The Germans on Venus Read online

  The text of Les Posthumes combines the letter-writer’s accounts of his own posthumous activities with a second hand account of the much more elaborate adventures of Jean-Jacob, Duc Multipliandre. That name is intended to be more suggestive of “man multiplied” than “Everyman:” Multipliandre is a kind of superman, who can not only fly but discorporate himself in order to undertake journeys in space and time, enabling him to visit many other worlds and the Earth of the future. Many of his adventures, as related by the letter-writer—occasionally in direct quotation—display his opinions regarding the idiosyncratic limitations of contemporary humankind, especially the problematics of sexual relationships, in a quasi-satirical fashion. His account of his cosmic voyages to other worlds within and beyond the solar system allow him to put those discussions into a wider biological context, examining the nature, languages, folkways and reproductive strategies of many extraterrestrial species, few of which are humanoid and some of which are radically alien. Although Restif follows Mercier’s example—in “Nouvelles de la Lune” (1768; tr. as the title-piece of my earlier Black Coat press showcase anthology)—by combining contemporary notions regarding the plurality of worlds with the theory of cosmic palingenesis, he takes the corollaries of the premise much further, just as Multipliandre’s glimpse of the future, as summarized by Versins, seems to be considerably more radical than Mercier’s classic depiction of Paris in the year 2440.

  Restif’s imagery of alien life was highly unusual for its time, when the vast majority of depictions of life on other worlds imagined their dominant inhabitants as near-human, or at least closely modeled on familiar animal species. Throughout the 19th century and into the early 20th, in fact, the majority view was that because other planets were made of the same elements as the Earth, and had originated by the same process of nebular condensation, life there would inevitably follow a similar pattern to that on Earth, however it originated and/or evolved—a doctrine dramatized by the other interplanetary stories reprinted in this sampler.

  This was not the only respect in which Restif was way ahead of his time as a speculative writer. His utopianism anticipates many aspects of 19th century communism as well as the sexual revolution of the late 20th century. He not only imagined heavier-than-air flying machines in advance of the Montgolfier brothers’ first balloon flight, but suspected that such devices would leave a “trail of infamy, fear and horror” in the future when they were used to drop bombs. Although his evolutionary theory was primitive, he deserves recognition as a significant pre-Lamarckian evolutionary philosopher. He was also a significant pre-Pasteurian germ theorist. He was, as even La Harpe admitted, a genius—and he also had far better taste than he was long given credit for. French scientific romance would have been far richer had he had more influence on its early development.

  The fragments reproduced here only represent a small fraction of Multipliandre’s comic voyage; the full text evidently goes into much more detail about life on Mars, Jupiter and other worlds. The fragments I have translated begin part way through the 207th letter; I have run consecutive letters together, as the breaks between them are arbitrary, but I have separated out the occasional interpolated “responses” by means of an extra line. Where sections of the original text have been omitted, however, I have inserted chapter breaks.

  I

  When Multipliandre had risen up, by means of his wings, to 32,000 feet above the world’s surface, there was no more breathable air. It was impossible to make provision for that; there was only one course of action to take and he took it. That was discorporation. He flew over the highest peak in the entire world and left his body on he inaccessible point of a crag, after having wrapped it up well in furs, having treated it with a health-preserving gel, with which he filled the stomach, the mouth and all the bodily apertures and having placed it so securely that the winds and tempests could not dislodge it. Then, his detached soul could go wherever it wished, because, no longer being in the sphere of corporate life but that of souls, could dispense entirely with entry into a body.

  Multipliandre’s soul being a finite point, it could not arrive on the world of the Moon instantaneously; the journey would take time, albeit not long—about half an hour. Consequently, he calculated the point in space where the Moon would be in half an hour, and directed his intention thereto, intention being the soul’s wings. He arrived there at the right moment, but in entering the tenuous lunar atmosphere he sensed that he needed a body. He displaced the soul of the first large bird he encountered and descended thus to the surface.

  As soon as he had arrived, having caught sight of a Rondin (that being the name of the lunar creature that corresponds to an Earthly human), he abandoned the body of the bird—which did not resemble our birds, having one round wing all around the body—and set about displacing the Rondin’s soul. He found it to be very weak, and triumphed without difficulty; he placed it in the bird that he had quit.

  Multipliandre perceived that the Rondin was the dominant animal on the Moon, not by virtue of its form, which did not resemble that of humans at all—it was entirely round and rolled instead of walking—but because all the other animals drew away from it, or at least would not to allow it to approach. While he was in its body, he allowed its former ideas to follow their habitual course, and immediately sensed how limited they were. The Rondin only thought about four things: seeing, hearing, tasting and touching. It did not have the idea of odor, and lacked a sense of smell.

  Multipliandre’s soul tried to speak then, and perceived with singular astonishment that the same organ served for eating, speaking, listening and evacuation;6 it had two different conduits to the interior, one for introduction and the other for excretion. As the Rondins, like all other lunar animals, have no limbs, they have a singular manner of eating. They lick an object and catch hold of it with a multitude of tiny feet, like those of woodlice or the clinging processes of ivy, then they suck it by means of the same tongue; one sees the sucked object diminish in breath or volume, like a fly devoured by a spider, and the sucker increase in size. It is only by that means that one can see which is the eater and which the eaten. In this manner they suck animals, fruits and plants whose species are entirely different from ours.

  It was a curious thing to see a Rondin roll after an animal, trap it, attach itself to it and suck it up. Some three or four days later the victim disappeared entirely, and the consumer was as large as the two of them had been—then it diminished by transpiration. If, during the suction, the consumer experienced a contrary need, it stopped, evacuated, rinsed the conduit, then began sucking again. Sometimes, a malodorous excretion of digested matter emerged from the pores of the Rondin or the animals, in parts opposed to that which sucked.

  The Rondin language was composed of 24 masculine words and as many feminine ones, the verbs having no tenses and only one participle, which was both substantive and adjective at the same time. Here are the 24 words:

  Loving, hating.

  Eating, evacuating

  Enjoying, depriving.

  Beating, vanquishing.

  Chasing, evading.

  Killing, producing.

  Crying out, shutting up.

  Flying, walking.

  Winning, losing.

  Ordering, confusing.

  Searching, finding.

  Accepting, refusing.

  Taking, receiving.

  Giving, removing.

  Braving, fleeing.

  Rejoicing, saddening, frightening.

  Honoring, scorning.

  Going forward, stopping

  Being born, dying.

  Warming, chilling.

  Illuminating, obscuring.

  Existing, ceasing to exist,

  Raising, lowering.

  Benevolent, malevolent.7

  All the passives of these participles—loved, hated, eaten, evacuated, etc.—are the feminines of the pairs. The Sun is called the warming, the Moon the warmed, God the existing, the Rondin the ceasing to exist, or m
ortal. The word Rondin was invented by Multipliandre because of the rolling motion of the lunar inhabitants, which is particular to them.

  Oh, what strange people! At the end of the day, though, it is necessary that everything is varied in Nature, and we all believe that strongly—but men are eternally argumentative. Monsieur de Lagrange 8 has a theory: he says that all the planets must dissolve in their Sun, and all the Suns in God or the central star, and that this amalgamation of all being in God, at the end of a great general revolution, proves that—all the Suns and, in consequence, all the planets having emerged from that homogeneous amalgam—they must all produce the same things. That is well enough reasoned—Monsieur Cazotte was converted on the spot—but others maintain their opinion. They say that it is the difference of locality, not that of substance, which produces and necessitates differences of organization, form and modification. It is truly astonishing that I remember all that.

  It is in a language that has only these few words that the two lunar sexes express everything that they have to say, employing neither conjunctions nor adverbs. The Moon is also called the existent, the Earth the illuminating. There are no pronouns; to say “me” the Rondin bounces on the spot; to say “you” he bumps into another; for “him” the same; for “my” he attaches himself.

  For erotic enjoyment, the Rondin and Rondine attach themselves together as if they were eating one another; one can see that they are having sex because they increase and diminish in size alternately to a small degree.

  Having left the Earth when the Moon was full, I observed at first that it was midday when I arrived. The heat was so excessive that all the living beings retreated into caverns or profound valleys, with which the Moon is strewn, or beneath large trees whose foliage, if they have any, is impenetrable to the Sun’s rays. The reason for this is that because the Moon’s atmosphere has neither ice nor snow (they hardly have time to form during a half-year or winter of 14 of our nights and days, and have, on the other hand, plenty of time to melt during a hot day) the Moon has no large rivers and very few small ones, only streams; similarly, it has few seas, whether because crystallization is more advanced than on Earth and on Venus, or for other reasons. Thus, there is almost no rain, only abundant dews, during the long night of 14 times 24 hours. The trees and other plants do not have leaves; they are all akin to mushrooms. They grow in the same fashion, after abundant dews, and are all destroyed at about the third hour of the afternoon—which is to say, between the ninth and tenth of our 24-hour days, counting in our fashion. During this interval, they bear their fruit, and the lunar inhabitants harvest them. There are also plants that do not bear fruit; these are bread-mushrooms and they are very tasty. They are eaten fresh, and to conserve them for subsequent days—or, rather, the final hours of the long day—they are fried in an oil furnished by several species of olive-mushrooms, and eaten crisp for supper. Breakfast on the Moon lasts for one of our days, dinner for two and supper for three; thus, there are six days of eating out of 14—which is almost in the same proportion as here.

  There is neither rain nor wind during the long day that is a veritable lunar year. Daylight lasts 14 times 24 hours, not counting the morning twilight or the evening dusk. Supper takes up the three times 24 hours before the day’s end, dusk included. Bedtime is immediately thereafter, and if anyone takes a nocturnal stroll it is when there is Earthlight on the relevant hemisphere—but it is rare that one has the pleasure of such excursions, as we shall see.

  Multipliandre, after what is improperly called sundown, perceived that the air became replete with condensing vapors. Lightning flashed; thunder was audible. In spite of this racket, the man from Earth observed the sky. He saw a gross Moon, 50 times larger than the one we see from here, which sent forth a light strong enough to read, if he had had any books, for 12 hours, and for the next 12 hours left the Moon in a profound darkness, during which the Rondins and all the animals slept.

  II

  The language spoken on Mars is uniform, as that of Earth once was, very coarse and imperfect but more extensive than that of the Rondins of the Moon. The creatures there have a head and limbs. The terrestrial philosopher sought an individual of the same species, other than the one he was inhabiting, in order to be able to converse. He discovered one, but stouter, more hideous and much more ferocious. This animal, known on Mars as Nususumu—pronouncing the u as the French do, which is to say, like the Greek ypsilon, rolling it—threw itself upon him and said to him: “Mumuarumu”—which means, in Martian, “I want to possess you.” The poor Duc had just taken over the body of a Nususumu that had earlier pleased the hippopotamus, and he was therefore possessed. He even felt all that a female Martian amphibian would have felt on such an important occasion.

  After this operation, which lasted rather a long time, the Nususumu made his mistress, or his spouse, kiss his posterior, effected a few heavy capers and plunged into the marsh, where he disappeared. In order not to be exposed to these rather disagreeable assaults any longer, the terrestrial soul entered the body of a young male, very cheerful and playful, which appeared to be at the end of its adolescence.

  He found then that the community of Nususumu, of which he had the honor of being a member, labored on its aquatic habitations much as our beavers do. Their nourishment consisted of a fleshy herb like the thick and leafless plants of our hot countries; the bark of a tender cabbage-like tree; large citrus-like fruits that tasted like cooked apples, which came from soft palm-like trees; and almonds as big as pumpkins, borne by trees resembling walnuts, which made a whole meal for a female although it took three of them to satisfy a male. They also ate dried fish, sometimes living ones, commencing with the head, as we eat a piece of bread. The most delightful meal was serpent, or eel.

  What the Earthman found most advantageous about these amphibians, which ruled the animal kingdom, was that no other species was stouter, stronger, more courageous or more voracious than them. They made all others tremble and flee.

  Multipliandre saw animals of a thousand species; all of them were smaller than a female Nususumu. As for the males, they were enormous in size; they went into the sea to seize the largest fish and serpents whose length exceeded 600 feet. They broke them up as soon they caught them, and every female that followed them got a 12-foot section for her meal.

  III

  “Discorporate, I rose upwards, aiming for Jupiter, which I discovered at that height; its light only reaches the Earth weakly. I had quit the latter, and the movement of Jupiter was very slight at first, relative to me. Having approached it for three hours, though, I was obliged to steer a new course in order to catch up with it, for it appeared to be moving away from me with a surprising velocity. The intentions of my soul, however, were even swifter. I had seen the Earth as a large luminous planet; then I saw it diminish as Jupiter grew; eventually, the Earth became a tiny planet and Jupiter a monstrous body. Finally, I arrived in its atmosphere, and then it hid the half of the universe that was behind it.

  “I saw then that it was almost completely covered by seas, which were subject to fearful tides; it was an Ocean 2400 times more extensive than ours, immense even to the vision of a discorporate soul. I descended nevertheless, looking for a bird in order to enter its body. Thick and continuous clouds were obscuring my vision, in such a fashion that Jupiter, seen at close range, is very dark. These clouds were composed of vapors of every sort; they passed over three times every day—each of which is only six hours long—leaving clear spaces between them, and also changing places. I could not imagine the sort of beings that might inhabit such a stormy environment, but I could only get to know them by entering into the brain of one of them.

  “The winds there are so terrible that nothing can remain very long in place. In my capacity as an unattached being, they had no grip on me, but it seemed to me that there could not be any birds in air so agitated. Nor could I discover any at first. As I approached the surface of the waters, however, I saw massive creatures thee that seemed to me to b
e round. They watched what was happening above them with a sort of marked anxiety. I was about to decide to enter into one of these bodies when I saw a sort of square tub rising up towards the clouds. I observed that it was a waterspout that was lifting them up and carrying them over peaks that were not merely elevated above the water but the clouds too, covered with vegetable produce on which the square tubs appeared to be grazing. They remained there until another waterspout enveloped them and plunged them back into the Jovian sea.”

  We can certainly imagine that the inhabitants of Jupiter will not resemble those of the Moon or those of Mars. It is, however, very pleasant to voyage thus among the planets in the wake of a man as enlightened as Multipliandre, for we presume that he places himself within each of the appropriate inhabitants according to the most exact principles of physics. That is what gives us confidence in him and amuses us all.

  “I was not sure whether I ought to take the body of one of these flying, swimming and waterspout-borne tubs, whatever they might be. I came to a decision, though, when, having gone to investigate the large masses that were immersed in the water, I perceived that they were anchored to the seabed. I dispossessed the soul of a tub and replaced it. I then attempted to follow the course of its ideas. I had a great deal of trouble. Gentlemen, the tubs of Jupiter only think about two things: grazing and reproduction. Their language has but two words: pupu, eating; and coco, doing…that.