Le Dernier Homme
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Le Dernier Homme (Eng: Omegarus and Syderia), written in 1805 by Jean-Baptiste Francois Xavier Cousin De Grainville and published in 1806 is a seminal post-apocalyptic novel and a precursor to Mary Shelley's The Last Man.
It has been described as "a strange novel, filled with overblown romantic prose, describing the sublimest horror imaginable - the end of the human race, destroyed by plague."[1]
The book is set in 2092, part political drama, a roman à clef narrated by the fictional character Lionel Verney.
Virtually unknown today, it was noted in an 1835 issue of La Revue de Paris (page 83):
- Et le génie dont je parle avait nom Jean-Baptiste-Francois-Xavier de Grainville. Pourriez-vous me dire si on lui a érigé un monument quelque part, s'il a seulement pris place dans quelque modeste musée provincial, si ses traits ont été conservés comme les vôtres (qui que vous soyez), et peut-être comme les miens, par l'iconographe obséquieux des célébrités contemporaines? Hélas !
Background
Le Dernier Homme [The Last Man] was possibly the first novel ever written on the now-popular theme of the Last Man on Earth. In it, the narrator meets the Incarnation of Time who tells him the saga of Omegare, the Last Man on Earth. A bleak vision of the future emerges, of a time when a Dying Earth has become totally sterile. Omegare travels to Brazil where the last men have found refuge. Ormus, the so-called "God of Earth", tries to manipulate Omegare to force him to him father a new breed of monstrous cannibals, doomed to live in eternal darkness, but the vision of this awful future terrifies Omegare, who, instead, chooses death.
The saga of Omegare gave rise to one of the first unauthorized spin-offs in literary history. In 1832, Auguste-François Creuzé de Lesser published Le Dernier Homme, poème imité de Grainville [The Last Man, Poem Inspired By Grainville], an expanded version of Grainville's work, including a description of aerial cities and a failed attempt at leaving Earth to colonize another planet.
The character of Omegar (this time, without an "e") returned again in L'Unitéide ou la Femme Messie [The Uniteide or The Messiah Woman] (1858), a vast philosophico-poetic saga, self-published by Paulin Gagne. L'Unitéide took place in the year 2000, when according to the author, there were only twelve countries. In the book, God sends the eponymous female messiah to save the world.
Finally, the following year, Paulin Gagne's wife, Élise Gagne, wrote Omégar ou Le Dernier Homme [Omegar, or The Last Man] (1859), yet another poetic epic about the final days of the Earth.
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