AND WHY NOT? VILLIERS DE L'ISLE-ADAM'S TOMORROW'S EVE AND ARTIFICIAL REDEMPTION

L'Eve future by Villiers de l'Isle-Adam tells of the quasi-demonic creation of a paradoxical automaton, a machine imbued with life, by a scientist nostalgic for faith and a romantic sickened by love among its contemporaries. The duo strives to bring about the artificial redemption of a modern world now void of all divine. Science here occupies the role of religion in a text that quickly slides from positivism into spiritualism. This article explores the.workings of a novel that, while fulminating against the divine, nonetheless never questions its existence and subtly reintroduces its possibility. Finally, insisting on the hopelessness of a godless world, it seems that L'Eve future attempts to demonstrate the fundamental impossibility for human life to justify itself without any divine guarantee.