Appendix

John Henry Mackay[2]
Among the modern poets with a marked personality, John Henry Mackay undoubtedly occupies a conspicuous place. Surely the task of tracing the development of this poet-individuality is not without charm. The personal life, which in all cases reacts powerfully on a man’s works, can here indeed hardly be touched upon, and I can consequently offer no plastic, but only a reflex, picture.

With a few exceptions, Mackay’s poems so far have been so entirely lyrical, so entirely the expression of an inner mood, and so little addressed to the public, that they can be understood and appreciated only in their ensemble. To be delighted by rare beauty, surprised by original and saving ideas, one must allow his thought and soul-life to absorb him seriously and without prejudice. This is especially true of Mackay’s latest and, for the general reading public, most incomprehensible book, “Das starke Jahr” (The Strong Year). The following study is chiefly meant to serve as an introduction to the spirit of this remarkable collection of poems.

John Henry Mackay was born on the 6^th of February, 1864, at Greenock, in Scotland. After the death of his father, his mother, a Hamburg lady, returned to Germany with her three-year-old boy. He was given a_ German collegiate education, which inflamed his inherited British and Hamburgian spirit of independence to such angry rebellion that it gave rise to the precious series of songs, “Moderne Jugend” (Modern Youth).

Studies in Leipzig, a sojourn in Berlin, travels in Scotland, Englan , Spain, and France, gave the young man a general idea of the contemporary state of European civilization. Now Mackay lives mostly in Zürich.

It is characteristic of the poet that birth and conditions made a cosmopolitan of him long before he declared himself one on principle. On what country, indeed, should he bestow his patriotic sentiments ‘? He belongs to that class of men who are foreigners everywhere. Notwithstanding his extraction and his name, he cannot be classed with the English singers. Despite his perfect mastery of our language, he is in a certain sense also not a German poet. To explain this statement, it is suflicient to point, in contrast to him, to Bleibtreu and Wildenbruch. In their excellences and in their failings these are genuine Germans; with all their diiferences they are one in their enthusiasm for the spirit of nationalism. This element is wholly foreign to Mackay; yes, he is directly hostile to it. At a time when the spirit of patriotism dominates public opinion, we shall have to look to this circumstance for one of the reasons that will, for a long time to come, prevent the recognition of Mackay among the better class of people.

That the poet, however, is not without a great measure of warm love for his native land, for the soil on which the child first enjoyed the sun, the air, and worldly beauty, he has demonstrated by his first work, “Die Kinder des Hochlands, eine Geschichte aus Schottlands Bergen” (The Children of the Highlands; a Story of thdgiountains of Scotland). Mackay also paid a delicate tribute of youthful gratitude to our classics for the fructification of his poetical genius in a small volume of “Thüringer Lieder” (Thuringian Songs).

In Ilmenau he finds a melodious echo of the immortal strain: “Ueber allen Gipfeln ist Ruh.” And with a sense of power native to him also, he leaves the places dedicated to the memory of past greatness with the exclamation: —

... Doch ich trage voll von Hoffen
Eine Welt in mir mit fort.

All honor to the enthusiasm for Goethe and Schiller; to English poets — Byron, Shelley, Swinburne — Mackay seems to be still more indebted for the form of expression.

His own world is first opened to us in the “Dichtungen” (Poems), published in 1886.

A charming, youthful world!

Aside from a number of pictures of life seized with the intuition of the genuine poet (“Unschn1dig verurteilt,” Innocently Condemned, “Martha,” and “Einsames Sterben,” Lonely Dying), the book depicts the natural feelings of a youth just past boyhood. The love-songs bear the unmistakable stamp of the alike visionary and transitory inclinations of the young student. The poem “Glückliche Fahrt” (Happy Journey) describes the pain of the mother on the departure of her son into the world. The feelings of a mother’s heart in this heavy hour are expressed with such tender truth that one is led to infer a specially intimate relation existing between mother and son. Is it the unconscious exhaled the unconsciously inhaled influence of a filially loved woman which later gave the man the power of noble form, the pure feeling which Mackay always manifests when he treats of the most difficult themes with free inspiration?

In the “Dichtungen” all the qualities of his individuality are already to be found: the inclination to the crass, the weird, the passionately fanatical hatred of all tyrannical power, and coupled with it a deep soul-life, a love for nature which tracks its most hidden beauties, a power which knows how to reflect the finest shades of that indeiinable something which we call mood. Above all, Mackay possesses feeling and language for human suffering which give him a place beside the greatest singers of the world’s woe.

But all this is so far only indicated, just as ono recognizes the features of the grown-up man in an old photograph of a child.

The “Dichtungen” do not yet contain angthin that good fathers and mothers, cultured aunts, an loysl citizens could not pardon to a fiery and aspiring young talent. The ligh things play in it, but the storm may yet turn into a gentle, beneiicent country rain.

The mutterings of the thunder become more ominous in the social poem, “Arma parata fero,” which appeared in 1887. It is quite likely that it cost Mackay many a friend and patron. There indeed flames a kindling force in the melodious verses which far surpasses anything that the poet has hitherto accomplished; but for that very reason they are also doubly dangerous.

With this song he takes up the weapons, not again to lay them down; he becomes a clearheaded champion of the rights of the oppressed; he calls himself the spokesman of liberty.

Between the works reviewed, to which are to be added an attempt at a tragedy, “Anna Hermsdorf,” and the novelistic studies “Schatten” (Shadows), and Mackay’s later works lies an important period. Evidently we are here in the presence of one of those mysterious turning-points which occur in the development of every superior mind, and in which such abrupt changes seem to take place within it as in the verdure of the earth after certain moist, warm spring nights. Indeed, if everything becomes suddenly green, it is because the buds were ready to burst. In the year 1888 Mackay published, through Baumert and Ronge, in Grossenhain and Leipzig, a collection of novels, “Moderne Stoffe” (Modern Themes), and a second volume of poems. The latter he called “Fortgang.” At the same time two books appeared at Schabelitz’s in Zürich, anonymously, “Helene” and “Sturm” (Storm). John Henry Mackay very soon confessed himself the author.

Here we see an astonishingly rich harvest, which seems impossible to have ripened in a single year. Those must have been high-water marks of life, of creative power!

The four books belong together, although each one is in form an independent whole.

The promise, Arma parata fero! is kept.

What confusedly dawns on others from distant realms, stands before the clairvoyant eye of the prophet in clear, proximate reality. And he measures the present by the ideal of a liberty-illumined future. He daress see that which men must live, and is stronger than the Schillerian youth before the picture of Sais. — The sight of truth has not paralyzed him. He finds powerful words to proclaim to all the world what one-half of mankind must suffer that the rest may enjoy, in order to arouse from lazy indulgence and dull resignation, to terrify and to encourage.

Characteristic of this epoch is the epilogue with which “Fortgang” closes: —

“Freudig kämpfend bis zum Ziele!”
Freund, das sind ja Worte nur.
Nicht mit leeren Tönen spiele,
Willst du folgen klarer Spur.

Wann hat je ein Ziel ein Streben,
Wenn es schrankenlos die Welt
Seinem eignen kurzen Leben
Kühn und kräftig unterstellt?

Und wozu ein Kampf auf Erden
Wenn er nicht ein Ziel gewinnt:
Dass wir Alle froher werden,
Als wir waren, als wir sind?

“Freudig” — kämpft der Wahnbethörte
Und der Knecht auf blinder Spur.
Wer des Mitleids Stimmen hörte
Kämpft in herben Schmerzen nur.

Ueber Sterbende und Leichen
Wird vielleicht sein Wünschen gehn,
Und sein Ziel — er wird es weichen
Weit und immer weiter sehn.

The description of the fates of women, as illustrated in the characters contained in “Moderne Stoffe” and “Helene,” is born of an infinite compassion.

These girls have nothing of dæmonic sensuality, nothing of the sentimentality of “fallen innocence” with which most writers love to invest such figures. They are poor, troubled, trembling, despairing slaves of the sin of others. It seems to me it might do many a young lady of the bourgeoisie a great deal of good to read the story of this Hedi, this Maxl’, and the dance-hall singer Helene, in order to put aside her haughty scorn of such poor, dust-covered creatures.

Mackay has the gift of drawing the girls of the common people very attractively with the simplest means. The story of the brave little waitress Maxl’ and her tragic defeat is a gem of modern narrative art. The cold scorn with which the well-bred hero Hans Grützmeier is described leads us to expect still more of the author in the domain of satire.

Larger in conception, more valuable by its form, and more overpowering by its glowing passion is the epic poem “Helene,” written in blank verse.

It treats of the love of a young man of the upper classes for a girl who disappears after a chance acquaintance. And then he finds her again in the sad calling referred to above, which she took up not by choice, but into which deplorable conditions drove her.

Love, love, nothing but love! The exultation of young joy, sighs of languishing desire, wrestling with despair and newly-awakening pain of hope to the rage of the wildest passion! And then separation and her downfall — worse than death — and a curse shrieked into the air by the man who sees her drifting down the dark stream — ever farther and farther — and who stands on the shore and cannot help her.

What shall I say of the beauty of its lines, of its glow of passion, of its changing moods, of its climax? — Whoever has lived through the heights and the depths of a great passion, will feel by the revival of all painful memories how true this book is; and whoever does not know them — let him not read “Helene,” for its contents will appear as madness to him.

The exception might be taken that the object of such a grand feeling is little worthy of it — but when did love ever go by the rule of middle-class respectability? Presumably the Levites and other distinguished personages of the people of Israel in their time also did not consider the shepherdess, to whom the royal singer, Solomon, dedicated his song, worthy of him. And yet it was the song of songs, and Shulamite became the symbol of the heavenly bride. Every age has its typical heroine. The Middle Ages, when feudalism flourished, sang of queens; Beatrice and Laura were at least noble ladies. When the bourgeoisie recalled its rights, and the clouds of the revolution of 1789 rose on the horizon, Lotte, the pure middle-class maiden, inflamed all hearts with emotion. Helene, the filth-covered, innocently ruined proletaire girl — wil1 she not be the heroine of the threatening future?

That the heart of a son of the ruling caste, the caste which contributed no small part in causing her ruin, breaks for her, gives the poem the eifect of deep tragedy.

“I have died, but I will live!” Mackay lets his hero say, after he has resigned youth and happiness. These words are fraught with a far-reaching significance.

A number of the men who are to-day undermining the bourgeoisie with their pencil and their pen, with their word and their brush, who are bringing to honor the rights of the fourth estate, be it through the artistic representation of its life, be it through unequivocal battle cries, are the defiant, spirited children of the fat and hoary bourgeoisie itself. Such is the Nemesis of universal history. Cesar died by the hand of Brutus — the absolutism of the Catholic Church was overthrown by a monk, — and Mirabeau was a descendant of the French aristocracy. Almost always the insurgents have been nourished and equipped for their work of destruction with the best forces of the declining ruling classes.

The naturalistic, social artists and writers of the present time, too, have inherited from the bourgeoisie the results of science and the refined spirit which enables them, now that the age has opened their eyes, to feel the sufferings of their brothers so keenly and to depict them so powerfully.

A poet who with a creative imagination and the heart of a lover of mankind has made the studies that flowered in “Moderne Stoife” and in “Helene” must be carried away to mad rebellion.

After Mackay could write “Helene,” he must write “Sturm.” And the poems of “Fortgang” are only the quieter intervals between the hurricane, the dying-away of it.

Mackay has broken with his past and with the old world. In Titanic wrath he shakes at the foundations on which society imagines that it lives securely. With sublime courage he hurls mighty war songs against a hated order of the world.

Of course the book was forbidden.

It is the right of civil society to defend itself by all means against an enemy who preaches the overthrow of all existing things in such magnificent language.

The melancholy gloom which broods over the songs of the “Fortgang,” the lamentations on the frigid loneliness in which the truth-seekers dwell, are only now comprehensible. We understand that, with this poet who is too deep, and with all his pity too proud to give himself over to the quickly changing favors of the masses, and who has forever broken with the applause of his own caste, they are no mere poetical figure, but bitter reality.

“Fortgang” is a serious, rich book, a treasure for uncommon people. The solitary observer acquires a keen glance for the events about him, in which he no longer takes an active part. The results of such observations are turned into bright, psychologically interesting little sketches by the poet of the “Fortgang.” Of these I enumerate the best: “Ehe” (Marriage), “Die Knechtin” (The Hired Girl), “Der Wahre” (The True Man), “Frühlingswind” (Spring Breezes), “Liebe” (Love), “In der Gesellschaft” (In Society).

There is in Mackay a peculiar blending of a clear, skeptical reason with an imagination soaring into the realms of the unknowable. His fantasies sometimes border on the morbid. Nevertheless, when he tries to banish them, the poet shows himself perhaps at his best.

A year after the four books just reviewed, Mackay published a small volume of translations from English and American poets. It contains much that is beautiful and successfully done; nevertheless — with the exception of Joaquin Miller’s “Arizonian” — I cannot rate them as highly as Mackay’s own poetical productions.

In the meantime Mackay made an acquaintance which had the greatest influence on him. The new edition of “Sturm” of 1890, which remained unmolested by the police, is dedicated to the memory of Max Stirner.

The highly significant, now almost forgotten book of this philosopher, “Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum,” must exert a saving influence on natures who are sick with an excess of the love of humanity and who yet understand that the sacrifice of their own personality not only does no good to any one, but leads to deception and hypocrisy. Who has ever quite overcome his own self?

At bottom every largely endowed character with artistic talent is an individualist. If he wishes to be unusually true to himself and others, he will openly say so; and if he is at the same a thinker, he will try to put it into a system. Stirner, with his luminous demonstration of the right of egoism, could only offer to Mackay in a connected way what the latter had long ago experienced and even already expressed in his writings here and there.

The enthusiastic gratitude with which he recognizes the master only shows that much-abused egoism does not necessarily make its disciples incapable of every so-called noble emotion.

Mackay says in the preface to the second edition of “Sturm”: —

Und langsam fand ich mich. Ein Jahr zerrann
In letzten Kämpfen, bis ich mich gewann,
Vom Nebel-Schleier war ich dicht umhüllt,
Von Rufen aus der Tiefe wild umbrüllt,
Von Lockungen der Höhen süss umklungen,
Höhen und Tiefen habe ich bezwungen.

It is very probable that the poet of “Sturm” was approached by the temptation of taking an active part in the social movement of our day.

But Mackay no longer believes in Utopias. As long as men do not make themselves inwardly free of illusions and prejudices of all kinds, outward liberty will be of little use to them.

Wenn Ihr die Stärkren geworden seid,
So scid Ihr in Eurem Rechte,

he exclaims to the dreamers.

The idea that Socialists and Communists might prepare a happy state for the people he opposes in the strongest terms in the following verses: —

— Wo ist dann Freiheit noch und wo Entfaltung,
Wenn Keiner sich mehr an dem Andren misst?

Was Staat jetzt heisst, wird dann Gemeinde heissen,
Der Einzelne wird mehr und mehr umengt,
Ihm ist versagt, sich los- und freizureissen,
Er ist in — Rosen-Ketten eingezwängtl!

Die “Liebe” breitet ihres Mitleids Schwingen
Ueber der Tage unentschiedene Schlacht!
Sie lähmt dein Leben, meines Geistes Ringen;
Mein Lachen und dein Weinen sind bewacht.

Und bleigrau-öde, trübe Langeweile
Sinkt auf die Welt herab ein Leichcntuch,
Erfüllung hemmt des letzten Wunsches Eile
Und schliesst des Lebens unverstandnes Buch. .

These words will hardly be pardoned to Mackay by the people whom they hit.

Thus he is separated from all parties, and it will be his fate to be much hated and little understood. He stands alone, as is his will, single and strong.

The last work with which John Henry Mackay has presented us bears the name “Das starke Jahr.” (Schabeiitz, Zurich, 1890.)

The dedication of the poem reads: —

Dem gehassten Gefährten gehöre sein Werk.

“Sturm” gives us the answer thereto: —

Das ist der Kampf, den allnächtlich
Bevor das Dunkel zerrinnt,
Einsam und gramvoll auskämpft
Des Jahrhunderts verlorenes Kind.

Or is it that gloomy friend to whom the poet speaks: —

Reich mir die Hand, meiner Jugend Genosee, gewaltiger Schmerz!

The book consists of brilliant variations of the theme, “Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum.” Stirner would be pleased with the fruits of his teachings. But the harvest is no longer his; it has become Mackay’s own.

Only he alone — an idealist of materialism — could write such deep fancies on the right of the individual. It requires Mackay’s courage of the truth to draw the last conclusions of one’s philosophy with such a weirdly grand humor as is found in the poem “Krähengekrächz” (The Cawing of the Crows) — to illustrate its dark side by a picture like “Der Trinker” (The Drinker).

Some songs in which the wrestling with the unspeakable is not Yet crowned by success, or which refer directly to experiences which the reader does not know, and which for this reason, despite his best efforts, remain obscure to him, might have better been omitted by the author. The fertile loneliness of the poet, the changing moods of the creative spirit, are sung with wonderful melody. Mackay finds touching expression also for wild pleasure and the eternally wakeful longing after happiness.

How beautiful is the song, “Frühlingsnacht” (Spring Night)! But little space is accorded to love. It is the mature man who is talking here, — the wise man, who introduces us like his pupil Walther to 1ife’s opulent feast, and whose “final perception” of the world is —

Einst wähnte ich sie zu verachten —
Ich verachte sie nicht mehr —
Ich kann nur noch betrachten —
Ich schaue um mich her —

Ich betrachte das Sein wie ein Haben,
Von dem kein Teil ich bin —
Ich bin mein — ich kann mich geben
Nicht mehr den Andern hin.

To what purpose any further quotations?

Whoever has recognized how rotten the pillars are which we commonly call “ideals” when the experiences of reality brutally rise against them — and who at the same time carries within him the unquenchable thirst for pondering on the riddles of human being, the great fate of the world — will find much in this book to move him and lead him by a rare perfection of form into a realm of serious, true beauty. “Das starke Jahr” will not capture the masses, but whoever has mastered it will find in it a true friend, and its influence will grow in the course of time.

On the last page of “Das starke Jahr” the publisher announces the early appearance of the novel, “Die Anarchisten,” by John Henry Mackay. With it the poet appears for the first time before the public with a prose work of this kind. One is curious to know how such an independent, courageous, and conscientious thinker will treat the question of the Anarchistic movement. And it will be interesting to see whether the lyric poet, the novelist, has grown into the mastery of the great picture of civilization.

[1] Weltanschauung: world view.

[2] A literary study, by Gabriele Reuter. Translated from “Die Gesellschaft.”