NEW YEAR’S EVE

By: Robinson Jeffers
December 31, 2023

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.

Staggering homeward between the stream
     and the trees the unhappy drunkard
Babbles a woeful song and babbles
The end of the world, the moon’s like fired
     Troy in a flying cloud, the storm
Rises again, the stream’s in flood.
The moon’s like the sack of Carthage, the
     Bastile’s broken, pedlars and empires
Still deal in luxury, men sleep in prison.
Old Saturn thinks it was better in his
     grandsire’s time but that’s from the
     brittle
Arteries, it neither betters nor worsens.
(Nobody knows my love the falcon.)
It has always bristled with phantoms,
     always factitious, mildly absurd;
The organism, with no precipitous
Degeneration, slight imperceptible
     discounts of sense and faculty,
Adapts itself to the culture-medium.
(Nobody crawls to the test-tube rim,
Nobody knows my love the falcon.)
The star’s on the mountain, the stream
     snoring in flood; the brain-lit drunkard
Crosses midnight and stammers to bed.
The inhuman nobility of things, the ecstatic
     beauty, the inveterate steadfastness
Uphold the four posts of the bed.
(Nobody knows my love the falcon.)

— from Such Counsels You Gave to Me (1935–1938), right at the outer limit of the Radium Age era. Includes metaphorical use of a microbiological reference — i.e., organisms adapting to a culture medium in a test tube.

“New Year’s Eve” depicts a drunken person’s ramblings on New Year’s Eve, juxtaposing his incoherent musings with grand historical events and philosophical reflections. Jeffers’ bleak worldview is evident in the depiction of the world’s chaos and decay. The drunkard’s song captures the essence of the poet’s philosophy in a single scene, exploring themes of transience, the inevitability of change, and the enduring power of nature.

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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.