''Le Dernier Homme'' (English: ''The Last Man'') is a French

science fantasy Science fantasy is a hybrid genre within speculative fiction that simultaneously draws upon or combines tropes and elements from both science fiction and fantasy. In a conventional science fiction story, the world is presented as being scient ...

novel in the form of a prose poem. Written by Jean-Baptiste Cousin de Grainville and published in 1805, it was the first story of modern

speculative fiction Speculative fiction is a term that has been used with a variety of (sometimes contradictory) meanings. The broadest interpretation is as a category of fiction encompassing genres with elements that do not exist in reality, recorded history, nat ...

to depict the end of the world. Considered a seminal early work of science fantasy, specifically of the Dying Earth genre, it has been described by

Gary K. Wolfe Gary K. Wolfe (born Gary Kent Wolfe in 1946) is an American science fiction editor, critic and biographer. He is an emeritus Professor of Humanities in Roosevelt University's Evelyn T. Stone College of Professional Studies. Life Wolfe was bo ...

as "A crucial document in the early history... of what became science fiction". ''Le Dernier Homme'' was translated into English in 1806 – poorly, and neither credited to de Grainville nor described as a translation from a French original – under the title ''Omegarus and Syderia, a Romance in Futurity''. This translation remained the only English version available until 2003, when a new translation by I. F. Clarke and Margaret Clarke was published.

Creation and publication

De Grainville was inspired by Milton's epic poem ''

Paradise Lost ''Paradise Lost'' is an epic poem in blank verse by the 17th-century English poet John Milton (1608–1674). The first version, published in 1667, consists of ten books with over ten thousand lines of verse. A second edition followed in 16 ...

''. Where Milton's work featured the first couple,

Adam and Eve Adam and Eve, according to the creation myth of the Abrahamic religions, were the first man and woman. They are central to the belief that humanity is in essence a single family, with everyone descended from a single pair of original ancestors. ...

, de Grainville writes of the last couple – Omegarus and Syderia. Influences from the Biblical

Book of Revelation The Book of Revelation is the final book of the New Testament (and consequently the final book of the Christian Bible). Its title is derived from the first word of the Koine Greek text: , meaning "unveiling" or "revelation". The Book of ...

are also seen in the concept that the earth has a predestined day of ending. The influence of

Malthusian Malthusianism is the idea that population growth is potentially exponential while the growth of the food supply or other resources is linear, which eventually reduces living standards to the point of triggering a population die off. This event, ...

ideas is also seen, as de Grainville writes at one point of an earth out of balance, population outstripping resources. The work was published in 1805 due to the advocacy of the French literary figure

Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre (also called Bernardin de St. Pierre) (19 January 1737, in Le Havre – 21 January 1814, in Éragny, Val-d'Oise) was a French writer and botanist. He is best known for his 1788 novel '' Paul et Virginie'', ...

, who persuaded the Paris publisher Deterville to offer the book. By the time the book was published, de Grainville was dead, a suicide in February of that year.* The first publication failed to attract any critical notice or sales, but was championed by Herbert Croft, who published a second edition in two volumes, in 1811. This second edition did garner the attention of critics, who praised it.

Plot

The story is told by a spirit to a young man who comes upon its cave while traveling in

Syria Syria ( ar, سُورِيَا or سُورِيَة, translit=Sūriyā), officially the Syrian Arab Republic ( ar, الجمهورية العربية السورية, al-Jumhūrīyah al-ʻArabīyah as-Sūrīyah), is a Western Asian country loc ...

. The protagonist, Omegarus, is the son of the King of Europe and the last child born there in a far future in which the earth is becoming sterile and the human ability to reproduce is fading. He sees a vision of Syderia, the last fertile woman. She lives in

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

, so he travels there in an airship. After various adventures there, including meeting Ormus, the Spirit of Earth, who urges the two to begin a rebirth of the human race, Omegarus returns to Europe with Syderia by his side. There they meet

Adam Adam; el, Ἀδάμ, Adám; la, Adam is the name given in Genesis 1-5 to the first human. Beyond its use as the name of the first man, ''adam'' is also used in the Bible as a pronoun, individually as "a human" and in a collective sense as " ...

, the first man, who has been condemned by God to watch all the damned among his descendants enter Hell, and who is now charged with persuading Omegarus and Syderia not to prolong the life of humanity, which God has determined must now end. He succeeds in having Omegarus leave Syderia, who then dies. Ormus, who cannot survive without humanity, despairs, and the world begins to end and the graves of all the dead to open, initiating the eventual

Rapture The rapture is an Christian eschatology, eschatological position held by some Christians, particularly those of American evangelicalism, consisting of an Eschatology, end-time event when all Christian believers who are alive, along with resurre ...

and the events described in the

Works inspired

''Le Dernier Homme'' inspired three other works. *''Le Dernier Homme, poème imité de Grainville'' (''The Last Man, a Poem Inspired by Grainville'') is an 1832 work by

Auguste Creuzé de Lesser Baron Auguste Creuzé de Lesser (3 October 1771 – 14 August 1839) was a French poet, playwright, librettist and politician. Works *1790: ''Satires de Juvenal, traduction en prose'' *1796: ''Le Seau enlevé, poème héroï-comique, imitate ...

, which expands on Grainville's original, describing aerial cities and a failed attempt at leaving Earth to colonize another planet. *''L’Unitéide ou la Femme messie'' (''The Unitéide, or the Female Messiah''), a mammoth and epic philosophical poem by Etienne-Paulin Gagne published in 1858, sees the return of the character of Omegarus (under the name Omegar). In the work (set in the year 2000), God sends a female messiah to save the world. *''Omégar ou le Dernier Homme'' (''Omegare, or the Last Man''), published the following year by Gagne's wife Élise Gagne, is another poetic epic about the final days of the Earth. The work known as ''Omegarus and Syderia'' did circulate somewhat in London, and several contemporary reviewers noticed resemblances between it and subsequent

eschatological Eschatology (; ) concerns expectations of the end of the present age, human history, or of the world itself. The end of the world or end times is predicted by several world religions (both Abrahamic and non-Abrahamic), which teach that nega ...

works: Byron's "

Darkness Darkness, the direct opposite of lightness, is defined as a lack of illumination, an absence of visible light, or a surface that absorbs light, such as black or brown. Human vision is unable to distinguish colors in conditions of very low ...

" (1816) and Mary Shelley's ''

The Last Man ''The Last Man'' is an apocalyptic, dystopian science fiction novel by Mary Shelley, first published in 1826. The narrative concerns Europe in the late 21st century, ravaged by a mysterious plague pandemic that rapidly sweeps across the ent ...

'' (1826).

References

* *

External links

Short selections from ''Le Dernier Homme'' (1806 London translation)

Complete copy of the 1805 first edition, in facsimile

Creation and publication

Plot

Works inspired

References

External links

Further reading