De Casseres, Anarch

The Shadow Eater. By Benjamin DeCasseres. American Library Service. $2.

NEARLY a score of years has passed since “The Shadow Eater” was first published and yet the author of these startling poems has remained practically unknown except in the journalistic milieu that he frequented. The critical scouts that should have been alert for the’ signs of new genius either ignored or were ignorant of the existence of Benjamin DeCasseres. Remy de Gourmont and James Huneker pointed the way to his door, but their voices were lost in the rumble of drums that heralded the constant arrivals on the literary scene of magnificoes of little talent. The drums are still rumbling and genius still starves for the appreciation that should attend it. Now that “The Shadow Eater” has been republished after the lapse of a number of years I, who have lately read these poems for the first time, wonder if it be possible for DeCasseres to receive his due from this generation. That a later one will hail him as a poet who spoke before his time I have -no doubt, but today he is doomed to obscurity for reasons that are patent to any one who brings an understanding sympathy to the reading of his strange poems.

Their spirit is anarchical, but of an anarchy that transcends the breaking of the tablets of man’s petty fashioning and would assault the enthroned Life Force itself. It beats savagely against the walls of its prison, not for freedom’s sake, but because it would know—and destroy—that which lies beyond them. To those who serenely await a supernal answer to the great riddle as well as to those who anoint their uneasy souls “with the unguent of philosophers or theologians the poetry of Benjamin DeCasseres will always be anathema. No larks sing their “God’s-in-His-Heaven” songs in these pages. Daffodils may nod in sun-bright rows but DeCasseres stands lost in contemplation before the gibbet that rises black and stark against the moon. The unearthly secret of life glows through these poems, but to the poet it lies hidden behind its blinding radiance. He grapples with that mystery of the spirit that pushed up cursing man from the primordial ooze and yet throughout the struggle he knows the futility of his soul-wearying efforts. But Caliban some day will stand before Prospero and of this meeting DeCasseres sings.

The weird beauty of these chants of a soul that still feels the pangs of its own birth can not he limned in other words than those which it utters in its own proud torment. Lack of space prevents me from quoting in full the significant poem, The Vision Malefic.

“My soul is a tarn as black and motionless as the night above
In which whirl forever and ever the pallid balls of light that are my sickly dreams.
I am weaving a shroud for the God whom I hate—
I have defied Him and cursed Him, and here is His winding-sheet.
I am lodged in my sins, and my soul is lean of its lusts.”

These swift-running, rhymeless lines, with their varying yet certain rhythm, like the heat of the sea on a long, curving shore, made their appearance some time before the vers libre craze swept our smaller poets beyond their depth. This fact would be more significant had not Walt Whitman broken the set forms of poetry several generations behind DeCasseres. Whitman’s influence was not lost on DeCasseres, but it betrays itself in the fashioning of some of his lines more than in their content.

The fierce individualism of DeCasseres, however, makes it impossible for him to employ very long any medium that is not shaped by his own passion. For this reason he occupies a niche that is all his own and asks space to stand from no other man. Formal criticism would demand a label for that niche by which the poet could be read into his proper place in the ranks of his contemporaries and his predecessors, but DeCasseres defies such evaluation, for he belongs to no school nor does he proselyte for any cult that is greater than his own individuality. His genius may owe much to those before him who strode in the vanguard of the rebels, yet it has come to its full flower only in himself. It is a bloom of exotic richness that time will not cause to droop and perish.

Howard Irving Young

This article was in the archives of Egoist Archive. In an effort to get that material back on the web, if it cannot fit within the framework of the website somewhere else, it will be posted to the blog.

Note: William McCall’s 1947 book was titled Elements of Individualism.

Review of “‘Individualism’ in the Mid-Nineteenth Century”, by Koenrad W. Swart

Koenrad Swart states his thesis early on when he states: “The term ‘individualism’ with its perplexing varieties of meanings is responsible for many inconclusive debates in the history of ideas.” He goes on to identify three “highly dissimilar clusters of ideas”: individualism as 1) the idealistic doctrines with egalitarian implications, such as the “rights of man” made popular by/in the French Revolution; 2) the anti-statist utilitarian doctrine of laissez faire, economic liberalism; and 3) the aristocratic cult if individuality, Romantic individualism, such as put forth by Wilhelm von Humboldt and Fredrich Schlegel. This contingent was at odds especially with the egalitarian aspect of what had been termed individualism up to that time (c.1830), and stressed the diversity and inequality of talents and abilities. On the other hand, many thinkers at this time considered individualism, including laissez faire capitalism, to be the logical outgrowth of the ideas which spawned the French Revolution, pointing out that the founding fathers of this revolution were inspired more by self-interest than love of humanity.

Individualism as a positive term made its first strides toward acceptance in England in the work of William McCall, whose Principles of Individualism gained a fairly wide readership; one of his early enthusiasts was George Eliot. McCall was apparently influenced by J.S. Mill and Carlyle, but above all, by the German Romantic ideas by authors discussed above, and, although Swart does not explicitly say so, it would seem that Max Stirner may have figured into it as well; McCall’s book was published in 1847, two years after Stirner’s book Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum.

Many of the writers, especially in Germany, stressed the long history of German independence as a widespread cultural trait; their love of freedom could be traced to the old Germanic tribes which had successfully resisted Roman domination and which later insinuated itself into medieval institutions such as the feudal system after the Germanic invasion of Roman territories. This love of liberty was considered a strong cultural trait until German unification in the 1870’s, with the rise of Prussianism.

The individualist tendency is seen by Swart as culminating with the thought of the Young Hegelians, in particular Max Stirner, in rejecting the claims of society upon the individual, in the 1840’s.

An interesting contrast between the individualism of laissez faire capitalism and what was termed “infinite individualism” was developed by Karl Bruggemann in 1842 in which he asserted that this infinite individualism was based in a German infinite self-confidence to be personally free in morals and truth.

Individualism gained a lasting impetus in the publication of Jacob Burckhardt’s Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy in 1860. From this moment on the term was a force to be reckoned with in the ongoing battle of ideas still being waged today.