The scarlet plague

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The Scharlachpest (original title: The Scarlet Plague ) is a 1912 published science fiction - story of Jack London . In it, one of the few survivors of a pandemic that broke out in 2013 in a post-apocalyptic world tries to preserve knowledge of the past from complete extinction.

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In the frame narrative , an old man named Granser, dressed in goat skins, tells a group of young wildlings, among them some of his grandchildren, about the world of 2013, which 60 years earlier had passed through a worldwide one, from English grandsire (“grandfather” or “ancestor”) The pandemic, the eponymous “scarlet plague”, went under when only one of a million people survived. At that time the now slightly paralyzed and somewhat senile old man was called James Howard Smith and was professor of English literature at the University of California at Berkeley . Civilization has collapsed and Granser is the last survivor of a world ruled by science, technology and a global capitalist system headed by the Board of Industrial Magnates. The group listens to Granser's stories with a mixture of disbelief and impatience, often with incomprehension and the resulting boredom, especially when Granser falls back into the idioms and terminology of 2013 because the language has become more primitive - a barbaric idiom in the eyes of the former English professor:

“They used monosyllabic words and short, broken sentences, more gibberish than language. And yet it was pervaded by traces of grammatical construction and remnants of the forms of a superior culture were recognizable. "

The main part of the novel then takes up the account of how the then 27-year-old Professor Smith experienced the outbreak and course of the disease. The epidemic breaks out in London , the first cases are soon to appear in New York, and from the centers of civilization it is spreading inexorably and with a speed that destroys any attempt to find a cure. London describes the course with medical accuracy:

“From the first sign you would be dead in an hour. For some it took several hours. Many died within ten or fifteen minutes of the onset of symptoms. The heartbeat increased and the body temperature rose. Then came a scarlet rash that spread like wildfire over the face and body. Most of them did not notice the increase in pulse and temperature, only when they had the rash did they know. Cramps usually went with this, but they did not last long and were not particularly severe. Whoever survived it became very calm, only felt a numbness creeping up from the feet. First your heels went numb, then your legs, then your hips and when the numbness reached your heart you died. You did not rage or wear out. The mind remained calm and serene until the heart became numb and death. The speed of decomposition was also strange. No sooner had death occurred than the body seemed to fall apart, to melt away as you watched. That was one of the reasons the disease spread so quickly. All the billions of germs in a corpse were released immediately. "

As more and more people die, panic and turmoil break out. After his brother dies, Smith isolates himself with a group in the University's Chemistry Building, from where those trapped can see the burning city. Armed gangs roam the streets, looting and arson. It is the members of the lower class, who until then were kept like slaves, who are now freed from their chains and who contribute their part to the downfall of civilization:

“In the midst of our civilized world, deep down in the slums and workers' ghettos, we had bred a race of barbarians and savages; and now, in the hour of our need, they turned on us like the wild animals that they were, and they destroyed us. And they destroyed themselves in the same way. "

The epidemic also breaks out in the chemical building and the survivors plan to make their way out of the city and perhaps leave the epidemic behind in the countryside. A group of 47 people set out with a car and a pony. But even of these, all but Smith and the pony are gradually dying. Smith observes the first changes in a now deserted world, sees how the pets either go wild or are all eaten. It migrates east through the San Joaquin Valley and eventually arrives at the Yosemite Valley . Only after three years does he return - together with a horse, the pony and two dogs. He is amazed at the rapid disappearance of traces of agricultural culture:

“[…] The wheat, the vegetables, the fruit trees, they were always taken care of and cared for by humans and therefore soft and sensitive. Weeds, bushes and the like, on the other hand, had always been fought by humans and were therefore tough and resilient. The result: As soon as the human influence was gone, the crops were almost completely overwhelmed and destroyed by the wild. "

At Lake Temescal, northeast of Oakland , Smith then met other survivors for the first time. The first person he meets is Bill, a former chauffeur, a barbarian of unbridled brutality. His wife is Vesta Van Warden, widow of the chairman of the council of industrial magnates. The chauffeur made her his " squaw " and slave through abuse . Cannot help her, Smith leaves the chauffeur's camp and looks across Carquinez Street for another group of 18 survivors, the Santa Rosa tribe, whom he eventually finds in Sonoma Valley . He joins the tribe and takes a wife. The scattered groups henceforth marry one another and begin to multiply; however, the old knowledge is gradually being completely lost. Smith hopes that someday someone will find the books he has saved and learn to read them with the help of an alphabet key. His outlook, however, is pessimistic, including a civilization that will resurrect at some point in the future, because with this technology will also arise again and with this weapons and explosives:

“The gunpowder will come. Nothing can stop it - the same old story over and over again. People multiply, people fight. With gunpowder people can kill millions of other people, and only in this way, through fire and blood, will some distant day a new civilization develop. And what will be the benefit? As the old civilization disappeared, so will the new one. It may take 50,000 years to build, but it will sink again too. "

background

When London wrote the story in 1910, the great 1906 earthquake in San Francisco , in which large parts of the city had been destroyed mainly by the fires that followed the earthquake, had only happened a few years ago. London witnessed the destruction and wrote a report that appeared in Collier’s magazine . In it he described the huge clouds of smoke over the city, the caravans of residents who had become homeless and also the remarkable calm with which the catastrophe was accepted - very different from the scenes of frenzy and looting that accompanied the collapse in The Scarlet Plague . The obvious assumption that the impression of the earthquake was an inspiration in his downfall narrative is confirmed by Joan London in her father's biography.

In the German-speaking world, Jack London is mainly known as the author of works such as Der Seewolf and Wolfsblut , but London is also an important representative of early science fiction. The scarlet plague was one of the first post-apocalyptic novels, even if it had an early forerunner in Mary Shelley's novel The Last Man , published in 1826 . London was not the first exponent of a post-apocalyptic tradition in American literature either. Other forerunners are Bret Hartes The Ruins of San Francisco (1865), Robert Duncan Milnes Plucked from the Burning (1882) and Ambrose Bierces For the Ahkoond (1888).

The subject “Plague and Epidemic” had also been dealt with many times in the literature, but here the emphasis is not only on the course of an epidemic, but also on the representation of a world completely changed by a global epidemic. Another feature that sets the novel apart from other predecessors is the processing of the then new findings - including those from Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch - to cause infections by microbial pathogens, made visible for the first time by powerful microscopes (in the world of novels from 2013 the 40,000-fold “ultra microscope”).

Rosetti deals with the aspect of portraying the slave and working class in her essay from 2015. She shows that, despite its otherwise represented socialist positions here, London follows popular racist and xenophobic narratives that are still all too well-known today compared the reproductive fatigue of the "real" Americans with the fertility of immigrants and deduced from this a threat to the Aryan race. This was mixed up with social Darwinist ideas, as popularized in particular by Herbert Spencer at the time . It is therefore not a socialist utopia that follows the fall of capitalist oligarchy, but the triumph of barbarism of a proletarian subhuman class, represented by the brutal former chauffeur Bill.

expenditure

  • First published in: The London Magazine , June 1912
  • US first edition: The Scarlet Plague. Macmillan, New York 1914 (an edition published by Paul R. Reynolds, New York in 1912 was a so-called copyright edition , of which only a few copies appeared)
  • UK first edition: The Scarlet Plague. Mills & Boon, London 1915.
  • Current issue: The Scarlet Plague. Dover Publications, 2015, ISBN 978-0-486-80281-7 .
  • E-book: The Scarlet Plague in Project Gutenberg ( currently not usually available for users from Germany )
  • Audio: Audiobook at LibriVox
  • German:
    • The scarlet plague. Translated by Edda Fensch. In: Erik Simon , Olaf R. Spittel (eds.): Duel in the 25th century: stories of happy worlds and times to come. Series of Classic Science Fiction Stories . Das Neue Berlin, Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-360-00083-8 . Also called: The Scarlet Plague. In: Jack London: Fantastic Tales. Fantastic Library # 243. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1989, ISBN 3-518-38175-X .
    • The scarlet plague. The iron heel. Two novels in one volume. Translated by Erwin Magnus. Book guild Gutenberg, Frankfurt am Main 1977, ISBN 3-7632-2114-X .

In addition to the aforementioned editions, The Scarlet Plague has appeared in over 100 collections with stories from London and anthologies since it was first printed.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The Scarlet Plague , Chapter 1: “They spoke in monosyllables and short jerky sentences that was more a gibberish than a language. And yet, through it ran hints of grammatical construction, and appeared vestiges of the conjugation of some superior culture. "
  2. ↑ The Scarlet Plague , Chapter 3: “From the moment of the first signs of it, a man would be dead in an hour. Some lasted for several hours. Many died within ten or fifteen minutes of the appearance of the first signs. The heart began to beat faster and the heat of the body to increase. Then came the scarlet rash, spreading like wildfire over the face and body. Most persons never noticed the increase in heat and heart-beat, and the first they knew was when the scarlet rash came out. Usually, they had convulsions at the time of the appearance of the rash. But these convulsions did not last long and were not very severe. If one lived through them, he became perfectly quiet, and only did he feel a numbness swiftly creeping up his body from the feet. The heels became numb first, then the legs, and hips, and when the numbness reached as high as his heart he died. They did not rave or sleep. Their minds always remained cool and calm up to the moment their heart numbed and stopped. And another strange thing was the rapidity of decomposition. No sooner was a person dead than the body seemed to fall to pieces, to fly apart, to melt away even as you looked at it. That was one of the reasons the plague spread so rapidly. All the billions of germs in a corpse were so immediately released. "
  3. ↑ a b The Scarlet Plague , Chapter 4: “In the midst of our civilization, down in our slums and labor-ghettos, we had bred a race of barbarians, of savages; and now, in the time of our calamity, they turned upon us like the wild beasts they were and destroyed us. And they destroyed themselves as well. "
  4. ↑ The Scarlet Plague , Chapter 5: “[…] the wheat, the vegetables, and orchard trees had always been cared for and nursed by man, so that they were soft and tender. The weeds and wild bushes and such things, on the contrary, had always been fought by man, so that they were tough and resistant. As a result, when the hand of man was removed, the wild vegetation smothered and practically destroyed all the domesticated vegetation. "
  5. ↑ The Scarlet Plague , Chapter 6: “The gunpowder will come. Nothing can stop it — the same old story over and over. One will increase, and men will fight. The gunpowder will enable men to kill millions of men, and in this way only, by fire and blood, will a new civilization, in some remote day, be evolved. And of what profit will it be? Just as the old civilization passed, so will the new. It may take fifty thousand years to build, but it will pass. "
  6. ↑ Jack London: The Story of an Eyewitness. In: Collier’s , the National Weekly May 5, 1906.
  7. ^ A b John Hay: Jack London's Sci-Fi Finale. In: Jay Williams (Ed.): The Oxford Handbook of Jack London. Oxford University Press, 2017, p. 364 ff.http: //vorlage_digitalisat.test/1%3D~GB%3DuIWuDQAAQBAJ~IA%3D~MDZ%3D%0A~SZ%3DPA364~ double-sided%3D~LT%3DS.%20364%26%23x202f%3Bff.~PUR% 3D
  8. ↑ Michele Augusto Riva et al .: Pandemic Fear and Literature: Observations from Jack London's The Scarlet Plague. In: Emerging Infectious Diseases 20, Issue 10 (October 2014), pp. 1753–1757.
  9. ^ Gina M. Rosetti: After the Plague: Race and Survival in Jack London's “The Scarlet Plague”. In: Annette M. Magid (Ed.) Apocalyptic Projections. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015, pp. 61-77.
  10. ↑ The ISFDB shows (as of April 2020) 130 issues.