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The Human Ant
Han Ryner (1861-1938) was a French anarchist, a philosopher and a startlingly original science fiction writer in pre-Wellsian, French scientific romance; he was once voted the Prince of Storytellers by a popular magazine. In The Human Ant (1901), a man is miraculously transformed into an ant by a fairy. Trapped into the universe of the ants for a year, he discovers the beauty, intelligence and heroism of this tiny species which, in turn, forces him to reflect upon the sad world of men. In The Pacifists (1914), a small band of men shipwrecked in the Sargasso Sea encounter a peaceful utopian Atlantean civilization who have domesticated a universal form of energy. The Human Ant is a relatively mild admonition to humans to broaden their minds and become more sensitively aware of their limitations; The Pacifists is a full-frontal assault on human vanity and so-called civilization.
332 pages, Paperback
First published March 3, 2015
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About the author
Han Ryner
71 books8 followersIssu d'un milieu modeste (son père est employé des postes et sa mère institutrice) et très religieux, Henri Ner réussit à faire des études et prépare une licence en philosophie. À cause de la mort de sa mère, il rompt avec la religion, devient franc-maçon et s'intéresse aux idées sociales.
Après avoir publié deux romans en 1894-1895, Henri Ner fréquente les milieux littéraires, en particulier Alphonse Daudet, pour qui il traduit Vie d'enfant de Batisto Bonnet. Après avoir tâté un peu de journalisme, il devient professeur de collège même s'il a beaucoup de difficulté à se plier à la discipline et aux conventions qu'impose une telle carrière. Auteur d'une cinquantaine de livres dans des genres fort divers (romans, contes, essais, théâtre, poésie), il est élu en 1912 « prince des conteurs » par les lecteurs de L’Intransigeant.
En 1896, il adopte le pseudonyme de Han Ryner, devient le rédacteur en chef de la revue Demain et collabore à de nombreuses revues et journaux : L'Art social, L'Humanité nouvelle d'Augustin Hamon, L'Ennemi du Peuple d'Émile Janvion, L'Idée Libre de Lorulot, ainsi que L'En dehors et L'Unique d'Émile Armand.
À la veille de la Première Guerre mondiale, Han Ryner adopte des positions pacifistes et lutte jusqu'à sa mort pour la reconnaissance de l'objection de conscience. Son pacifisme s'exprime, pendant la guerre, dans ses collaborations à Par-delà la mêlée d'Émile Armand et Ce qu'il faut dire de Sébastien Faure et par la suite au Journal du Peuple de Henri Fabre.
Homme aux combats multiples, Han Ryner prend position pour la libération d'Eugène Dieudonné en 1913, pour celle d'Émile Armand pendant la guerre, pour les mutins de la Mer Noire, pour Sacco et Vanzetti et Nestor Makhno. Anticlérical virulent, il s'oppose à l'emprise et au pouvoir de l'Église catholique, surtout en matière d'éducation. En 1936, Han Ryner adhère au Comité mondial contre la guerre et le fascisme. Il entretient des rapports amicaux avec José de Bérys et il est également l'un des rares anarchistes ayant participé au Félibrige.
Après avoir publié deux romans en 1894-1895, Henri Ner fréquente les milieux littéraires, en particulier Alphonse Daudet, pour qui il traduit Vie d'enfant de Batisto Bonnet. Après avoir tâté un peu de journalisme, il devient professeur de collège même s'il a beaucoup de difficulté à se plier à la discipline et aux conventions qu'impose une telle carrière. Auteur d'une cinquantaine de livres dans des genres fort divers (romans, contes, essais, théâtre, poésie), il est élu en 1912 « prince des conteurs » par les lecteurs de L’Intransigeant.
En 1896, il adopte le pseudonyme de Han Ryner, devient le rédacteur en chef de la revue Demain et collabore à de nombreuses revues et journaux : L'Art social, L'Humanité nouvelle d'Augustin Hamon, L'Ennemi du Peuple d'Émile Janvion, L'Idée Libre de Lorulot, ainsi que L'En dehors et L'Unique d'Émile Armand.
À la veille de la Première Guerre mondiale, Han Ryner adopte des positions pacifistes et lutte jusqu'à sa mort pour la reconnaissance de l'objection de conscience. Son pacifisme s'exprime, pendant la guerre, dans ses collaborations à Par-delà la mêlée d'Émile Armand et Ce qu'il faut dire de Sébastien Faure et par la suite au Journal du Peuple de Henri Fabre.
Homme aux combats multiples, Han Ryner prend position pour la libération d'Eugène Dieudonné en 1913, pour celle d'Émile Armand pendant la guerre, pour les mutins de la Mer Noire, pour Sacco et Vanzetti et Nestor Makhno. Anticlérical virulent, il s'oppose à l'emprise et au pouvoir de l'Église catholique, surtout en matière d'éducation. En 1936, Han Ryner adhère au Comité mondial contre la guerre et le fascisme. Il entretient des rapports amicaux avec José de Bérys et il est également l'un des rares anarchistes ayant participé au Félibrige.
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March 3, 2022
There's much more than just the titular 1901 novel, "The Human Ant" (L'homme fourmi), packed into this translation by Brian Stableford. Also included are multiple short stories, a 1914 novella called "The Pacifists," and the usual analysis of the works by Stableford himself.
The author, Han Ryner, was a philosopher based on stoicism and epicureanism. His work promoted individualism and the power of the will. He cited heroes who he said remained happy despite living in poverty and other circumstances that would seem to many of us to be not conducive to happiness. This kind of outlook of course preceded modern psychology, and so Ryner did not fully understand concepts like sublimation, acceptance and mindfulness. He saw creativity and contentment in spite of pain and hardship to be due to the power of an individual's superior will, and basically preached a fancier version of "pull yourself by your bootstraps." He didn't quite grasp that it is not merely a matter of the will; it is a matter of maintaining a cohesive self through activities that continue to stimulate and reinforce a healthy sense of meaning and narcissism. People who love their work or the art they create will maintain happiness in the face of incredible adversity. An empty person will not have such resilience. But Ryner saw this resilience as a matter of conscience, of moral fortitude, and hence it was a moral failing for the individual to be self-reliant, marching to the beat of their own drum, aloof to relationships. It is silliness to take up causes or fight for collective values, such as for a country, for a king, for a religion, for a race. The individual is the end in itself.
Ironic that such a staunch individualist would write a novel praising a colony of formians. In "The Human Ant," the first-person narrator is granted three wishes, the last of which was to experience what it was like to be an ant for a year. Though he still thinks and behaves as an insect, he is able to reason as a human. He loves the life of an ant, and even falls in love with a fellow worker ant that he dubs "Aristotle."
Like a Pixar cartoon, it is astounding how a drama taking place entirely in the world of insects can be engaging. Ryner pulls it off without any cute anthropomorphic bugs, but with an intelligent mature speculation of how consciousness and thought can be for animals, and how different yet how similar the content of the thought in the spectrum of animal neurology. Of course, he also recognizes the limits of understanding the thinking of an ant, but Ryner has his human protagonist be unable to articulate in language and human cognition experiences he had as an ant. The limitations of the human brain is an ongoing theme in Ryner's work. Ryner's focus has always been on the inner experience of the individual, for there lies the real truth, the real good, and the real evil.
Unfortunately, when the narrator does try to explain things, he comes across as irritating. Though the narrator does soften as the story progresses, Ryner preferred his narrative voices to be those of snarky and unlikeable intellectuals who border on the sociopathic. I don't entirely know if these narrative choices were completely artistic or a reflection of the author's actual personality, but it doesn't leave the reader with much sympathy. Take, for instance, this introduction to the "protagonist" of the Human Ant in the first few pages. Here, the character is complaining about his fate in life before he became an ant. He had so many siblings that it diluted his inheritance:
"I showed a considerable penchant for science. They did not have the justice to understand that it was due to my intelligence. However, if I had remained an only son, if I had had sufficient income to live without forced labor, to dedicate all my time to the studies I loved, I might perhaps have become an economist of the first order... Alas, I was given six brothers and four sisters. Fortunately, my father died young, without having time to complete the dozen."
Don't you just want to adopt him and take him home with you? Regardless, I stayed invested in the story, mostly because I found it fascinating how the narrator's human mind in an ant body made him behave uniquely in a way that had profound impact on the hive. Ryner looked up to Jesus and Epictetus as true individualists, and in a way, the narrator's ant character is a Jesus figure, complete with a "resurrection" of sorts.
The original edition was evidently illustrated by Alexis Mérodack-Jeanneau, an artist associated with the fauvist movement who was proficient in ink, pencil, charcoal, and watercolor. I would like to see some of these original drawings, as his work actually appeals to me over even contemporaries like Matisse, especially his ink and watercolors that pop with vibrant creole reds, orange, and blue. But my initial internet search for samples of these illustrations were unfruitful.
For all the cleverness of "The Human Ant," I could not escape the realization that I've read so much of this before. Life amongst ants was a staple of later Radium-Age science fiction, such as Ralph Milne Farley's "Radioman" series, A. Hyatt Verrill's "The World of Giant Ants," and Otis Adelbert Kline's "Planet of Peril." However, I must say that this story, which precedes all these other more pulp allegories of hive mentality, goes into much darker territory.
Particularly bleak is Ryner's portrayal of love in "The Human Ant" and in the subsequent short stories that follow. For example, in "The Prophet's Wife," a boy disciple is turned into a woman, who immediately begins to become clingy and manipulative so that the great sage cannot conduct his holy mission. The "wife" claims to love the prophet, but doesn't understand anything he is doing and wants him to change everything that he is about, clearly not loving him at all.
We see a similar theme again in "A Transition," which had been published still in French in the March 1915 issue of the American literary magazine "The Smart Set" as "The Secret of Don Juan." Here, the fabled "last supper" scene between Don Juan and the man he killed is reimagined as only a mind like Hans Ryner could. Ryner believed that true realization of the self's potential could only come from freedom of material desires and attachments. This is why he painted love in such a ridiculous light, and women as huge deformed egg-layers or clingy nags who demand their mates lose their identities.
The two short stories "Sacrifice" and "Apologistes' Dream" were mind-blowing. I can't say I completely understood them, but they certainly inspired awe. I will have to reread these again for them to fully digest.
After a few more shorts that I didn't find entirely memorable, we come to the second and final novel of the collection. Ryner was also an anarchist and, as I said before, was against the idea of fighting for God and country. Therefore, with the outbreak of World War I, he published his pacifist novel aptly titled "Les Pacifiques."
Once again, we have a rather unlikeable narrator. He is traveling on an unnamed ship that wrecks due to volcanic activity while attempting to cross the Sargasso Sea, but his Hellenistic friend recalls they are near where the fabled city of Atlantis supposedly sank into the ocean. Sure enough, naked flying men and women come to their rescue and take them to their utopian land. Here, Atlantis is described as a kind of hippy commune in an immense resort, like the Atlantis on Paradise Island in the Bahamas.
But when I say the main character is unlikeable, I mean hateful. He is selfish, paranoid, racist, xenophobic. I suppose this is because he is meant to be the voice of nationalism, patriotism, colonialism, and conservatism, and so he is the foil for the Atlantean utopia that substitutes for Ryner's preachings.
Despite the disagreeable narrator, this utopia is one of the most vivid and beautiful, depicted masterfully by the poesy of Ryner's pen and translated so ingeniously by Stableford as to be exquisitely natural. Though I certainly am no anarchist, I found Ryner's arguments compelling, his mirror on Western culture reflecting some undeniable silliness in the things we otherwise take very seriously in our religious and civic life.
So when all is said and done, there's quite a lot offered here for a paltry price. It is not the weirdest or the most engaging of the Black Coat Press French Science Fiction line, but it is one of the most thought-provoking and enlightening. I would say this collection is definitely worth it for fans of vintage sci-fi and of interest to philosophers, politicians, and historians.
SCORE: Four ant bites.
The author, Han Ryner, was a philosopher based on stoicism and epicureanism. His work promoted individualism and the power of the will. He cited heroes who he said remained happy despite living in poverty and other circumstances that would seem to many of us to be not conducive to happiness. This kind of outlook of course preceded modern psychology, and so Ryner did not fully understand concepts like sublimation, acceptance and mindfulness. He saw creativity and contentment in spite of pain and hardship to be due to the power of an individual's superior will, and basically preached a fancier version of "pull yourself by your bootstraps." He didn't quite grasp that it is not merely a matter of the will; it is a matter of maintaining a cohesive self through activities that continue to stimulate and reinforce a healthy sense of meaning and narcissism. People who love their work or the art they create will maintain happiness in the face of incredible adversity. An empty person will not have such resilience. But Ryner saw this resilience as a matter of conscience, of moral fortitude, and hence it was a moral failing for the individual to be self-reliant, marching to the beat of their own drum, aloof to relationships. It is silliness to take up causes or fight for collective values, such as for a country, for a king, for a religion, for a race. The individual is the end in itself.
Ironic that such a staunch individualist would write a novel praising a colony of formians. In "The Human Ant," the first-person narrator is granted three wishes, the last of which was to experience what it was like to be an ant for a year. Though he still thinks and behaves as an insect, he is able to reason as a human. He loves the life of an ant, and even falls in love with a fellow worker ant that he dubs "Aristotle."
Like a Pixar cartoon, it is astounding how a drama taking place entirely in the world of insects can be engaging. Ryner pulls it off without any cute anthropomorphic bugs, but with an intelligent mature speculation of how consciousness and thought can be for animals, and how different yet how similar the content of the thought in the spectrum of animal neurology. Of course, he also recognizes the limits of understanding the thinking of an ant, but Ryner has his human protagonist be unable to articulate in language and human cognition experiences he had as an ant. The limitations of the human brain is an ongoing theme in Ryner's work. Ryner's focus has always been on the inner experience of the individual, for there lies the real truth, the real good, and the real evil.
Unfortunately, when the narrator does try to explain things, he comes across as irritating. Though the narrator does soften as the story progresses, Ryner preferred his narrative voices to be those of snarky and unlikeable intellectuals who border on the sociopathic. I don't entirely know if these narrative choices were completely artistic or a reflection of the author's actual personality, but it doesn't leave the reader with much sympathy. Take, for instance, this introduction to the "protagonist" of the Human Ant in the first few pages. Here, the character is complaining about his fate in life before he became an ant. He had so many siblings that it diluted his inheritance:
"I showed a considerable penchant for science. They did not have the justice to understand that it was due to my intelligence. However, if I had remained an only son, if I had had sufficient income to live without forced labor, to dedicate all my time to the studies I loved, I might perhaps have become an economist of the first order... Alas, I was given six brothers and four sisters. Fortunately, my father died young, without having time to complete the dozen."
Don't you just want to adopt him and take him home with you? Regardless, I stayed invested in the story, mostly because I found it fascinating how the narrator's human mind in an ant body made him behave uniquely in a way that had profound impact on the hive. Ryner looked up to Jesus and Epictetus as true individualists, and in a way, the narrator's ant character is a Jesus figure, complete with a "resurrection" of sorts.
The original edition was evidently illustrated by Alexis Mérodack-Jeanneau, an artist associated with the fauvist movement who was proficient in ink, pencil, charcoal, and watercolor. I would like to see some of these original drawings, as his work actually appeals to me over even contemporaries like Matisse, especially his ink and watercolors that pop with vibrant creole reds, orange, and blue. But my initial internet search for samples of these illustrations were unfruitful.
For all the cleverness of "The Human Ant," I could not escape the realization that I've read so much of this before. Life amongst ants was a staple of later Radium-Age science fiction, such as Ralph Milne Farley's "Radioman" series, A. Hyatt Verrill's "The World of Giant Ants," and Otis Adelbert Kline's "Planet of Peril." However, I must say that this story, which precedes all these other more pulp allegories of hive mentality, goes into much darker territory.
Particularly bleak is Ryner's portrayal of love in "The Human Ant" and in the subsequent short stories that follow. For example, in "The Prophet's Wife," a boy disciple is turned into a woman, who immediately begins to become clingy and manipulative so that the great sage cannot conduct his holy mission. The "wife" claims to love the prophet, but doesn't understand anything he is doing and wants him to change everything that he is about, clearly not loving him at all.
We see a similar theme again in "A Transition," which had been published still in French in the March 1915 issue of the American literary magazine "The Smart Set" as "The Secret of Don Juan." Here, the fabled "last supper" scene between Don Juan and the man he killed is reimagined as only a mind like Hans Ryner could. Ryner believed that true realization of the self's potential could only come from freedom of material desires and attachments. This is why he painted love in such a ridiculous light, and women as huge deformed egg-layers or clingy nags who demand their mates lose their identities.
The two short stories "Sacrifice" and "Apologistes' Dream" were mind-blowing. I can't say I completely understood them, but they certainly inspired awe. I will have to reread these again for them to fully digest.
After a few more shorts that I didn't find entirely memorable, we come to the second and final novel of the collection. Ryner was also an anarchist and, as I said before, was against the idea of fighting for God and country. Therefore, with the outbreak of World War I, he published his pacifist novel aptly titled "Les Pacifiques."
Once again, we have a rather unlikeable narrator. He is traveling on an unnamed ship that wrecks due to volcanic activity while attempting to cross the Sargasso Sea, but his Hellenistic friend recalls they are near where the fabled city of Atlantis supposedly sank into the ocean. Sure enough, naked flying men and women come to their rescue and take them to their utopian land. Here, Atlantis is described as a kind of hippy commune in an immense resort, like the Atlantis on Paradise Island in the Bahamas.
But when I say the main character is unlikeable, I mean hateful. He is selfish, paranoid, racist, xenophobic. I suppose this is because he is meant to be the voice of nationalism, patriotism, colonialism, and conservatism, and so he is the foil for the Atlantean utopia that substitutes for Ryner's preachings.
Despite the disagreeable narrator, this utopia is one of the most vivid and beautiful, depicted masterfully by the poesy of Ryner's pen and translated so ingeniously by Stableford as to be exquisitely natural. Though I certainly am no anarchist, I found Ryner's arguments compelling, his mirror on Western culture reflecting some undeniable silliness in the things we otherwise take very seriously in our religious and civic life.
So when all is said and done, there's quite a lot offered here for a paltry price. It is not the weirdest or the most engaging of the Black Coat Press French Science Fiction line, but it is one of the most thought-provoking and enlightening. I would say this collection is definitely worth it for fans of vintage sci-fi and of interest to philosophers, politicians, and historians.
SCORE: Four ant bites.
April 3, 2024
É um livro ok. Tem uma vibe bem dramárica que alguns classicos tem. Mas não me deixou "nossa amei!".
May 27, 2024
O homem-formiga foi um dos melhores romances que li. A minha melhor leitura de 2024 até então. A edição da Ercolano é bem bonita e a tradução de Jorge Coli primorosa! Deu vontade de ler tudo o que ele já traduziu.
O prefácio de Scheiner Carpeggiani introduz muito bem a obra ao presente tempo sem aquele ar de estudo acadêmico que nos faz dispensar apresentações.
Achei curioso ler em um dos paratextos que, embora a obra tenha precedido "A metamorfose", de Kafka, narrativa em que o protagonista também se metamorfoseia em um inseto, ela possui seu brilho próprio e sua originalidade, como se este livro corresse o risco de ser acusado de plágio, e não o de Kafka.
Minha intenção com este comentário não é tecer acusações a Kafka, que fique claro. Reconheço o valor de A metamorfose e considero legítima toda obra que nasce inspirada por outra. No entanto, preciso deixar registrado que achei esta muito superior.
O tom de fábula e as questões políticas e existenciais são aqui retratadas não só como uma angústia inerente à condição humana, mas como algo inerente à vida. E enquanto Han Ryner nos mostra isso, ele nos faz olhar não com os olhos de outros seres humanos, mas com os olhos de outras espécies de animais, o que amplificou o horizonte da minha imaginação de uma maneira que só grandes obras são capazes.
Sobretudo por o autor ter sido "cancelado" à época, considerando que era anarquista e viveu num mau momento para anarquistas, acredito que a sua genialidade merece todo reconhecimento póstumo.
Já estamos muito bem servidos de traduções de clássicos reconhecidos. Por isso, será um prazer acompanhar as publicações da Ercolano! Temos muito ouro a descobrir.
@_matheuspeleteiro
O prefácio de Scheiner Carpeggiani introduz muito bem a obra ao presente tempo sem aquele ar de estudo acadêmico que nos faz dispensar apresentações.
Achei curioso ler em um dos paratextos que, embora a obra tenha precedido "A metamorfose", de Kafka, narrativa em que o protagonista também se metamorfoseia em um inseto, ela possui seu brilho próprio e sua originalidade, como se este livro corresse o risco de ser acusado de plágio, e não o de Kafka.
Minha intenção com este comentário não é tecer acusações a Kafka, que fique claro. Reconheço o valor de A metamorfose e considero legítima toda obra que nasce inspirada por outra. No entanto, preciso deixar registrado que achei esta muito superior.
O tom de fábula e as questões políticas e existenciais são aqui retratadas não só como uma angústia inerente à condição humana, mas como algo inerente à vida. E enquanto Han Ryner nos mostra isso, ele nos faz olhar não com os olhos de outros seres humanos, mas com os olhos de outras espécies de animais, o que amplificou o horizonte da minha imaginação de uma maneira que só grandes obras são capazes.
Sobretudo por o autor ter sido "cancelado" à época, considerando que era anarquista e viveu num mau momento para anarquistas, acredito que a sua genialidade merece todo reconhecimento póstumo.
Já estamos muito bem servidos de traduções de clássicos reconhecidos. Por isso, será um prazer acompanhar as publicações da Ercolano! Temos muito ouro a descobrir.
@_matheuspeleteiro
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews