Wednesday, December 8, 2010

The epigraph to Brave New World

Utopias seem to be much more realizable than we formerly believed them to be. Now we find ourselves presented with another alarming question: how do we prevent their definitive realization? …Utopias are realizable. Life marches toward utopias. Perhaps a new century will begin, a century in which intellectuals and the cultivated class will dream of ways to evict utopias and return to a non-utopic society, less “perfect” and more free.”
Nicolas Berdiaff 

The source is a Russian writer (whose name is variously transliterated, often as Berdyaev), once a Marxist,   then a Christian existentialist theologian. The particular work is a French translation translated again into English under the titles of both The New Middle Ages (1924) and then as The End of Our Time (1933). Right in the midst of the great utopian "realizations" of the first half of the last century (The horror! The horror!) .

And so here we are now, a new century begun....


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