants safety and profitable trade. The sovereigns reigned in justice and mutual harmony, everything seemed to proceed in the utmost harmony and peace until the behavior of ungrateful men began to degenerate, to the point that Zeus gave his thunderbolts and unleashed the cataclysm that destroyed Atlantis and its wicked inhabitants. So far Plato. And from here began in the Western world all the investigations into the mythical continent swallowed up by the waves that have given rise to the most varied hypotheses, Atlantis in the Atlantic, in the Mediterranean, in the Caribbean, in the Sahara, once the bottom of an immense lake, flooded into the channel that separated the continents of Africa and Atlantis due to the violent earthquakes that destroyed its banks, definitively submerging the latter beneath itself. The latter is in fact the version of the event that an old librarian offers to the officer Saint-Avit and his colleague Morhange, when they wake up – after being drugged and dragged there – in the royal palace of the lost Atlantis, in the novel of the same name by Benoit (1919). In that last hidden bastion of the disappeared island reigns Antinea – whose name means “new Atlantean” – a beautiful woman with a disturbing charm, descendant of Poseidon and Clito. The queen nourishes her eternal youth with the life of the men she makes fall in love with her; Saint-Avit, prey to that lethal charm, commits a brutal crime. Having regained possession of himself, he manages to escape: but the memory of Antinea, like the song of a siren of the desert, will give him no respite. He will fatally decide to return to Atlantis and thus fulfill his destiny of love and death. On display is a magnificently bound copy of the work from René Kieffer’s Paris workshop, a 1922 edition illustrated with 24 original etchings by Lobel-Riche. The engravings – in perfect harmony with the novel’s fiery and visionary climate – describe exotic characters and environments but above all convey the eternal feminine embodied by Antinea, a man-eating mantis, a true femme fatale, in all her shocking and morbid sensuality.

Robert Owen and the New Moral World [nota di Paola Urbani]

Owen proposes the creation of a New Moral World, ‘founded on universal and eternal truths’. The aim is to ensure the conditions necessary for the happiness of all; the means a right direction impressed on human nature in the period of childhood through an education in love and solidarity. Owen is a contemporary of Fourier, but his ideal society has a stronger utopian and community connotation than that of Fourier (who bitterly contests it). He applied some of his principles in the management of his cotton mill in New Lanark (Scotland) where he improved the conditions of the workers. For the complete realization of his project, Owen then purchased 30,000 acres in Indiana and on January 3, 1825, eight or nine hundred people formed the first nucleus of what he called New Harmony. But internal conflicts and the secession of some dissident groups undermined the community that Owen himself abandoned in 1828. The same fate befell two other communities founded by his followers at Orbiston in Scotland in 1826 and at Ralahine in Ireland in 1831. Description The ideal community is a settlement of 1200 people on 1000-1500 acres of land. The buildings are common and have four sides: three for houses, the fourth for dormitories for children over three years old or when they exceed the number of two per family. Outside there are vegetable gardens and gardens and outside again laboratories and industries. Public life The communities are self-sufficient, based on a community organization of production. Each settlement must have land around it that ensures abundant harvests, must have factories, mines, and exercise fishing and navigation. The population is divided into 8 classes with increasing responsibilities according to age: one passes from one class to another every five years, with the exception of the seventh class (from 30 to 40 years old, which will take care of the internal affairs of the community) and the eighth class (from 40 to 60 years old), which has the task of providing for external orders and relations. Money is not used, considered by Owen to be ‘the root of great injustice’. Private life All children receive the same education, ‘according to the science possessed at a given time regarding the good formation of human character’. Each must learn, in addition to the language of his parents, a general language ‘destined to become the language of truth and of the world’, and receives knowledge and an education such as to make him healthy and ‘charitable’ for life. For this reason there will be no need for an army, a church, doctors or lawyers.

Francesco Patrizi and the Happy City [nota di Paola Angori]

Patrizi, a Renaissance philosopher and man of letters, studied in Padua where Robortello was one of his teachers; in 1553 he published some poems on moral and aesthetic subjects, including “The Happy City”, where the influence of Platonism is felt. Description The happy city is one in which all the things necessary for the well-being (happiness, according to the Aristotelian conception) of the body and soul are found. The city, therefore, must first of all be able to produce the food and drinks necessary for the nourishment of the body. Since food cannot always be ingested in its natural state, as gathered by farmers, it must be transformed. A ‘throng of millers, cracker-crackers, painters, bakers, butchers, cooks …’ takes care of this, who, in turn, need an equal number of craftsmen (‘artificers’, such as blacksmiths, bricklayers, carpenters) who prepare their work tools. As regards the location (the ‘site’), the ideal city must be placed in an area with a mild climate, where neither heat nor cold prevail, that is, it must be built, preferably, partly on a hill, partly on a plain, so as to have not only shelter from the great cold or heat, but also a beautiful view of the landscape and a fortification against enemy attacks. The city must also be far from marshes, stagnant waters and areas where there is atmospheric pollution (‘corrupt air’). Public life In paragraph 6 there is talk of ‘the population and its equality’. However, this is only a theoretical statement, in fact in the previous paragraph 4 it is written, with regard to farmers, that ‘in order for citizens to be able to command them more freely, it is necessary that (they) be servants’. Among the duties of those who manage public affairs are indicated those of public order and external defence [defence from the internal (domestic) enemy and from the external one]. To achieve the first goal, the following are indicated: mutual knowledge of citizens among themselves, which in turn generates mutual love, for which the Author expresses his opposition to an overpopulated city; the celebration, at least once a month, of ‘public banquets’; ‘equality, both in private possessions and in dignity’; the fear of punishment. With regard to this last point, any perpetrator of malice must be isolated from the citizen community. The task of supervising the observance of the laws falls to the magistrates, supported by other collaborators of justice. As regards the external defense of the city, the use of weapons is permitted. Two distinct hypotheses are therefore examined and analyzed: that of the enemy attack from land and that of the enemy attack from the sea. As for the government of the city, this is the responsibility of the elders, since, to the prudence that is a natural gift (prudence that is also common to the young), they also add the prudence acquired through experience. Trade is then examined, in truth rather summarily, which is justified above all by the need to meet military expenses, and which gives the cue to affirm that our city must be a seaside city, since ‘the merchandise is more valuable at sea and is more easily exercised, than on land’. Finally, from an organizational point of view, religion is dealt with, that is, the need of the human soul to have a religion. The speech concludes with the list of the six categories (‘manners’) of men who must contribute to making the city blessed: the farmers, the artisans (‘artifici’), the merchants (‘mercatanti’), the warriors, the magistrates, the priests. The first three orders (peasants, artisans and merchants) must not enjoy the privileges, pre-eminences, comforts and conveniences enjoyed by the remaining orders (warriors, magistrates and priests) and must instead suffer ‘the service, hardships and toils’. ‘Our city (must) have two parts, one servile and miserable, the other lady and blessed; and this properly (can) be called a citizen, as the one that has a hand in the honours and pre-eminences of the republic and is its master’. Private life The Author is concerned with the well-being of the child and his correct education from the moment of his conception. This well-being is aimed at both ‘his own happiness’ and the ‘services of the republic’. This well-being (material and spiritual) of the child is linked to that of the mother during pregnancy, who must, during that period, visit churches, be cheerful and ‘drive away boring thoughts’. As regards the education of children, a distinction is made between ‘child rearing’ (until the child reaches the age of five) and ‘education of children’. The latter must consist in ‘closing’ the soul ‘the chimney that overflows it with vice’ and in spurring it ‘to enter the steep slope of the rugged mountain, at the top of which virtue holds the paradise of its delights’. It is therefore necessary to prevent the child from seeing or hearing ‘vicious and dishonest things’. Corporal punishment is suggested as a remedy against the temptation to fall into vice, while as a spur to virtue ‘the hope of that glorious reward, which virtue usually gives to those who have reached its paradise’ is indicated. To educate children, in public places, it is necessary to instruct and train them in moral virtues, ‘with precepts and examples’. The teachings that must not be missing are those of philosophy, music and grammar. Clothing and food They are discussed in the first paragraphs, regarding the nature of man, the needs of the soul and the body, and the things needed to achieve happiness, and they are also discussed regarding the raising of children. Both clothing and food must be related to the climatic conditions of the area and must ensure the optimal satisfaction of human needs. Religion Religion has been discussed, together with commerce, regarding the organization of the city and it has been mentioned regarding the needs of the soul. In paragraph 12 the path that leads to happiness is indicated, and which is given by the exercise of moral virtues: to be blessed, men must be virtuous. Among the virtues, those of peace are exalted in preference to those of war. The paragraph ends, however, with the invitation, addressed to the legislator, to take care first of the things of the body and then of those of the soul. Francois Rabelais and the Abbey of Telema [nota di Paola Angori] The history of the Abbey of Telema is contained in the first volume, chapter LIII of Gargantua and Pantagruel. The Abbey was built by Gargantua after the war, thanks to him victorious, which broke out between Picrochole and Grandgousier, due to a dispute over the cake market. The Abbey of Telema is composed of six floors, has a hexagonal shape; at each corner there is a large round tower with a diameter of 60 paces. In the middle of the lower courtyard there is an alabaster fountain with a statue of the three Graces above it that spout water from all the openings of the body. Between one tower and another there are gardens with both fruit and decorative plants. There are a total of 9,332 rooms, each with an antechamber, bathroom, wardrobe, chapel, wallpapered in different ways according to the seasons of the year. The floor is covered with green cloth, in each antechamber there is a crystal mirror set in thin gold, decorated with pearls, which can reflect the entire figure if desired. The Telemites are cultured and refined, they know 5 or 6 languages, they know how to converse, they love poetry and music. They enjoy doing what they see gives pleasure to one of them. The clothing is sumptuous, in the French fashion in winter, in the Spanish fashion in spring, in the Turkish fashion in summer. There is so much sympathy between men and women that every day the clothes are similar, according to the choice of the ladies. It is an airy environment, where the whole rule is summed up in the prescription to do what one wants.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Nouvelle Eloise [nota di Paola Angori]

This story can be considered autobiographical in a certain sense, as regards the passion that the Author had for the simple life of nature, which became the basis of all his moral aspirations. In his love story, Julie ou la nouvelle Héloïse, Rousseau depicts the dream of his entire sentimental life. This work offers us the image of the world in which the Author would have liked to live, woven with nostalgic elements of that life that had been granted to him in his best days. The author, addressing a gentleman to whom he extends an invitation to visit his house, expresses first of all the pleasure of living in a simple country house, without pomp and luxury, where order, peace and innocence reign and where it is possible to lead a life according to one’s own tastes and in a social context suited to one’s ‘heart’. He then goes on to describe the changes made to the house in Clarens in order to make it more functional, even if less suitable ‘to be seen’ (better distributed rooms and simpler furniture), changes that also affected the service rooms (‘home of the lower family’, home of the farmhouse family) and the vegetable garden in order to give the house ‘a more rustic, livelier, more animated (crowding of cocks, lowing of oxen, etc.), more cheerful’ air. The lands are not rented, but cultivated directly. The main crops are meadows, wheat, woods and above all vineyards. The aim pursued with these crops is not profit, but to ‘feed more people’. The criteria that must be followed to optimize the factors of production are then indicated. In particular, as regards the use of agricultural workers, preference must be given to local workers over foreigners and strangers, differentiated wages must be paid in order to encourage workers to increase production, and a system of inspections must be established by choosing inspectors from among members of the rural family. The owner of the land himself (the Lord of Wolmar) visits them daily ‘and often several times a day’ together with his wife who is accustomed to giving, in periods of greatest work, small donations of money to the most industrious. But more than with these donations of money, the mistress wins the affection of the workers with love and kindness, taking an interest in their family problems, sharing their joys and sorrows and giving them advice. With affability, therefore, she obtains in exchange from the servants a greater diligence in their work, as they feel more connected to the family. Particular care must also be taken in the choice of servants: they must first of all be honest, they must love the master and be willing to ‘serve him at his pleasure; but provided that the Master is reasonable, and the servant intelligent.’ The servants must be taken from the country and not from the city, they must be taken from a large family and it must be the parents themselves who offer them to the masters. They must be ‘young men well made, of good health, and of good physiognomy.’ The servants, before being taken into service (at first on a trial basis and then into the number of the family), are first questioned and examined by the lord of Wolmar and then presented to his wife. There follows a period of training and education during which the servants become fond of their masters without them ‘disdaining their old country life’ and without them, after having been trained and after having become fond of them, being tempted to go and serve another master (need to prevent ‘the very common and not very sensible objection: I will have trained them for others). To this end, it is necessary to optimize the number of servants: a servant who has served in a house for a long time receives an increased salary that doubles over the course of twenty years. Hence the need to limit the number of double salaries to be paid, renouncing pomp in exchange for good service, which can only be ensured by the zeal of an old faithful and affectionate servant, and not by a novice without affection towards the masters.

Voltaire and Eldorado [nota di Paola Urbani]

Eldorado was the name given by the Spanish to a mythical city in South America north of the equator, also called Manoa, which was believed to have been founded by the Incas and was very rich in gold deposits, and which was therefore the destination of many unfortunate expeditions in the 16th-18th centuries. Walter Raleigh writes that it far surpasses in beauty and riches all the cities in the world and quotes passages from Francisco Lopez’s Historia Universalis in which very rich houses are described in which all the utensils are made of gold or silver. Voltaire takes up the myth of Eldorado in Candide (1759), treating the theme of wealth and happiness with his usual smiling irony and making at the same time a story and a parody of utopia. His Eldorado is a great plain surrounded by mountains as straight as walls and ten thousand feet high and by precipices. It is cultivated, both ‘for pleasure and for need’. The streets are traversed by brilliant carriages with men and women of singular beauty, drawn by large red sheep. The public buildings are very tall, the streets are adorned with a thousand columns, fountains of pure water and sugar cane liquor gush. The inhabitants live long, over 170 years, and have no material worries, but they cannot cross the frontiers of the kingdom. They dress in gold brocade, or in ‘hummingbird down’, all the inns ‘established for the convenience of trade’ are paid for by the Government and offer abundant and exquisite meals. The streets and squares are of precious stones and the children play with tiles made of gold, emeralds and rubies. The simplest houses have a gold roof and a silver door. There is a palace of sciences, which contains a gallery two thousand paces long, with all the instruments of mathematics and physics. The government is a monarchy, but without a Court of Justice, or Parliament, or prisons. The ceremony is reduced to a minimum: hugging and kissing the king on the cheek. There are no priests and there is no arguing over religion. They believe in only one God, they do not pray, but only give thanks because they have everything they desire. And yet, having arrived by chance in Eldorado while they were traveling to Cayenne, Candide and his servant Cacambo, while remaining in admiration of it, decide to leave it to go in search of Cunegonde’s love. Eldorado will always remain in their thoughts, as the only place where happiness resides, but they will then be satisfied with a quiet life. And Candide ends with these words of theirs: ‘Everything is not as good as in Eldorado, but it is not so bad either.’