“IF MAN ENCOUNTER…”
By:
January 13, 2025
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.
If man encounter
on his proud adventure
other intelligence?
If mind more able,
ranging among the galaxies,
noose this colt and break him
to be a beast of draught and burden
for ends beyond him?
If man’s aim and his passion be ludicrous,
and the flight of Pegasus
but a mulish caper?
Dobbin! Pull your weight!
Better be the donkey of the Lord,
whacked on beauty’s errand,
than the wild ass of the desert
without destination.
Vision! From star to star the human donkey
transports God’s old street organ and his monkey.
— Untitled poem from Olaf Stapledon’s 1932 proto-sf novel Last Men in London, written by its protagonist, Paul. “Shortly after the final meditation in which he summed up the whole issue of his inquiry, Paul wrote a poem in which he made it clear to himself, though with a certain bitterness, that he cared more for the music which is spirit than for the human or any other instrument. In the final couplet there appears the self-conscious disillusionment which is characteristic of your age.”
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.