Anarchistbanjo's World

Homo Sapiens by Stanislaw Przybyszewski and translated by Joe E Bandel

III.

At the “Green Nightingale,” Isa’s appearance caused quite a stir. 

Falk caught sight of old Iltis, squinting his eyes, his face twisting into an unpleasant grin. 

Naturally, his extravagant sexual imagination began to work. In that, he was unmatched. 

Iltis immediately rushed over to Mikita. God, they’d always been such good friends. 

Falk greeted him with a casual nod and sat with Isa a little apart. 

He saw again around her eyes that hot, veiled glow. 

It felt as if he might collapse. How hard it was to keep himself in check! But he controlled himself. 

Curiously, he had to clear his throat first; he felt so strangely hoarse. 

“I’ll introduce you to the company a bit.” He coughed briefly again. 

“Look, that gentleman there, the fat one with the thin legs, which you unfortunately can’t see—and they’re truly worth seeing—yes, that one, staring at you with that eerie, brooding gaze, as if he senses in you some uncanny social riddle—he’s an anarchist. He also writes verses, marvelous verses: ‘We are the infantry…’ no—correct: ‘the red hussars of humanity.’ Red hussars! Splendid Prussian imagination! That man’s got drill in his bones…” 

Falk laughed hoarsely. 

“Yes, he’s an anarchist and an individualist. Yes, they all are, all of them, sitting there so fat and broad, individualists with that peculiar, thick, German beer-egoism.” 

Something clinked on the floor. Everyone looked. 

Falk laughed. 

“Look, that’s an interesting young man. He’s a neo-Catholic and believes in a will-center in the world, of which we are only emanations of will. In him, energy collects in his fingertips; he has to release it to prevent further energy buildup. He manages by throwing glasses.” 

The young, blond, curly-haired man looked around triumphantly. His action hadn’t caused much of a stir, so he called for a new glass. 

Iltis calmed him. “Come now, child…” 

“And that one—yes, the one on the left… doesn’t he have a face like a rotten apple?” 

Mikita approached. 

“We need to join their table, or they’ll think we’re keeping to ourselves.” 

Now everyone was introduced to Isa. 

Falk sat next to Isa. To his right sat a man his friends called the Infant. 

The Infant was effusively friendly. 

Suddenly, Falk found him repulsive. He knew the man hated him. 

“Have you read the poetry book?” The Infant named a poet just rising to fame, very en vogue. 

“Yes, flipped through it.” 

Falk sensed instinctively that Isa was listening. He felt a violent inner tremor. 

“Don’t you find it delightful?” 

“Not at all. No, I find the book utterly stupid.” Falk tried to quell the foolish trembling. 

“Utterly, utterly stupid. Why write these empty little poems? To sing of spring? It’s had more than enough of that endless crooning. One’s ashamed even to say the word ‘spring’…” 

Mikita looked at Falk in surprise. He wasn’t used to hearing Falk speak like this in these circles. 

“This whole mood-painting is so flat, so meaningless… These moods—every peasant boy, every peasant girl has them when the sluggish metabolism of winter gives way to a faster combustion process… If they were moods that revealed even a speck of the terrible, the enigmatic, that which overflows in a person; if they were moods that, however trivial otherwise, gave something of the naked life of the soul, yes—something of the unknown soul… But all these things, which a higher type of person no longer experiences because—because feeling rebels against moving in this springtime crooning…” 

Falk stammered and grew confused. It felt as if he were standing at a podium, a thousand listeners around him. Then he always became foolish and spoke only banal things. The Infant tried to interrupt. But Falk had to finish. 

“Look, all these feelings may have value for youths and schoolgirls, because they’re, so to speak, the substrate of mate-selection instincts…” 

“But dear Falk—” the Infant seized a momentary pause as Falk tried to gather his thoughts—“you completely misunderstand the nature of art. 

Art comes from ability…” 

He pronounced the sentence with weight. 

“Ability alone determines the value of a work of art. The poems are rhythmically perfect, they have flow and song…” 

“And they’re empty straw-threshing,” Falk interrupted. 

“To your health!” Iltis toasted Falk amiably. Something wasn’t right with Falk. He’d never seen him so fervent and shaky. 

Falk recovered slightly. 

“No, dear sir. It’s not form, not rhythm that defines art. That had meaning once, when humans first had to create artistic forms, yes—had to, from an inner drive conditioned by a thousand causes. Back then, rhythm itself had meaning, for it expressed the rhythmic interplay of muscles… in the time when rhythm was born, it was a revelation, a great deed… Today, it has only an atavistic meaning—today, it’s an empty, dead formula. 

You know, these poems needed nothing more than an inherited sense of form… I don’t deny the importance of rhythm for the overall artistic effect, but there has to be something in a poem…” 

Iltis toasted Falk again. It was starting to bore him. 

“No, no! Not the worn-out content of spring and love and woman… No, I don’t want these ridiculous lullaby singers…” 

Falk spoke passionately and urgently. 

Isa didn’t listen to what he said. She only saw the man with the refined, narrow face and the burning passion in his deep eyes. 

“What do I want? What do I want? I want life, life with its terrible depths, its chilling abysses… Art, for me, is the deepest instinct of life, the sacred path to the future of life, to the eternity of life, and that’s why I want great, generative thoughts that prepare a new selection, give birth to a new world, a new worldview… 

Art shouldn’t consist of rhythm, flow, or song for me; it should become the will that calls new worlds, new people out of nothing… 

No, no, dear sir, we need a great, idea-generating art, or it has no meaning at all…” 

Falk suddenly came to his senses. Good Lord, what was he saying? Was he shouting a manifesto to the world? He caught himself checking the impression his words made on Isa. 

That was too boyish! 

“This kind of art you praise may have meaning for animals… You know, birds, for example, attract mates with the rhythm, the flow of their trills and such—our poets can’t do that, no, certainly not. Even schoolgirls aren’t impressed by it anymore.” 

Iltis smiled slyly and winked. 

Falk toasted him. He was dissatisfied with himself, but he felt her eyes, and he looked at her, so deeply, so… into the heart… That was surely a lyrical thought, but again, heat rose to his brain. 

The Infant grew nervous. 

“I’m truly curious what you consider art.”

“Have you seen Rops? Yes? Look, that’s art. Can you say more about life than that?” 

“Of course.” 

“Yes—superficially, of course… Of course for those to whom everything is obvious. Yes, obvious for Strauss and Vogt and Büchner, and… and… But the terrible, the gruesome, the great struggle of the sexes and the eternal hatred of the sexes… is that obvious? Isn’t that an uncanny mystery? Isn’t that perhaps what eternally creates, gives life, and destroys life? Isn’t that what shapes our motives, no matter how harmless they seem to the conscious mind…”