True stories (Lukian)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Lukian of Samosata (fantasy portrait of the English painter William Faithorne)

True stories ( ancient Greek Ἀληθῆ διηγήματα; Latin Verae historiae ) is a parodic travelogue of Lucian of Samosata . The story, dating from the 2nd century AD, is the earliest known literary depiction of a journey through space , extraterrestrial life forms and interplanetary warfare and is described by some authors as the first work of science fiction in the history of world literature . The work was intended by Lukian as a satire against contemporary and earlier historiography , which uncritically presented fantastic and mythological events as facts.

action

Lukian sails west through the Pillars of Heracles (the Strait of Gibraltar ) with a group of adventurous heroes to discover new lands and peoples across the Atlantic . They are blown off their course by a strong wind and land on an island after 79 days. There you will find a vinous river full of fish and an inscription that Heracles and Dionysus traveled to this place, as well as normal and huge footprints. They discover hybrid creatures who are half woman, half grapevine. Some of the companions are transformed into hybrid beings themselves when they have sexual intercourse with these beings. Lukian invents the word Ampelomixia (Greek ἀμπελομιξία ) for this "grapevine mating " .

After they leave the island, their ship is hit by a cyclone and thrown through the air for seven days until they finally land on the moon . The king of the moon wages war against the king of the sun for the morning star . In the armies of the two opponents there are anthropomorphic mushrooms, acorn- riding cynocephalic and cloud centaurs . Lukian describes the geography of the sun, moon, stars and planets and the characteristics of their respective inhabitants in detail. For example, there are no women on the moon and children grow up in the calves of men.

Upon returning to Earth, the adventurers are swallowed up by a two hundred mile long whale . In it live different groups of people who wage war against each other. After their escape from the whale they find a sea of milk with an island of cheese and then even the island of the blessed , where they meet the heroes of the Trojan War and other mythological figures and finally even meet Homer . You will also see there how Herodotus is punished with eternal torment for spreading lies in his histories .

Lukian and his companions travel on to Ogygia and deliver a letter to Calypso , which Odysseus has given them and in which he expresses his regret for leaving her, although he could have become immortal with her. On their onward journey they come across a crevice in the ocean, but can circumnavigate it, discover a new continent and decide to explore it. The story ends quite abruptly at this point with Lukian's hint that her adventures on the new continent will be the subject of the next volume.

Literary genre

Lukian's True Stories defy clear classification. Its various aspects have led to classifications as science fiction , fantasy , satire or parody .

satire

The satirical interpretation assumes that Lukian wrote the True Stories as a kind of literary criticism in order to critically examine the methods of contemporary historiography in which fantastic or mythological events were portrayed as true. He mentions works by Ktesias , Iambulos and Homer and remarks: "What surprised me most of all was their expectation that no one would notice their lies ." Lukian reproduces various people and events in a ridiculously exaggerated manner in order to find out about the originals to make fun of. He also says explicitly: “ I have neither seen nor experienced the True Stories or heard from others; they are things that do not exist and also could not exist at all. My readers mustn't believe a word of it. ”Lukian justifies the title by saying that his book is the only true mythological story that has ever been written because it is the only one to admit that it is merely a lie. At the end he promises a sequel in the next volume, which also turns out to be a lie.

Science fiction

Interpretations from the field of science fiction see no fundamental conflict between the satirical intent of the author and the science fiction genre. The defining element of science would be in Lukian's specific and effective method of highlighting the weaknesses of his contemporaries' approach; The True Stories are therefore a form of criticism of science. The work was also intended as a response to the (not preserved) marvelous things beyond Thule des Antonios Diogenes , in which science fiction elements also appeared. The alienating impression of the work is also seen as a defining science fiction element:

“... the True Stories can be seen as true science fiction because Lukian creates a feeling of 'cognitive alienation' that Darko Suvin described as defining the genre - that is, the description of an alien world that differs from ours radically different, but still with our knowledge assignable elements. "

- SC Fredericks

According to Greg Grewell's definition of science fiction, which primarily focuses on the struggle between supposedly superior and inferior forms of life, that part of the true stories qualifies it as science fiction, which allows Lukian and his companions to participate in a struggle for territory and colonial influence:

“'The king of the inhabitants of the sun, Phaeton, ' said Endymion , king of the moon, 'has long been at war with us. One day I gathered my poorest subjects together and founded a colony with them on the morning star, which was empty and uninhabited. Phaeton wanted to prevent this out of jealousy and attacked us with his dragoons . We were beaten because his men were outnumbered and we withdrew. But now I want to go back to war and re-establish the colony. "

Typical science fiction topoi in True Stories are, for example:

  • Travel to space
  • Encounter with extraterrestrial life forms, including first contact
  • Interplanetary war
  • Colonization of other planets
  • Worlds that function according to different physical laws

The English writer Kingsley Amis writes:

"I just want to note that the verve and sophistication of True Stories make them read like a joke from today's perspective at the expense of almost all science fiction written between around 1910 and 1940."

- Kingsley Amis

Text output

literature

  • SC Fredericks: Lucian's True History as SF. In: Science Fiction Studies. Volume 3, No. 1, 1976, pp. 49-60 ( online ).
  • Aristoula Georgiadou, David, HJ Larmour: Lucian's Science Fiction Novel True Histories. Interpretation and Commentary (= Mnemosyne. Supplement 179). Brill, Leiden 1998, ISBN 90-04-10667-7 ( online ).
  • Greg Grewell: Colonizing the Universe: Science Fictions Then, Now, and in the (Imagined) Future. In: Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature. Vol. 55, No. 2, 2001, pp. 25-47.
  • James E. Gunn: The New Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. Viking 1988, ISBN 978-0-670-81041-3 , p. 249.
  • Roy Arthur Swanson: The True, the False, and the Truly False: Lucian's Philosophical Science Fiction. In: Science Fiction Studies. Vol. 3, No. 3, 1976, pp. 227-239 ( online ).

Web links

Wikisource: True Stories  - Sources and Full Texts
Wikisource: Αληθής Ιστορία  - Original (Greek)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Greg Grewell: Colonizing the Universe: Science Fictions Then, Now, and in the (Imagined) Future. In: Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature. Volume 55, No. 2, 2001, pp. 25-47, here: pp. 30 f.
  2. ^ Roy Arthur Swanson: "Lucian of Samosata, the Greco-Syrian satirist of the second century, appears today as an exemplar of the science-fiction artist. There is little, if any, need to argue that his mythopoeic Milesian Tales and his literary fantastic voyages and utopistic hyperbole comport with the genre of science fiction; ... "
  3. ^ A b c S. C. Fredericks: Lucian's True History as SF. In: Science Fiction Studies. Volume 3, No. 1, 1976, pp. 49-60 ( online ).
  4. ↑ Aristoula Georgiadou, David HJ Larmour in their introduction: "... Lucian's Verae Historiae (" True Histories "), a fantastic journey narrative considered the earliest surviving example of Science Fiction in the Western tradition."
  5. ↑ James E. Gunn refers to the true story on p. 249 as proto-science fiction .
  6. ^ BP Reardon: Collected Ancient Greek Novels , p. 619
  7. ^ BP Reardon: Collected Ancient Greek Novels , p. 622
  8. ^ A b Roy Arthur Swanson: The True, the False, and the Truly False: Lucian's Philosophical Science Fiction. In: Science Fiction Studies. Vol. 3, No. 3, 1976, pp. 227-239 ( online ).
  9. ^ Kingsley Amis: New Maps of Hell: A Survey of Science Fiction. New York 1960, p. 28.