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Alexandre Kojeve (1997) The Latest New World parallax, 3:1, 23-27. Opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor and Francis. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, systematic supply, or distribution to anyone is expressly forbidden.
Alexandre Kojeve (1997) The Latest New World parallax, 3:1, 23-27. Opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor and Francis. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, systematic supply, or distribution to anyone is expressly forbidden.
Alexandre Kojeve (1997) The Latest New World parallax, 3:1, 23-27. Opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor and Francis. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, systematic supply, or distribution to anyone is expressly forbidden.
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Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Parallax Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/tpar20 The Latest New World Alexandre Kojve Published online: 30 Sep 2011. To cite this article: Alexandre Kojve (1997) The Latest New World, Parallax, 3:1, 23-27, DOI: 10.1080/13534645.1997.9522371 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13534645.1997.9522371 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the Content) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/ terms-and-conditions The Latest New World' Alexandre Kojve Francoise Sagan, Bonjour tristesse (Paris: J ulliard, 1954) - Un Certain Sourire (Paris: J ulliard, 1956) Translated by David Macey A new type of world has been born to literature. And for my part, I find it quite natural that it should have been born in Paris and diat an unmarried mother (die mother of a purely literary neonate of course) should have given bi nh to it. This new world itself was obviously not born yesterday. But aluhough research into me question is no longer forbidden, paternity is far from having been definitively established in this case, and the procession of claimants to that heavy responsibility has not yet come to a close. And yet, even during the lifetime of die putative fadier, a German - and he too was a genius - hinted discretely at what a Great Corsica might be. And for my part, I am beginning to believe firmly mat die latter conqueror was himself effectively responsible for what was, for him, die honour and the pleasure of die conceiving our new world. German insinuations aside, die German informer saw very cleariy and predicted die nature of die child he announced to the worid. Even though many people who are well endowed with common sense still fail to take seriously visions, even diose of this visionary (not to mention die disturbing visions of certain of his aposdes), despite the fact diat he was enamoured of reason [Vernunft]. In England, however, one contemporary seemed to have seen tilings just as clearly. At all events, he certainly realized diat, dianks to die exploits of his Franco-Italian competitor, the honour (which some call vainglorious) of virile heroism can now be won (albeit in purely sartorial terms) only in civilian dress (the colour of mourning, of course). But that peaceful genius died an unknown martyr to his sensational discovery (which was to have unforgettable repercussions in the world, defined in the true sense of the word) without leaving any literary trace, and his hagiographers never revealed to non-initiates die true meaning and import of his painful act of witness (a French nunnery still shelters his material relics). parallax 4 (february 1997): 23-28 D o w n l o a d e d
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In France, finally, there was once a Marquis who was imprisoned by the Tyrant but liberated by the People. He too understood that, in the new free world, everything would now have to be committed in private, especially murders, which were perforce seen as the (nobly gratuitous) acts of an egalitarian and fraternal Liberty. But the popular Liberators initially saw this liberated man as a mere Libertine. Even today, the few elite men who read him and talk about him seriously are accused by the eminendy serious masses of not really being serious. And so he did not divulge the secret either! Truth to tell, it is because I wanted at last to reveal a mystery mat has been so carefully preserved by those who are party to it (assuming that some of them still exist), that I resolved to write and even publish the few pages that follow, and to dedicate mem to all those who will read them and, merefore, quite definitely to mademoiselle Sagan. The good offices of some vigilant Argus will no doubt ensure that they come to her notice. For it is thanks to the care with which this young girl has written her first two books that the world in question has been 'born to literature". Until this young French girl came along, no man of letters was willing to speak of it, or at least to speak of it so nicely. One great American literary hack of modern times specialising in the analysis of virile behaviour did of course look into the problem of a world that had been emasculated by its father, who remains unknown as it happens. Having grown his beard (now white), probably to give himself courage in his heroic struggle against despair, this famous author searched the world for the last human male, or rather the last truly male man, and claims to have at last found him in the Caribbean Sea, in the form of an old fisherman. True, he was half-dead. Even then, the only worthy adversary he could find for him was a fish (of a different species, as it happens, to the one that served as a model for one of the symbols of a well-known religion). 2 A heroic and very strong fish, but even so... But this modern Anglo-Saxon's very recent natural history remained just as esoteric as the already venerable Germani c apocalypse of universal History. It is merefore a very-very-young-young French girl who has the (literary) honour of revealing to the crowds (her male and female readers) throughout the true nature of the world where this glory was won. And she certainly does so in a very honest way, though her way of doing so may still perhaps be somewhat 'unconscious' (in the philosophical sense of the term) or 'naive' (in Schiller's sense, or in other words as opposed to sentimental). To get straight to the point, we are dealing with a world that is new because it is completely and definitively devoid of men (as defined by Malraux-Montherlant- Hcmingway to cite only those three classics and to leave Homer and the others in peace). A world without men, seen (vu 3 ) by a young girl of course. But a world that differs completely from the already dusty world in which another young girl (not a D o w n l o a d e d
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Parisian, as it happens) saw, so to speak, nothing but the flannel trousers which, at that time, were worn by practically no one but 'authentic' men. By contrast, in the new world revealed to us by the young girl to whom this world has been revealed, men (not in the ambiguous sense of the equivocal French word, but in the precise and proper anatomo-physiological sense) or those who stand in for men, tend to flaunt themselves quite naked (but with compulsory muscles) or in a state of undress before the by no means startled eyes of young girls. In my day (and for me those were the good old days, as has been the case for all time and of all the times that have been spoken of with a certain sadness [une certame tristesse]). In my day, I say (with virile pride), nudity, even when complete, tended rather to be the preserve of pretty- girls (at least in art and literature). Such too was its fate in a more distant past. And besides - God knows - undressing the virile men of the past was no easy matter. It took four or five people to get a shining knight out of his gleaming armour, and more recently still the help of a strong young lad was no luxury if you wanted to get a famous soldier out of his fine shining boots. No doubt things have gready improved since then. Even in my day, casual and comfortable pyjamas from the effeminate Indies had conquered the free Western world, thanks to the British conquerors of the servile Orient. And yet, insofar as it was a literary theme, the role of these occi- oriental garments (initially reserved exclusively for men; their mammas stricdy forbade well -brought up young girls to wear them) was stricdy confined to bedroom farces. It would be difficult indeed to imagine a serious (masculine) author of those times evoking the pyjamas of a (literary) hero whose virility was called upon (on, say, the bleeding soil of revolutionary Spain and, to spell it out, in an army sleeping bag) to initiate into the purest love a young girl whose purity (moral purity, of course) had not been sullied by her earlier and repeated rape at the hands of a dozen (reactionary) males. Of course in our new world (where, fortunately, pure young girls no longer need to get themselves raped to become able to make love properly or, if you prefer to put it that way, purely and simply), the young girl who is talking about it speaks in detail only of her own pyjamas, and their immaculate purity is watched over with a maternal eye by the second young man of her choice. But one really cannot see why today's young writeresses should not be able to talk just as easily, and with just as much fraternal devotion, about the pyjamas worn by the ex-virile partners of the masculine-looking lovers of their novels' heroines. For their heroines already eye up with a very masculine indifference (which still, it is true, seems to them to be 'marvellous', as they themselves admit with touching humility) the virile forms that are on show as they watch one of their potential conquests walking in beauty in the street or, more specifically, on the pavement of the Promenade des Anglais (Un Certain Sourire, 18). When die conquest has been consummated in a bed (ibid., 106), they kiss his 'torso' (which, unfortunately and even if it were that of the Apollo Belvedere, can never, from a certain point of view, be as good as that of a Venus from die Capitol, or anywhere else come to that). D o w n l o a d e d
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No one could honestly deny that all diis is profoundly humiliating for those of us who, thanks to some Mendelian accident, were born with the body of a man (unless they have forgotten the non-sexual meaning of the generic name they bear). Even so, in this case, it would take some courage, not to deny and disagree, but to conform and agree. But is there any point in expressing indignation, as some still claim to be able to do? Or in describing mese young girls as Amazons', with a subde hint of the irony that has so advantageously replaced the outmoded bronze of the heroic legends of very ancient Greece, now brought back 4 into fashion by die sophisticated thinkers of our time? As the saving goes, beggars can't be choosers. At all events, I am reluctant to believe that anyone has any intention of advising these so-called Amazons (who have, as it happens, shown no hostility towards any husbands, not even their own) mat they should divide, if only for a joke, into two groups, with one group taking the role of die men they have had to stop fighting because there are no men left to fight. For thousands of years, men 'took' girls. Then it became the fashion for girls to 'give' diemselves. But is it the girls' fault if, in a new world where there is no male heroism, they can be no longer either 'given' nor 'taken' and have to be content widi letdng themselves be talked into it, like it or not? In these conditions and in a world in which we are now forced to live so long as our deaths means nodiing to us, is it not preferable for them to let themselves be talked into it with the best possible grace and will-power? And what would be the point of sending these gracious but voluntary 'Amazons' to nunneries (as some would seem to wish to do, without every daring to say so), or to other subde and professional healers of supposedly damaged souls (as some occasionally think fit to suggest on the grounds that the girls in question are not 'truly happy', though they never offer to meet the cost - a high cost, as it happens - of this so-called moral decontaminadon)? Even assuming that die girls could be 'normalised' to such an extent diat behaving like 'real women' would make them perfecdy 'happy', how could they find die real men they need in a world where the acme of male power now lies in die peaceful and laborious (aldiough duly motorized) activity of a fenile husband? To sum up my final opinion, I will say that in my view Ccile and Dominique (die name is to be read in the feminine) are, like Frangoise herself, girls like any odiers. What I mean is this: like any odier girls in any dme or place with unusually sharp minds and what is commonly (or nobly?) called 'guts' (even though not all of them had the dazzlingly precocious literary talent displayed by at least one of their number). What is new about the above-mentioned young girls (and this is what is humiliating for those of us who are after all men, at least from a certain point of view) is that the third of them has allowed the other two to begin to live, not in the world of which young girls dream almost as much as young men, but in this strange new world. This latest new world is indeed our world and its specific characteristic, which distinguishes it from all other is, as we know, the fact that diere are virtually no more real wars or veritable revolutions. Before long, the only place for a glorious death will be a bed (private or public). Dying a glorious death will be conditional upon taking on wild Kojve 26 D o w n l o a d e d
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beasts (non-castrated ruminants) sword in hand, or risking one's life to scale peaks of over eight thousand meters (or the equivalent number of English or other feet). Now, there are very few such peaks, and they will soon be forgotten about when they lose all the virile interest they now have. They will be equipped with eidier cable cars that present as little danger as possible, or landing-pads for helicopters which, we all hope, will soon be being used for purely peaceful purposes, meaning that all sexes and ages will be able to use them. As for the wild beasts diat are currendy used to realize the virtual virility of a few authentic (and mosdy I berian) human males, there is a great danger that a public opinion (which is certainly far from 'naive' but very 'sentimental', to re-cite the great poet of Sturm and Drang) that no longer tolerates die idea of (painlessly) execudng real murderers (even in the formerly aristocradc homeland of the last civic dandies), will soon be mobilized to put an end to die sufferings (and diey are cruel and so humiliadng) inflicted upon these poor vegetarian animals who have never done anyone any harm. When diey see the state of paradisiacal peace diat has finally been reestablished on earth, the ancient gods (male and female alike) who laughed so loudly in the day of Achilles's batdes but who almost died of thirst in a less remote area, may themselves be content to smile a certain smile as diey, like everyone else, drink visqui, which - at least in our world - is pronounced scotch and drunk diluted widi iced water. Even die most Epicurean Sage in die world will readily grant diem that pleasure. Notes ' "The Latest New World" was first published as "Le Dernier Monde nouveau" in Critique 1112 (Aug-Sept, 1956). The exclusive honour accorded to fish and fishermen would be unfair to non-emasculated bovines, were it not that die latter were the object of an eariier book by the author in question, who has devoted the better part of his literary auvre and even his own life to bloody combats between (male) mammals, and were it not that he fell back on cold- blooded animals only when he was in his (virile) decline. 1 -Any typographical error that added an Y to the end of '/' would be a horrible betrayal of the author's deepest thought (because men and not world would be the object, trans.]. 'Once again, a typographical error omitting the (feminizing V) on 'remise' would make it agree, not with Ancient Greece, but with the famous poetic 'bronze'. We could make it perfecdy well today, and even use it in the way the legendary heroes used it in theirs (when they could make nothing better, or at least not in terms of metals). No one would dare (either in their lifetime or even after their glorious deaths) to challenge their virility. Such a typo mi ght expose me to the risk (which is certai nl y seri ous for an author) of bei ng misinterpreted, or even totally misrecognized (in die sense of mis-understood). D o w n l o a d e d