Reading Environmental Apocalypse in J.-H. Rosny Aîné
223
rayonnement toujours émanant de la base, et ces caractères restent un instant fixés,
puis s’effacent. (p. 639)
While the motif of writing on stone is evoked once again, the ephemeral character of the Xipéhuz script seems to hint at the corresponding
impermanence of its scribes, for, as Maraud notes, Rosny’s aim in this
work is to exalt “la fonction proprement humaine de l’écriture, qui
conserve la mémoire de l’espèce”.
8
Thus anticipated, the destruction of the Xipéhuz is inevitable
once Bakhoûn has discovered their Achilles heel. Susceptible to attack
at the luminous star formation which is the sole vulnerable point of
their otherwise indestructible anatomy, the redoubtable creatures are
reduced to mere rubble by the massed hordes of tribal warriors armed
with arrows and spears during two days of intensive combat. The only
reminders of their existence are Bakhoûn’s narrative and the mysterious “cristaux jaunâtres, disposés irrégulièrement, et striés de filets
bleus” (p. 637), conserved for posterity in a London museum, between
which Maraud draws the following comparison:
Histoire des origines, le livre lapidaire est aussi l’origine de l’histoire. […] Le texte
oppose légitimement aux “débris minéraux”, restes fossiles des “vivants” que furent
les Xipéhuz, et qui se refusent à l’analyse, “les tables de granit” où Bakhoûn a inscrit
leur histoire, véritables pierres vives qui constituent le premier des livres...
9
Bakhoûn’s writings are thus presented by Rosny as a fictitious exemplar of man’s first conscious efforts to record his own history for presumed future generations. The sixty painstakingly
inscribed stone tablets constituting this magnificent artefact dating
from earliest antiquity are, however, dwarfed in scale and significance
by the much greater livre lapidaire of the Earth. Truly “le premier des
livres”, the Earth may be understood as the vast and still unfinished
multi-volume work from which these few stone pages have themselves been cut, in which a record of all living things throughout the
ages is contained. It is to Rosny’s rendering of the evolutionary narrative running through the entirety of this vast geological chronicle,
within which the story of mankind is no more than a brief chapter,
that we shall now turn.
___________________________
8 Maraud, “Le Texte à l’origine de l’histoire”, p. 104.
9 Maraud, “Le Texte à l’origine de l’histoire”, p. 106.
223
rayonnement toujours émanant de la base, et ces caractères restent un instant fixés,
puis s’effacent. (p. 639)
While the motif of writing on stone is evoked once again, the ephemeral character of the Xipéhuz script seems to hint at the corresponding
impermanence of its scribes, for, as Maraud notes, Rosny’s aim in this
work is to exalt “la fonction proprement humaine de l’écriture, qui
conserve la mémoire de l’espèce”.
8
Thus anticipated, the destruction of the Xipéhuz is inevitable
once Bakhoûn has discovered their Achilles heel. Susceptible to attack
at the luminous star formation which is the sole vulnerable point of
their otherwise indestructible anatomy, the redoubtable creatures are
reduced to mere rubble by the massed hordes of tribal warriors armed
with arrows and spears during two days of intensive combat. The only
reminders of their existence are Bakhoûn’s narrative and the mysterious “cristaux jaunâtres, disposés irrégulièrement, et striés de filets
bleus” (p. 637), conserved for posterity in a London museum, between
which Maraud draws the following comparison:
Histoire des origines, le livre lapidaire est aussi l’origine de l’histoire. […] Le texte
oppose légitimement aux “débris minéraux”, restes fossiles des “vivants” que furent
les Xipéhuz, et qui se refusent à l’analyse, “les tables de granit” où Bakhoûn a inscrit
leur histoire, véritables pierres vives qui constituent le premier des livres...
9
Bakhoûn’s writings are thus presented by Rosny as a fictitious exemplar of man’s first conscious efforts to record his own history for presumed future generations. The sixty painstakingly
inscribed stone tablets constituting this magnificent artefact dating
from earliest antiquity are, however, dwarfed in scale and significance
by the much greater livre lapidaire of the Earth. Truly “le premier des
livres”, the Earth may be understood as the vast and still unfinished
multi-volume work from which these few stone pages have themselves been cut, in which a record of all living things throughout the
ages is contained. It is to Rosny’s rendering of the evolutionary narrative running through the entirety of this vast geological chronicle,
within which the story of mankind is no more than a brief chapter,
that we shall now turn.
___________________________
8 Maraud, “Le Texte à l’origine de l’histoire”, p. 104.
9 Maraud, “Le Texte à l’origine de l’histoire”, p. 106.