POLAR ATTRACTIONS

As a writer, Kevin Danby could be described as an idealist rather than a realist, and thus as one who depends on imagination more than observation - in short, as a spiritualist, so to speak, rather than a materialist. One of his favourite authors is Tolkien, the creator of that masterpiece, The Lord of the Rings. One of his main literary aversions, however, is Zola, that bulwark of literary realism. The realists he despises as paralleling a socialist approach to the world; the idealists, by contrast, he admires, as paralleling a transcendental approach to it. He likes to think of himself as a transcendentalist, a man for whom the expansion of the spiritual element in life is more important than the contraction of the material element there, relatively important as that is. He claims that progressive proletarian literature is divisible between a 'red' and a 'white' approach to the world, that one can tell whether an author is a materialist or a spiritualist, so to speak, by the nature and content of his work. We are back to a familiar distinction between the mundane and the transcendent, the emotional and the spiritual.

Not surprisingly, Danby will tell you that imaginative literature is inherently superior to its observational counterpart on the same class plane. You cannot treat the apparent and the essential approaches to literature as equal. Huxley and Koestler, though arguably petty-bourgeois authors, don't write on the same level. The one is more concerned with the inner world, the other with the outer one. Their temperaments are virtually antithetical. Schopenhauer distinguished between inner and outer when he wrote The World as Will and Representation. Danby will tell you that 'Will' corresponds to imagination and 'Representation' to observation. The imaginative author can free himself, through his work, from the representational. The observant author, no matter how engrossed in his work, remains its slave. The former aspires towards the Divine Omega, whereas the latter, dependent on representation, stems from the Diabolic Alpha. He may be orange rather than red, but he falls a long way short of white!

Kevin Danby, with his interest in politics, will tell you that a red absolutism is impossible and therefore could never arise. A world entirely given to the materialist approach to literature could never arise, because a material/spiritual dichotomy runs through the world in response to evolutionary relativity - at least this has been the case since man outgrew pagan absolutism and attained to a dualistic, and therefore partly transcendental, integrity ... with the development of religions like Christianity. Yet, in evolving away from one absolutism towards another, man will certainly arrive at a point in time when the spiritual approach to literature entirely supersedes the materialist approach, as a white, or transcendental, civilization is established throughout the world in conformity with evolutionary requirement, and man pursues an exclusively essential course towards the post-human millennium. Such an idealistic literature, appertaining to proletarian civilization, will be a good deal different from and superior to the representationally imaginative literature of masters like Tolkien and Huxley. It will be completely abstract, denying appearances in a wholly transcendent context - imagination free to wander where it may in the most radical literary essence. Man will be weaned of proton constraints in this free-electron literature of spiritual absolutism. Words would no longer be chained, like so many slaves, to appearances. They would be free to dissolve into meaningless essence. Danby is already experimenting with such abstract literature at present, in anticipation, one might say, of the coming transcendental civilization. Such literature, he claims, will complement the most serialized atonal electronic music and the most classically abstract holography.

Is he right, I wonder? Knowing Danby as I do, I would say that he's partly right or, at any rate, that what he says may hold true for a time. Certainly, visual education and/or entertainment, such as one acquires from computers, will continue to appeal to most people, since computers are to a limited extent the evolutionary successors to books. Read books? Middle-class intellectuals will probably continue to do so, but the majority of people will prefer, I feel confident, the more spiritually-relaxing medium of computers. Books are destined to die out, though not, apparently, before they've attained to a maximum essence!

* * *

"You have all the makings of a perfect female superman," Edmond Martin opined from the depths of his capacious armchair. "For one thing, you're not a liberated female and, for another, your hair is both dark and short."

"How flattering!" exclaimed Nicola Clarke, the impetus of which exclamation induced a slight shift of position in her own, not uncomfortable chair. "Though there aren't many liberated females in late twentieth-century Ireland, bearing in mind that our country isn't strictly an integral part of bourgeois/proletarian civilization, as applying, in the main, to America and Western Europe. Most women who aren't bourgeois tend to be potentially supermen."

Edmond Martin nodded confirmation and said: "Who will only become actual supermen in the future proletarian civilization, when all females are required to wear trousers and keep their hair short, like yours. There would be none of this petty-bourgeois miniskirt business with female supermen, who will be disposed, on the contrary, to symbolizing the phallic, through an exclusive adherence to dark pants, rather than the vaginal, no matter how superficially."

Nicola laughed gently before responding with: "You mean, even shallow vaginal symbolism will be out of the question with female supermen?"

"Indeed I do," Edmond Martin assured her, vigorously nodding his domed head. "At that fortunate juncture in time, society will be elevated above sexist relativity, and therefore it won't be disposed to tolerating skirts, no matter what their length. There'll be no, absolutely no, sexual discrimination! Women, thank goodness, will be a thing of the past!"

"Something which they're already becoming these days," Nicola suggested, as if to console her overly philosophic companion.

"Yes, though I still encounter a great many skirt-wearers on the street," Edmond Martin remarked through slightly-clenched teeth. "I despise such women, I can tell you! Bourgeois types, for the most part!"

Nicola couldn't resist the impulse to laugh anew, especially as she herself possessed one or two long dresses and skirts which, however, she had sometime ago given-up wearing, though they had been a regular choice during her youth, when moral ignorance made the wearing of any number of blatantly sexist things rather blissful. Youth, as Edmond had once told her, pushes everything to extremes, the reactionary as well as the progressive, and is consistent in nothing. Youthful females of his generation hadn't been at all ashamed to symbolize 'deep cunt' (as he roguishly liked to call it) - doubtless largely because they had no real idea of what long dresses and skirts were essentially all about!

"Well, at least you can't despise me on that account," Nicola at length rejoined, her amusement having made no conciliatory impression on the occupant of the other armchair. "I'm usually to be found in jeans - namely cords and denims. Though occasionally I have my feminine relapses and wear a short skirt, such as I know you personally take some pleasure in, despite your theoretical pretensions. After all, I'm only potentially a female superman. Just as you, in this transitional period of evolutionary time, are only potentially a male superman and therefore don't automatically object to my skirt-wearing tendencies."

Edmond Martin blushed faintly, more out of a need to quell the amusement mounting in his soul than as a betrayal of embarrassment. "What I would automatically object to," he asseverated, "is the sight of your miniskirted legs bereft of nylon stockings! I don't mind being confronted by the graceful outlines of your legs, providing the flesh is covered. And preferably in a dark colour, like the pairs of blue and black stockings you habitually wear. Anything else would strike my potentially transcendental psyche as unacceptably pagan."

This time it was Nicola's turn to blush, and not from suppressed amusement either! "Whilst I may have paraded bare legs from time to time in my youth," she confessed, "I would no more think of doing so these days, than of going about in a long skirt. As you well know!"

"Indeed I do," Edmond Martin admitted, his own blush having subsided. "Though it's pleasantly reassuring to be reminded of the fact." He took a short reflective pause, then continued: "Of course, like skirts, stockings will become obsolete in the future, since they pertain to a relative age and are what, in common parlance, one might describe as 'the best of a bad job', largely because they cover the flesh without actually hiding its contours, like a pair of trousers would tend to do."

"Trousers don't hide the contours of a female's rump," Nicola briskly retorted.

"Thank goodness for that!" Edmond Martin declared. "For if they did, you'd never get women to wear them."

* * *

As a philosopher Edmond Martin stands head and shoulders above his contemporaries, mainly because he writes from a broadly proletarian rather than a narrowly petty-bourgeois point of view. None of his works has been published in the West to-date, which is only to be expected, since what he writes has little or no applicability to Western society as it's currently constituted. This isn’t to say it would be welcomed with open arms in the former Soviet East at this point in time, either! There is too much transcendentalism in his work for that to happen. Socialists, he assures me, will be converted to transcendentalism in due course, once circumstances permit the supersession of Marxism and the world tends towards a white absolutism from a social base. One apparently can't expect any such thing to happen for some time yet, however.

Getting back to the West, which Edmond Martin characterizes as a bourgeois/proletarian civilization, the fact is, he tells me, that artists fare much better than philosophers as a rule, and for a very good reason: namely that the emphasis in an extreme relative civilization will be on entertainment rather than information, enlightenment, or instruction. In other words, being entertained is the norm for a civilization such as this, particularly when it is drawing towards a climax and actually existing in its ultimate spiritual manifestation. Entertainment, which he sees as the chief business of petty-bourgeois artists, accords with the beingful essence of this stage of relative civilization - instruction and/or enlightenment, by contrast, affirming a doingful ethic which, whilst of some applicability to the West, could become dangerously irrelevant to the spiritual integrity of such a civilization, and for the simple reason that, in any extreme guise, it would counsel or encourage revolutionary change where none was desired. Such counsel, he maintains, can only be applicable to a state historically destined for revolution, that is to say, to one that isn't strictly an integral part of bourgeois/proletarian civilization and is therefore entitled to its philosopher, whose instruction should fall, like seed, on fallow ground, to bring forth the fruit of revolutionary change.

So one must distinguish, he informs us, between the educator and the entertainer, and understand that while the former will be something of a pariah in an extreme relative civilization, such as currently exists in the West, the latter will be honoured as the creator of a literary 'promised land' germane to the ideological integrity of the civilization in question. Only a few philosophers can be tolerated in such a civilization and, needless to say, they will have to be bourgeois or petty-bourgeois types, whose work falls well-short of advocating revolutionary change. Their status as philosophers, however, will fall somewhat short of the leading artists.

Of course, writing on a proletarian level, Edmond Martin isn't strictly a philosopher but, so he tells me, a philosophical theosophist, a status which apparently signifies a convergence to omega on the level of philosophically-biased literature - pure philosophy, according to him, being a thing of the past, modern philosophic writing having to accommodate itself to the poetic bias of the age and transcend philosophy from a literary base. The contemporary petty-bourgeois variety will do so relatively, which is to say, in terms of being divisible between an essayistic purism and a novelistic relativity in which philosophical theorizing will predominate, constituting the very raison d'être, as it were, of their existence. The futuristic proletarian variety will, in accordance with post-atomic criteria, transcend philosophy absolutely, which is to say, from the homogeneous context of philosophical theosophy - the resultant volume transcending both the absolute context of pure philosophy and the relative context of novelistic literature. Hence Edmond Martin can be described as neither a philosopher nor a novelist but only as a philosophical theosophist, the root educator/enlightener appertaining to the inception and subsequent development of an absolute civilization. There isn't likely, he tells me, to be another such educator/enlightener after him, but only - and here I have to smile - poetical theosophists, or people, like me, whose business it will be to entertain the proletariat on the supreme level of a transcendent poetic absolutism.

Is he right about this, I wonder? Certainly I have no wish to argue with the claim put forward for himself, since it is unlikely that proletarian society will require another philosophical theosophist after his definitive truth! But as regards poetic transcendentalists, I'm not so sure, bearing in mind that, as Edmond Martin conceives of it, transcendentalism would entail the poetic treatment of both short prose and novelettes (alternatively regarded, within this context, as medium prose) in volumes destined to culminate with or intimate of absolute poetry. Now surely that would constitute a concession to petty-bourgeois relativity, whereas, if the forthcoming age is to be truly absolutist on proletarian terms, no such concession ought to exist? Rather, volumes of free-electron poetry would be compiled by poets either working together or being published together in anthologies, the resultant publication constituting a transcendent poetry. Maybe I am wrong about this, overlooking the moral significance of transcending traditional terminology in a literature which reflects a convergence to omega, as it were, on poetical terms? Yet somehow, my artist's instinct tells me, as Edmond Martin's philosophical one never could, that this isn't necessarily so.

* * *

"I very much doubt that women-become-supermen will be directly dependent on men-become-supermen for getting pregnant in the next civilization," Kevin Danby opined as, in the comfort of his bedroom, he put an arm round his girlfriend's slender waist and drew her closer to himself, the resulting upright postures at the foot of his bed suggesting the possibility that, at any moment, the pair of them might tip over backwards onto their backs.

"You mean that female supermen will have better things to do than involve themselves in a sexist relationship with their male counterparts," Yvonne Driscoll suggested, in a delicately ambivalent tone-of-voice.

"Putting it less generously than you, I would argue that they won't be permitted to involve themselves in sexist relationships with their male counterparts at all," said Kevin Danby, "since encouraged to maintain an absolute sexuality employing vibrators of one description or another instead. The male supermen will likewise be encouraged to do the same thing, though their sexual absolutism, when not availing itself of plastic inflatables, will be centred on unisexual erotica of one degree or another, involving female supermen in a variety of, for the most part, rump-biased postures. Probably such pornographic erotica won't make any great concessions to coital relativity but will be absolutist, that's to say, employing but one model in each photo."

Yvonne smiled faintly, her comprehension of the situation in no doubt, and asked: "But how, in such a sexually absolute civilization, where vibrators and/or plastic inflatables and rump-biased erotica were the norms, would women - I mean, female supermen - become pregnant?"

"Indirectly," Danby replied, his choice of word harnessed to the terminological bias of an earlier statement. "In other words, through artificial insemination, as involving a suitable syringe and quantity of sperm extracted from a sperm bank, its quality or vintage, so to speak, readily ascertainable and regulated by the state, or whatever. In all probability, there would be two kinds of sperm bank - one for the leaders and another for the led, each of which would stock a range of sperm from donors approximating to the same I.Q. levels. Professional female supermen would be entitled to quantities from the first kind, their non-professional counterparts to quantities from the second."

"And how would each category of female superman obtain access to any given quantity of sperm?" Yvonne inquired of him, not unreasonably in the circumstances.

"I dare say by submitting a form, obtainable from the relevant propagation authorities, to the effect that they desired a pregnancy, and giving information about themselves and their donor preferences," he obligingly replied. "It could transpire that this will become strictly regulated by the authorities in the course of time, thereby making at least one pregnancy compulsory for every female superman and ensuring, in the process, that the number and dates of artificial inseminations were recorded in the interests of social control. Too many female supermen becoming pregnant simultaneously could lead to social chaos, and not only in terms of a lack of hospital beds, either! With vital professional/industrial roles for them to fulfil, one couldn't very well leave the artificial insemination of such supermen completely to chance. Certainly the state would have to serve the people in this matter, as in so many other matters, and thus ensure the continued rational functioning of proletarian civilization. I dare say there would be a maximum of two pregnancies for each female superman, in order to minimize her natural/sensual obligations and enable her to continue in an everyday artificial role during the greater part of her adult life. After all, children would require collective upbringing in specially-run nurseries, though again a distinction would have to be upheld between nurseries and/or schools for the offspring of professional people, and nurseries and/or schools for the offspring of the masses in general."

Yvonne nodded her understanding of the subtle logic behind this contention and remarked: "Though whereas in a relative civilization there exists an absolute distinction between each type of school, in an absolute civilization, on the contrary, there would exist only a relative distinction, as between two different types of school - one for the education of a future transcendental leadership, and the other for the general improvement of the proletariat."

"Yes, and all the latter type of schools would approximate to what, in an extreme relative civilization, is termed a mixed comprehensive," he averred. "Only, one wouldn't speak of mixed schools in an absolute, non-sexist civilization. Possibly, by then, Christian names would have been superseded by transcendental names, assuming 'names' is really the word. For it seems unlikely that Christian names, not to mention surnames, would be respected in a transcendental civilization. Probably names will be completely different or, more likely, people simply be referred to by numbers."

Yvonne frowned slightly and said: "It seems that you're dissatisfied with anything which isn't completely impersonal!"

Kevin Danby gently nodded his head, chuckled briefly, and admitted: "To be sure, and that applies as much to effecting pregnancies as to transcending Christian names. A self-introduced artificial insemination, officially regulated by the powers-that-be, would guarantee both impersonality and the preservation of the absolute sexual integrity of a female superman in a transcendental age. Never again would those capable of becoming pregnant be directly dependent on natural means of acquiring sperm. That, you may be sure, will constitute a significant progression in human affairs!"