The following I'm working on is, I believe, the first English translation of The New Amorous World (Le Nouveau monde amoureux) by the 19th century French political/sexual taxonomist and satirist Charles Fourier. A French transcription of 1967 published French text was attempted on wikisource.org, but the archivist gave up after the first 4 pages. Therefore, I am working, for now, directly from untranscribed scans from fr.wikisource.org. I am translating each page individually (ie not batched) using LLM assistance, followed by a manual review to correct obvious errors, highlight headers, and note any known or additional issues with the original text. A page by page translation narrows the context window for the LLM, and my own attention span, improving accuracy. This is a working draft translation, for any important corrections, please email me at [email protected] with the page number and the correction.
This text was suppressed by his own followers and first published in 1967 as "previously unpublished manuscript, complete text" by Editions Anthropos, 151 years after it first written in 1816. Simone Debout-Oleszkiewicz compiled original Fourier notebooks for the 1967 publication and included their own introduction. They also included a prologue they attribute to Fourier and also presented their own footnotes beneath the original text. This original French Editions Anthropos text is hosted by fr.wikisource, Wikimedia Commons as public domain, and by BnF Gallica in what are essentially untranscribed scans, despite whatever format they use. This text was reprinted in book form in 1979 by Slatkine Reprints, Genèva and by the French house Stock in 1999.
I am including the prologue attributed to Fourier, which starts on page 1 of the text presented here. I am working, for now, with the 1967 French Publication of Le Nouveau monde amourex, omitting the potentially copyrighted footnotes and the potentially copyrighted introduction by Debout-Oleszkieweicz. The end resulting French manuscript text I'm working with is of course public domain.
Fourier's "The New Amorous World" describes Fourier's disdain for civilization and how he would allegedly prefer society to be organized, especially when it comes to love, sex, and romance. Fourier considered romantic relationships within civilization to be overly reproductive (to the mortal detriment of the resulting children who the parents cannot afford), and reduced to a property relation.
Fourier contrasts civilization to his own "Societary Order". In his Societary Order, people are organized into communal buildings called Phalanxes. In each phalanx there is what appears to be a satire of the Catholic Church and sex in general. Fourier commentator Jonathan Beecher argues it is an inversion of the Catholic Church. A Court of Love is established in each Phalanx, an orgy-regulating organization with pseudo-religious, mostly non-monogamous roles for each member. Participants approach the most attractive (dubbed "Narcisse" and "Psyche") of the Phalanx like as if receiving Catholic communion. If Narcisse and Psyche pass a number of tests they are promoted to the rank of "Angelic". The Angelic surrender themselves to their 40 most ardent admirers who strive to equal them in "delicacy and refinement". As a result of their generosity Narcisse and Psyche become public idols as a result. This inspires their admirers to do the same in a downward triangular fashion.