Poetry Recs

[i]"Look at Stirner, look at him,
the peaceful enemy of all constraint.
For the moment, he is still drinking beer,
soon he will be drinking blood
as though it were water.
When others cry savagely
«Down with the kings»
Stirner immediately supplements
«Down with the laws too».
Stirner full of dignity proclaims;
you bend your will power,
and you dare to call yourselves free,
You become accustomed to slavery;
Down with dogmatism, down with law."[/i] - Friedrich Engels

@Gus Lamarch

All right, then. From this poem I believe we can conclude that, to Engels and also everyone else, Max Stirner was an absolute madlad.

In all seriousness, what I find interesting about this piece is that its tone seems simultaneously critical and exalting. I can't tell if the lines that follow "Stirner full of dignity proclaims..." have a sense of overt admiration, reluctant admiration, or strong contempt delivered via irony.

I'm hardly familiar with Stirner and his ideological relationship to Engels, so take that as you will-- though off the top of my head, I assume they quite disagreed with each other. Enlighten me?

Quoting Rosie

hat I find interesting about this piece is that its tone seems simultaneously critical and exalting. I can't tell if the lines that follow "Stirner full of dignity proclaims..." have a sense of overt admiration, reluctant admiration, or strong contempt delivered via irony.

It is not surprising - for those who are already familiar with the relationship between Engels and Stirner - that Engels, in his poem - taken from the unpublished work, "The German Ideology", which was written by the duet, Engels and Marx, where they focused completely on the refutation of Stirner and his theories about egoism in "The Ego and Its Own" - would demonstrate his admiration for Stirner, since both were, for a period of 10 years, friends, in a setting of young philosophers, journalists and intellectuals of the time known as "Die Freien" - The Free -, and philosophical rivals - where Engels and Marx were declared socialists, Stirner was "Egoist" -.

Stirner directly and indirectly greatly influenced the communist philosophy that was to be developed by Marx in the decades after Stirner's death - 1856 -.

Stirner wrote and said what Marx and Engels were so eager to express, but which, having cowardly spirits, ended up hiding in a false altruistic and utopian rhetoric.

While Stirner would have the courage to project the true image of Man:

"Where the world comes in my way — and it comes in my way everywhere — I consume it to quiet the hunger of my egoism. For me you are nothing but — my food, even as I too am fed upon and turned to use We have only one relation to each other, that of usableness, of utility, of use. We owe each other nothing, for what I seem to owe you I owe at most to myself. If I show you a cheery air in order to cheer you likewise, then your cheeriness is of consequence to me, and my air serves my wish; to a thousand others, whom I do not aim to cheer, I do not show it.”

Marx and Engels, with their resentment, would end up saying:

"Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Workingmen of all countries unite!"

It is a tremendous sadness for the world that Stirner did not have enough time to refute both Marx and Engels...

Quoting Rosie

I assume they quite disagreed with each other.

I can assure you that they both agreed pretty much in everything. The only difference between the two, was that, while Stirner demonstrated what he, as being an individual, truly was, Engels didn't accept that and tried to hide it. That caused ressentment - by part of Engels - which in turn became a philosophical try at refuting Stirner - aka "Communism" -.

Quoting Rosie

Enlighten me?

Read the above.

I haven’t been on the forum for about a year. That’s not the first time I’ve disappeared for a while. Generally it’s because they ban someone I care about. Sometimes I just run out of things to say. This time – both. I miss it here, so I come back from time to time just to hang around. There are usually a few posts I want to respond to just to tell the posters what boneheads they are. The forum clearly still needs me. It’s never seemed to me that’s a good enough reason to come back.

A few weeks ago I came across your poetry discussion. I love poetry and thought maybe this would be a good time to come back…. But I’m very lazy. Well. Yesterday I was reading a Finnish detective novel (in English). They referenced a Finnish poet – Henry Parland, so I pushed on the page, clicked on the button, and there I was – Here’s one of his poems:

My hat
was run over
by a trolley
yesterday.
This morning
my coat took a walk
to some place
far away.
This afternoon
my shoes
happened to get assassinated.
—?I’m still here?
that’s just
i t.

This is why I can only read books on Kindle now. Sometimes the most fun I have is following a chain of links that started in whatever book I am currently reading. The poem was included in an article in “Poetry” magazine called “"Poetry Not Written for Children that Children Might Nevertheless Enjoy,” written my Lemony Snicket. Here’s a link:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/article/246328

It has a bunch of poems in a similar vein along with smart, amusing commentary. How could you not want to read an article with a title like that? I like the way Snicket writes. He is clear, simple, and graciously educational.

I don’t like long posts, so I’ll stop here.

Reply to T Clark

Long time no see.

Thanks @Noble Dust

Beautiful poem of Angelos Sikelianos:

[i]O when,
Huntress,
with naked foot beating the snow all night,
shall we see at last on the summit,
like Boreas
and the lion
rousing himself from sleep,
the rising sun?

for in that light
the contest will be decided,
and the new-fledged young men
will row their opponents from the cliff top
and, like the poppy beside the sheaf,
each life
will be harvested in the golden light
spontaneously, silently.[/i]