Алдос Хакслидің "Маймыл және мәні" романы

1948 English language book by Aldous Huxley

Ape and Essence (1948) is a novel by Aldous Huxley, published by Chatto & Windus in the UK and Harper & Brothers in the US. It is set in a dystopia, as is Brave New World, Huxley's more famous work. It is largely a satire of the rise of large scale warfare and warmongering in the 20th century, and presents a pessimistic view of the politics of mutually assured destruction. The book makes extensive use of surreal imagery, depicting humans as apes who, as a whole, will inevitably kill themselves.

The novel is divided into two sections, "Tallis"—the name of the novel's character most like Huxley himself—and "the Script"—the screenplay titled Ape and Essence which Tallis had submitted to the studio (it was rejected on 26 November 1947, a fortnight before his death, but not returned to him).

"Tallis" introduces two movie industry intellectuals—screenwriter Bob Briggs and the narrator—who, on the day of Gandhi's murder (30 January 1948), rescue Ape and Essence from the trash. Intrigued, they make the drive two days later to Los Angeles County's high desert to find its author, William Tallis. En route they discuss a range of ideas cultural and topical, from Gandhi to Goya. They arrive at a remote and isolated old ranch, a solitary homestead in a surreal setting. They interact with the home's inhabitants, learning that Tallis died suddenly just six weeks before. As these characters serve mainly to establish the narrative frame, or context, they are not seen again, except insofar as Tallis has written himself into the script's final scene, foreknowing his death (but misimagining his grave to lie at the desert farm he rents, rather than in a proper cemetery 30 mile (48 km) away in Lancaster).

The story in the script is punctuated by a series of vignettes centring on a society which is much like 20th century human society, but with baboons substituted for men. The opening scene shows two Einsteins, tied to leashes held by baboons on either side of a pair of baboon armies, facing each other and preparing for battle. They are then directed to operate machines which release "improved" disease causing clouds at the opposition. Several of the vignettes portray a female baboon singing sensually to an all baboon audience "Give me, give me, give me detumescence " Other vignettes involve apes performing various human activities, ape armies assembling, and other more surreal imagery.

In the words of Dr. Poole (from p. 94 of the Bantam 1958 edition ):

text=Progress and Nationalism—those were the two great ideas He put into their heads. Progress—the theory that you can get something for nothing; the theory that you can gain in one field without paying for your gain in another; the theory that you alone understand the meaning of history; the theory that you know what’s going to happen fifty years from now; the theory that, in the teeth of all experience, you can foresee all the consequences of your present actions; the theory that Utopia lies just ahead and that, since ideal ends justify the most abominable means, it is your privilege and duty to rob, swindle, torture, enslave and murder all those who, in your opinion (which is, by definition, infallible), obstruct the onward march to the earthly paradise. Remember that phrase of Karl Marx’s: ‘Force is the midwife of Progress.’ He might have added—but of course Belial didn’t want to let the cat out of the bag at that early stage of the proceedings—that Progress is the midwife of Force. Doubly the midwife, for the fact of technological progress provides people with the instruments of ever more indiscriminate destruction, while the myth of political and moral progress serves as the excuse for using those means to the very limit. I tell you, my dear sir, an undevout historian is mad. The longer you study modern history, the more evidence you find of Belial’s Guiding Hand.