This paper tries to present a reconstructive interpretation wishful thinking, as seen in the works of Ibsen and O'Neill had to present their ideas. Utopia has its roots in classical and Christian beliefs. The ideal city based on reason comes from the Greeks and the idea of deliverance through a Messiah is a Christian. Most of the stories of utopia in the West tend to begin with Plato and his Republic. For Plato, the Utopia is the ideal city, perfect,complies with its political, social and spatial. In the Republic, this state is described as a place where you need the goodness and justice, some of the functions and virtues that some are more important and higher than others, and some needs take precedence. In this state, philosophers are at the top of the social hierarchy and is supported by the base class for the kind of work. So this is the spatial hierarchy of the city. Then he created a state in his "idea" or mind:"We will begin or create a mood, however, the true creator is necessity, who is the mother of our invention" (Plato, 61). Then described, in fact, gave a picture of primitive life on the other hand, asked them to keep an eye to poverty and war (ibid. 62). In this dialogue, Glaucon, frankly rejected the state and called it a "city of pigs". "But this is a picture of a city of pigs, yes, Socrates, and if you were to give a city of pigs, how could feed thebeasts? "(Ibid., 369 to 72), which has been called, as well as luxury." People need to be comfortable are accustomed to lie on sofas, tables and dining out, and should have sauces and sweets in the modern style "(ibid. 373). Socrates is a representative of Plato and his ideal and ideas, and Glaucon seems to be a representative of the 19 th and 20 nineteenth-century man. I knew what was happening in the future. It seems that if Plato wishes to his ideals into realitylife. He was aware of both. He himself confessed that it was "true and healthy" is just an ideal in mind. In fact, Plato was playing a real state. Arriving at the choice of a tutor, has chosen a nobleman, "is not the noble young man like a dog for good behavior with respect to monitoring and observation?" (Ibid., 375) the question of education, then, was considered. As Glaucon moved the Platonic idea of a pig in a city of luxury, Plato began to drift deeper questions of humanity. For what you paid foreducation, of course, the most important need to protect the city of luxury and unpredictable man. And "more likely that Plato is immersed in high ideals and noble thing.
He gave his famous parable in the seventh book, where he played a real state, Greece, Athens, his hometown, desires and pride. This parable was given for the future, for the modern man, which are far from the ideals of life and very close to real life. The truth never dies and can neverbe ignored. Make a utopia does not mean a city, including the best of comfort, and the guardians of the nobility, however, does not mean that man. All the "isms" you can not define the man and the reality of their existence. If and only if the man had experienced the reality of man is the greatest truth about man. This is the cry of modern man.
As the Renaissance was a return to 'Greek humanism, "Platonic conception had any influence on architects and thinkers of this era. Classic orPlatonic conception of the ideal or utopia was fixed and static, it assumes an immutable order, and the parameters are the same in all ages. The principles of reason have been used in the arts and scientific rationality. However, some authors tend gradually to express the protest of the human soul utopia based on reason.
In the sixteenth century, Thomas More wrote his famous work called Utopia, Utopia dates modern utopia of Thomas More (1516). Today is Greekand Christian roots. For more, utopia, the place is good for nothing (as outopia utopia).
It seems that in all times and in all societies people tend to Paradise or the Golden Age, a time and place where no pain, all live in freedom and happiness. There are some popular images of the earth and Schlaraffenland Cockaygne, places where people went to live with joy and does her bidding. There Dorados The Shangri Las and where people live in peace and harmony. But these are notUtopia. For more, utopia has to walk with the current realities. It looks as if trying to create an image of a well and a perfect society.
In the seventeenth century that we have found some great utopian works such as Sun City Bell (1623), Christianopolis Andreae (1619), Bacon's New Atlantis (1627), while its high reputation among European men of letters. However, in eighteenth-century satire of Jonathan Swift and Gulliver is refuted in writingOn the Road (1726), adds the anti-utopian utopia or dystopia tradition. We can trace the influence of the great utopias soon. Swift's Gulliver's Travels and Samuel Butler's Erewhon Evegeny We Zamyatin, as Kumar has in his article that "the pride of human reason" (67).
As Kumar cites in his article entitled "Aspects of Western utopian tradition" in the Renaissance, and revived the utopian ideas have their roots in Greek. Until the eighteenth century,elements such as science and technology have added the concept of utopia and the subject of the ideal city. In fact, the age of reason (1600-1800) Plato's lost its popularity and abandoned him and his rationalist metaphysics. But after the French and industrial revolutions inspired by the imminent possibility of utopia. However, it was a kind of utopia based on scientific analysis, a company created by modern science and modern industry. Utopia has been idle for a "time, because of racethe social sciences. They interpreted the utopia through science and logic (67).
Consequently, we consider the classical ideal city invented by the Greeks as the "prehistoric" or "unconscious" of the modern utopia. Modern utopias, rooted in the majority are heathens. They are designed to create a society without the light of divinity, just by human reason and rationale. Republic, however, there was a philosophical sketch (ibid. 70).
According to this article, utopia has become the waynovel in the eighteenth century. During this time we find two types of theories, utopian social theory represented in Rousseau's Social Contract and Owen, "Fourier" and the writings of Marx and utopian political theory highlighted in the Leviathan of Hobbes and Locke, Two Treatises of Government (ibid. 73).
Some scientists like Charles Darwin and Emile Zola offered revolutionary theories. Literary naturalism is derived from a biological model has its origin in Darwin and his theory ofevolution. Emphasis is placed on the theories of heredity and environment. According to Richard Lehane "Darwin has created an environment that has made a convincing naturalism to explain the nature of reality in the late nineteenth century" (46). However, before Darwin's ideas are available in literature, had to be transformed by Emil Zola. Zola believes that a novelist is like a scientist observes nature and society and rejects the supernatural and the absolute standard of morality. All reality couldexplained biologically. Controlled by heredity and environment, man was the product of his temperament in a social context (ibid. 47). Consequently, while the naturalistic novel presupposes the reality of evolution, often works in terms of devolution, degeneration and decay are based on the fiction of a personal nature (ibid. 50). Zola believes that the same forces that determined the individual were at work in society. But modern man had been transferred from the environment, the losscontact and relationship with his instincts and being. Lehane says in his article that the money and bureaucracy had replaced the workings of nature and natural feelings. As civilization became more and more pronounced, the company has become increasingly corrupt. Realism / Naturalism as a literary movement depended on showing how a new business process / Industrial had broken the ancient rhythms of the earth and set in motion a social process (ibid. 61). The question is whether the realism / naturalismwas an American equivalent or not. There is a connection between Norris and Zola, Balzac, and Dreiser. They shared historical moment and have been the scene of his novels in the industrial world. As a way of presenting a literary reality, naturalism has dominated from 1870-1890 in Europe and America from 1890 until the end of World War II (62).
Technology has been a central element in the history of Western modernization. As Pippin said there is "an increasing reliance on technologyproduction of goods, services, information processing, communication, education, health and public administration "(185). This dependence, Pippin also argues, it is expected and accepted by the early founders of modernity (Bacon and Descartes), and finally became a reality in the second half of the nineteenth century (185). This growing reliance on technology has created a series of political problems.
As mentioned in the Norton Anthology of AmericanLiterature, when the wars broke out, have changed the world. World War I erupted in 1914 when England and France were fighting Germany. The United States in 1917 went to war with Britain and France. Most of the U.S. population was of English and German after the war encouraged the country to return to the ways of life before the war. However, for others this fall in Europe has shown the inadequacy of the old sociallife. In the collapse of the stock market in 1929 was an economic depression. Do not over until the Second World War. In this war, Japan and Germany have fought against the United States. The war ended in 1945. Why the United States has become an industrial society and a world power. The United States therefore has become a modern nation. In recent decades, American writers recorded all the struggles and debates about war and history. An anticipated futureutopias. They hope to build an ideal city, but others believe that "the old ways would not work for New Times" (1071). They were thinking of creating something new. In fact, in the twenties and thirties, the pace of urbanization, industrialization and immigration accelerated. The pace of technology and accelerated science, morality, justice, virtue and it has been crushed under the wheels of their own.
According to the Norton Anthology of American Literature, Communism andor other forms of radical politics, so common in the decades between the wars have their ideology through the writing of the German Karl Marx (1818-1883). Marx identified the root of human behavior in the economy. He said the industrial companies that have divided into two classes: the capitalists against the workers. For him, ideas and ideals of every society has had a direct bearing on the interests of the ruling class. It seems that Marx wanted to build a society based on communist ideals.Americans, Europeans have been affected by the vision of Marx. Those who considered themselves Marxists in the 1920 and 1930 were related to this problem. As socialist syndicalists, anarchists, communists opposed these American competition of free markets. The United States also wanted to have the ideals that have been said to ensure freedom and justice. In these decades, the U.S. has occurred in the construction of an ideal state (Franklin 1073). But a question arises that ifideal of life was possible or not.
Technology has played a vital role in these events. Without the production of new transport services and communication, modern America could not exist. You can not dissociate science technology. Because scientific inventions, the world has changed, we have the technology development in the Americas and Europe. On the other hand, the literati, scientists believe. He knew that some "thinkers negligent." The letters alsodecreased ability of scientists to lead to some important moral issues such as human factors and subjective experience (Ibid.1073). Therefore, in the nineteenth century, O'Neill was against capitalism, the individual worker exploitation and unequal distribution of wealth were its products. From early 1910 to 1920, saw the utopian goals of anarchism as a possible answer to capitalism (Ibid.1152).
If we take into account Marx's vision of utopia is a goodtalking about his idea of self-concept because utopian thought has something to do with being and the way in regard to yourself, others, human nature, technology and the natural world. Marx's intention is supposed to overcome alienation. For him, this is an important aspect of political theory and reconstruct the Marxist utopia. Johan Tralau in his article "The Self-made in the utopia of the young Karl Marx," says that "the human being no longer dominate nature, but livein harmony with it. "(394) argues that the utopian world is completely industrialized For Marx, the man must be active. Believes that the flesh is flesh, because of its production continues." technological activities through the car turns right in nature, and himself, because this utopia means the end of the conflict between man and nature, natural science has invaded and transformed human life through "(397 ) Therefore there is no difference between man and nature that Marx is discussed .. "half of the field "(398) that considers the natural sciences industry in relation to man. This destroys the subjectivity of human society. Tralau As argued in his article" in Utopia there are no differences between people "( 399.) Chapter IV, illustrate the symbolic character of Larry and anarchists representing caricatures of utopian thought in The Iceman Cometh.
Joshua Nichols in his article entitled "Lacan, the City, and the symptom utopian analysis. Abject urban spaces, "says that" Utopia is a fictional representation of an ideal society "(460) It seems that the utopia is a place that is only in myth and fiction utopia looks like a mirror of society. . actually reflects "a lack of rationality of the modern city" (461) As in his opinion, in recent centuries, "utopian city is outside of the deity" makes sense only in relation to secular city "(460).
The idealism is a doctrine thatsomething to do with philosophy and argues that "the reality is fundamentally mental in nature", ie a kind of definition in the Dictionary of Philosophy Simon Blackburn gives, second edition (177). Modernity refers to both a category and a historical and philosophical ideal of civilization. If we consider the first class historical positions, classical Enlightenment have been highlighted. According to Robert B. Idealism Pippin 's as modernism, these positions are as follows:
the new conception ofrequired by the nature of modern science, post-Cartesian concept of mind as subjective consciousness, a world of passion fueled by politics, but rationally calculating individuals, or a post-Protestant self-sufficient individual, responsible agents, a new political language of rights and equality and, above all, a common hope: a secular basis, rational morality and politics has proven to be safe and expectations, could inspire loyalty and commitment tovitality and reproduction of a company (Pippin 2)
Now we can consider philosophical modernity that has something to do with the modern German idealism, especially Kant and Hegel, and especially the discussions of the "agency, self-determination and rationality." Pippin says it is very questionable to say that some of the German philosophers of the early nineteenth century, developed the true sources of intellectual break with the first modernist religious and intellectualtradition. They believe that reality, modern social reality has become rational. In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant refers often to the mind. Later German idealists were convinced that Kant had not destroyed the classical metaphysical tradition, but had begun a new kind of philosophy of subjectivity. He claims that, in philosophical knowledge, "reason is occupied with nothing but itself"(qtd. in Pippin, 39). His controversial issue is the concept of "apperception"; Kant states the claim that " It must be possible for the 'I think' to accompany all my representations"(Ibid.), "The principle of apperception is the highest principle in the whole sphere of human knowledge"(Ibid.). Pippin argues that according to Kant," whenever I am conscious of anything, I also apperceive that it is I who am thus conscious" (Ibid.).
At that time, Hegel also gave his own theme in his account of modernity; he stated that the modern age is the realization of human freedom, of absolute freedom. He stresses that this freedom is possible if you just experience a great loss; the experience that God himself is dead, as it is noted in his article "Belief and Knowledge".
In the latter half of the nineteenth century, the new seemed suddenly old, outdated. According to Jurgen Habermas, Nietzsche's thought represents the entry into post modernity. Nietzsche renounces a renewed revision of the concept of reason and bids farewell to the dialectic of enlightenment (Habermas, 85-6). As Pippin holds this farewell to the hopes of the Enlightenment is seen as the decisive European turning point , the European dissatisfaction with the Enlightenment comes down to the failed attempt of Hegel and the post-Hegelian at a dialectical reformulation and completion of such hopes, and a Nietzschean inauguration of irrationalism (Pippin 330)
Pippin further argues that for Nietzsche there is something different about the post-enlightenment period in western history; something which is not just the repetition of Platonism and Christianity (Ibid. 335). However, Modernity just represents his repetitive descriptions; as Pippin argues, it wants to complete the ancient will to truth. He believes that Modernity's dream of Enlightenment is so extreme and that makes its failure. His analysis of the institutions of modernity is directed to the Christian-moral interpretation; he asks his major question and replies it: "What does nihilism mean? That the highest values devalue themselves" (Ibid.335). In his book Pippin argues that Heidegger attacks on the ancient philosophy and Germen Idealism. He asserts that man is free and his being is determined only in his liberation, commerce and economy turn into their powers, art becomes the manner of self-development of human creativity. The idea of sovereignty brings a new formation of the state and a new kind of political thought (Ibid. 395).
When the utopian society comes to be portrayed in literature, we see a fully developed picture of a happy world in which we experience a good life in a new society; we see people at work, at home, in society, we experience their personal and social lives, however, we see a good life, a good day in utopia. But a question arises if it is a real life, whether it is persuasive to portray just a far-fetched life and society. A modern man can not stand it, because he has experienced and seen the real life and the bitter truth is that what he sees is completely different from what he reads in literature. Among the nineteenth century men some come to react against utopian thinking; in their works we can trace anti-utopian thinking. Some like Henrik Ibsen and Eugene O'Neill have portrayed real life in their writings and questioned Plato and his principles of state. It seems the early utopians as Kumar holds in his article, tended to "blend utopian and anti-utopian elements"(70), like Plato and More. But from the late nineteenth century, utopia and anti-utopia tended to pull apart. The anti-utopia expresses some fears; it offers the threat of Technology, Science, and material progress and considers it as the greatest threat to human values. We see that in this century the portrayal of the society becomes more detailed and realistic as you see in Ibsen's The Wild Duck and O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh.
Ibsen is looking forward to something new, the creation of a transformed world. This is an age of becoming. There is not any definite line, as Plato implied in his parable of the cave in order to divide truth and reality. It looks as if Ibsen is playing with the concepts. There is no line between the old and the new, the illusion and the fact, the reality and the truth, the physics and the metaphysics. He wants to define them again. The man of Plato's era is completely different from the 19th century man. However, both intend to construct an ideal world with an ideal concept.
But Ibsen is not only a great thinker, he is a great artist. His works show us the true meaning of the word realism. According to Arthur Symons, "a word which has unhappily come to be associated with pictures of life which are necessarily sordid, frequently unclean (97). Realism is a picture of life as really it is. In his article" Ibsen's Modernity" he argues that Ibsen's realism stifles nothing;" it is daring to discuss matters over which society draws a veil"(97), but it is never gross, never unhealthy, it "sees life steadily, and sees it whole"(97). Ibsen paints ordinary life; his people are the people we meet on the streets, painters, lawyers, and teachers.
In 1890, the American popular theater began slowly to change, along with the Norwegian Ibsen, whose work was first produced in America in 1889. According to Brenda Murphy's American Realism and American Drama, before 1890 the realistic ideas were coming from novelists who had not fully learned the language of the theater (85). The years between 1890 and 1915 were crucial for the establishment of realistic principles in American drama. "The turn-of-the-century playwrights who had ambitions toward writing drama that was good literature as well as good theater were the generation who grew up with the sense of realism as avant-garde"(Ibid. 86). When he started writing plays in 1913, O'Neill was aware of what had been happening in the American theater. As the son of a prominent actor, he had grown up with some knowledge about the theater. From the realist's perspective, his whole career was a development of these two early impulses:" the search for a dramatic structure that would give an appropriate shape to the illusion of reality in his dramatic action, and the search for theatrical ways to depict the deepest reality of his characters within the dramatic structures he discovered". He wanted to fulfill the two impulses of realism in his masterpiece, The Iceman cometh(1939) and A long Day's Journey into Night(1940).In many of his experiments he intends to pursue realistic structure and deeply psychological characterization in order to represent his notion of truth (Murphy,114).
They both seem to develop a great understanding of humanity in all its shades. Ibsen gets his doubts about utopian thinking and that ideal state imagined by Plato and so does O'Neill. He is also against the American dream. Through the history we can diagnose the trace of old in new. Humankind from his birth has been looking for an ideal place based on his ideas. However, in track of history man's ideas have been fulfilled by innovation of technology, science, philosophy, human morality, and so many other factors. Utopia to Ibsen and O'Neill and many other thinkers is not the one which was to Plato. It tends to change into Dystopia, a place where instead of all being well, all is not well. The nineteenth and twentieth-century thinkers like Henrik Ibsen and Eugene O'Neill made an attempt to construct a utopia based on the realities of the life.
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