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Aldous Huxley

What does Aldous Huxley stand for?

  • One of the greatest novelists and essayists of English Literature, whose best-known novels are included in the 100 most important works of world literature.
  • Swiftian satire and humour
  • Scintillating wit
  • Inter-disciplinary thinking
  • Polymath who combined mastery of the arts with a profound understanding of psychology, religion, philosophy and mysticism
  • Pioneer of ecology and decentralism
  • Staggering vocabulary, Brave New World is his easiest book(!)

Swiftian satire and humour

  • A merciless portrait of the salon of Lady Ottoline Morrell, Garsington (Crome Yellow, Those Barren Leaves)
  • A kaleidoscopic view of the Bloomsbury Circle and London in the Swinging 20s in his early novels (Crome Yellow, Antic Hay and Point Counter Point)

Huxley's novels of ideas

  • Main character resembles author, gentle, intellectual observer of an ever-changing kaleidoscope of characters
  • Leading character often changes personality in different situations / multiplicity
  • Structure inspired by music, composed like fugues or sonatas

Intellectual genius and scholarship

  • Intimately familiar with the literature of France, Italy, Germany, England, the US and well versed in the major works of Chinese, Russian and Arabic literature
  • Authority on Eastern and Western philosophy
  • Major art and music critic
  • Famous for his astounding range, with essays on science, education, politicial philosophy, ecology, psychology, neurology, hypnosis, propaganda

Living with a handicap

  • Visually impaired from his late teens as a result of keratitis punctata, Huxley suffered from eye-strain throughout his life.
  • Hence the interest in:
    – Alexander Technique
    – Bates Method
    – Kinesiology
    – All form of meditation

«Vision of the future»

– ALDOUS HUXLEY

Vision of the future

  • Brave New World (1932, dystopia), intellectual totalitarianism
  • Ape and Essence (1949, dystopia), bestial totalitarianism
  • Island (1962, utopia), the world of balanced man, mystical ecotopia

Pacifism

  • Pacifist writings and pamphlets in the 1930s
  • Eyeless in Gaza 1936
  • Island 1963
  • Peace is impossible as we are
  • Pacifism starts with work on ourselves
  • Nationalism as idolatry
  • Involvement with Peace Pledge Union, Dick Sheppard

Ecology

  • One of the first writers in the 20th century to address the importance of
    – Organic farming
    – Overpopulation
    – Renewable energy
    – Phosphorous (Point Counter Point)
    – A more vegetarian diet (Eyeless in Gaza)

Perennial philosophy and comparative religion

  • The Perennial Philosophy, common ground of world religions as a basis for peace
    – Term coined by the German philosopher Leibnitz
    – Lessing Nathan der Weise
    – Huxley’s last novel Island
  • Vedanta and the West
  • Vedanta for Modern Man

Search for deeper meaning in culture

  • Distrust of what we ordinarily call personality, life, reality
  • Culture as a pseudo-religion
  • Fragmentation of leading characters (The Farcial History of Richard Greenow, Antic Hay, Those Barren Leaves, Point Counter Point)
  • Reincarnation and metempsychosis (transmigration), Time Must Have a Stop

Exploring human nature practically

  • Mind-body: F. M. Alexander (Eyeless in Gaza), Bates The Art of Seeing
  • The value of hallucinogenics in discovering the deepest levels the psyche (The Doors of Percecption, Heaven and Hell, Island)
  • Dieting (e.g. Hay diet), painting, gardening, cooking etc. as forms of yoga

In search of human potentialities

  • Contemplation and the practice of awareness:
    – Those Barren Leaves
    – Eyeless in Gaza
    – After Many a Summer
    – Time Must Have a Stop
    – The Genius and Goddess
    – Island

Independent and creative thinking

  • Huxley is one of the path-breakers of the 20th century for interdisciplinary thinking
  • Though he was close to a number of political movements (pacifism) and religious institutions (e.g. Vedanta), he retained his complete independence

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