4.
The death of worlds by the ordeal of fire exerts
a strange
fascination on other minds. The appeal of
flames has retained the attention
of psychoanalysts, in
particular, of G. Bachelard (Psychanalyse du feu,
1938). Fire for the unconscious mind
has two opposing
functions, one destructive and the other
regenerative.
On the cosmic plane, the destroyer Fire, the Fire of
Anger, devours and volatilizes worlds. But beneficial
and fecund Fire, like
the burning woodpile of the
Phoenix, restores new life to the world
transfigured.
This great flame, which is an integral part of biblical
prophecies of the
Doomsday, as also of the pagan myth
of the “Eternal
Return,” is one that cosmologists find
excuses for integrating
into the evolution of their uni-
verse, not so
much through their fidelity to tradition
as through a deep attraction to
it. In England, Thomas
Burnet (
Telluris theoria sacra, 1681),
William Whiston
(
New Theory of the Earth, 1696), and
J. Ray (
Three
Physico-theological Discourses, 1713)
fell back on the
Holy Book. The French enlighteners, like Delisle de
Sales or Restif de la Bretonne, who were little con-
cerned with the Bible, opted for the flames and the
eternal
return because these satisfied their insatiable
appetite for life and
enjoyment. But right in the middle
of the nineteenth century, a genuine
astronomer, J. P.
Nichol, believing he saw the nebulae rolling up and
turning into globes, secretly hoped that the universe
was marching
“up to that mysterious terminating
glory” (
Architecture of the Heavens, 1838). And this
was the
message which aroused in the fantasy of Poe
the final flames of his
Eureka.
In order to spark the conflagration, as an unconscious
desire urges,
cosmologists at the end of the century
resorted to the shock of the
collision of two worlds.
It was a matter of a more fortuitous and more
partial
version of the eternal return, lacking the aesthetic rigor
of
Poe's system, but having a more immediate physical
verisimilitude. The
comet has always been given the
role of torch-bearer; meeting it is a
fearful thing, like
meeting love, but a new life can be expected of
it.
The comet stands in line among the hypotheses of
Flammarion
concerning the end of the world, and in
1910, materialized by Halley's
comet, it was to let
loose a flood of fears and hopes. At the end of
the
nineteenth century, the comet found rivals in the ex-
tinct stars with which Faye, Flammarion, and their
followers peopled space, and which revived the old
myth of the Dark Sun.
Universal death by the degradation of energy and
total stabilization at
absolute zero in absolute night
was a tolerable vision only for the
decadent family of
minds of the catastrophists obsessed with the idea
of
the impending death of the universe. Others refused
to accept it.
This deathly equilibrium, before being
definitely established, was to be
broken constantly by
some shock, transforming into heat the energy of mo-
tion; such was the “impact
theory” of James Croll
(Stellar
Evolution, 1889). So it was at the beginning:
the primordial spark
jumped between two cold and
black masses. So will it eternally be. This
fascinating
vision, resembling the alchemists' dreams, the marriage
of
two dead stars giving birth to a glorious child, is
the view adopted by
Flammarion (Astronomie popu-
laire, La fin du monde). It was also the vision of
a
cosmologist who enjoyed great prestige in the first third
of the
twentieth century: Svante Arrhenius (L'Évolu-
tion des mondes, 1907). He
insisted on the fabulous
reserve of energy—therefore, of life
and fecundity—
which can remain in an extinct star until a collision
awakens it; and this impact gives birth either to a new
star
(nova) or to a spiral nebula; a striking sketch
shows
the two powerful jets of fire shooting out and whirling
about.
This impact theory was then popularized by
H. Poincaré (Hypothèses cosmogoniques, 1911), by
Abbé Moreux, and by M. Maeterlinck (La grande
féerie, 1929).
Now, starting in 1927, the theory of the expanding
universe took shape and
satisfied once again the need
for a unitary pulsation of the great Totality
of the
universe. Minds repugnant to the idea of Infinity took
refuge
in the curvature of space. To those who fear
cold and darkness, the nuclear
furnace of the sun has
appeared inexhaustible; the quasars enable one to
dream of fabulous stores of energy.
Articles populariz-
ing science suggest to
us every day that light, the
cosmic voyager par excellence, traveling for
billions
of years might end up by bringing back news of the
Creation.
Astronomy still appeals to all types of imagi-
nation, to lovers of the immutable as well as to lovers
of
change, provided that they can detach themselves
from the individual
destiny of man and lose themselves
in that which surpasses them and all
things.
