Appeared in Vol. 10 No. 1 Download PDF here
The following essay was originally published as a series in La Tribuna (a Buenos Aires newspaper) in 1893-94 and is contained in the collected works of its author, Ruben Dario, which were published in 1955 (Obras completas, Madrid, Afrodisio Agusado, Vol IV, p. 643-654; the original newspaper series had the collective title of “Mensajes “ or “Mensajes de la tarde, “ and the author used the pseud- onym “Des Esseintes “). Dario’s essay is both a fascinating literary window on the social turmoil of nineteenth century Christendom and a work of continuing relevance for our own time. It is translated here by Richard B. O’Keefe, who was led to it by the quotation “The whole of Europe is rotten with the caries of socialism, “ which he read somewhere in the 1960’s or 1970’s.
We Americans cannot complain: Our civilization is European. We have been copying from Europe from the French Revolution on, even to importing the Cafe chantant. So far, we have lacked the application of chemistry to our social order, the end-of-the century use of explosives. Now, even this is on the way here; at least the seed of the tree is among us. It would seem that the corner bootblack, and the sweeper down the street have not yet realized that all the capital of Pereira’s’ is really their capital. The hungry of Europe bring us the contagion of rage stored up for centuries, to our blessed lands, where only the man who doesn’t want to, fails to put in his pot the chicken which the goodhearted Henri IV2 wished for the soup pots of his subjects.
The whole of Europe is rotten with the caries of socialism. Anarchism appears on every hand. “Germany,” Heine once wrote, “is menaced by a social revolution, beside which the bloody tragedy of 1793 will seem an innocent idyl.” France has recently produced that exquisite “artist” by the name Ravachol.3 Italy has in-house and external promoters of the cause, both theoretical and practical. Spain and Portugal will not be backward in this race. What about England? A mere question of annihilating one’s enemies. And who is the enemy? Fontaine’s jackass gives the reply:
Notre ennemi c’est notre maitre. Our master is our enemy.4
For Cain the farmer, the enemy is Abel the rancher. The enemy is the worker who saves; the landlord who owns houses; the gentleman who wears tails; the noblewoman who possesses diamonds; the judge who has authority; the king who wears a crown; the believer who has God. God is also the enemy. The would-be anarchists imported to Argentina have scribbled their threatening pamphlets concerning the pilgrimages to Lugan: “Nor God nor country.” Engels has said of Germany: “The time is coming when there will be no religion but socialism.”5 The latter-day philosophes following upon the pack of Darwins, Strauss’, Buchners, Feuerbachs6, preach to the ignorant and mute lumpenproletariat7 the death of belief and religious ideals. The philosophy of appetite is sprinkled upon them like a pestilent breath. “Come to me,” Christ explained, “all ye who are burdened with work and I will give you rest.”‘ To which Bakunin replied: “Christianity has been as harmful to the West as opium has been to the Chinese.” The religion which must be followed is that which satisfies the beast’s limitless cravings. The motto of the plebeian bellies is “All for pheasant.”9 John Q. Citizen doesn’t want bread and onion soup; and he has thought deeply that his heavy paws would be housed much better by the gloves of the marquis. One must be rich at all costs, and granting that we cannot be so, let us destroy the other man’s property; let us equalize in blood and fire the heads of all mankind. Let us manage to grow fat and to be happy in this world; there is none beyond this one. Or, as the inscription in the Commune Libre cemetery in Berlin reads:
Schafft hier das Leben gut und schon Kein
Jenseit is kein Auferstehn
Make here the good life fair There’s no
beyond to which the resurrected fare.10
God forbid that I should ever be for suffering, that I should ever gibe or mock at misery. Neither should I range myself on the side of the wealthy miser who denies his laborer a just wage; on behalf of those who allow their workers to starve, for those to whom St. Paul promises condign punishment because of their putrid wealth, whose gold and silver will become offal. “Behold, the wages of the workers who have harvested your fields (and by trickery have not been paid their wages) and the cry of the harvesters has reached unto the ears of the Lord of Hosts.”11 But I must also be firm against the morass, against the dark wave in which the mob seethes and foams, against hatred from below, against the envy of white against black, of the cloudy against the brilliant, of the coarse against the fine, of ugliness against beauty, of vulgarity against distinction. More than a matter of morality, the esthetic impels me to fight the rabid anarchy. Socialist, anarchist, communist, they’re all the same. The employment of more or less soap and water is all that distinguishes them. They are the sons of Cain. They have no lambs to lay upon the altar, and therefore they kill. They are those who after the captivity of King John soaked the lie de France with the blood of nobles; they are the Jacques; they are those who ever think that Madame Veto must dance;12 those who mount the heads of princesses upon pikes; those who hate the aristocracy merely for being aristocratics, hating La Belle Lamballe13 for her golden tresses. Fatherland? They have none. With the first Turanians there travelled gentlemen pillagers against the white Aryans.14 Furious outcasts avenge their fate by destruction. In our days their fatherland is the whole world. Karl Marx, founding the International, erases all frontiers, and whenver he spies a bourgeois, a proprietor, he recognizes a tyrant who must be fought. The Frenchman, the Englishman, The Yankee as well as the Argentine is not regarded as a mortal enemy, if he professes the same (socialist) ideas. Terrible zingaros15 these who speaking all the same frenzied jargon, are met with everywhere, like the heads of the very Hydra! Klemich says to Becker:16 “nationality is a fiction not only absurd but dangerous.” And the rich-baiter” of Hamburg or of Barcelona feels the noose that hung the Chicago anarchists tighter about his own neck. He envies the wealthy man for his mansion, his luxury, his table, his wife, even for his fat and for his indigestion. Morality does not exist, classes do not exist, property does not exist, justice does not exist, God does not exist. And, if he does exist, Dynamite Him!
Atheist writers and their explosive philosophers who are crammed full of Darwin do not apply consistently to their egalitarian armies the Law of Selection. `What is selection?” the protesting voice says, “but inheritance with all its consequences?; physical, intellectual, moral, and social inequality?” If my readers have ever beheld a socialist congress, or others of that ilk18, representative groups of these people: Have you regarded the physiognomy, the faces of these exemplars, the kameraden? The crown teems with fierce eyes, great jutting jaws, features markedly zoological, scars of appetite, covetous looks, revealing glances. Better than my observation is Frank Duperrut’s: “On seeing the cortege, or the demonstrations of social militancy pass by, the thoughtful man and the believing cannot help being moved emotionally and saddened at the same time by the pitiful intelligence reflected in the faces of almost all the demonstrators. The features are stubborn, stupid, crabbed, often in the majority. These men pretend they are force. They are mistaken. They are nothing but numbers. “19 They are numbers, in effect waxing every day through the preachments of tavern-orators who are out to infect the good worker, to sop up half his salary, making him dream of an anarchist Cockaigne which must come to be with the absolute triumph of the Messiah, called Democracy. The blacksmith, the shoemaker, the carpenter who go on Sundays to their own casinos to enjoy themselves, finish off their whiskey or beer at the same time that they swallow the preaching of a chattering loafer, and it is as though they had swallowed gasoline. Out of the tavern comes the diligent working man with rage and hatred for the capitalist, for anyone who does not perform manual labor. In his mind there appears the vision of victory, of a sudden aggrandizement; and he sees the Kobold of Germanic legend as a sort of Puck affiliated to socialism, who makes the bill collector break a leg or who will weave on the poor sleeping maiden’s spindle so that she wakens to find the weaving all done. That is the Kobold who will change later on, when he will make the world rich with the riches of the underworld, the flag of the People “black as misery, yellow as gold, red as blood.” Dwarfs will become as enormous as giants and the chief dwarf will nail the People’s Insignia on a rock so lofty all the earth will behold it. Well, they dream when thus they dream! They believe surely-by the workings of democratic principles which give force and law to the majority-that being great numbers, they are force, forgetting that force is in intelligence. Odd missionaries indeed, the husband and wife team Klemich,20 who from city to city have preached the gospel of materialism and the good news of socialism through-out the thinker’s country, Germany; curious logic the obligating logic of Engles which makes the moral law depend upon the laws of economics; strange utopia that of Vorwarts21 which would concentrate and unite all the wealth in the world- in one single millionaire who is then to be stripped of these millions in order to get underway the universal sharing of wealth. The model republic of Cabet is nothing to this; Fourier, Saint Simon should go back to school.22 LasSalle Bebel, Marx would teach them many things. The very stuff petroleum is passe. Of what use is this humble combustible when one can ravacholizar23, when the precious substances, dynamite, melinite, panclastite24 have been discovered? Well now, in the Kobold legend the female Messiah whose day must come, the princess whose image will be graven on the shields made from the gold of crowns, will be called Democracy. And this is the goddess who, turned Gorgon, has stoked up the bonfires everywhere. Everytime the riffraff raise their flag this word is pronounced: Democracy. Democracy throughout the universe; granted that fatherlands no longer exist. Marx affirms: “Since the year 70, since Vespasian, we have no fatherland; we have only interests.” Well now, let us state the truth: All the poets, all the utopians, all the orators, all the politicians who have flattered the spirit of the people, all those who, possessed by the democratic fever, have told their workman or their cook: “You are my equal,” have added a blasting cap to the bombs of devastating stupidity. I can’t explain to myself how it is that in Europe men of intellect and brilliant literary powers sympathize with this most unjustifiable cause. I can understand how DeAmicis25 dedicates his beautiful prose to an awareness of the suffering poor, of the sickly and poverty-stricken miner; how Severine26 might go in person to the mines to leave bread and flowers; that all writers in the end have a just compassion for the unhappy and the needy. But when the needy worker leaves off his work and hoists the red banner, when crowds of descamisados, proclaim death and destruction, who but a member of the angry guild of sapers-bombers, would not look askance at these mouths twisted by rage, these fists raised in menace?
Of all the advocates of European socialism, the strangest one seems to me to be Ernest Waldow.27 His Catarina is the one work which must have taken deepest root in the hearts of German workers, for the main reason that its doctrine is displayed with novelistic charm and too, without a forcing violence. If its effects should have made many socialists among people, as the Steiner of the book itself made them, there would not have been such great damage, since by means of calm reasoning, houses are not blown up nor is anyone assassinated. But there are many Solomon Friedman’s28 who prefer the chemical argument and who make the air dance with bits and pieces of poor folks, as we have just seen in the Liceo Theatre in Barcelona.29
Friedman sows the seed of ferocious and unconditional anarchism. For me it was a great surprise to hear from the account of the popular novelist Gerstoetexker30 that Ernest Waldow was a woman, “a young lady very handsome, by my faith!, eleganty attired, who wore gracefully perfectly immaculate gloves on her plump little hands, the hem of her dress revealing a darling foot, finely stockinged.” And so, I saw why the aristocratic Catulle Mendes31 applauded the German socialist writer. Ernest Waldow is the pseudonym of the Baroness Lodoiska von Blum. More dangerous still than this author is Hauptmann32, the playwright author of The Weavers. The staging of this work thoroughly shook up Berlin and afterwards Paris when performed in the Antoine Theatre. Surely there is something of Aeschylus in the Saxon’s play. It is the vision of a famished people risen in honor. But it is also true that before the play would move anyone to good works, before igniting the soul of a Francis of Assisi or of a Tolstoy, it will swell the hordes of dynamiters or strikers. The principal hero of the work is the laborer-or better the workers-since, as Paul Schlenter33 has noted, the heroine is Misery; there is no protagonist, but rather the collectivity of workers. Act L The worker finds work at a pitiful wage; work and hunger. Act IL Comprehends his condition; protests among the workers themselves; the idea of uprising. Act III: At the sound of a warlike chant, the worker throws himself upon the exploiter; vengeance. Act IV: More pillage; flight of the owners. Act V: Fury of the human beasts; sackings, burning, men and women in delirium; the authorities intervene; combat, triumph of the people. Moral? None. Old Hilse is a believer and lifts his prayers to God. But of course, no one else follows Hilse’s gesture. Backer, however, is imitated, and for him the applause is greatest. Three serpents manage to be seen on the head of the Eumenide.34 They are labelled Desperation, Alcohol, and Vengeance. Oh how far all this is from the song of the Russian poet:
The little bird will say to the good Lord that the poor man suffers, he who plows the field by the seat of his brow, that for the laborer the Spring is not sweet, as it is for the little bird, that it bears no joy for him. He too would like to greet the dawn with a song but the weight of his miserable burden keeps him silent. His cares are a lead weight upon his heart, and to his sorrow, the song cannot go forth from his lips. The little bird begs that the hand of the good God might sustain the laborer in his hard lot, so that he might, in the end have enough courage to carry his cross and to come even to the grave without murmuring. …
But the socialist neither understands nor wants to understand the divine works, laws, and goodness. Anarchism says it straight out: “Neither God nor country;” and in the face of its flood of passions and rages, governments and societies are becoming aware of the dangers. It’s about time. The importation of this maleficent current is not a thing of just yesterday. In 1887 a well-known journalist wrote in this regard: “This trend is not confined to Germany; it crosses frontiers easily and has set up a tight network in neighboring countries. One could cite that city in south Germany where the iron is worked and the bijoux for export are put together, this bonfire irradiating onto Switzerland, Italy, and France, even to South America.” As we are not disposed to apply, given the case, the project which in the Banquet of the Eventualists the illustrious Tribulat Bonhommet of the delightful Villeirs de L’Isle Adam35 proposed, we shall have to remind the dynamiter immigrants of what country they are in. From the great city of Frigia Pactancia, Laosicea the stalwart Apostle wrote to his son in faith, Timothy: “For those who wish to be rich fall into temptation, into the snare, and into many foolish and harmful envyings, which sink men in perdition and death,” or, earlier on “And thus having their sustenance and their clothing, let them be content with this.”’36 In which matter let me show my admiration for that old and profound philosopher who replied to the commissionary Obligado:37 “My dear sir, I am the friend of the stewpot.” Here indeed is the basis of human happiness: to content oneself with one’s stewpot, more or less rich, more or less thin.
Notes
1“… all the capital of Pereira.” This is probably a reference to Leonardo Pereira, “… ganadero argentino, murio 1899 . . . ” for whom see Enciclopedia Universal Illustrada (Madrid, Espass-Calpe, reprint 1958), vol. 43, p. 609.
2“Henri IV …” “Je veux qu’il n’y ait si pauvre en mon royaume qu’il n’ait tous les dimanche sa pule au pot.” `I want there to be no peasant in my kingdom so poor that he is unable to have a chicken in his pot every Sunday.’ Hardouin de Perefixe: Hist. de Henry Le Grande (1681), cited in Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (2nd ed.) (New York, OUP, 1958), p. 242.
3“Ravachol” “RAVACHOL (Francois Claudius Koenigstein, dit) anarchiste francais (1859-1892) auteur de nombreux attentats, il fut guillotine” Le Grande
Larousse Enciclopedique (Paris, Larousse, 1964) vol 9, p. 29. See also Marius Boisson Les attentats anarchistes sous la 3 r9publique (Paris, les Editions de France, 1931) NB: Reference only; test not seen by translator, Boisson’s “First Ravachol, with five murders behind him, blew up the homes of several magistrates in 1892. He was caught in a restaurant, brought to trial, and let off with penal servitude for life. Then another jury, intimidated by public outcry, reversed the decision and sent him to the guillotine” is quoted in Roger Shattuck’s The banquet years: The origin of the avant garde in France 1885 to World War I (rev. ed.) (New York,
Vintage books, 1968) p. 20. Curiously the index to Shattuck does not list the illustration (photograph) on Plate XVIIIA, between pages 178 & 179, displaying “theanarchist Ravachol’s police card.” Finally “RAVACHOL (rava) s.m. Pop. Pantomimeiro, palrador oco e sem siso, individuo charlatao e exuberante de gestos e palavras (do n. p. Ravachol de um anarquista e agitador frances, dos meado do sec. XIX, m. na guilhotina, celebre pela su facundia demagbgica). Certo apregoador verborreico de espectaculos de feira popular, nos principios deste seculo, adoptou este pseudonimo e daqui o popularismo.” Grande Enciclopedia Portuguesa e Brasileira (Lisboa, Editorial Enciclopedia, 1945) vol. 24, p. 454.
4“Fontaine’s jackass . . . ” La Fontaine: Oeuvres completes (Paris, Gallimard, 1954) “Le Vieillard et 1’ane” p. 138, line 15.
5“Engels has said of Germany: . . . ” Possibly in monographic publications The Peasant War in Germany (1870) or in Anti-Duhring. Translator is searching for concordance (??).
6“ Strauss’, Buchners……………….. David Friederich Strauss, 1808-1874 “en el hegelianismo de izquierda . . . ” Diccionario Enciclopedico Salvat Universal (Barcelona, Salvat, 1976) vol. 19, p. 96. Georg Buchner, 1813-1837 “Al estudiar la historia de la Revoluciea francesa fue cuajado en Bnchner su talante revolutcionario …”DESU vol. 5, p. 291.
7“… to the ignorant and mute lumpenproletariat” _”a las masas populates cerradas e ignorantes”
8“‘Come to me,’ Christ explained …” Matthew 11:19.
9“Todo por el faisan” possibly “Me for the pheasant?”
10 ” . . . Commune Libre cemetery in Berlin /Schafft . . . ” English is translator’s reading of epitaph. Cemetery is possibly ” . . cementerio de las victimas de Marzo 1848. Situado junto al hospital de Friederichshain en la Landsberger Allee.” EUI vol. 8, p. 294 (article “BERLIN”).
11“… St. Paul promises …” is a mis-citation. Text cited is Epistle of St. James 5:4.
12 ” . . . Madame Veto must dance . . .” “captivity of King John.” John (Jean) II, king of France, 1319-1364 “surnamed `The Good’ captive after the Battle ofPoitiers, 1356-1360” Encyclopaedia Britannica (14th ed.) (Chicago, Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1956) vol. 13, p. 89. See also article “Jacquerie” in EB-14, vol 12, p. 861. “Monsieur’ and `Madame” Veto occurs in the celebrated song called the Carrnagnole.” Brewer: The reader’s handbook (Philadelphia, Lippincott, 1899) p. 1173.
13“… La Belle Lamballe” “Marie Therese Louise de Savoie-Carignan Lamballe, September 8, 1749-September 2, 1792…. She refused on September 3 to take the oath against the monarchy, and was literally torn to pieces by the mob as she emerged from the courthouse.” Century Dictionary: The Century Cyclopedia of Names (New York, Century, 1914) p. 587.
14“With the first Turanians …” A classification in the religious/linguistic system of F. Max Muller, 1823-1900, for which see Encyclopaedia Britannica (15th ed.) (Chicago, Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1976) “Macropedia” vol. 16, p. 629 (article “RELIGIONS, CLASSIFICATION OF”); EUI vol. 7, p. 251-254 has extensive article on “Muller.” Neither of these articles explains provenance of Dario’s usage. By 1893 Muller was esteemed but controversial linguist, editor, historian.
See William Dwight Whitney’s Max Muller and the science of language (New York, D. Appleton 1892) which work, cited in A New English dictionary on historical principles, ed. by James A. H. Murray …(Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1926) vol X, p. 471.
15“zingaros” = variant form of “cingaros,” i.e. gypsies. Diccionario de la Real Academia Espanola (19. ed.) (Madrid, RAE, 1970) p. 303.
16“Klemich says to Becker . . . ” Oskar Klemich, b. 1845, author of Der Egoismus als Welt Prinzip (2. aufl.) (Dresden, 1877) and Die Nationalitatsdunkel, eine Studie fur Mords-Patrioten, Erbfeinde und sonstige Chauvinisten (Dresden, 1877). NB: reference only; these works not seen by translator. Johann Philip Becker, 1809-1886 “demagogo y revolucionario aleman, . . . mas tarde afiliose al entonces naciente partido socialista, y dirigi6 varias publicaciones de este, siendo uno de los mas entusiastas de la Asociacion Internacional de Obreros y de las teorias colectivistas de Karl Marx . . . ” EUI vol. 7, p. 1413. “As characterized by F. Engels, `he was a man who honorably took part in the liberation struggle of three generations …’ ” Great Soviet Encyclopedia (New York, Macmillan, 1973) vol. 3, p. 93.
17“rich-baiter”= “come-ricos”
18 “others of that ilk” _”otros, ejusdem farinae ” Jones: Dictionary of foreign phrases and classical quotations. (Edinburgh, John Grant, 1949) p. 36.
19“Frank Duperrut . . . ” Possibly author of Resolutions (Lausanne, La Concorde, 1911) NB: Reference seen in The National Union Catalog: Pre-1956 imprints (London, Mansell, 1971) vol. 152, p. 271.
20 See end-note #15.
21” . . . Vorwdrts . . .” “VORWAERTS; Berliner Volksblatt (Sozial demokratische partie Deutschlands) Berlin v. 1-50 1884?-1933. Zentralorgan SPD.” Union List of serials in libraries of the U.S. and Canada. (3rd ed.) (New York, H.W. Wilson, 1965) vol. 5. For a fine historical summary see article “VORWARTS IN EUI vol. 69, p. 1147.
22The model republic of Cabet . . . ” Etienne Cabet, 1788-1856 “Political radical, born Dijon, France. Involved in the revolution of 1830; exiled for radical articles (1834-39). Influenced by Robert Owen, led a group to Nauvoo, Ill. (1849) to found a utopian community, called Icaria; became American citizen (1854); withdrew from community after dissension (1856).” Webster’s biographical dictionary (lst ed.) (Springfield, Mass., G & C Merriam Co., 1943). See also GLE, vol. 2, p. 472; more extensive biographical article in EUI, vol. 10, p. 115.
23 “ravacholizar” see end-note #3. Verbal coinage has not been admitted by DRAE-19.
24“… melinite, panclastite . . . ” From Century Dictionary (New York, Century, 1914): “MELINITE. n. An explosive of French invention, consisting of picric acid and guncotton dissolved in ether …'”PANCLASTITE, n. An explosive composed of liquid nitrogen tetroxid mixed with carbon dispulphid or other liquid combustible . . .
25“De Amicis …” See biographic entries under “DE AMICIS” in Dizionario Enciclopedico Italiano (Roma, Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1970), Vol. III, p. 768; and in Enciclopedia Italiana (Roma, Istituto Enciclopedia, 1950), vol. XII, p. 432. See entry under “AMICIS” (Edmondo de) in EB-14, vol. 1, p. 807; EB-15, “Micropedia,” vol. III, p. 413; also “AMICIS, (Edmundo de . . . 1846-1908
… En sus ultimos anos escribio sobre moral, sociologia e historia …” EUI, vol. 5, p. 167-68.
26“Severine …” Pseudonym of Carolina Guebhard Remy, “periodista francesa, nacio en Paris 1855 . . . defendio el socialismo …”EUI, vol. 50, p. 769; longer biography in Enciclopedia Universal Ilustrada: Apendice (Madrid, Espasa-Calpe, 1930) vol. 9, p. 76-77 with portrait. Died 24 April 1929.
27 “Ernest Waldow.” Pseudonym of Lodoiska von Blum, NUC Pre-1956 imprints. Identical articles except for necrology in EUI, vol. 8, p. 1205; and EUI Apendice, vol. 2, p. 322 “muerta 16 Oct. 1927.”
28 “Solomon Friedman …”Possibly an anarchist in Catarina. Title unattested.
29“Liceo theatre of Barcelona.” New York Times Index: “July i-December 31, 1893: Lyceum Th. dynamite explosions; J. Codina’s confession, Nov. 9, p. 9, col. 3; Dec. 20, p. 8, col. 4; and Dec. 24, p. 16, col. 7.” “From Spain, in November 1893, came the news that an anarchist had thrown two bombs into the Teatro Liceo . . . 20 people were killed . . . ” Roderick Kedward The anrachists (New York, American Heritage Press, 1971) p. 41.
30“.. popular novelist Gerstoetexker . . . ” Probably Friedrich Wilhelm Christian Gerstacker, 1816-1872. See Oxford companion to German literature (Garland)(Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1976) p. 277.
31“Catulle Mendes . . . ” Catulle Mend’es, 1841-1909. “II prodigait aussi des romans d’une perversite subtile …”GLE, vol. 7, p. 250. See also article on “MENDES, Cdtulo” in EUI, vol. 34, p. 581-82.
32“Hauptmann . . . ” Gerhart Johannn Robert Hauptmann, 1862-1946 . See OCtGL, p. 345-46 for biography of Hauptmann; p. 919 for synopsis of Die Weber (1892). First English translation cited in NUC Pre-1956 imprints is dated 1899; Les Tisserands, traduction Francaise de M. Jean Thorel. Represente pour la premiere fois, a Paris au Theatre-libre, le 29 mai 1893. (Paris, G. Charpentier, 1893).
33“Paul Schlenter . . . ” = Paul Schlenther, 1854-1916, author of Theater im 19. jahrhundert . . . (Berlin Selbstverlag der Gesellschaft fiir theatergeschichte, 1930). NB. Citation seen in NUC Pre-1956 imprints only, work not seen. Further biographic notice of Schlenther in EUI, vol. 54, p. 1032; Der Grosse Brockhaus (Wiesbaden, Brockhaus, 1956), vol. 10, p. 404.
34“Three serpents manage to be seen at the head of the Eumendide.” “Their appearance is described by Aeschylus as Gorgo-like, their bodies covered with black, serpents twined in their hair …” Harper’s dictionary of classical literature and antiquity, ed. by H. T. Peck. (New York, Cooper, 1963) p. 693. Further reference to the Aeschylean character of The weavers will be found in New Century classical handbook (New York, Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1962) p. 459-60.
35 ” . . . Tribulat Bonhomet of the delightful Villiers de L’Isle Adam …’ For Tribulat Bonhomet’s proposed suppression of revolution by encouragement of drunkenness, see William T. Conroy Villiers de L Isle Adam (Boston, Twayne, 1978) p. 119-20. Summary of the five short stories, including “Banquet of the Bventualists,” see Kindlers Literatur Lexikon (Munchen, Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1974), Band 22, p. 9550-9551.
36 “. . . to his son in faith, Timothy: … content with this” = I Timothy 6:9 and I Timothy 6:8 respectively.
37 ” . . . commisionary Obligado …” Possibly Rafael Obligado, 1851-1920,
“Poeta argentino … tomando del pueblo solamente los temas. ” Diccionario de la literatura espanola (4th ed.) (Madrid, Revista de Occidente, 1972) p. 653.