A Poetics Of Utopia

It has become a commonplace for those who embark on the sometimes troublesome task of studying Utopia to start their approaches with the daring and perhaps futile attempt of circumscribing a domain that is by definition inexhaustible. The student of Utopia wanders and wonders lost in the maze of a semantic and existential Babel, amidst definitions and concepts, soon rendered relative by flights of imagination. Immersed in the mythical consciousness of humanity, the puzzled scholar will suddenly overhear the shouts of protest echoing from a rally in the neighbouring street. Absorbed by the absolute utopian tranquility and self-sufficiency, by images of a primordial non-contradictory state of nature, he will further encounter abominable struggles for the "survival of the fittest" or brood upon Dionysian celebrations of spiritual freedom only to sink again into nightmarish visions of doom generated by the "fallenness" of man or by the invasion of some terrestrial or extraterrestrial "alien".