Reading Environmental Apocalypse in J.-H. Rosny Aîné
225
Vie soit souillée par les Ténèbres du Meurtre!” (p. 652). This sense of
solidarity with other, non-human life forms signals the emergence of a
kind of ecological morality in Rosny’s thought, to which we shall return in the latter sections of this chapter.
The awareness that the rise to supremacy of one species is
typically purchased by the extinction of another, as shown by Bakhoûn, meanwhile constitutes a further recurrent theme in Rosny’s
writing. In Les Navigateurs de l’infini, for instance, it is only the courage and technological know-how of a group of human explorers that
saves the Martian Tripèdes, a species of sympathetic, intelligent beings who have fallen prey to a kind of endemic apathy, a chronic
“défaut d’initiative”,
14 from being overcome by enemy species collectively known as the Zoomorphes. Having explained that “[t]ous les
vivants ont leur fin du monde!” (p. 61), the chief of the Tripèdes extends his rationale to his human visitors, whose superiority he has already acknowledged, in his prescience of an era in which “le déclin
des hommes aura commencé” (pp. 80-81).
Contemporary anxieties about degeneration and racial decline
may well have had an important influence on Rosny’s ultimately pessimistic prognosis for the human race, “dont il évoque la déchéance
biologique, et ceci avec une imperceptible délectation au parfum ‘finde-siècle’”, as Daniel Couegnas notes.
15 A more profound awareness
of the workings of nature may, however, be discerned in Rosny’s
thought, inasmuch as he considers that “[l]a fin des hommes est programmée depuis leur apparition, de même que chaque être humain
porte en lui la trace de l’évolution”.
16 The built-in obsolescence which
Rosny’s Martian chief identifies as an essential characteristic of all
organic life therefore serves to displace mankind from its presumed
position of ultimate superiority over all other species by contextualizing humanity’s rise and correspondingly inevitable fall within a
broader evolutionary movement taking place over eons of geological
time. This movement may be understood not as a teleological progression towards the establishment of man as nature’s highest achieve___________________________
14 J.-H. Rosny Aîné, Les Navigateurs de l’infini. La Mort de la Terre (Paris: Denoël,
1983), pp. 7-93, p. 91. Subsequent page references to this text will be given in brackets after the relevant quotation.
15 Daniel Couegnas, “Préhistoire et récit ‘préhistorique’ chez Rosny et Wells”,
Europe, no. 681-682, jan-fév 1986, 18-29, p. 26.
16 Compère, “La Fin des hommes”, p. 31.
225
Vie soit souillée par les Ténèbres du Meurtre!” (p. 652). This sense of
solidarity with other, non-human life forms signals the emergence of a
kind of ecological morality in Rosny’s thought, to which we shall return in the latter sections of this chapter.
The awareness that the rise to supremacy of one species is
typically purchased by the extinction of another, as shown by Bakhoûn, meanwhile constitutes a further recurrent theme in Rosny’s
writing. In Les Navigateurs de l’infini, for instance, it is only the courage and technological know-how of a group of human explorers that
saves the Martian Tripèdes, a species of sympathetic, intelligent beings who have fallen prey to a kind of endemic apathy, a chronic
“défaut d’initiative”,
14 from being overcome by enemy species collectively known as the Zoomorphes. Having explained that “[t]ous les
vivants ont leur fin du monde!” (p. 61), the chief of the Tripèdes extends his rationale to his human visitors, whose superiority he has already acknowledged, in his prescience of an era in which “le déclin
des hommes aura commencé” (pp. 80-81).
Contemporary anxieties about degeneration and racial decline
may well have had an important influence on Rosny’s ultimately pessimistic prognosis for the human race, “dont il évoque la déchéance
biologique, et ceci avec une imperceptible délectation au parfum ‘finde-siècle’”, as Daniel Couegnas notes.
15 A more profound awareness
of the workings of nature may, however, be discerned in Rosny’s
thought, inasmuch as he considers that “[l]a fin des hommes est programmée depuis leur apparition, de même que chaque être humain
porte en lui la trace de l’évolution”.
16 The built-in obsolescence which
Rosny’s Martian chief identifies as an essential characteristic of all
organic life therefore serves to displace mankind from its presumed
position of ultimate superiority over all other species by contextualizing humanity’s rise and correspondingly inevitable fall within a
broader evolutionary movement taking place over eons of geological
time. This movement may be understood not as a teleological progression towards the establishment of man as nature’s highest achieve___________________________
14 J.-H. Rosny Aîné, Les Navigateurs de l’infini. La Mort de la Terre (Paris: Denoël,
1983), pp. 7-93, p. 91. Subsequent page references to this text will be given in brackets after the relevant quotation.
15 Daniel Couegnas, “Préhistoire et récit ‘préhistorique’ chez Rosny et Wells”,
Europe, no. 681-682, jan-fév 1986, 18-29, p. 26.
16 Compère, “La Fin des hommes”, p. 31.