Solaris/the Ocean Character Analysis

I found myself inside a vast, silver funnel, as high as a cathedral nave.

I must be dreaming. All this could only be a dream!

In the empty corridor I stood for a moment in front of the closed door. I noticed a strip of plaster carelessly stuck on one of the panels. Pencilled on it was the word “Man!”

Compared with the proliferation of speculative ideas which were triggered off by this problem, medieval scholasticism seemed a model of scientific enlightenment.

Veubeke, director of the Institute when I was studying there, had asked jokingly one day, “How do you expect to communicate with the ocean, when you can’t even understand one another?” The jest contained more than a grain of truth.

“He never for one moment thought he was mad. If he had he would never have done it. He would still be alive.”

As I watched her moving about the room, now smiling, now serious, talkative one moment, silent the next, sitting down and then getting up again, my terror was gradually overcome by the conviction that it was the real Rheya there in the room with me, even though my reason told me that she seemed somehow stylized, reduced to certain characteristic expressions, gestures, and movements.

As she tried to take off her dress, an extraordinary fact became apparent: there were no zips, or fastenings of any sort; the red buttons down the front were merely decorative.

I felt I was justified in thinking that I had defeated the ‘simulacra,’ and that behind the illusion, contrary to all expectation, I had found the real Rheya again—the Rheya of my memories, whom the hypothesis of madness would have destroyed.

“Who hasn’t had, at some moment in his life, a crazy daydream, an obsession? Imagine . . . imagine a fetishist who becomes infatuated with, let’s say, a grubby piece of cloth, and who threatens and entreats and defies every risk in order to acquire this beloved bit of rag. A peculiar idea, isn’t it? A man who at one and the same time is ashamed of the object of his desire and cherishes it above everything else[.].”

“We are only seeking Man. We have no need of other worlds. We need mirrors. We don’t know what to do with other worlds.”

The sight of the two identical dresses filled me with a horror which exceeded anything I had felt hitherto.

“They are not autonomous individuals, nor copies of actual persons. They are merely projections materializing from our brains, based on a given individual.”

I was struck by the soundness of this description; Sartorius might not be very sympathetic, but he was certainly no fool.

“The truth?” she said. “Word of honor?”

I opened my mouth to speak, but no sound came. “Word of honor” . . . it was our special catch-phrase, our old way of making an unconditional promise. Once these words had been spoken, neither of us was permitted to lie, or even to take refuge behind a half-truth.

This geocentrism might have been amusing if it did not underline the dilemma in which he found himself.

“Am I . . . do I look very like her?”

“You did at first. Now I don’t know.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Now all I see is you.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes. If you were really her, I might not be able to love you.”

“Why?”

“Because of what I did.”

“You don’t love her. You do love her. She is willing to give her life. So are you. It’s touching, it’s magnificent, anything you like, but it’s out of place here—it’s the wrong setting. Don’t you see? No, you don’t want to. You are going around in circles to satisfy the curiosity of a power we don’t understand and can’t control, and she is an aspect, a periodic manifestation of that power.”

Because there may be thoughts, intentions and cruel hopes in my mind of which I know nothing, because I am a murderer unawares. Man has gone out to explore other worlds and other civilizations without having explored his own labyrinth of dark passages and secret chambers, and without finding what lies behind doorways that he himself has sealed.

According to Muntius, Solaristics is the space era’s equivalent of religion: faith disguised as science […] the drudgery of the Solarists is carried out only in the expectation of fulfillment, of an Annunciation, for there are not and cannot be any bridges between Solaris and Earth.

“Who is responsible? Who is responsible for this situation? Gibarian? Giese? Einstein? Plato? All criminals . . .”

“Suppose, I’m capable of reproducing the architecture of a symmetriad, and I know its composition and have the requisite technology . . . I create a symmetriad and I drop it into the ocean. But I don’t know why I’m doing so, I don’t know its function, and I don’t know what the symmetriad means to the ocean . . .”

The age-old faith of lovers and poets in the power of love, stronger than death, that finis vitae sed non amoris, is a lie, useless and not even funny.

I knew nothing, and I persisted in the faith that the time of cruel miracles was not past.

I found myself inside a vast, silver funnel, as high as a cathedral nave.

I must be dreaming. All this could only be a dream!

In the empty corridor I stood for a moment in front of the closed door. I noticed a strip of plaster carelessly stuck on one of the panels. Pencilled on it was the word “Man!”

Compared with the proliferation of speculative ideas which were triggered off by this problem, medieval scholasticism seemed a model of scientific enlightenment.

Veubeke, director of the Institute when I was studying there, had asked jokingly one day, “How do you expect to communicate with the ocean, when you can’t even understand one another?” The jest contained more than a grain of truth.

“He never for one moment thought he was mad. If he had he would never have done it. He would still be alive.”

As I watched her moving about the room, now smiling, now serious, talkative one moment, silent the next, sitting down and then getting up again, my terror was gradually overcome by the conviction that it was the real Rheya there in the room with me, even though my reason told me that she seemed somehow stylized, reduced to certain characteristic expressions, gestures, and movements.

As she tried to take off her dress, an extraordinary fact became apparent: there were no zips, or fastenings of any sort; the red buttons down the front were merely decorative.

I felt I was justified in thinking that I had defeated the ‘simulacra,’ and that behind the illusion, contrary to all expectation, I had found the real Rheya again—the Rheya of my memories, whom the hypothesis of madness would have destroyed.

“Who hasn’t had, at some moment in his life, a crazy daydream, an obsession? Imagine . . . imagine a fetishist who becomes infatuated with, let’s say, a grubby piece of cloth, and who threatens and entreats and defies every risk in order to acquire this beloved bit of rag. A peculiar idea, isn’t it? A man who at one and the same time is ashamed of the object of his desire and cherishes it above everything else[.].”

“We are only seeking Man. We have no need of other worlds. We need mirrors. We don’t know what to do with other worlds.”

The sight of the two identical dresses filled me with a horror which exceeded anything I had felt hitherto.

“They are not autonomous individuals, nor copies of actual persons. They are merely projections materializing from our brains, based on a given individual.”

I was struck by the soundness of this description; Sartorius might not be very sympathetic, but he was certainly no fool.

“The truth?” she said. “Word of honor?”

I opened my mouth to speak, but no sound came. “Word of honor” . . . it was our special catch-phrase, our old way of making an unconditional promise. Once these words had been spoken, neither of us was permitted to lie, or even to take refuge behind a half-truth.

This geocentrism might have been amusing if it did not underline the dilemma in which he found himself.

“Am I . . . do I look very like her?”

“You did at first. Now I don’t know.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Now all I see is you.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes. If you were really her, I might not be able to love you.”

“Why?”

“Because of what I did.”

“You don’t love her. You do love her. She is willing to give her life. So are you. It’s touching, it’s magnificent, anything you like, but it’s out of place here—it’s the wrong setting. Don’t you see? No, you don’t want to. You are going around in circles to satisfy the curiosity of a power we don’t understand and can’t control, and she is an aspect, a periodic manifestation of that power.”

Because there may be thoughts, intentions and cruel hopes in my mind of which I know nothing, because I am a murderer unawares. Man has gone out to explore other worlds and other civilizations without having explored his own labyrinth of dark passages and secret chambers, and without finding what lies behind doorways that he himself has sealed.

According to Muntius, Solaristics is the space era’s equivalent of religion: faith disguised as science […] the drudgery of the Solarists is carried out only in the expectation of fulfillment, of an Annunciation, for there are not and cannot be any bridges between Solaris and Earth.

“Who is responsible? Who is responsible for this situation? Gibarian? Giese? Einstein? Plato? All criminals . . .”

“Suppose, I’m capable of reproducing the architecture of a symmetriad, and I know its composition and have the requisite technology . . . I create a symmetriad and I drop it into the ocean. But I don’t know why I’m doing so, I don’t know its function, and I don’t know what the symmetriad means to the ocean . . .”

The age-old faith of lovers and poets in the power of love, stronger than death, that finis vitae sed non amoris, is a lie, useless and not even funny.

I knew nothing, and I persisted in the faith that the time of cruel miracles was not past.