The Year 5865 Page 2
Following the publication of Paris avant le Déluge, Mettais wrote a further fantasy, Simon le magicien [Simon Magus] (1867), but reverted thereafter to more conventional literary fare, after a further gap in his production, with Docteur Marat [Dr. Marat] (1874) and Les Amours d’un tribun [The Love-Life of a Tribune (i.e. a popular spokesman)] (1876). He published two further novels, one of which—Le Secret des catacombs [The Secret of the Catacombs] (1877)—has an intriguing title, and a one-act play, but information regarding their contents is not easily available. Following his unremarked death, his works appear to have been completely forgotten, even by specialists in the history of imaginative and speculative fiction—although L’An 5865 is mentioned in passing in Charles Richet’s essay on futuristic fiction “Dans 100 Years” (1891-2)—until the Bibliothèque Nationale’s gallica website and Google Books made the text of L’An 5865 available for reading on-line or downloading, thus paving the way for a reignition of interest in what is undoubtedly an fascinating text, long ripe for rediscovery and celebration of its pioneering spirit.
This translation is taken from the version reproduced on gallica.
Brian Stableford
THE YEAR 5865
PREFACE
I would be very sorry if this book were to be taken for a humorist’s jest; I would be even sorrier, however, if I were believed to be a social critic. I am serious, and I am not a mud-slinger. If my opinions regarding history do not have the orthodoxy that certain people would like them to have, I beg pardon from those people, but I humbly retain my opinions, convinced that they are the orthodoxy of a good number.
I would not like it any more if I were to be accused of offending anyone’s religion, by virtue of having cast doubt on the antiquity of our globe, and I shall never regard myself as impious for believing that the world is older than it is said to be—that before the creation from which our era dates, there might have been, and probably was, an existent world: a world that must, like all worlds, have passed through its various periods of birth and barbarism, growth and civilization. And if this world has been preceded by other worlds, even indefinitely, why should I not say more? Why should I not say that it is illogical to deny it, simply because we have no memories of them, no facts and no traces, extending back to that epoch of chaos in which God, according to Genesis, created our world?
Oh, I know full well that there are arguments extending as far as the eye can see on the part of scientists; I know full well that there are theories which calculate the epoch of the birth of our Earth and the term of its duration—but those arguments are so subtle and contradictory, and those theories are so conclusively annihilated by one another, that one really only has the right to believe whichever one of them one pleases, and I do not believe any of them.
For me, the world is very old—much older than anyone can say, even though I admit a commencement. Who would dare to seek out that commencement, however, in the darkness of its impenetrable antiquity? Let us therefore be content to conclude…yes, can we even conclude the perenniality of the world? In view of its imperfection, the mobility of its beings, the intestinal fermentation that perverts or destroys incessantly, have we not the right to conclude at least that unexpected changes are produced in all its parts, that the globe of today is not the globe of old, and that the globe in several thousands of years will no longer be that of today?
Will the air, the seas, the rivers, the continents, the cities all be changed, in their essence? No, for water will still be water—but everything will have changed its location, everything will be changed in its relationships, in its appearances, in its very qualities.
And it will be thus with humankind.
Do I mean than human beings will have changed their nature? Certainly not—even less in their passions. Why? Because that has never changed—but civilization, mores and laws will change.
So, may I, without being a great prophet, foresee today what human beings will be in 4000 years, giving their passions the colors of the future?
That prospect might be rather gloomy, in my opinion—although my opinion might be wrong, I admit, for every question has at least two faces, one cheerful and the other sad.
The France of today, which still has a free and light-hearted spirit, and which has its civilization, with which it is content and of which it is proud, never fails to laugh at the civilization of our ancestors. It is probable that if it could read the future, it would laugh even more at the civilization of its descendants. It holds its strength and its science in such high esteem that it is far from thinking that they will ever be equaled, and especially that one or other of them might be in the hour of its decadence.
It is to be wished by every good patriot that France is not mistaken; that it will stay as it is; that it will progress even further, and forever. Moreover, I would take infinite pleasure in seeing it painted in the most beautiful and vivacious colors, not with its vestments of the past, but with those of the future—the future that I wish for it with all my heart. But who can say that it will not be otherwise; that in 4000 years, France will not have the decrepit face of old age and animality? Who can say whether, instead of the luxury that renders it so beautiful, the science that raises it so high, the valor that renders it so redoubtable today, there might not be nothing then but pettiness, ignorance and misery? Who can say that its palaces, so luxurious, might not be replaced by huts, that its squares, so splendid, will not be forest crossroads, that its streets, so magnificent, will not be thorny paths, its rivers miry marshes? Who can tell us whether its population, so powerful, proud and numerous, might not be a petty tribe of slaves, fallen under the lash of barbarians?
May God will that it shall never be so!
But when I see the enemy sowing tares in the field of our civilization, have I not the right to dread that our civilization might one day be stifled? When? I have no idea…in 50, 100, 200 years, perhaps. What do I know?
When I see so many vices weighing everywhere among us, with egotism at their head, I am afraid for our society, because I know that a building never crumbles as surely as when its foundations are undermined by insects.
When I see the God of the wise dethroned from his altars by the God of the foolish; when I see virtue set beneath know-how, poverty beneath money, for what can I hope?
Then again, what do all these discords between great and small, all these incredible disputes of rich and poor, and all these contradictory pleadings with regard to the social contract signify?
What do all these clashes of arms signify that can be heard from one end of the world to the other; all these prideful pretensions of strong people against weak; all these massacres, futile unless there is an objective to which a large number are obedient; all these pillages by means of arms?
There are no longer any laws than those of the strongest, no longer any logic to regulate common interests than the logic of cannon. There is no longer anything but an all-out war of all against all, some to seize and others to defend.
Are these not the symptoms of the dissolution of society?
Could any of the peoples that have fallen in the past have done so in another fashion?
Am I not then authorized, without wishing to paraphrase the words of a great man, to believe that France in 4000 years might be Cosaque?7
“Cosaque! Why?”
History is done; I shall not remake it here; but why not Cosaque? If I wanted to dabble in political philosophy I could prove that it is possible; if I wanted to dabble in politics, I could prove that it will happen. In order to convince ourselves, we have only to look hard at what is going on around us.
“Utopias!”
If they are utopias, so much the better. But is it not with that name that speakers in Nineveh, Babylon or Carthage would have been castigated if, in the times of the greatest splendor of their countries, they had predicted the physiognomy that Nineveh, Babylon and Carthage present in the year 1865 of our era?
There too, huts have replaced palaces, and barbarism civilization.
No, these are not utopias; this is what will happen. Peoples only ever change their laws and habits; their nature is always the same; their lives always move in the midst of a sea of passions, and the end of every one is similar.
The life of a people, like its civilization, is a mountain that each one must climb without ever stopping. Having arrived at the summit, there is no longer anything to do but descend.
Is France at the summit of the mountain? In the year 5865, will it not have descended therefrom a long time ago?
One may pose that question, but never in jest. It is always seriously that one watches one’s fatherland set foot on the downward slope.
But if, in the year 5865, France has descended the mountain, to find itself in the ruins and forests of the New Cosaquia, if Paris has then exchanged its palaces for the huts of Figuig,8 the mountain of civilization will not have disappeared in consequence; it will be occupied by other peoples.
But what peoples?
That is the question I ask myself. To resolve it with probability, I have looked back, and, according to what I have seen, I believe I can say that civilization and life will be displaced in the world; that where we see activity and social sciences today, we shall see barbarity, and that where we see barbarity, the sages of the time will see civilization, and perhaps a civilization more advanced than our own, whatever we might think of it.
Is that improbable?
I have not lost sight for an instant of this important philosophical point, which my savant Caucasian traveler, Daghestan, has been able to bring out in his various peregrinations, either in the most civilized countries of his time, such a Borneo, the Sudan, the Congo, Caucasia and Zeeland, or in the most deserted and primitive, such as France, which has eve
n lost its name, in order to take that of New Cosaquia.
If, furthermore, the mores of the peoples of that time resemble ours somewhat; if we see them getting drunk in the cups in which we steep out lips, let no one reproach me! What is astonishing about human beings, who only have a narrow circle of passions to indulge, being devoured in the year 5865 by the same passions that devour them in 1865?
In any case, I do not accept responsibility for the opinions of my characters, and I can no more guarantee the historical veracity of the peoples they pass in review than the historians of our day can guarantee the veracity of their accounts. I am only a historian, like all the rest, and a very humble one—but I am an impartial historian who is trying to do his best to paint an accurate picture of the mores of peoples he has seen in the mirages of the future.
EDITOR’S NOTE
Caucasipol, 15 Ventose 50029
The immense popularity obtained in the past year in the Caucasian Gazette by the publication of The Year 5865 by Citizen Daghestan demands that its disparate sections be combined this year in a single volume.
We dare to hope that the patrons of the publishing house will give the publication the same welcome as the subscribers of the periodical. This edition, reviewed very carefully by a friend of the author, perhaps ought to been given a different form in losing the effect of its periodicity, but we thought it best to reproduce it as it originally appeared, to conserve its sap and primitive savor in leaving it all the frankness of a journal, and, what is more, not even removing a few journalistic appreciations, which only serve to complete his friend’s thoughts.
It is, in brief, the Caucasian Gazette that we have adjusted to the size and appearance of a volume, with all the respect owed to conscientious works.
Editor Guriel
I. THE CAUCASIAN HUNTER
Caucasian Gazette
Caucasipol, 5 Prairial 5001
There was nearly a terrible accident yesterday on the shores of the Black Sea. One of our friends, a hunter who is fortunately as maladroit as he is intrepid, had launched himself into the rocks of the Caucasus on the track of a hind with such ardor that he had not noticed dusk falling, and had gone astray in the mountains a long way from any habitation. That was not a matter of considerable anxiety for such a hunter. Our friend’s decision was soon made; he took shelter beneath an overhanging rock, which far-sighted nature appeared to have suspended there expressly for him, and went to sleep with one eye open.
At dawn he was up and about, perched on the highest point in the vicinity on the scent of the previous day’s prey—but the previous day’s prey had not waited for him, and no other appeared.
Our friend then descended the mountain slope far enough that he soon had nothing below him but the waves of the sea and the little tongue of land that separates them from the foothills of the Caucasus, which is so small that the smallest village could not be accommodated there—although it was once so large, so it is said, that there were cities there, the cities of the warrior tribes of the old Abasges.
It was early morning, as we have said, and a thick mist covered the mountains and their surroundings—which did not prevent the ardent eye of our hunter glimpsing a black mass some distance away, standing almost immobile on the sea shore. Either his eye was fatigued by the night’s poor sleep, however, or the daylight was still too weak, for he could not distinguish the nature of the prey. It was nevertheless voluminous—perhaps a group of hinds, asleep or bathing in the cool waves. Perhaps, however, it was a more redoubtable prey.
Being in doubt, our hunter carefully loaded his rifle, stealthily drew nearer, as close as possible, and then aimed and fired.
When the smoke had dissipated, he saw that the group was still perfectly immobile. Our friend is a hunter devoid of pride; he did not blush on seeing the immobility of his prey. So, reloading his rifle with all the precaution of a man intent on success, he took a few further steps forward, since the prey did not seem timid, and prepared to fire again.
At that moment, the sun’s radiance dissipated the morning sun and clarified his vision—but he did not fire. The rifle fell from his hands. His heart was gripped by an indescribable sentiment, and he nearly fell off the rock on which he was perched.
His prey was none other than a woman sitting on a boulder, holding on her knees the discolored head of a young man lying at her feet. She appeared to be a young woman; whether she was beautiful our friend was unable to judge from where he stood. It seemed to him that her hair was ash-blonde, plaited and forming two graceful curves around her cheeks. On her head she wore a conical hat ornamented with white feathers, in the fashion of the high society of the savage lands of the west. Her costume was also clearly indicative of a foreign woman. She was not wearing the ample and chaste peplum that serves the modesty of our Caucasian women so well; her upper torso was enclosed in a corsage perfectly fitted over the breast, all of whose contours it outlined, and then extending to the knees, or very nearly, in two skirts with large loose pleats. She also wore loose-fitting trousers, tightened at the bottom of the leg by ribbons whose knot was formed externally as an elegantly-expressed rose.
In one of her hands she held the limp hand of the man whose head was sustained by her knees; her other hand was placed on the breast of the dead or dying man, doubtless in order to study his chances of living. Her eyes were anxious; her face, bleak with anguish, was only awakened at intervals by the stimulus of some hopeful thought. A moment later, however, it was illuminated and stirred by relaxation; a palpitation had doubtless made itself felt in the dying man’s breast. Then, laying him gently down on the ground, she ran to draw water from the sea, and returned to inundate the face of the man she was doubtless yearning to bring back to life.
Her hope was not betrayed. His breathing became more abundant; the moribund man opened his eyes, and then raised his head. He looked around, bewildered...
He was alone.
His companion, so anxious and attentive, had just fled, as nimbly as a desert gazelle, gliding over the water with the rapidity of a seagull, with the aid of wings of a sort that had suddenly spread out around her arms. By that means she reached a boat that seemed to be waiting in the distance, and on which she stood up to her full height, contemplating with an indefinable sentiment the place she had just quit and, doubtless, her protégé—who, completely conscious, had got to his feet and was standing straight, motionless on his boulder, trying to make out with his as-yet-feeble gaze the vision of that boat, in which he seemed intensely interested.
Our hunter, profoundly moved by this scene, which he only understood in part, had gradually and instinctively drawn nearer, but discretion and respect for the misfortune kept him at a distance. When he saw the poor injured man alone, he came to offer him sympathetic assistance.
“Thank you, sir,” the latter said to him. “There is only one person I need at the moment.”
The hunter bowed without replying, and turned to go.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” the shipwreck-victim continued, calling him back. “My heart and mind are numbed; excuse an unfortunate who could not yet comprehend the generosity and graciousness of your offer. I was wrong. I shall not refuse your services; I have need of them. Merely grant me the favor of allowing me to remain alone for a few moments more. I will wait for you here.”
Our friend slung his rifle over his shoulder, went hunting for an hour, and came back.
The castaway was sitting on his rock, holding a writing-pad on his knees, in which he was scribbling. When the hunter arrived he raised his head and smiled; then, sealing the letter that he had just finished, he gave it to him.
“Are you going to Caucasipol?” he asked.
“I live there.”
“Could you deliver this letter to the office of the Caucasian Gazette?”
“I have a friend there,” the hunter replied. “I’ll give it to him.”
“Thank you, sir,” the castaway said, effusively, seemingly not desirous of a longer conversation.