THE LITTLE CAR
By:
November 8, 2022
A (pro- or anti-) science-, mathematics-, technology-, space-, apocalypse-, dehumanization-, disenchantment-, and/or future-oriented poem published during sf’s emergent Radium Age (c. 1900–1935). Research and selection by Joshua Glenn.
The 31st day of August 1914
I left Deauville a little before midnight
In Rouveyre’s little car
Counting his driver there were three of us
We said good-bye to an entire epoch
Furious giants were rising over Europe
Eagles were leaving their aeries expecting
the sun
Voracious fish were rising from the depths
Populations were rushing to know each
other intimately
The dead were trembling with fear in their
dark dwellings
The dogs were barking toward over there
where the frontier is
I went bearing within me all those armies
fighting
I felt them rise up in me and spread out
over the countries they wound through
With the forests the happy villages of
Belgium
Francorchamps with l’Eau Rouge and the
mineral springs
Region the invasions always come through
Railway arteries where those who were
going off to die
Saluted one last time this colorful life
Deep oceans where monsters were moving
In old shipwrecked hulks
Unimaginable heights where men fight
Higher than the eagle soars
There men fight men
And suddenly fall like shooting stars
I felt in myself new and totally capable
beings
Build and organize a new universe
A merchant of amazing opulence and
astounding size
Was laying out an extraordinary display
And gigantic shepherds were leading
Great silent flocks that were grazing on
words
With every dog on the road barking at
them
— An excerpt from Guillaume Apollinaire’s “The Little Car” (1918).
RADIUM AGE PROTO-SF POETRY: Stephen Spender’s THE PYLONS | George Sterling’s THE TESTIMONY OF THE SUNS | Archibald MacLeish’s EINSTEIN | Thomas Thornely’s THE ATOM | C.S. Lewis’s DYMER | Stephen Vincent Benét’s METROPOLITAN NIGHTMARE | Robert Frost’s FIRE AND ICE | Aldous Huxley’s FIFTH PHILOSOPHER’S SONG | Sara Teasdale’s “THERE WILL COME SOFT RAINS” | Edith Södergran’s ON FOOT I HAD TO… | Robert Graves’s WELSH INCIDENT | Nancy Cunard’s ZEPPELINS | D.H. Lawrence’s WELLSIAN FUTURES | & many more.