“Life whetted upon life”: Mathilde Blind, The Ascent of Man , and the Geological Record

Abstract: This article investigates the wealth of geological detail across Mathilde Blind’s poetry, especially The Ascent of Man (1889). Considering the influences of, among others, James Hutton, Charles Lyell, and Charles Darwin on Blind’s political and poetic thinking, the article argues that she contrasts the cyclical nature of geological time with human time, which has the potential to be linear and ascendant. For Blind, intervention in the geological scheme is the cosmic destiny and responsibility of humankind. Her focus on images and themes of shaping, molding, and forming, dynamically associating tectonic action and human labor with a metaphor for evolution as a process of erosion or honing, links her scientific interests to her political consciousness. The article suggests that Blind’s pinnacle of human ethical achievement correlates with that of Marx and Engels on the Communist ending of history, while also discussing how Blind’s political consciousness diverges from the Marxist. For Blind, this focus on hierarchy and the responsibility of humanity for the world betrays an anthropocentrism that is strikingly Victorian. However, the poem’s socialist and feminist argument culminates in an ethical recalibration of the human-world relationship.