Poem – Union Of Egoists

“Nietzsche”, a poem by William Walstein Gordak

Kevin I. Slaughter — Mon, 12 Feb 2018 19:05:57 +0000

The following poem appeared in Clarence Lee Swartz’s journal “I” (1898), issue No.5 of January 1899.
Today we posted the most information online about a rare early English language Nietzschean journal, edited by Thomas Common. “Why is Thomas Common so absolutely ignored?” was already being asked in 1913, when he was still alive, and alas, it has only gotten worse.

Nietzsche.

I sneezed, —it was his name;
He is a great philosopher,
But then, —I am the same,
And deal much less in metaphor.

I am not overmuch
In love with overmen;
Who hanker after such
Are simple folk, but then—

If think they that he meant
Themselves the overclod,
That is quite different,
Much different, God Lord!

—William Walstein Gordak,
published in “I”, No.5, January 1899

Three translated poems of E. Armand

Kevin I. Slaughter — Mon, 29 Jan 2018 16:42:04 +0000

The following poems were originally published in So sang an “outsider” in 1925. They were translated by “J.” in 2004.

The dream

I dream of a country without suffering
where no one groans under the weight of solitude,
and hearts dared to hope,
with no layers of darkness blackening their desires.

A country without tears and sadness,
where happiness would replace torment,
I dream of a country without suffering,
where one could live with integrity.

I dream of a country where all the smells of misery
would be impossible, where neither hunger nor cold
was suffered by anyone, where free, full,
brilliant, life could finally live.

I dreamt of a country where fecund science
would stir in everyone a noble an beautiful desire,
the desire to know, without heavy and burdensome
limits confining the flight of the mind.

I dreamt of a country where without any difference,
without the vulgar goals of gold and honor,
but acting upon the stimulus of common accord
the most diverse projects would be carried out.

It is not in heaven, this country I dreamt of,
It is in our world, full of prejudices and errors,
and from which we would like to flee, towards a new end —
it is upon this bitter world that its foundation awaits.

It is amongst those who are tired of stalling and obstacles,
amongst those who have decided to act here and now
that the radiant sun of all our dreams will shine;
if our will is founded on one alone.

∉

Sensibility

I’d prefer to tremble in the heat of battle
To hear the crash of cannon’s echoing fear
Standing amongst the dead and half dead,
Harvested by the shrapnel,
Than to see your eyes fill with tears.

I’d prefer to face a bandit assaulting me
In the night, in the middle of the woods, see
Shivering rays tear across the sky. But
I cannot resist for a moment
The sad pearls your eyes fashion.

And if others think it is pure laziness,
That I am a child broken by emotion,
I won’t respond, it doesn’t hurt me.

I have no hatred for those of frozen soul,
But I don’t understand those who can see
Their love cry, insensitive and calm.

∉

Progress or dementia?

Because, feverish, he says “I can go faster,
And I want to elevate myself higher: As a somber prisoner
I travel the world, which in every way is narrow to me,
To languish in it. I still don’t accept
The torrents dotting the skies with their idyll slowly,
And the antique trill of the gallant nightingale,
They are no longer of my time. I would like a push
Towards the new, the unforeseen… or to find in myself
A still-hidden nook. Mountains, oceans, valleys,
Rivers, deserts, forests, lakes, have become
So common. I need to extend into the future,
To know the still virginal tremblings of the infinite blue.”

Because he says: “I want to raise myself up as high as the condor
To where the cities flee from my eyes
And where I can no longer see the yellow of the reaped fields
Nor the waving of the grasses in the capricious winds.”
Because he invades the domain of the winged ones
And penetrates the skies more every day,
You imagine glorious destinies for man,
And deify his audacious gestures.
You bow, you become delirious, you adore imprudence,
You deck with flowers the altar of the new cult;
Who knows whether it’s progress, regression, or dementia?
I prefer to sing to the fertile and fragrant earth.
I don’t believe that the rough voice of the motors
Will ever be worth the most timid song of the troubadour,
Nor the peaceful refrain of crystal clear fountains,
Nor the sound of the reaper harvesting the grains.

“Personally Acquainted,” a poem by J. William Lloyd

Kevin I. Slaughter — Tue, 03 Oct 2017 02:06:14 +0000

J. William Lloyd (1857 – 1940) was an individualist anarchist poet and author. The following poem was published in Georgia and Henry Replogle’s Egoism (1890), Vol.4 No.1, published in September, 1897.

Lloyd founded his magazine, The Free Comrade, which first ran from 1900 to 1902, which was edited by Clarence Lee Swartz. There he championed anarchism, free love, Whitman (“Our American Shakespeare, and greater than he”) and Edward Carpenter (“The greatest man of modern England”). In 1902 and 1904 were published his two utopian novels, The Natural Man: A Romance of the Golden Age and The Dwellers in Vale Sunrise: How They Got Together and Lived Happy Ever After. A Sequel to ‘The Natural Man,’ Being an Account of the Tribes of Him.

The Free Comrade resumed publication in a new series, which ran from 1910 to 1912. Lloyd now co-edited it with his friend Leonard D. Abbott, who financed its publication. Between the end of the original series and the beginning of the new, Lloyd had stopped considering himself a pure anarchist, indeed joining the Socialist Party (“I am still anarchistic in the essential sense…. the great need of Socialism is a stronger infusion of Anarchism….”). Meanwhile his friend Abbott had moved from socialism towards anarchism. They saw the new series “as an advocate of the juncture of the Anarchist and Socialist forces.”

Lloyd’s writings appeared in Benjamin Tucker’s Liberty; in Moses Harman’s anarchist and free love journal, Lucifer the Light Bearer; the anarchist and sex-radical newspaper Fair Play, and others.

He wrote hundreds of poems, many of which appeared in anarchist periodicals.

Personally Acquainted.

A man climbed up a mountain steep,
And far and near his eyeballs peep :
“O what seek you, my friend to find?”
“To find myself, ere I grow blind.”

A man went through a forest far,
He dug each root, he watched each star:—
“What seek you, man, in these to find?”
“To find myself, or I grow blind.”

A man went o’er a pathless plain
His brain had joy, his feet had pain :—
“If you had luck, what would you find?”
“Who finds himself cannot be blind.”

A man sat in the sun and thought;
His every whim his swift hands wrought:—
“What is it then, at last, you find?”
“I find myself, and am not blind.”

—J. Wm. LLOYD.

“Life’s Paradoxes”, a poem by P. Luftig

Kevin I. Slaughter — Sat, 05 Nov 2016 16:48:17 +0000

In doing some research for the UoE, we came across this gem.

Life’s Paradoxes

P. Luftig (pseud.), 1900

STRANGE! the man who works the hardest never makes a pile of pelf,
And the flirt who flirts most madly sometimes falls in love herself;
Strange! the bogus banks have buildings in the very finest style,
And the simpler the Celestial looks the deeper is his guile;
And the wight who wades in wickedness feels not the direst woes,
And the man who drinks the deepest doesn’t have the reddest nose.

Strange! that when the man who owes us leaves, we’re all with anguish torn,
But when the man who pays departs there’s not a soul to mourn;
Strange! the rooster on the steeple, though he’s only made of tin,
Is more famous than the live one with his merry morning din;
And the fool who boasts a title (like the steeple-cock on high)
Is looked up to and respected when a sage is hustled by.

Strange! the man who stoops the lowest nearly always rises high,
And the parson says we only live, to learn the way to die;
Strange! we hail the badge of slav’ry as the banner of the free,
And we nail the thieves and prophets side by side upon the tree;
Strange! the heathen throng the thickest where the clergy tithe the sod,
And a thousand temples rise to Man for one that’s built to God.

P. LUFTIG.

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