The Alchemy of Waste

The Impact of Asian Farming on the British Organic Movement

Bibliographic Data

ID12243303
AuthorsPhilip Conford (University of Reading, corresponding author)
Year1995
Volume6
Issue1
Pages103-114
Publication date1995-04-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueRural History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0956-7933 • E-ISSN: 1474-0656
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0956793300000856
OpenAlexW2105433399
LanguageEN
Citations received6
References cited2

When Jean Valjean, the hero of Victor Hugo's Les Misérables, evades captivity by disappearing into the Paris sewers, the author relaxes the narrative tension for nearly twenty pages in order to reflect on the harm caused by that city's waste-disposal methods. In doing so, he identifies what were to become, several decades later, central issues of concern for the British organic husbandry movement. With an artist's insight Hugo recognised that the Parisian sewage system was doubly wasteful: ‘the land impoverished and the water infected’ (Hugo, 1909: 532). A ‘restitution of the mire to the land’ (Hugo, 1909: 548) was required, and he suggested the creation of a tubular arrangement, ‘a system of elementary drainage, as simple as the lungs of man’, which would ‘bring into our cities the pure water of the fields and send back into our fields the rich water of the cities’ (Hugo, 1909: 532). The alternative – the road being taken – was to squander potentially precious fertility and emaciate the population

Alchemy · Art · Art history · HERO · Literature · Narrative · History · Philosophy, Ethics, and Existentialism · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies · Walter Benjamin Studies Compilation

Tools

Open DOISci-Hub