Certainly, the forms in which these ideas were received and the ways in which they were diffused—by Fourier on the one hand, by Nerval and Baudelaire on the other—were very different. What for the latter two affects and reinforces their immutable concept of the sacred, unleashes in the fundamentally profane mind of the former a turbulent principle whose sole aim is the conquest of happiness. Contrast—which in Fourier’s system is the first “serial” condition, necessary to satisfy the “butterfly” passion—is the fully armed Minerva surging from a head in which, on the transcendental plane, hyperlucidity and extreme rigor in matters of social criticism are allied with total freedom of conjecture. Someone has suggested that “a good thesis topic might be Fourier as humorist and mystifier.” It is certain that a humor of very high tension, punctuated by sparks such as might be generated between the two Rousseaus (Jean-Jacques and Henri), crowns this lighthouse, one of the brightest I know of, whose base defies time and whose crest is thrust into the heavens.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Théorie des quatre Mouvements, 1806. Traité de l’association domestique-agricole, 1822. Le Nouveau Monde industriel et sociétaire, 1829. Pièges et Charlatanisme des deux sectes de Saint-Simon et d’Owen, 1831. La Fausse Industrie morcelée, 1835–1836. “Publication des manuscrits de Fourier,”* in La Phalange, etc.
BIBLIOGRAPHY IN ENGLISH: Theory of the Four Movements. Theory of the Function of the Human Passions. Design for Utopia: Selected Writings. The UtopianVision of Charles Fourier (selections). Harmonian Man (selections).
* “From an examination of the manuscripts that have already been printed, it is clear that everything concerning the relations between the sexes in Harmony or in other periods has been highly expurgated. Notebooks 50 through 54, class mark 9, of the listing established upon Fourier’s death remain unpublished, or almost entirely unpublished.” (Maurice Lansac, Les Conceptions méthodologiques et sociales de Charles Fourier.) At last word, these notebooks seem to have disappeared during the recent war, while being secretly transferred from the library of the Ecole Normale Supérieure as part of an effort to safeguard the most precious documents housed there.
* Karl Marx, The German Ideology.
† Friedrich Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific.
* Auguste Viatte, Victor Hugo et les Illuminés de son temps.
CORONA BOREALIS
When the human race has exploited the globe beyond 60 degrees north latitude, the temperature of the planet will grow noticeably milder and more stable; rutting activities will increase. The aurora borealis, which will occur very frequently, will attach itself to the North Pole and flare out in the form of a ring or corona. The fluid, which today is only luminous, will acquire a new property: the ability to distribute heat as well as light.
The corona will be of such dimensions that at least one of its points will always be in contact with the sun, whose rays will be needed to embrace the circumference of the ring: it should present the sun with an arc, even in the sharpest inclination of the earth’s axis.
The influence of the corona borealis will make itself strongly felt up through the first third of its hemisphere; it will be visible in St. Petersburg, in Okuotsk, and in every region of the 60th parallel.
From the 60th degree to the Pole, the heat will increase in such a way that the polar crust will enjoy temperatures comparable to those in Andalusia and Sicily.
At that point, the entire globe can be cultivated, which will cause temperatures to rise by five or six and even twelve degrees in still uncultivated areas such as Siberia and Upper Canada.
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While waiting for this future event to take place, let us note the various indicators that announce it. First, there is the contrast in shape between the lands neighboring the South Pole and those neighboring the North Pole. The three meridional continents are sharpened into a point, so as to distance themselves from the polar latitude. But we notice a completely different shape in the septentrional continents; they flare out as they near the Pole and group around it, to absorb rays from the ring that will one day crown it; they pour their great rivers toward it, as if to encourage relations with the glacial sea. Now, if God had not planned to give the fecundating corona to the North Pole, it would follow that the arrangements of continents surrounding this Pole would bespeak a monumental ineptitude. And God would be all the more ridiculous for having acted so very unwisely at the opposite point, on the southern continents; for he has given them dimensions perfectly suited to surrounding a pole that will never have a fecundating corona.
One can regret only that God pushed the tip of the Strait of Magellan too far down, which causes a momentary hindrance; but his intent is for the entire route to be abandoned, and for man to build canals in the isthmuses of Suez and Panama through which large craft can navigate. These projects and so many others, the very idea of which horrifies the Civilized, will be mere child’s play for the industrial armies of the Spheric hierarchy.
Another harbinger of the corona is the defective positioning of the earth’s axis. If we assume that the corona shall never be, then the axis, for the good of the two continents, should be reversed by one-twenty-fourth, or seven and one-half degrees, on the meridians of Sandwick and Constantinople; so that this capital would be located at the 32nd parallel. It follows that the Bering Strait and the two tips of Asia and America would sink by the same amount into the ice of the North Pole: it would mean sacrificing the most useless tip of the globe to benefit the other portions.
No one has ever made this observation on the inappropriateness of the axis, because the philosophical spirit makes us shy away from any rational critique of God’s works and adopt extreme positions, whether doubt of Providence or blind and stupid admiration—as is the case with a few scientists, who admire even the spider, even the toad and other such filth, in which we can see only the Creator’s shame, at least until we can learn the motives for this misdeed. It is the same with the earth’s axis, whose deviant position should induce us to disapprove of God, and divine the birth of the corona that will justify the Creator’s apparent blunder. But because our philosophical exaggeration, our mania for either atheism or admiration, has diverted us from any impartial judgment of God’s works, we have managed neither to determine the rectifications required of his work, nor to foresee the material and political revolutions by which he will effect these corrections.
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—from Theory of the Four Movements
THE UNION OF THE SEXES IN THE SEVENTH PERIOD [AND NOT THE EIGHTH]
In the cuckolded world, we may distinguish nine degrees of Cuckoldry, either among men or among women, for women are much more frequently