Last week we looked at the foundation of the premise in
Robert Hugh Benson’s satiric novel, Lord
of the World. That is, take to its reductio ad absurdum everything that the
secular world considers good, such as atheism and the establishment and
maintenance of universal wellbeing provided by the State (socialism, whatever
it manages to get itself called), and show how the secular utopia would turn
into a hell on earth.
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| It's back. |
The book is deliberately sensational, as Benson admitted, and just as deliberately
exaggerated. “I am perfectly aware that this is a terribly sensational book . .
. . But I did not know how else to express the principles I desired (and which
I passionately believe to be true) except by producing their lines to a
sensational point. I have tried, however, not to scream unduly loud.”
Benson’s satire thereby comes across as a club rather than
his usual rapier. The characters, the plot, the futuristic machines, the very
incidents were simply props to the idea he wanted to convey. His point was that failure to conform the
world to the truth of religion and universal moral values would lead to
disaster.
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| Abp. John Ireland |
This was a theme found in the works of Archbishop John
Ireland of St. Paul, Minnesota, with which Benson may have been familiar. Given
the general attitude toward religion among the typical member of the English
upper classes of his day, this struggle could only go one way — and that is the
way Benson took it.
“Where faith goes out, superstition comes
in. Man is a worshipping animal, and Humanity-worship, even in Comte’s day,
demanded an organized cult.” (Martindale, Life of Robert Hugh Benson, Vol. II, 72.)
The task of conforming one’s self to truth is a theme that
pervades all of Benson’s fiction in one form or
another. Typically, in Lord of the World Benson used a science fantasy to highlight this
theme, prevalent in all of his work. Obsessed with the meaning of life, and his
own specific vocation, Benson was wont to agonize whether he was truly
answering God’s Call, or simply following his own inclinations. Like the
question as to whether one has a soul, perhaps that question is best answered
by the fact that one can ask it.
Most people did not understand that Benson was juxtaposing a sound exercise of the virtue of religion with a deluded self-sufficient
secularism. His public in England reacted to the novel very negatively at first.
In other places, such as Ireland and France, the book proved to be
extraordinarily popular, but still misunderstood.
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| Scene from Ibañez's The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse |
After the near apocalypse of World War I, the book acquired
the popularity it enjoys today, and probably for the same misguided reason. To
many readers, Lord of the World took on a prophetic character, something that
Benson explicitly denied. He intended the novel as a
parable, not a future history at all. He was fully aware that the science he
posited was impossible and the plot line outrageous. It was, however, the most
graphic way possible to present the idea of man vs. God, of human self-delusion
confronting ultimate truth. As Martindale observed,
“This, then, is what Benson pictures: humanity
consciously refusing the higher kind of life which the Church proclaims to it,
and insisting on reaching merely that incredibly lofty goal to which its
intrinsic efforts can carry it.” (Ibid.,
82-83.)
Apropos of nothing, did you know that Robert Hugh Benson’s
mainstream novel, None Other Gods (1911) — of which,
judging by reviews, many readers seem to miss the point — influenced F. Scott
Fitzgerald’s debut novel, This Side of
Paradise (1920)? Of course, there are also allusions to Booth Tarkington, G.K. Chesterton,
Richard W. Chambers, H.G. Wells, and Rupert Brooke.
Don’t
worry. We’re almost done. Tomorrow we introduce yet another
misunderstood Benson science fiction satire, The Dawn of All (1911), an attempt by Benson to correct the
misimpressions people got from Lord of
the World.