The Darkest Hours - 18 Chilling Dystopias in One Edition. Samuel Butler
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of the people in the Government offices belonged to the Fourth Class, and as these all lived in the two quarters running north and south of the central ring, they could reach their offices in a very short time. The midday meal was taken in a canteen within the office. The few inferior employees, messengers, porters, cleaners, etc., who belonged to the Fifth or Sixth Class, lived almost as near. The higher Civil servants of the Third Class, who of course were less numerous, did not make a crowd in the street. The green uniforms of the Fourth Class were the most conspicuous object everywhere. The industrial classes, living as they do on the side nearest the industrial town, are transported by an ingenious system of trams and underground and overhead railways, so that in half an hour they can all get from their homes to their work, where they remain all day. All goods arriving from the industrial town for distribution to the Stores are carried by a regular service of motor-vans. The distribution of goods to houses is so systematised as to require comparatively few vehicles. For instance, certain kinds of goods can be delivered only once a month for each household, others only once a week. Consequently one sees a perfectly regular stream of traffic, which is never very dense and never congested. All this might have been very interesting to a student of municipal socialism and mechanical organisation, but my chief interests lay in other directions, and it was not until we came to the cultural institutions that I found things so remarkable, at any rate from my own point of view, that I shall make no apology for describing them with some fullness here, even at the risk of being tedious to those who think more of locomotion than of liberty, or who regard the Post Office as the highest symbol of civilisation.
I had looked forward with some curiosity to my first visit to a Meccanian Art Gallery, for, as I had not been into any private houses, and as there are no shop windows, I had seen hardly any signs of Meccanian Art Culture, except in Architecture. The decorative work in the public buildings did not impress me favourably. It was Patriotic Art, executed by the students of the Imperial Meccanian Academy.
Prigge announced that, as he had been promoted to a higher grade in the Police Service, he would no longer be available to conduct me. By way of consoling me for the deprivation he said that in any case I should have to be handed over to various specialist conductors, as I had almost completed the general part of my tour and had reached the stage when I should have to begin the study of definite branches of Meccanian culture. He had consequently arranged for me to spend the first three days in the Great Meccanian Gallery under the guidance of Specialist Art Section Sub-Conductor Musch.
Sub-Conductor Musch met me at the appointed time at the hotel. He was a very different type from Prigge. He was much less of the drill-sergeant; in fact he looked rather ‘decadent,’ if a Meccanian can be decadent. He spoke in a soft voice, which was quite a contrast to the leathery voices of most officials I had encountered previously. He began by saying that before we actually began our inspection of the pictures there were certain preliminaries.
The Great Meccanian Gallery, he said, was the temple of all that was sacred in the æsthetic world. I must be properly prepared for it, so that I could concentrate my attention upon what I saw and not be distracted by having to ask questions about extraneous matters. If I would pay careful attention he would describe the general arrangements.
“The Great Meccanian Gallery,” he said, “is one of the four galleries in Mecco; the other three are subsidiary. The first gallery is devoted to the old historical collections that existed before the time of Prince Mechow, and contains only foreign pictures. The second gallery contains Meccanian pictures of a date previous to the foundation of the Great Meccanian Gallery by Prince Mechow. The fourth gallery contains foreign pictures contemporary with those in the Great Meccanian Gallery. And now we come to the Great Meccanian Gallery itself.
“Every picture in that gallery is an expression of the Meccanian spirit; otherwise it is not admitted. Its technique must also satisfy the Board of Art of the Department of Culture. Consequently, as soon as you enter you are in the atmosphere of pure Meccanian Art. Previous to the creation of this gallery, the influence of Art was rather de-nationalising. The æsthetic sense was cultivated in total ignorance of the possibility of marrying it to the Meccanian spirit. The Meccanian spirit is the active, creative male; the æsthetic sense is receptive, conceptive, essentially female. Of the two, Meccanian Art is born.”
He went on in this style for several minutes until I thought I had better get something more definite from him for my ‘guidance.’ So I said, “How does one tell whether a picture is an expression of the Meccanian spirit?”
“To the true Meccanian, all things truly Meccanian are sacred, and by the inward cultivation of the sense of reverence for what is most characteristically Meccanian he arrives at a certainty which is incommunicable to others.”
“But suppose opinion is divided. Suppose, for example, one man says, here is a picture which is full of the Meccanian spirit, and another man says the contrary.”
Musch smiled in a sad, superior way, by which I saw that after all, in spite of his ‘decadence,’ he was a true Meccanian. “You are evidently not well acquainted with either Meccanian history or philosophy,” he said. “Even our early philosophers taught that the Meccanian spirit must embody itself in institutions or it would evaporate. The Imperial Meccanian Academy is the visible embodiment of the highest manifestation of the Meccanian æsthetic spirit. All Meccanian artists are trained under the influence of the Academy. Its judgment, as expressed by the Central Board, is infallible. None of its decisions has ever been reversed. I do not think you realise how completely the influence of the Academy has moulded the Meccanian appreciation of Art during the last generation,” he went on in his slow, soft speech. “You have heard something from my friend Dr. Dodderer of the care taken by our all-beneficent Super-State in the cultivation of the appreciation of the Drama, and you have probably heard something too of our musical culture. Other forms of Art are equally sacred, since they are all Meccanian. Every person in the Fourth and higher classes goes through a course of art appreciation, which extends over several years. No person is admitted beyond the fifth stage of the Great Meccanian Gallery unless he has passed the advanced test. Attendance at the gallery is compulsory, once a fortnight, for all persons of the Fourth and Third Classes between the ages of fourteen and twenty-five. The Fifth Class are not admitted to rooms beyond Stage III., except by special permission on four days in the year. For them we have a few local galleries, as we have for the Sixth Class also, containing pictures which are soundly Meccanian in spirit but which do not come up to the standard of the Great Gallery.”
Presently we proceeded to the gallery containing the old historical collection. Musch said that we should see what we wanted of this in an hour, in fact it was rather a formality to visit it, but the Regulations for Foreign Observers made it necessary that I should see this first. It turned out to be really a fine collection, such as I had seen in many others parts of Europe; but I almost gasped at the strange freak which had inspired the curators in arranging the pictures. They were arranged strictly according to subject. All the “Nativities” were together in one room, all the “Madonnas” together in another, all the “Adam and Eves” together, all the “Deluges,” all the “Susannas,” all the “Prodigal Sons,” all the “Venuses,” all the “Bacchuses”; whatever the subject, every picture relating to that subject was placed together as if the gallery were a collection of butterflies.
Musch took no interest in this collection. It was all dead, he said, obsolete, pre-Meccanian, untouched by the spirit. When we came to the second gallery containing the older Meccanian pictures he showed more interest. Some painted three centuries ago I thought very fine, but Musch said they were lacking in self-consciousness. The Meccanian spirit was overlaid by false foreign culture. Only when we came to some weird and powerful but almost revolting pictures, dating from the beginning of the century, did he grow enthusiastic. These, he said, were the genuine precursors and pioneers of Meccanian Art.
It was afternoon when we entered the first section or stage of the Great Meccanian Gallery. This was the first stage for young persons, and was divided into a section containing ‘elementary-general’ pictures, and another containing historical pictures. The general pictures were mostly scenes of places of interest in various parts of Meccania, or national customs and public ceremonies. The technique was distinctly good. The historical pictures mostly represented wars against foreign enemies.