Can we describe, or even just approximate, the possible interaction between literature and science? Can one be the crucible of the second sometimes? Or can literature be felt as a harbinger of the Other, or even just a herald of the Other? An exceptional example is provided by a text published in 1950 in The Esprit Review (a review of Christian thinkers who, during the post-war years, attempted to justify some scientific humanism, and then veered around the intellectual conception—whose conception and pre-eminence was beginning to crack socially—of perception” Divine”).
George ChickenA Belgian critic who was particularly interested in the study of human time, he analyzes the intrinsic relationship between the concepts of time and space envisioned in the masterful work of Victor Hugo. And the vision that emerges is truly transcendent. Even if this text emerges from a construction of the mind carried out from the compilation of fragments taken from an enormous work (and where one can find there a priori what one wants), its teaching constitutes a rare enlightenment.
His study shows how, for Victor Hugo, an existential doubt permeated himself which not only carries his work as a whole but illuminates, according to the author of the essay, the human thought of his century. But above all, the conceptions he describes in an idea developed in one form or another between 1820 and 1850, later conceptions that have a very strange resemblance to the roots of Theory of relativityIt was issued in two stages (special and then general relativity) between 1905 and 1915 only. The essence of this vision is actually based on the close and inseparable relationship between space and time (the famous concept of space-time and space), which will emerge from an abyss where man and his environment will miraculously remain in suspense: “The universe is suspended, nothing falls.”
Thus, one might say, for Hugo, he would be God The grandiose visualization of nothingness. Or how the inexplicable is an integral part of human observation. Apart from any rational explanation, can only an external concept come, indeed, to affirm the universal coherence of chance? However, we are aware that even at the present time, you are faced with the questions raised by him string theory(More specifically by The theory of everything– or the induced grand unification theory), in connection with which, for example, the absence of a coherent model uniting 60 orders of magnitude known and scientifically investigated by man, more than one scientist is still fond of such an approach (see our article based on the book by Jean-Pierre Luminate).
But let us instead give the floor to the heroes of this demonstration. To access it, click on the PDF icon located at the bottom of the left column. It remains only to wish you an excellent and unexpected find.
Xavier Herron, July 2023
