Chronology
ALDOUS HUXLEY
July 26, 1894
born into a family that included some of the most distinguished members
of that part of the
English ruling Class made up of the intellectual elite.
Father
son of Thomas Henry Huxley - great biologist theory of evolution with Darwin.
Mother
sister of Mrs. Humpfrey Ward, novelist
nice of Methew Arnold, poet
granddaughter of Thomas Arnold, real life headmaster of Rugby School
Heritage
and Upbringing
effect on his work
Gerald Herd, longtime friend: Huxleys ancestry "brought down on him a weight
of intellectual authority and a momentum of moral obligations".
Brave New World
evidence of embivalent attitude towards such authority assumed by he ruling
class
like England of his days BNW rigid class structure and even stronger than
England's, cause
biologically and chemically engineered and
psychologically conditioned.
own experiences
standing apart form class into which he was born
small child
considered different
alertness
intelligence
brother:
"superiority"
respected and loved
Brave New World
Helmholtz Watson
Bernhard Marx
problems
cause different
Huxley feels that heredity made each individual
unique
14 years old
Mother died
sense of transience of human happiness
you can see the influence of his loss in Brave New World
Utopians
deny unpleasantness of death
find perpetual happiness
cost great: by denying themselves unpleasant experiences denying pleasant
as well
happiness: drug soma, making love, Obstacle Golf --> essantially shallow
Savages (of the reservation)
poor
dirty
ills of old age, painfull death
blessed with happiness (still transient, but deeper and more real)
16 years old
eye illness,
nearly blind
learns Brialle
recovers some vision
Oxford University - with honours
scientific work - no
idea of vision
early novels --> ideal for motion pictures
later: screen writer
1916
first book, collection of poems
1919
marriage
Maria Nys, Belgian
1920 son
(their only child)
Metthew Huxley
1920's
travelling
Italy, France, India
USA
"+": confidence, vitality, "generous extravagance"
"-": way vitality is expressed
public amusement
dancing, motoring
Huxley: "all movement and noise like the water gurgling out of a
bath down the waste. Yes, down the waste"
1931
Brave New World
written in 4 months
3 years after his bestseller Point Counter Point
important: before Hitler, Stalin, worldwar 2
(Orwell 1984 written much later, in 1948
1937
moves to United Staates
1938
Hoolywood
Screenwriter
California
one of his novels caricatures what he sees as the strange life there
After many a summer dies the swan
(Jo Stoye, immortal, scientific experiments &st==> giving up humnity
-->
animal state)
1946 forword to Brave
New
World
he says, he no longer wants to make social sanity an impossiblity (as in
BNW).
this, after death of millions of people during the war and the atomic bomb
invented
convinced that while still "rather rare", sanity could be achieved.
The Perennial Philosophy
collection of texts with his own commentaries on mystical and religious
approaches
to sane life in a sane society.
1958
Brave New World Revisited
Set of essays on real life problems
overpopulation
overorganisation
psychological techn.
salesmanship
hypnopedia
sleep teaching
he wants to warn people by showing them instruments the gouvernment can
abuse to
deprive people of freedom.
1950's
interest in drugs
psychedelic drugs
mindexpanding drugs
like mescaline and LSD.
Takes them several times under the supervision of a medicin.
allow escape from the self (?)
physically and socially harmless
Doors of Perception (1954)
Island
1962
antidote to Brave New World
- a good utopia
soma --> a perfected version of LSD
people of Island in religious way.
Interests
Huge range of interests. The preparation for Island included research in
the following
areas:
Greek history
Polynesian anthropologie
translations from sanscrit
Buddhist test's
Scientific papers on
pharmaology
neurophysiology
psychology
education
novels, poems, critical essays, travel books
Remains nearly blind all his life. Dies in 1963