Elena Zheltova

The article analyses the popular fantasy inspired by the emergence of airplanes in the public imagination, namely, the belief that their pilots were the forerunners of a new race of flying supehuman beings. In discussing the birth and development of this myth, it provides a detailed account of the literature on the subject published in Europe and Russia from 1908 through 1914. As it turns out, the idea that the capacity for flight transforms the pilot into a God-like being was embodied in the work of many well-known writers of prose and poetry, including Gabriele D’Annuncio, Edmond Rostand, Guillaume Apollinaire, Georges RolHn, Leonid Andreev, Vasilii Kamenskii, F. T. Marinetti, and others. On the other hand, a number of Russian authors (e. g., Alexander Blok, Andrei Belyi, Mikhail Artsybashev, Konstantin Fofanov, Dmitrii Merezhkovskii) opposed such vision. The article goes on to discuss the two chief superhuman characteristics that the new race of pilots was supposed to possess, namely, their ability to reach supreme love and their immortality. As envisioned by many authors, the flight on the airplane made it possible for the pilot to enter the domain of divine love. While he could draw a woman into a love-flight, he was also capable of flying away from carnal love to reach the heaven and enter into pure spiritual love. In a similar vein, the pilot was viewed as capable of escaping the lot of human mortality. In flight, his soul could leave his body and continue to ascend to the domain of God, while the falling body returned to the earth. Such an image of the pilot’s passing became especially wide-spread during the days of World War I. In conclusion, the article examines the reasons whereby the myth of pilot-superman enjoyed a great deal of popularity in the European culture of the early 20th century and eventually came to be assimilated by the ideologists of totalitarian state and widely used in manipulating the public opinion in the Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Soviet Union.