I have finished reading the 1961 novel Solaris that I mentioned in my last post. I rank it as one of the better sci-fi books I have read because of its disturbing realism. None of these humanoid extra-terrestrials that are now so common - here all attempts to make satisfactory contact with the alien fail and yet it wreaks havoc. The characters, with all their inhibitions, distrust and confusion, are not straightforward. Many questions in their and the reader's minds are purposely left unanswered. Which all resonate with common experience.
The protagonist Kris Kelvin falls in love with an alien-created avatar of his long-deceased love Rheya and doggedly will not accept that she will probably cease to exist on leaving Solaris for Earth. Even after his colleagues force the issue by destroying the avatar, and some semblance of normality has returned, he ends up abandoning his original plan to return to Earth and the book ends "Must I go on living here the, among the objects we both had touched, in the air she had breathed... In the hope of her return? And yet I lived in expectation. Since she had gone, that was all that remained... I persisted in the faith that the time of cruel miracles was not past".
Earlier in the book Kris observes: "We all know that we are material creatures, subject to the laws of physiology and physics, and not even the power of all our feelings combined can defeat those laws. All we can do is detest them. The age-old faith of lovers and poets in the power of love, stronger than death, that finis vitae sed non amoris (the end of life but not of love), is a lie, useless and not even funny... Are we to grow used to the idea that every man relives ancient torments, which are all the more profound because they grow comic with repetition? That human existence should repeat itself, well and good, but that it should repeat itself like a hackneyed tune, or a record a drunkard keeps playing as he feeds coins into the jukebox..."
I found all this disturbingly reminiscent of emotions that rattle around in my ego. I hold onto relationships and principles without fully understanding why I do so. I find it difficult enough to even quantise such feelings myself, let alone explain them in writing. Had I been born, for example, to Hindu parents in India I wonder how different my inner thought processes, expectations and beliefs would be? The comparison is of course void because, if I had, I would not be "me". So maybe I am destined to remain an unknown quantity to myself - I know, O LORD, that the way of man is not in himself, that it is not in man who walks to direct his steps.
Several films have been based on the book and there are numerous web sites on the subject. For example, if you want an in depth description of the manifestations of the alien "intelligence", try here.
Apropos your entry re Solaris - and who we really are, I wonder if you have come across a poem (translated from the German) by Deitrich Bonhoeffer, written while he was in Buchenwald concentration camp awaiting execution for his protest against Hitler and his attitude to the confessing church. I think it summarises all those thoughts about who we feel/know ourselves to be and how we appear to others, and the fact that what matters is that we are known to God.
ReplyDeleteLovingly,
your sis
Who Am I? by Deitrich Bonhoeffer
Who am I? They often tell me
I stepped from my cell’s confinement
Calmly, cheerfully, firmly,
Like a Squire from his country house.
Who am I? They often tell me
I used to speak to my warders
Freely and friendly and clearly,
As thought it were mine to command.
Who am I? They also tell me
I bore the days of misfortune
Equably, smilingly, proudly,
like one accustomed to win.
Am I then really that which other men tell of?
Or am I only what I myself know of myself?
Restless and longing and sick, like a bird in a cage,
Struggling for breath, as though hands were compressing my throat,
Yearning for colours, for flowers, for the voices of birds,
Thirsting for words of kindness, for neighbourliness,
Tossing in expectations of great events,
Powerlessly trembling for friends at an infinite distance,
Weary and empty at praying, at thinking, at making,
Faint, and ready to say farewell to it all.
Who am I? This or the Other?
Am I one person today and tomorrow another?
Am I both at once? A hypocrite before others,
And before myself a contemptible woebegone weakling?
Or is something within me still like a beaten army
Fleeing in disorder from victory already achieved?
Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine.
Whoever I am, Thou knowest, O God, I am thine!