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The Latest New WorldAlexandre KojvePublished online: 30 Sep 2011.

To cite this article:Alexandre Kojve (1997) The Latest New World, Parallax, 3:1, 23-27, DOI:10.1080/13534645.1997.9522371

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The Latest New Wor ld

Alexand re Ko jve

Francoise Sagan,

onjour tristesse

(Paris: Ju ll ia rd , 1954)

-

Un Certain Sourire

(Paris: Ju ll ia rd , 1956)

T r a n s l a te d b y D a v i d M a c e y

A new type of world has been born to l i terature. And for my part , I f ind i t qui te

na tura l tha t i t should have been born in Par i s and d ia t an unmarr ied mother (d ie

mother of a purely l i terary neonate of course) should have given binh to i t .

This new world i tself was obviously not born yesterday. But aluhough research into

me quest ion is no long er forbidden, pate rni ty is far from hav ing be en defini tively

established in this case, and the procession of cla ima nts to tha t heavy responsibi l i ty

has not yet come to a close. An d yet , even du rin g the l i fet ime of die pu tat ive fadier ,

a G er m an - and he too was a genius - hinted discretely at wh at a Gr eat Co rsica

migh t be. And for m y par t , I am b eginn ing to bel ieve f irmly m at die lat ter c on qu ero r

was himself effectively respon sible for wh at was, for him , die h on ou r an d th e plea sure

of d ie conce iv ing our new wor ld . G er m an ins inua t ions as ide , d ie Ge rm an informer

saw very cleariy and predicted die nature of die chi ld he announced to the worid.

Even though many people who are well endowed with common sense st i l l fai l to

take seriously visions, even diose of thisvisionary (not to m en tion die disturbin g

visions of certain of his aposdes) , despi te the fact diat he was en am ou re d of reason

[Vernunft].

In England, however, one contemporary seemed to have seen t i l ings just as clearly.

At al l events , he certainly real ized diat , dianks to die exploi ts of his Franco-Ital ian

competi tor , the honour (which some cal l vainglorious) of vir i le heroism can now be

won (albei t in purely sartorial terms) only in civi l ian dress ( the colou r of m ou rn ing ,

of course) . But that peaceful genius died an unknown martyr to his sensat ional

discovery (which was to have unforgettable repercussions in the world, defined in

the t rue sense of the word) without leaving any l i terary t race, an d his h agio gra ph ers

never revealed to non-ini t iates die t rue meaning and import of his painful act of

witness (a French nunnery still shelters his material relics).

parallax 4 (february 1997): 23-28


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In France, final ly, the re was on ce a Ma rq ui s wh o was impriso ned by the Tyra nt but

l iberated by the People. He too understood that , in the new free world, everything

would now h ave to be com mit ted in private, especially murd ers, which were perforce

seen as the (nobly gratui tous) acts of an egal i tar ian and fraternal Liberty. But the

popular Liberators ini t ial ly saw this l iberated man as a mere Libert ine. Even today,

the few el i te men who read him and talk about him seriously are accused by the

em ine ndy serious masses of not real ly be ing serious. An d so he did not divulge the

secret ei ther

Truth to tel l , i t is because I wanted at last to reveal a mystery mat has been so

careful ly preserved by those who are party to i t (assuming that some of them st i l l

exist), that I resolved to write and even publish the few pages that follow, and to

dedicate mem to al l those who wil l read them and, merefore, qui te defini tely to

mademoisel le Sagan. The good off ices of some vigi lant Argus wil l no doubt ensure

that they come to her notice.

For it is thanks to the care with which this young girl has written her first two books

that the world in quest ion has be en 'bo rn to l iterature". Un ti l this you ng Frenc h gir l

came along, no man of letters was willing to speak of it , or at least to speak of it so

nicely. O ne g reat A me rican l i terary hack of m od er n t imes specialis ing in the analysis

of vir i le behaviour did of course look into the problem of a world that had been

emascula ted by i t s fa ther , who remains unknown as i t happens . Having grown his

beard (now white) , probably to give himself courage in his heroic struggle against

despair , this famous author searched the world for the last human male, or rather

the last t ruly male man, and claims to have at last found him in the Caribbean Sea,

in the form of an old f isherman. True, he was half-dead. Even then, the only worthy

adversary he could find for him was a fish (of a different species, as it happens, to the

one that served as a model for one of the symbols of a well-known rel igion).

2

A

heroic and very strong f ish, but even so. . . But this m od er n A nglo-Sax on's very rece nt

na tu r a l h i s t o ry r em a ine d j u s t a s e so t e r i c a s t he a l r eady vene rab l e G e r m an ic

apocalypse of universal History.

I t is merefore a very-very-young-young French gir l who has the ( l i terary) honour of

reveal ing to the crowds (her male and female readers) throughout the t rue nature of

the world w here this glory was won . An d she ce rtainly does so in a very honest way,

though her way of do ing so m ay s ti ll pe rha ps be som ewh at 'unconsc ious ' ( in the

philosophical sense of the term) or 'naive ' ( in Schil ler 's sense, or in other words as

opposed to sent imenta l ) .

To get s traight to the point , we are deal ing with a world that is new because i t is

comple te ly and def in i tively devoid of me n (as def ined by M alrau x-M onth er lan t -

Hcmingway to ci te only those three classics and to leave Homer and the others in

peace) . A world without men, seen (vu

3

) by a young girl of course. But a world that

differs completely from the already dusty world in which another young gir l (not a


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Parisian, as i t happens) saw, so to speak, nothing but the f lannel t rousers which, at

that t ime, we re wo rn by pract ical ly no one but 'au the nt ic ' m en . By con trast , in the

new world revealed to us by the young gir l to whom this world has been revealed,

men (not in the ambiguous sense of the equivocal French word, but in the precise

and proper anatomo-physiological sense) or those who stand in for men, tend to

flaunt themse lves quite naked (but with c om pul sory muscles) or in a s tate of und ress

before the by no me an s star t led eyes of y oun g

girls.

In m y day (and for me those were

the good old days, as has been the case for all time and of all the times that have

been spoken of with a certain sadness [une

certame

tristesse]). In my day, I say (with

vir i le pride) , nudity, even when complete, tended rather to be the preserve of pret ty-

girls (at least in art and literature). Such too was its fate in a more distant past. And

besides - God knows - undressing the vir i le men of the past was no easy matter . I t

took four or f ive people to get a shining knight out of his gleaming armour, and

mo re recently st il l the help of a s trong you ng lad was n o luxu ry if you wan ted to get

a famous soldier out of his fine shining boo ts. N o do ub t things have gready imp roved

since then . Even in my day, casual and com fortable pyjam as from the effeminate

Indies had conquered the free Western world, thanks to the Bri t ish conquerors of

the servile Orient. And yet, insofar as it was a literary theme, the role of these occi-

oriental garm en ts (initially reserved exclusively for men ; their ma m m as stricdy fo rbade

well -brought up young gir ls to wear them) was str icdy confined to bedroom farces.

It would be difficult indeed to imagine a serious (masculine) author of those times

evoking the pyjamas of a (literary) hero whose virility was called upon (on, say, the

bleeding soil of re volut ion ary Sp ain a nd , to spel l it out , in an a rm y sleeping bag) to

initiate into the purest love a young girl whose purity (moral purity, of course) had

not been sull ied by her earl ier and repe ated rap e at the hand s of a dozen (react ionary)

males. Of course in our new world (where, fortunately, pure young gir ls no longer

need to get themselves rap ed to beco m e able to mak e love prop erly or , i f you prefer

to put i t that way, purely an d simply) , the you ng gir l w ho is talking abo ut i t speaks in

detai l only of her own pyjamas, and their immaculate puri ty is watched over with a

maternal eye by the second young man of her choice. But one real ly cannot see why

today's young wri teresses should no t be a ble to talk jus t as easi ly, and with just as

much fraternal devotion, about the pyjamas worn by the ex-vir i le partners of the

masculine-looking lovers of their novels ' heroine s. For their hero ines already eye u p

with a very masculine indifference (which st i l l , i t is t rue, seems to them to be

'marvel lou s ' , as they themselves ad m it with tou chin g hum il i ty) the vir i le forms that

are on show as they watch one of their potent ial conquests walking in beauty in the

street or, more specifically, on the pavement of the Promenade des Anglais

(Un

Certain

Sourire, 18). W he n die conqu est ha s bee n con su m m ate d in a bed ( ibid. , 106), they

kiss his ' torso' (which, unfortunately and even if it were that of the Apollo Belvedere,

can never, from a certain point of view, be as good as that of a Venus from die

Capitol , or anywhere else come to that) .


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N o one co uld honest ly deny th at all diis is profou ndly hum il iat ing for those of us

w h o ,

thanks to some M endel ian acc ident , were bo rn wi th the body of a m an (unless

they have forgotten the non-sexual meaning of the generic name they bear) . Even

so , in this case, i t would take som e coura ge, not to den y and disagree, but to conform

and agree. But is there any poin t in expressing in dign ation , as som e sti ll c laim to be

able to do? O r in describing m ese young gir ls as Am az on s ' , with a sub de hin t of the

irony that ha s so advantageou sly replace d the ou tm od ed bronze of the heroic legends

of very anc ien t Greece , now brough t back

4

in to fashion by die sophist icated thinke rs

of o ur time? A s the saving goes, beg gar s can't be ch oosers. At all events, I am reluc tant

to bel ieve that anyone has any intent ion of advising these so-cal led Amazons (who

have, as i t happens, shown no host i l i ty towards any husbands, not even their own)

ma t they shou ld divide, if only for a jok e, into two grou ps, with on e gro up tak ing the

role of die men they have had to stop fighting because there are no men left to fight.

For tho usan ds of years, m en ' took' gir ls . T h e n i t be ca m e the fashion for gir ls to 'give '

diem selves. But is it the girls ' fault if, in a new wo rld w he re th ere is no m ale hero ism,

they can be no longer ei ther 'given' nor ' taken' and have to be content widi letdng

themselves be talked into it , l ike it or not? In these conditions and in a world in

which w e are no w forced to live so long as our d eat hs m ean s n odiin g to us, is i t not

preferable for them to let themselves be talked into i t with the best possible grace

and wil l-power? And wh at would be the poin t of se ndin g these gracious but vo luntary

'Am azons ' to nunn eries (as som e would see m to wish to do , witho ut every dar ing to

say so) , or to other subde and professional healers of supposedly damaged souls (as

some occasionally think f i t to suggest on the grounds that the gir ls in quest ion are

not ' t ruly h app y' , tho ugh th ey never offer to mee t the cost - a high cost , as i t ha pp en s

- of this so-cal led moral decontaminadon)? Even assuming that die gir ls could be

'normal i sed ' to such an extent d ia t behaving l ike ' rea l women ' would make them

perfecdy 'ha pp y' , how could they find die real m en they need in a world w here th e

acm e of m ale power now l ies in die peaceful an d laborio us (aldiough duly mo torized)

act ivi ty of a fenile husb and ?

To sum up my f inal opinion, I wil l say that in my view Ccile and Dominique (die

name is to be read in the feminine) are, l ike Frangoise herself girls like any odiers.

W ha t I me an is this: l ike any od ier gir ls in any dm e or place with un usua lly sha rp

m inds an d wh at is com mo nly (or nobly?) cal led 'guts ' (even thou gh n ot all of them

ha d the dazzlingly precocious literary talen t displayed by at least on e of their n um be r).

W ha t is new abou t the abov e-m entio ned yo un g gir ls (and this is wh at is hum il iat ing

for those of us wh o are after all m en , at least from a c erta in po int of view) is tha t th e

third of them has al lowed the other two to begin to l ive, not in the world of which

you ng gir ls dre am almost as m uch as yo un g men , but in this s trange ne w wo rld. Th is

latest ne w world is indeed o ur world a nd its specific cha racteristic, wh ich distinguishes

it from all othe r is, as we know, the fact tha t dier e a re virtually no m or e rea l war s or

veritable revolutions. Before long, the only place for a glorious death will be a bed

(private or public) . Dying a glorious death wil l be condit ional upon taking on wild

Kojve

26


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beasts (non-castrated rum inants) sword in han d, o r r isking on e 's life to scale peaks of

over eight thousand meters (or the equivalent number of English or other feet) .

Now , there are very few such peaks, an d they wil l soon be forgotten ab ou t wh en they

lose al l the vir i le interest they now have. They wil l be equipped with eidier cable

cars that present as l it tle danger as possible, or landin g-pa ds for hel icop ters wh ich,

we al l hope, wil l soon be being used for purely peaceful purposes, meaning that al l

sexes an d ages wil l be able to use them . As for the wild beasts d iat ar e cu rre nd y used

to real ize the vir tual vir i l i ty of a few authentic (and mosdy Iberian) human males,

there is a great dan ger th at a public opinio n (which is certainly far from 'naiv e ' bu t

very 'sentimental ' , to re-cite the great poet of Sturm andDrang that no longer tolerates

die idea of (painlessly) execudng real murderers (even in the formerly ar is tocradc

homeland of the last civic dandies) , wil l soon be mobil ized to put an end to die

sufferings (and diey are cruel and so humiliadng) inflicted upon these poor vegetarian

animals who have never done anyone any harm.

When diey see the state of paradisiacal peace diat has f inal ly been reestabl ished on

earth, the ancient gods (male and female al ike) who laughed so loudly in the day of

Achil les 's batde s but wh o almost died of thirst in a less rem ote a rea , ma y themselves

be content to smile a certain smile as diey, like everyone else, drink visqui, which - at

least in our world - is pro no un ce d

scotch

an d drun k di luted widi iced water . Even die

most Epicurean Sage in die world wil l readily grant diem that pleasure.

Notes

' "The Lates t New Wor ld" was f i r s t publ i shed as

" L e D e r n i e r M o n d e n o u v e a u " i n

Critique

1112

(Aug-Sept , 1956).

T h e e xc lu s i ve ho no ur a c c o r de d t o fi sh a nd

f ishermen would be unfa i r to non-e ma scula ted

bov ines, we re it not that d ie lat ter wer e the object

of an ear i i e r book by the author in ques t ion , who

has devoted th e be t t e r par t of h i s l i t e raryauvrea n d

even his own l i fe to bloody combats between (male)

mammals, and were i t not that he fel l back on cold

blooded animals only when he was in h i s (v i r i l e )

dec l ine .

1

-Any typog raphica l e r ror tha t ad de d an Y to the

end of ' / ' would be a hor r ib le b e t raya l of the

aut ho r ' s deepes t thou ght (because me n and not

wor ld would be the objec t , t r ans . ] .

'O n c e a ga i n , a t ypog r a p h i c a l e r r o r om i t t i ng t he

(feminizing V) on

'remise'

would make i t agree , not

wi th Ancient Greece , but wi th the famous poet i c

'bronze ' . We could make i t per fecdy wel l today,

and even use i t in the way the l egendary heroes

used i t in the i r s (when they could make nothing

bet te r , or a t l eas t not in t e rms of meta l s ) . No one

would dare (e i ther in the i r l i f e t ime or even af te r

their glorious deaths) to chal le nge their viri li ty. Su ch

a t ypo m i gh t e xpos e m e t o t h e r i sk ( w h i c h i s

c e r t a i n l y s e r i o u s f o r a n a u t h o r ) o f b e i n g

mis in terpre ted , or even to ta l ly misrecognized ( in

die sense of mis-unders tood) .

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