Ignatius Donnelly's Caesar's Column

This document is an appendix to the "Iceberg-Dystopia" project. It provides the annotated artifacts to Ignatius Donnelly's Caesar's Column , and is connected with the main document by highlighted hotlinks.

  • Ignatius Donnelly's Dystopian Vision (Back to Starting Points)

    Caesar's Column - Ignatius Donnelly's dystopian vision

    Dies irae, dies illa
    Solvet saeclum in favilla
    (The day of wrath
    will dissolve worldly time
    into rubble)

    Caesar's Column , written in 1890 amidst social unrest and upheavals, is the message of a prophet of doom and an annunciator of a new beginning. Through his book, Donnelly heralds the unthinkable as he envisages a cataclysmic class struggle. At the same time, he undermines that vision, and illustrates his hopes of total change by granting the survivors a re-start.
    The text is both a reflection of the late 19th century literary tradition of the popular, sentimental romance, as well as a profound critique of the contemporary society. Its main theme is the looming probability of a revolutionary culmination of the conflicts between the poor and the rich. This revolution is presented as the 'peak experience' in the communities that have to endure them. It begins with hope, proceeds with cruelty, and ends in disappointment. The participation in the revolution which also means the legitimized use of violence in taking revenge on the enemy offers the majority of the population their first chance to participate in what they believe is going to be their self-organized and self-determined future, political life.
    Apart from the name 'Caesar' in the title which elicits an association with the ancient, martial Rome that was destroyed by internal crisis and external warfare, the book is full of allusions which indicate social tensions that are perceivable and whose outbreak must be expected any time.
    Donnelly's cataclysmic vision as reflected through the artifacts is already voiced in the introductory note To the Public.

    Links:
    Hyperthesis
    Cataclysmic Writing
    Future Shock and Growing Pessimism
    Cataclysmic Consciousness

    The Artifacts:
    Passages from Caesar's Column

    Artifact #1
    "It is to you, O thoughtful and considerate public, that I dedicate this book. May it, under the providence of God, do good to this generation and posterity! I earnestly hope my meaning, in the writing thereof, may not be misapprehended. [...] If God notices anything so insignificant as this poor book, I pray that he may use it as an instrumentality of good for mankind; for he knows I love his human creatures, and would help them if I had the power" (Donnelly 3).

    Annotation: The popular novel woos and attempts to win over its readership.

    Artifact #2
    "Some will say the events herein described are absurdly impossible. Who is it that is satisfied with the present unhappy condition of society? It is conceded that life is a dark and wretched failure for the great mass of mankind. The many are plundered to enrich the few. Vast combinations depress the price of labor and increase the cost of the necessaries of existence. The rich, as a rule, despise the poor; and the poor are coming to hate the rich. The face of labor grows sullen; the old tender Christian love is gone; standing armies are formed on one side, and great communistic organizations on the other; society divides itself into two hostile camps; no white flags pass from the one to the other. They wait only for the drum-beat and the trumpet to summon them to armed conflict. [...] Some may think that, even if all this be true, Caesar's Columnshould not have been published" (Donnelly 4).

    Annotation:
    Juxtaposing his sincere attempt to describe the worsening of the "present unhappy condition of society" with an anonymous reproach of impossibility or improbability of what he might come up with, appears to emphasize the book's relevance as a genuine, fact-based response to the time.
    Links:
    Pessimism
    Myopia
    Anxiety and Crisis
    Future Shock
    Artfiact #3:
    "It must not be thought, because I am constrained to describe the overthrow of civilization, that I desire it. The prophet is not responsible for the events he foretells. [...] Neither am I an anarchist: for I paint a dreadful picture of the world-wreck which successful anarchism would produce" (Donnelly 3).

    Annotation:
    If Donnelly considers it important to apologize for his 'prophecy' and to reveal his political conviction in adavance, the market for which the book was designed could indeed be imagined as politically tense. Of course, this could have been done for an economic reason, too. Donnelly targets a certain readership which is certainly not primarily anarchist. But having always in mind, when and in what general context the book was written, I am rather convinced that it wasn't a time when existent social tensions would have been fictionalized the way Donnelly did. As a matter of fact, Donnelly himself saw this book as a relevant response to his time, and he didn't merely intend to earn money from it.
    Links:
    Ignatius Donnelly's dystopian vision
    Cataclysmic Writing
    Artifact #4:
    "I seek to preach into the ears of the able and rich and powerful the great truth that neglect of the sufferings of their fellows, indifference to the great bond of brotherhood which lies at the base of Christianity, and blind, brutal and degrading worship of mere wealth, must - given time and pressure enough - eventuate in the overthrow of society and the destruction of civilization" (Donnelly 3).

    Annotation:
    The prophetic character speaks through this message. It is as if Donnelly was saying, `Look and listen, here is what you can't deny, and you can't but act to help prevent it from happen to your world (which is mine also!)'. In other words, a Cassandra foretells a future of gloom. This prophecy will come true if the necessary steps to avoid it, that is to change the present, will not be taken in time.

    Links:
    Cataclysmic Writing
    Myopia
    Artifact #5:
    "Here I am, at last, in the great city. My eyes are weary with gazing, and my mouth speechless with admiration; but in my brain rings perpetually the thought: Wonderful! - wonderful! - most wonderful! [...] But our admiration may be here, and our hearts elsewhere. And so from all this glory and splendor I turn back to the old homestead, amid the high mountain valleys of Africa; to the primitive, simple shepherd-life; [...] But my dream is gone. The roar of the mighty city rises around me like the bellow of many cataracts (Donnelly 3).

    Annotation:
    Perfectly utopian is the beginning when the visitor from the remote, primitive country in Africa describes New York. It is the year 1988 - the typical utopian time shift! - and Gabriel Weltstein, the visitor, writes his first letter to his brother in the State of Uganda in Africa.
    Already in describing the city's appearance, Gabriel uses catastrophic imagery; the city resembles a cosmic fire.

    Links:
    Utopia
    Energy and Reform

    Artifact #5.1:
    "As we approached it in our air-ship, coming from the east, we could see, a hundred miles before we reached the continent, the radiance of its millions of magnetic lights, reflected on the sky, like the glare of a great conflagration" (Donnelly 8).

    Artifact #5.2:
    "The chief features in the expression of the men were incredulity, unbelief, cunning, observation, heartlessness. I did not see a good face in the whole room: powerful faces there were, I grant you; high noses, resolute mouths, fine brows; all the marks of shrewdness amd energy; a forcible and capable race; but that was all. I did not see one, my dear brother of whom I could say, 'That man would sacrifice himself for another; that man loves his fellow man'. [...] I pitied them. I pitied mankind, caught in the grip of such widespreading tendencies. I said to myself: 'Where is it all to end? What are we to expect of a race without heart or honor" (Donnelly 15)?

    Annotation:
    Encountering people of his own class, Gabriel's ambivalent feelings about the seemingly magnificient place are amplified. Moreover, those questions convey a sense of dramatizing apprehension regarding the experience.

    Links:
    Artifact #2
    Cataclysmic Writing
    Future Shock
    Cataclysmic Consciousness

    Artifact #5.3:
    " 'That was the carriage of Prince Cabano, the wealthiest and most vindictive man in he city. If you had been taken you would have been consigned to imprisonment for probably many years.'
    'Many years,' I replied; 'imprisoned for beating an insolent driver! Impossible. No jury would convict me of such an offense. '
    [...] You are a stranger and come from a newly settled part of the world, and know nothing of our modern civilization. The jury would do whatever Prince cabano desired them to do. Our courts, judges and juries are the merest tools of the rich. [...] The newspapers are simply the hired mouthpieces of power; the devil's advocates of modern civilization; their influence is always at the service of the highest bidder; [...]" (Donnelly 27,28)

    Annotation:
    The future world envisaged in the book is politically an oligarchy. The justice and public service systems are corrupted and perverted by the interests in power and money. Injustice and economic inequality which have resulted in class-conflict and social unrest are at the core of the book. Gabriel is (still; always) thinking and judging as a person coming from a (more) democratic world, and -if his views may be equated with Donnelly's- from one that was superceded by a worse one. As a consequence, these things must extremely shock his sense of social life.

    Links:
    Cataclysmic Consciousness
    Future Shock and Growing Pessimism
    Artifact #4

    Artifact #5.4:
    " 'Rotten at the core!' I exclaimed, in astonishment; 'what do you mean?'
    'What I mean is that our civilization has grown to be a gorgeous shell; a mere mockery; a sham; outwardly fair and lovely, but inwardly full of dead men's bones and all uncleaness. To think that mankind is so capable of good, and now so cultured and polished, and yet all above is cruelty, craft and destruction, and all below is suffering, wretchedess, sin and shame.'
    'What do you mean?' I asked.
    'That civilization is a gross and dreadful failure for seven-tenths of the human family; that seven-tenths of the backs of the world are insufficiently clothed; seven-tenths of the stomachs of the worlds are insufficiently fed; seven-tenths of the minds of the world are darkened and despairing, and filled with bitterness against the Author of the universe. It is pitiful to think what society is, and then to think what it might have been if our ancestors had not cast away their magnificient opportunities - had not thrown them into the pens of the swine of greed and gluttony.' 'But, [...], the greatness of humanity, the splendor of civilization!'
    ' [...] but you see only the surface, the shell, the crust of life in this great metropolis. [...] I shall show you the fruits of modern civilization. I shall take you, not upon the upper deck of society, where the flags are flying, the breeze blowing, and the music playing, but down into the dark an stuffy depths of the hold of the great vessel, where the sweating gnomes, in the glare of the furnace-heat, furnish the power which drives the mighty ship resplendent through the seas of time. We will visit the Under-World" (Donnelly 34,35).

    Annotation:
    The comparison of the contemporary civilization with a "gorgeous shell" that has lost all of its substance is depressing. The only thing that has remained inside is a rotten past. Crisis as the manifestation of estrangement and disruption in the social sphere seems to speak through this comparison. If social life has become so fiercely tense, this society is likely to undergo a process of separation and division of its socio-economic structure. It becomes divided inside and bears on antagonistic contradictions.
    To equate the inhabitants of the 'Under-World', who are basically the labour-class, with gnomes who are working with fire although being exposed to fire at the same time is interesting. Although they obviously support the whole state-machinery ("the mighty ship"), they nonetheless have the potential to stop it. They could use the fire as a weapon. Thus, an implicated apocalyptic vision is part of Donnelly's prophecy. Allusions of the 'Under-World', the fire and the heat refer to hell and the influence of satanic forces.

    Artifact #6:
    "I thought how thin a crust of earth separated all this splendor from that burning hell of misery beneath it. And if the molten mass of horror should break its limitations and overflow the earth! Already it seemed to me the planet trembled; flood of wrath and hunger pouring through these halls; cataracts of misery bursting through every door and window, and sweeping away all this splendour into never-ending blackness and ruin" (Donnelly 62).

    Annotation:
    Gabriel Weltstein as the would-be messianic agent in such a decadent world provides extreme visions of the catastrophic release of the tensions between the separated, social antipodes.
    The destructive forces of fire, the allusions to powers such as the trembling earth and earthquakes, and the hint at hunger and power as the socially generated explosives constitute a vivid image of the consequences of the social uproar. Volcanic imagery also suggests the frustrations of the oppressed and the frightening punishment awaiting the oppressors. Roemer calls these descriptions of future strife "touches of nightmare" (Roemer 178). An apocalyptic culmination is foretold which will not bring anything but "never-ending blackness."

    Links
    Hyperthesis
    Myopia
    Cataclysmic Writing
    Artifact #2

    Artifact #6.1
    "I tremble, my brother, I tremble with horror when I think of what is crawling toward us, with noiseless steps; couchant, silent, treacherous, pardlike; scarce rustling the dry leaves as it moves, and yet with bloodshot, glaring eyes and tensedrawn limbs of steel, ready for the fatal spring. [...] And all to come to this. To this! A hell of injustice, ending in a holocaust of slaughter" (Donnelly 71).

    It is fascinating how brilliantly Donnelly's employs metaphoric imagery to convey his cataclysmic vision.
    The implications are that there are real dangers in the present which are potential catastrophes in the future. Pinpointing the catastrophic trends is what Donnelly does.

    Artifact #7:
    "We live in a commercial age - not in a military age; and the shadow that is stealing over the American landscape partakes of a commercial character. In short, the shadow is of an unbridled plutocracy, caused, created and cemented in no slight degree by legislative, aldermanic and congressional action; a plutocracy that is far more wealthy than any aristocracy that has ever crossed the horizon of the world's history, and one that has been produced in a shorter consecutive period; [...] a plutocracy which encourages no kindly realtion between landlord and tenant, [...]"
    -by Lloyd S. Bryce, 1889 (Donnelly 90).

    Annotation:
    Reminiscent of a documentary style, Donnelly also incorporates excellent, primary sources into the novel. He echoes voices of his contemporaies (public figueres) in the fiction. What he thus achieves is providing evidence that it was not only himself who was troubled by the apparent anxieties but others as well.

    Artifacts #7.1; 7.2
    "I tell you, in America, we will not tolerate vast wealth in the hands of men who do nothing for the people" -by John L.Spalding, 1884 (Donnelly 92).

    "There is a depth below atheism, below anti-religion, and into that the age has fallen. It is the callous indifference to everything which does not make for wealth. [...] the creation of a 'lower and lowest' class, without land of their own, without homes, tools or property beyond the strenght of their hands; whose lot is more helplessly wretched than any poet of the Inferno has yet imagined. [...]The worship of the almighty dollar, incarnate in the self-made capitalist, is a deification [...] " -by William Barry, 1889 (Donnelly 92,93).

    Links
    The U.S. in the late 19th Century

    Artifact #8
    "God is not at fault. Nature is not to blame. Civilization, signifying increased human power, is not responsible. But human greed, - blind, insatiable human greed, - shallow cunning; the basest, stuff-grabbing, nut-gathering, selfish instincts, these have done this work" (Donnelly 72).

    Annotation
    Donnelly complements imaginatively what could be perceived as inevitability of the future of the new generation; he draws on the objective, social conditions of his time and seeks for explanations. He asks: 'Who is to blame?'.

    Artifact #9
    "The ruling class long since denied them [workingmen] the privilege of free speech, under the pretense that the safety of society required it. In doing so they have screwed down the safety-valve,while the steam continues to generate. [...] the men meet, [...], to inflame each other mutually against their oppressors, and to look forward, with many a secret hint and innuendo, to that great day of wrath and revenge which they know to be near at hand - [...]" (Donnelly 72).

    [...] We have ceased to be men - we are machines. [...] The community is rotten to the core; and so rotten that it is not conscious that it is rotten. [...]There is no sound place to build on. There is no remedy but the utter destruction of the existing order of things" (Donnelly 173,172).

    Annotation:
    The use of violent means becomes legitimized because it is presented as serving an apparently good end: to destroy the careless-selfish, oligarchic class and to achieve freedom for the oppressed.

    Links
    Artifact #5.1
    Artifact #6
    Artifact #7
    Cataclysmic Writing

    Artifact #10
    "Now the fire pours through every door, and window and crevice; the roof crackles; the walls totter; the heat of hell rages within the edifice; it is doomed; there is no power on earth that can save it; it must go down into ashes. What can you do or I do? What will it avail the world if we rush into the flames and perish? No; we witness the working-out of great causes which we did not create. When man permits the establishment of self-generated evil he must submit to the effect. Our ancestors were blind, indifferent, heartless. We live in the culmination of their misdeeds. They have crawled into their graves and drawn the earth over them, and the flowers bloom on their last resting-places, and we are the inheritors of the hurricane which they invoked" (Donnelly 175).

    Annotation
    It is clear to the workingmen that good can only spring from uncorrupted, unspoilt society. There must be a purge before the desired place can be established. It is again an allusion to a necessary apocalypse, however a secularized apocalypse since Gabriel's emphasis on a return to he belief in God and Christianity is flatly rejected by the despairing masses.

    Links
    Artifact #5.1
    Artifact #6.1
    Artifact #7
    Anti-utopian and Dystopian
    Cataclysmic Vision
    Donnelly's dystopian vision

    Artifact #11
    "There he gathered around him a band of men as desperate as himself, and waged bloody and incessant war on society" (Donnelly 129).

    Annotation:
    The revolutionary's (Caesar Lomellini's) own biography epitomizes injustice that has created the anger wich will eventuate in an apocalyptic revenge. As he and his family has fallen victim to very unfortunate circumstances which are exploited by greedy money-lenders and others who want to make a profit out of his misery, Caesar eventually turns against the society which destroyed his life.

    Links
    Artifact #9
    Artifact #10
    Myopia
    Dejected Pessimism

    Artifact #12
    "In Commemoration of the Death and Burial of Modern Civilization" (Donnelly 282).

    Annotation:
    This is what the epitaph on the grotesque column reads which has been flung up to honor Caesar. At last, a revolution that went out of hand since its leaders became as corrupted and perverted as the oppressed's enemys is symbolically buried together with the quarter of a million deads in the column.

    Artifact #13
    "...mankind will re-enact the great human drama, which begins always with a tragedy, runs through a comedy, and terminates in a catastrophe" (Donnelly 291).

    Annotation:
    The revolution has devoured its own participants. What started off as an unified action to liberate the majority of man ended in a catastrophe because of man's inherent baseness. Donnelly doesn't believe in an utopian model like Marx for instance according to which the successful abolition of the causes of exploitation and oppression would automatically result in the establishment of an altruistic, classless society.The final outlook instead is rather bleak and dark.

    Links
    Artifact #12
    Artifact #9
    Artifact #6.1
    Cataclysmic Consciousness

    Artifact #14
    "But civility, culture, seem to have disappeared. There are no newspapers, no books, no schools, no teachers. The next generation will be simply barbarians, possessing only a few dim legends of the refinement and wonderful powers of their ancestors. Fortunate is indeed, that here, in these mountains, we have preserved all the instrumentalities with which to restore, when the world is ready to receive it, the civilization of the former ages "(Donnelly 310).

    Annotation:
    The post-apocalyptic life that has been granted to the few around Gabriel only partially decreases the infinitely mortal impact of the great disaster.
    Gabriel's conviction that, "Christ was only possible in a barefooted world; and the few who wore shoes murdered him" (Donnelly 295), and that it is therefore necessary to take precautions so that this can never happen again, makes him presume, that " [...] to seek out uncivilized lands, where no men dwelt but barbarians" (Donnelly 295), will be the only solution for survival.
    To protect man from themselves is the priority for the last (and new) community. I think that this is a grim judgement passed on humanity. I thus consider the utopia that succeeds the cataclysmic event neither substantial nor optimistic. Although the secluded world has almost all the means to initiate another, better evolution, it is nonetheless burdened by the past of its agents which is ingrained in their human traits and knowledge.

    The civilizations of the former ages have always become entangled in the same cyclic, destructive rhythm. It is doubtful whether this utopia will fulfil the hopes of mankind.
    Donnelly proposes a social market economy as a remedy for the class strife and the extreme stratification of society. The way he describes the course of the revolution of the Proletariat makes him appear to be clearly opposed to it. Instead, only the dependency on God and practiced Christianity, as well as state ownership of the major national properties (including the distribution of land) seem to work as a just social system that would eventually bridge the wide gap between rich and poor in the society that has been presented as doomed to fail.

    Links
    Cataclysmic Vision
    Ignatius Donnelly's Dystopia