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Utopian thought, conventionally seeking to harmonize the world, witnessed an essential revision in the 20th century. This period of grand political and social upheavals, world wars, an arms race, scientific and technological progress, ecological concerns, and globalization radically undermined mankind's faith in the humanistic potential of utopian projects. However, in Aldous Huxley's writings, the intention to summon up a utopian experiment superseded any agonies of doubt about programmes of social reconstruction. Huxley turned to utopia when mass distrust in the constructive impulse of the genre had become notable in the socio-cultural climate. In Huxley's last novel, Island (1962), "the poetry of silence" can be seen to render an optimistic response to the unholy state of the world.This article examines the novel's lyrical interspersions, which arguably create a specific concept of silence through a series of thematic explorations comprising the ideas of noiselessness, speechlessness, and peace. The idea of noiselessness endorses a form of overcoming the world's invincible cacophony. This kind of omnipotent dissonance can be diminished only by a supernatural power which integrates man's disparate relationships with the universe. Like Nature for Wordsworth, Huxley's image of the noiseless movement of the world unveils an image of unity to those who bring with them "a heart that watches and receives." The idea of speechlessness surfaces in the lyrical fragments of the novel that touch upon intuition. Intuitive discoveries lie at the heart of a religion unfettered from dogma, and allow access to the perennial wisdom which becomes "suddenly visible" through the act of elevation to the summit of the universe. The idea of peace is placed outside the conventional frame of existential discrepancies. For this reason, the image of Shiva is meant to transcend the opposition of life and death. As long as Shiva dances simultaneously in all the planes of reality, the Palanese can learn from him how to exist in non-attachment. The acceptance of the world's entropic progression checked by the poetry of silence leads the protagonist to a spiritual awakening and stirs his empathy for the utopian order realized in Pala.The poetry of silence embraces the beauty of the world which comes into existence from what Huxley calls a "pregnant emptiness." The mystery of this creation cannot be subjected to any scientific, philosophical, or even theological systems of reference. One may only sense this mystery without reasoning. Wisdom converges with the skyin emptiness, dubbed "the womb of love," and creates a universe from the poetry of silence. In Island, utopian thought, traditionally focusing on the regular patterns of a perfect society and state, attains a mystical profile promoted by the poetry of silence. ; В фокусе данной статьи находится поэзия Олдоса Хаксли. Поэзия была отправной точкой в творчестве Хаксли; в своих ранних лирических сборниках он ориентировался преимущественно на ироническое переосмысление модели романтического двоемирия. Начиная с первого романа «Желтый Кром» (Crome Yellow, 1921), поэзия регулярно входила в романную ткань произведений Хаксли, усиливая образное воплощение различных идей. Не исключением стал и последний роман «Остров» (Island, 1962), утопическая программа которого может быть проанализирована через призму концептуальной метафоры «поэзия тишины» и ее составляющих: бесшумности, безмолвия и покоя. В текст романа Хаксли встроил двенадцать собственных стихотворений и одно, принадлежащее древнеримскому поэту Катуллу. Если учитывать ее наиболее позднее хронологическое появление в творчестве писателя, поэзия тишины закрепляет ипостась Хаксли как поэта-мистика, близкого по духу Вордсворту. Посредством поэзии тишины Хаксли предпринял попытку устранить диссонанс мира и задать мировосприятию мистический профиль.

In his interwar utopias Men Like Gods (1923) and The Shape of Things to Come (1933), as well as other writings, H. G. Wells designs a World State whose cosmopolitan identity presents an alternative to traditional understandings of nationality, promoted by the operations of nation-states. Informed by Wells's disappointment in the League of Nations which failed to play down and overlay national prejudices and aggression after the Great War, the World State seeks to eradicate the political component of nationality. At the same time, since the nation-state gradually withers away in Wells's project, the ideas of cosmopolitanism appear to be linked to the cultural component of the nation. Superseding permanent national governments by functional world controls, the World State upholds an 'ultimate revolution', which in essence means slow-pace reformism with respect for legality. This tendency is traceable to the nineteenth-century discourse of progress with continuity, prevalent in discussions of Englishness. Yet the interaction of cosmopolitanism and nationality is complicated by Wells's eventual disavowal of national allegiances and professed investment in planning. These cosmopolitan developments can be seen to cancel out the notions of nationality at large and Englishness in particular. Regardless of such major disruptions, Wells's World State initially departs from continuous aspects English national discourse and thereby summons up an alternative, though culturally specific, form of identity.

This article examines the specificity of a space-time continuum in Aldous Huxley's utopia. The structure of the argument is informed by the compensatory nature of the utopian imagination: the critique of the current human situation engenders visions of a better and perhaps happier society; the utopian impulse to transcend reality brings to life a perfected space-time continuum. In his last novel Island (1962), Huxley summons up a vision arguably based, among many other aspects, on the rethinking of landscape which centres around an axis mundi and enables a convergence of values. Huxley uses the term 'pragmatic dream' to describe his utopian endeavours, which find their most potent, and yet precarious, realization on the fictional island of Pala. Having designated this island as a contact zone between East and West, morals and politics, death and immortality, Huxley heralds a project of reconciliation. The 'hybridization of micro-cultures' involves a dialogue of civilizations which are harmonized through various patterns of culture – European, Hindi, Chinese, and others. Since the concept of Pala is derived from varying cultural sources, the reconciliation of their opposites constitutes a convergent model of the world, ensuring a very productive if highly vulnerable exchange of values. Yet such a perfected space-time continuum proves incompatible with the dictates of the wider world. The movement of time outside the island contests Pala's timelessness to the extent that the alien profit-seeking party eventually infringes on this untimely ideal of enlightened insularity and dissolves it almost completely. However, the framing structure of the novel, opening and concluding at the call for attention, suggests a possibility of regeneration and eternal return: if not on earth, this illuminating vision can be lived and continually resurrected in the enlightened individual's mind. Huxley's aspiration to make his utopia at least psychologically attainable underpins the space-time continuum of his novel and thereby defines his fragile 'pragmatic dream'.