Louise Lyle
228
set out in Philosophie Zoologique of 1809, enjoyed something of renaissance in fin-de-siècle France, offering a more harmonious and progressive vision of the development of life on earth than Darwin’s
ostensibly conflictual theories. Asserting that environmental influences could effect direct change in an organism, and that such acquired changes could, furthermore, be bequeathed to the organism’s
offspring, Lamarckian transformisme posited the progressive development over the course of generations of ever more organically sophisticated creatures who would be increasingly closely attuned to the
demands of their environment. While in the Darwinian evolutionary
model the environment acts as a kind of filter, serving to eliminate the
least well-adapted organisms, thereby improving future breeding
stock, Lamarck’s alternative system envisages living creatures engaged in a closer and more responsive partnership with their native
milieu. Classifying Lamarckian thought “plus ‘écologiste’”
20 than that
of Darwin, Bozzetto highlights Rosny’s attraction to this idea of a
close cause-and-effect relationship between milieu and organism in
his works. Viewed within the framework of just such a Lamarckian
evolutionary narrative, the character and constitution of the inhabitants, human or otherwise, of Rosny’s worlds may be read from the
terrestrial “texts” in which the action takes place.
In La Mort de la Terre, the “extraordinaires remaniements du
sol” (p. 136) that have become the norm gradually lead to the total
disappearance of organic life forms, such as we know them. Mankind’s imminent and inevitable disaster is clearly foretold in the drastic remodelling of the earth’s surface, notably in the disappearance of
rivers and, indeed, whole seas, as well as of all kinds of naturally irrigated land, including “les bois, les landes, les marais, les steppes [et]
les jachères”, which have been replaced by “les monts [qui] pullulaient, immenses et funèbres” (p. 138). Beyond the crippling population reductions which are the most striking effect of the geological
phenomena etched so unmistakably into the earth’s outer crust, the effects of the on-going catastrophe are most clearly legible in the demeanour of the earth’s remaining organic population. Rosny’s
descriptive use of mineralogical terms in relation to the tribesmen,
who variously resemble “un bloc de basalte” (p. 125), or who have
“des cheveux aussi noirs que l’anthracite” (p. 122), and to the birds of
___________________________
20 Bozzetto, “Wells et Rosny”, p. 8.
228
set out in Philosophie Zoologique of 1809, enjoyed something of renaissance in fin-de-siècle France, offering a more harmonious and progressive vision of the development of life on earth than Darwin’s
ostensibly conflictual theories. Asserting that environmental influences could effect direct change in an organism, and that such acquired changes could, furthermore, be bequeathed to the organism’s
offspring, Lamarckian transformisme posited the progressive development over the course of generations of ever more organically sophisticated creatures who would be increasingly closely attuned to the
demands of their environment. While in the Darwinian evolutionary
model the environment acts as a kind of filter, serving to eliminate the
least well-adapted organisms, thereby improving future breeding
stock, Lamarck’s alternative system envisages living creatures engaged in a closer and more responsive partnership with their native
milieu. Classifying Lamarckian thought “plus ‘écologiste’”
20 than that
of Darwin, Bozzetto highlights Rosny’s attraction to this idea of a
close cause-and-effect relationship between milieu and organism in
his works. Viewed within the framework of just such a Lamarckian
evolutionary narrative, the character and constitution of the inhabitants, human or otherwise, of Rosny’s worlds may be read from the
terrestrial “texts” in which the action takes place.
In La Mort de la Terre, the “extraordinaires remaniements du
sol” (p. 136) that have become the norm gradually lead to the total
disappearance of organic life forms, such as we know them. Mankind’s imminent and inevitable disaster is clearly foretold in the drastic remodelling of the earth’s surface, notably in the disappearance of
rivers and, indeed, whole seas, as well as of all kinds of naturally irrigated land, including “les bois, les landes, les marais, les steppes [et]
les jachères”, which have been replaced by “les monts [qui] pullulaient, immenses et funèbres” (p. 138). Beyond the crippling population reductions which are the most striking effect of the geological
phenomena etched so unmistakably into the earth’s outer crust, the effects of the on-going catastrophe are most clearly legible in the demeanour of the earth’s remaining organic population. Rosny’s
descriptive use of mineralogical terms in relation to the tribesmen,
who variously resemble “un bloc de basalte” (p. 125), or who have
“des cheveux aussi noirs que l’anthracite” (p. 122), and to the birds of
___________________________
20 Bozzetto, “Wells et Rosny”, p. 8.