“Homo Sapiens” Discussed by Readers
In another place I called Homo Sapiens “the book of the age.” Surely there has not been a more stirring work of literature since Werther. Will the public respond? Is it true that the wall of American indifferentism is impregnable? I am still optimistic about the intellectual aristocracy of this country; that small circle of the young in spirit, brave searchers and earnest livers, for whom art and life are not merely diversions between meals and business transactions, but the italicized essence of existence. To those few Przybyszewski’s book should appeal; those should react.
I have been getting curious, and at times interesting, opinions of such readers. I hope to receive more, and acquaint the Little Review family with them. On the whole, there prevails a note of depression and uneasiness. One writes: “I had hoped to be left alone on a mountain peak in a blaze of light and in the stress of wind; instead there is a sardonic laugh, and I am again hurled into the maelstrom of a world that cannot rise above suffering from its own passions.” A feminist remarks sadly that the book demonstrates “the limit of man’s penetration. The women are women still—not even women of the transition.” An incurable, hopelessly struggling Puritan rages and curses both me and the author; I give a few gems: “I’ve read your devilishly wonderful book!... It did many things to me, which, thank God, have passed like a drunken dream.... For three days I’ve been hideously torn up, slashed into tatters, savage and fundamental. But you want my opinion! How can I tell you, divorce it from myself, tear it out of my living flesh, when it has become imbedded. That terrible, wonderful Falk! It makes you shudder away from all temperamental people with experimental souls in their fingers, and few convictions.... I became paralyzed with horror. At last I cried out, writhed on the floor and prayed to some Power, any Power, for pity, not to see myself, not to see life beneath the superficial surface.... Go away, take your Slav fingers out of my soul! They force me to look at truth, when I want to deal in lies. They force me to climb the heights and peer into the hideous crevasses, when I want to browse fatuously on the hillocks.” More such “drunken dreams,” and the comfortable blinders will fall off the eyes of the happiness-by-all-means-fiends.
I submit two letters of friends who have read my article and wished to supplement my views. I humbly think that what they say is included in my “reflections”; but I am also conscious of my inherent fault—conciseness which borders on obscurity. Hence clarification is gratefully welcome.
I.
What you say about Przybyszewski I also think. But what you do not say about Homo Sapiens is what I feel most of all. There is something very definite about Homo Sapiens, the book. It rises out of the mass of flaming gibberish, dissected nerves, and poetical slashings. It rings in the ears long after the book is closed. It is the most poignant cry of the dying nineteenth century, and it comes out of lower depths than the cry of Dostoevsky’s Raskolnikov,—shriller, madder, and more penetrating....
Eric Falk is not a nuance. He is the whole of Stanislaw Przybyszewski, the whole of modern wisdom and introspection, which is another word for degeneracy.
Come now, pretend I am not reviewing it. Pretend I am something of a clairvoyant.
See Przybyszewski creating him—Erick Falk. He is sitting at his desk. He is going to write a book about man, not a type, not a silhouette, but about Man complete. He wants the final man of his day, the Homo Sapiens, the Zarathustran phantom.
This Przybyszewski is a thorough fellow, a biologist, a poet, a physician, an historian, a psychologist. He lives on an operating table. Knows his own insides.