The coming race

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Edward Bulwer-Lytton

The Coming Race (German title The sex of the future or the coming generation ) is a 1871 published fantastic novel by Edward Bulwer-Lytton .

action

John Martin (1789–1854): Pandemonium , approx. 1825. In Coming Race the architecture of the Vril-ya is compared with the pictures of John Martin

In this novel, the narrator encounters an underground human race, the Vril-Ya , who have a psychic vital energy called Vril that is far superior to the human race . The Vril forces enable them to telepathy and telekinesis and enable them to influence any form of animate or inanimate matter for healing, raising the dead or for destruction. Originally a people who lived on the surface of the earth, the Vril-ya were cut off from the rest of humanity by a natural disaster and moved to an underground cave system in which they found a new home. There they developed in a history marked by wars and social upheavals through the discovery of a new natural force - the Vril force - to an egalitarian, eugenics- practicing society that is superior to all other races. Through contact with the narrator of the novel, the Vril-ya learn about the people who live on the surface of the earth and ask him in depth about human society. The narrator manages to escape from the realm of the Vril-ya and at the end of the novel he warns his readers of the danger that the Vril-ya would pose for mankind should they ever return to the surface.

Origin background

The Coming Race is classified as an early science fiction novel. The British literary scholar Geoffrey Wagner, however, takes the view that it is not a scientific-technical utopia in the style of Jules Verne . Rather , the novel is a satire that critically examines contemporary trends in politics, culture and society. In fact, Bulwer-Lytton takes up almost all social, aesthetic and political discourses of his time in the novel: the theory of evolution, as well as the emancipation of women , art, occultism, democracy and capitalism .

Bulwer-Lytton invented the “Vril-ya” and the “Vril” force in order to show his readers with their help what consequences social Darwinism , early socialist social utopias and the then beginning women's movement would have if they were to prevail . In addition , he parodies the style of the travel reports and political utopian novels that were popular at the time.

This interpretation of the novel, elaborated by literary scholarship, is based not least on letters in which Bulwer-Lytton explained his thoughts to friends and relatives and from which it also emerges how he used the language of the "Vril-ya" and the concept of the "Vril" Power developed. For the Vril-ya language, which he invented, he orientated himself on the ideas of the philologist Max Müller on language development and used lexicon articles from the vocabulary of various languages, including Latin and Greek, but also from Indian languages ​​and Sanskrit.

The word Vril in particular was probably derived from the Latin word virilis ('manly', 'powerful'). For the purposes of his novel, it was important to him to describe a race that has evolved so far from humans that it can no longer mix with them and has powers that humans can no longer cope with. In this context, Bulwer-Lytton wrote to a friend about his thoughts on what qualities the Vril-ya should have in his novel:

“Since some animals like the torpedo or the electric eel are electrically charged and they cannot communicate this force to other bodies, I assume the existence of a race that is charged with electricity and has acquired the art of concentrating and closing it control, in a word, to be the leader of their lightning bolts. If you have any other suggestion to implement the idea of ​​a destructive race, I would appreciate it. Probably the idea of ​​the vril should be freed even more of mesmerism and mysticism by simply calling it electricity [...] "

The culturally pessimistic view of Bulwer-Lytton was by no means an isolated case in the literature of his time. Doubts about the emerging machine age were widespread among the cultural elite of Victorian England. There are many examples in the literature of the period in which admiration for scientific progress was accompanied by a warning of its risks.

Bulwer-Lytton himself took part as an active player in the discourses on the scientific nature of phenomena such as magnetism and later, in the 1850s, spiritism . On February 28, 1869, at the request of the London Dialectical Society, he wrote a statement in which he excluded spirits as causes for spiritualistic phenomena and instead traced them back to the presence of an all-pervading natural force. This reflects Bulwer-Lytton's long preoccupation with magnetism, which had also repeatedly been a theme in his earlier works. Several important magnetism theorists were among Bulwer-Lytton's circle of friends and acquaintances.

reception

The Coming Race was the last book Bulwer-Lytton wrote before his death and was published anonymously during his lifetime, fearing that it would be panned by criticism if he published it under his name. He himself was disappointed with the audience reaction and felt that most of his readers did not understand the key messages of the book presented above. However, the novel was a great commercial success and shortly after Bulwer-Lytton's death, the Leipziger Tauchnitz-Verlag published the first English-language edition in 1873, which now also named him as an author. The book continued to be very successful and has seen numerous editions and translations into several languages ​​to this day; the first German translation appeared in 1874.

The word Vril was so well known in the English-speaking world that it found its way into dictionaries. The level of awareness was apparently so great that in 1886 a beef extract came onto the market under the name Bovril , as the reference to the well-known "Vril" power was seen as a brand name that promoted sales. From March 5th to 7th, 1891, there was even a Vril-ya-Bazaar in London's great Royal Albert Hall, where Bovril was also served . In the course of time, the works of Bulwer-Lyttons, who had written dozens of novels and short stories, fell largely into oblivion.

The Coming Race is an exception here, due to the special importance that theosophists and occultists ascribed to it. While contemporary critics viewed The Coming Race as satire, other sections of the audience viewed it as an occult clef . In these circles the view was held that Bulwer-Lytton was a member of the Rosicrucians and that the "Vril" force was an actually existing, universal life force. According to this view, the novel was merely a vehicle with which Bulwer-Lytton wanted to convey secret knowledge to his readers under the guise of anonymity.

The main reason for Bulwer-Lytton's popularity in theosophical and occult circles was the claim that he was the Grand Patron of the British Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia . Bulwer-Lytton had actually granted this honorary rank in 1870, but without his knowledge and even against his will, as is clear from a correspondence with SRIA member Hargrave Jennings . In fact, there is no historical evidence that Bulwer-Lytton was ever a member of an esoteric society. This also applies to the claim that he was initiated into a German lodge of the rising dawn. The corresponding lodge actually existed, but its records show that Bulwer-Lytton was never a member.

Bulwer-Lytton had been interested in alchemy , occultism , mesmerism, and spiritualism since about 1830 . These themes also appear in some of his early novels, most notably in Zanoni , published in 1842 . From the 1850s, when more and more spiritualists were exposed as fraudsters, he developed an inner distance to these ideas and instead became intensely interested in the knowledge of natural science. While the assumption of a " life force " was still a serious concept for natural science at the beginning of the 19th century, this view changed around the middle of the century. Chemists and biologists recognized more and more that organic processes involved complicated chemical-physical processes and that there was no specific “life force”. Bulwer-Lytton also regarded the “life force” as a failed dream of magicians and alchemists.

Vril Society

The reception of Vril as a real existing force by the theosophy around Helena Blavatsky was particularly important for the reception in occultism . This reception and the connection of Vril with the Atlantis myth by the theosophist William Scott-Elliot prepared the ground for the inclusion of the Vril force in the theories of ariosophers and right-wing nationalist esotericists, who ultimately became part of the legend of the Vril society , the Reichsflugplatten and various conspiracy theories that have been in effect up to the present day found expression.

expenditure

English editions:

  • First edition: The Coming Race. W. Blackwood & Sons, London & Edinburgh, 1871, also as: Vril: The Power of the Coming Race
  • US edition: The Coming Race, or The New Utopia. Francis B. Felt & Co., New York 1871.
  • Also as: Vril: The Power of the Coming Race. Rudolf Steiner Publications, 1972.
  • Current issue: The Coming Race . Edited and with an introduction by David Seed. Wesleyan University Press, 2005.
  • E-book: The Coming Race. Open Road, 2020, ISBN 978-1-5040-6178-0 .

German translations:

  • The gender of the future. Translated by Jenny Piorkowska. Theosophical publishing house, Leipzig 1873.
  • Vril or A Humanity of the Future. Translated by Guenther Wachsmuth , Stuttgart 1922.
  • The coming gender Translated by Michael Walter . Suhrkamp (Fantastic Library # 42), 1980, ISBN 3-518-37109-6 . New edition: The Coming Gender. With an afterword and comments by Günter Jürgensmeier. dtv # 12720, 1999, ISBN 3-423-12720-1 .
  • Vril or the coming gender. Omnium-Verlag (Omnium # 81), Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-942378-81-9 .

literature

  • Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke: Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism and the Politics of Identity . New York UP, New York 2002, ISBN 0-8147-3124-4 .
  • Julian Strube: Vril. An occult elemental force in theosophy and esoteric neo-Nazism . Wilhelm Fink Verlag, Munich / Paderborn 2013, ISBN 978-3-7705-5515-4 .
  • Geoffrey Wagner: A Forgotten Satire: Bulwer-Lytton's The Coming Race . In: Nineteenth-Century Fiction , Vol. 19, No. 4, 1965, pp. 379-385.

Web links

Wikisource: Vril: The Power of the Coming Race; The New Utopia  - Sources and full texts (English)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke: The Occult Roots of National Socialism. marixverlag GmbH 2009. p. 187.
  2. ↑ a b Barbara Schaff: The Coming Race . In: Kindlers Literatur Lexikon , 3rd, completely revised edition, JB Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2009 (accessed from Bücherhallen Hamburg on August 12, 2020).
  3. ^ Geoffrey Wagner: A Forgotten Satire: Bulwer-Lytton's The Coming Race . In: Nineteenth-Century Fiction , Vol. 19, No. 4, 1965, pp. 379-385.
  4. ^ Günther Jürgensmeier: Afterword . In: Edward Bulwer-Lytton: The Coming Gender . dtv, Munich, 1999, pp. 185-213, here: pp. 192-210.
  5. ^ Günther Jürgensmeier: Afterword . In: Edward Bulwer-Lytton: The Coming Gender . dtv, Munich, 1999, pp. 185–213, here: pp. 211 f ..
  6. ↑ cf. z. B. Geoffrey Wagner: A Forgotten Satire: Bulwer-Lytton's The Coming Race . In: Nineteenth-Century Fiction , Vol. 19, No. 4., 1965, pp. 379-385.
  7. ^ David Seed: Introduction . In: Edward Bulwer-Lytton: The Coming Race . Wesleyan University Press, 2005, pp. XXXIX.
  8. ↑ Günther Jürgensmeier: Notes . In: Edward Bulwer-Lytton: The Coming Gender . dtv, Munich, 1999, pp. 224-250, here: pp. 232-233.
  9. ^ Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke : Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism and the Politics of Identity . New York UP, New York 2002, ISBN 0-8147-3124-4 , p. 113. Goodrick-Clarke refers to the neuter form virile .
  10. ↑ Günther Jürgensmeier: Notes . In: Edward Bulwer-Lytton: The Coming Gender . dtv, Munich, 1999, pp. 224–250, here: p. 228.
  11. ^ Günther Jürgensmeier: Materials . In: Edward Bulwer-Lytton: The Coming Gender . dtv, Munich, 1999, pp. 214–223, here: p. 214.
  12. ^ Günther Jürgensmeier: Materials . In: Edward Bulwer-Lytton: The Coming Gender . dtv, Munich, 1999, pp. 214-223, here: p. 215.
  13. ↑ Colin Manlove: Charles Kingsley, HG Wells, and the Machine in Victorian Fiction . In: Nineteenth-Century Literature, Vol. 48, No. 2, 1993, pp. 212-239, here: pp. 224-225.
  14. ^ Julian Strube: Vril. An occult elemental force in theosophy and esoteric neo-Nazism . 2013, pp. 21–32.
  15. ^ Günther Jürgensmeier: Materials . In: Edward Bulwer-Lytton: The Coming Gender . dtv, Munich, 1999, pp. 214–223, here: p. 216.
  16. ^ David Seed: Bibliography . In: Edward Bulwer-Lytton: The Coming Race . Wesleyan University Press, 2005, pp. 190-191.
  17. ^ Gerhard Lindenstruth: Edward Bulwer Lytton. A bibliography of publications in the German-speaking area . Private printing, Giessen 1994, p. 28.
  18. ^ David Seed: Introduction . In: Edward Bulwer-Lytton: The Coming Race . Wesleyan University Press, 2005, p. XLI.
  19. ^ Julian Strube: Vril. An occult elemental force in theosophy and esoteric neo-Nazism . 2013, 48ff.
  20. ↑ Detailed in Julian Strube: Vril. An occult elemental force in theosophy and esoteric neo-Nazism . 2013, especially pp. 55–97.
  21. ↑ a b See on this Günther Jürgensmeier: Afterword . In: Edward Bulwer-Lytton: The Coming Gender . dtv, Munich 1999, pp. 185-213, p. 186.
  22. ^ David Seed: Introduction . In: Edward Bulwer-Lytton: The Coming Race . Wesleyan University Press, 2005, pp. Xiii.
  23. ^ Julian Strube: Vril. An occult elemental force in theosophy and esoteric neo-Nazism . 2013, pp. 55–64.
  24. ^ Julian Strube: Vril. An occult elemental force in theosophy and esoteric neo-Nazism . 2013, especially pp. 15–21.
  25. ↑ Cf. on this: Günther Jürgensmeier: Afterword . In: Edward Bulwer-Lytton: The Coming Gender . dtv, Munich, 1999, pp. 185-213, here: pp. 206-207; Ilse Jahn: history of biology . Berlin, Directmedia Publ., 2006. pp. 350-353, p. 505. ISBN 3-89853-538-X .