November 12, 2020 Dear Dr. Meyer: I find that Solaris throws light on these questions: 1) What drives the development of life? Solaris imagines the development of life solely from a survival threat, without competition from other life forms. (The ocean seems to have developed its capabilities in order to stabilize its orbit: here we are very much in the fiction part of science fiction, since this is not scientifically plausible.) 2) The name Solaris is suggestive. When you reach the chapter Monsters, compare the descriptions to fluid phenomena and, especially, solar flares. That the visitors come from neutrinos (the sun produces very many neutrinos) is also suggestive. Could the sun be alive? Could complex fluid phenomena----turbulence----display a kind of intelligence? The chapter Monsters is, for me, the most supreme work of imagination I have come across. In the Symmetriads, human beings see (or think they see) a reflection of all of human history. I am disappointed that no artist has risen to the challenge of depicting what Lem describes; perhaps it is impossible. 3) In the same chapter, it is also noteworthy how the larger environment destroys the forms it gives birth to. This seems to me much like what happens with artistic efflorescences: the period before world war I being destroyed in the war. And it also has relevance to my own life. When my mind awakens, the environment seems to assault it. 4) It seems that the ocean has made steps towards contact. What else could contact be, but an attempt to understand the other party? Berton observes the ocean attempting to simulate a human being at the beginning of its life, but he finds the process grotesque in its inhumanness, but how could he expect it to be otherwise? This first example of contact is dismissed as madness. Reflecting on my own life, I find this very apt. I have been able to make the most extraordinary contacts (to very different people, e.g. David Gonsalves), and even to other species (a dog) precisely at such time as I am regarded as mad. 5) When the scientists assault the ocean with powerful radiation (Lem is careful to mention that this is in violation of a UN convention), it produces the visitors. The visitors come from what appears to be the easiest parts of the scientists' minds to read: the obsessions; but they also appear to involve guilt, love, and sexuality. In working with love and sexuality, isn't the ocean pursuing the best means of contact available to it? It makes contact with the very means that humans make contact with one another. Protecting oneself, or at least analyzing dangers, is another necessary part of contact. The ocean, perhaps, wishes the scientists to consider how they have harmed other human beings, since they have just harmed the ocean. Kelvin's guilt with respect to his dead lover is obvious, but what about Gibarian's giant negress? (I find the old terminology in the Cox-Kilmartin translation more apt.) She is a walking racial stereotype: a woman in a grass skirt, grotesquely proportioned, and (to my best guess) a sexual obsession on the part of Gibarian. Is the ocean asking the scientists to consider the Earth's legacy of racial hatred? And as for Snaut's child visitor, might this be a child that he has either neglected or abused? (Why else would Snaut be guilty about it?) Here the ocean seems to have settled on another pillar of human contact, our caring for our children. Perhaps it would like Snaut to reflect on kinder treatment for the ocean. In spite of being part of a scientific discipline whose main goal is to make contact with Solaris, the scientists reject the visitors, either committing suicide, sending them away in rockets, or, finally, developing a device to destroy them. Kelvin, although he apparently does not fully realize a contact attempt has been made, is the sole scientist not to give up. He descends to the surface, and I will not share the last line, which is, I think, one of the most beautiful endings in literature. I find that my eloquence fails me: my writing is clunky and awkward. But you encouraged me not to censor myself. Nikola. On Thu, Nov 12, 2020 at 10:06 AM Ernst Meyer wrote: November 12, 2020 Dear Nikola, Thank you for the reference to Stanislaw Lem's Solaris. I accepted Amazon's offer of their Kindle edition for 30 days and read the first 65 pages. Then I downloaded the entire text from archive.org. I had never read "science fiction" before. For me it was the first time ever. Thank you for broading my horizons. I found much to think about. My immediate reaction, I must confess, was to remember my father's rejection of all contemporary music, of all contemporary drawing and painting, of much contemporary writing. He said "Das hat mit mir nichts zu tun." That has nothing to do with me. I try to be more open-minded. Although I cannot coerce my feelings, I can, and I believe I should, direct my thoughts to unfamiliar territory. Solaris reminded me of the notion of expressionism. I quote from Wikipedia: "Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas.[1][2] Expressionist artists have sought to express the meaning[3] of emotional experience rather than physical reality.[3][4] "Expressionism developed as an avant-garde style before the First World War. It remained popular during the Weimar Republic,[1] particularly in Berlin. The style extended to a wide range of the arts, including expressionist architecture, painting, literature, theatre, dance, film and music.[5] "The term is sometimes suggestive of angst. In a historical sense, much older painters such as Matthias Grünewald and El Greco are sometimes termed expressionist, though the term is applied mainly to 20th-century works. The Expressionist emphasis on individual and subjective perspective has been characterized as a reaction to positivism and other artistic styles such as Naturalism and Impressionism.[6] Solaris, as the account of a parallel world that purports to be real and true, also challenges the notions of epistemology with which I have been pre-occupied. Beyond its historical literary "success", the index of Solaris' truth and reality is the time and energy which I am devoting to the effort to "understand" and interpret its meaning. EJM