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| Solaris | | Date Created: Feb 02, 2004, 01:43 PM |
Stanislaw Lem's Solaris is an allegory. The book, not the movie. But just what kind of allegory? That's the question. It seems rather obvious to me that it's an anti-religious allegory. Or, the allegory of the "imperfect god."
Solaris's mysterious sea represents human history, or better, the universe--all of it: life, death, change, civilization, war, peace, buildings, love, hate, etc. What's the point of it all? Who's behind it, if anyone? Is the sea itself sentient or orchastrated by some sentient being? Why does it "produce" such beautiful complexity that in the end is destroyed by other forces? Why is this one thing followed by this other thing? It seems to have some purpose, some point. So much of it seems rationally conceived and guided. Or does it?
Humans come to Solaris to try to figure out "the liquid giant" that encompasses the planet, the reasons for the symmetriads and the mimoids (outcroppings of seemingly rational planning and construction in the otherwise amorphous sea). Humans spin out thousands of theories to explain these phenomena. Kelvin finds them all in the library of the station. But they are all wrong. They represent all the scientific and religious attempts to explain the world and human life. All attempts to "contact" the sea are in vain, just as all attempts to contact God are in vain. Humans tend to see their own "image" in the sea.
Then the sea "contacts" the men in the statiion. It throws up Rhyea for Kelvin, a cruel miracle, as he notes in the last sentence of the book. But why? Not because the sea loved Kelvin. But neither did it hate him. It just happened. It's like one of the symmetriads or mimoids. The sea, or what or who's behind the sea is like "the imperfect god" that Kelvin settles on at the end. Snow seems horrified by this possibility, but Kevlin embraces it. As the bumper sticker reminds us: s*** happens. But also, love happens. But ultimately love is not stronger than or more significant than s***. Finis vitae sed non amoris, Kevin concludes, is a lie.
The book seems like an allegory of man come of age, in the modernist sense. Leaving behind all religion and teleology, he is left by himself to face the void courageously. The last sentence: "I knew nothing, and I persisted in the faith that the time of cruel miracles was not past." Surely, the "cruel miracles" for the communist-era Pole Stanislaw Lem were the brief episodes of love that distracted us from our ignorance of the world and life as well as our impotence to make any difference. The universe (god), like the sea, takes no notice of us. When Kelvin finally makes physical contact with the sea at the end, it ignores him, even seems to avoid him. He's not important. He "builds" a little "flower" out of the sea. Surely that represents the brief ordered existence (love) of his own life, but it quickly disintegrates and melds into the larger ocean. These "cruel" miracles make the universe, which takes no notice of us, bearable. But that's all.
This is a dark novel, pessimistic and fatalistic to the core. I liked it.
Maybe the movies alter this. I haven't seen either one. |
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