In the course of the nineteenth century we witness a flourishing of utopian fiction, not only on the European continent but also in the United Kingdom and North America. It took some time before the horrors of the French Revolution – itself partly motivated by utopian thinking – had receded into the background. Then, half-way through the century, The Communist Manifesto (1848) and Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859) offered a worldview with an apparently scientific basis, which aroused hopes and raised the expectation that one day the utopian dream might come true. Intellectuals like Chernyshevsky believed that humankind could evolve to a higher level and that the social and economic obstacles to its development could be overcome by the combined process of historical determinism and political action. Utopianism became a serious thing and turned from a romanticist ideal into a significant factor in the struggle for equality and democracy – and finally, when the first results had been achieved, surprisingly into an invective for castigating political opponents.

Morris’s aesthetic utopia

The various stages of this development are reflected in the careers of several outstanding writers and political activists. In England the poetry of William Morris (1834-1896) represents a romanticist idealism by way of glorifying medieval culture, Icelandic sagas, and Greek mythology. He became interested in community art, and later devoted part of his life to political lecturing and writing. Morris founded the Socialist League in the mid-1880s, called himself a Communist, and wrote the novel News from Nowhere, which sketches a charming utopian society but does not conceal the civil war that was necessary to realize it. The life of William Morris covers several stages of the development I wish to sketch. However, the turn from aesthetic enchantment to utopian narrative, followed by political activism, and leading finally to disappointment with political practices is most clearly reflected in the work of Herman Gorter (1864-1927), one of the major, if not the major Dutch poet of the late nineteenth century. William Morris and Herman Gorter are the main protagonists in this chapter.

The bent of Morris’s imagination appears from his epic poetry, in particular The Earthly Paradise, originally published in four volumes in 1868-1870.