at this time prizes for poetry were being awarded every day. thousands of societies had been founded for this purpose and their members lived on the fat of the land, while making upon fixed dates large benefices to poets. but the 26th of january was the day upon which the largest associations, companies, boards of directors, academies, committees, juries, etc., of the whole world bestowed their awards. upon this day 8,019 prizes for poetry were distributed, the total of which aggregated 50,005,225 francs.[14] on the other hand, since the taste for poetry had never spread among any class of the population of any country, public opinion had risen powerfully against the poets who were called parasites, lazy, useless, and so forth. the 26th of january of this year passed without incident, but on the following day the great newspaper, la voix, published at adelaide (australia) in the french language, contained an article by the distinguished agricultural chemist horace tograth (a german born at leipzig), whose discoveries and inventions had frequently seemed to border on the miraculous. the article, entitled the laurel, contained a sort of chronology of the culture of the laurel in judea, in greece, in italy, in africa and in provence. the author gave counsel to those who had laurel trees in their gardens, indicating the multiple usage of the laurel, as a food, in art, in poetry, and its r?le as a symbol of poetic glory. he then began to talk of mythology, making allusions to apollo and the fable of daphné. finally, horace tograth changed his tone brusquely and concluded his article as follows:
"and furthermore, i say candidly, this useless tree is still too common, and we have less glorious symbolisms to which people attribute the famous savour of the laurel. the laurel holds too large a place upon our overpopulated earth, the laurels are unworthy of living. each one of them takes the place of two in the sun. let them be chopped down, and let their leaves be feared as a poison. hitherto symbols of poetry and literary science, they are nothing more today than that death-glory which is to glory as death is to life, and as the hand of glory is to the key.
"true glory has abandoned poetry for science, philosophy, acrobatics, philanthropy, sociology, etc. ...poets are good for nothing more nowadays than to receive money which they do not earn, since they scarcely ever work and most of them (except for the minstrels) have no talent and no excuse whatsoever. as to those who have some gifts, they are even more obnoxious, for if they receive nothing they make more noise than a regiment and din our ears with their being persecuted. none of these people have any raison d'être. the prizes which are awarded them are stolen from workers, inventors, scientists, philosophers, acrobats, philanthropists, sociologists, and so forth. the poets must disappear. lycurgus would have banished them from the republic, we too must banish them. otherwise, the poets, lazy fiefs, will become our princes and while doing nothing, live off our work, oppressing us, and mocking us. in short, we must rid ourselves immediately of the poets' tyranny.
"if the republics and the kings, if the nations do not take care, the race of poets, too privileged, will increase in such proportions and so rapidly that in a short time no one will want to work, invent, teach, do dangerous feats, heal the sick and improve the lot of unfortunate men."
an enormous stir greeted this article. it was telegraphed or telephoned everywhere, all the newspapers reproduced it. a few literary journals followed their quotations from tograth's article with mocking reflections as to the scientist; there were doubts as to his mental state. they laughed at the terror which he manifested over the lyric laurel. however, the journals of commerce and information made great ado about his warnings. they even said that the article in la voix was a work of genius.
the article by horace tograth had been a singular pretext, admirably fitted to fan the blaze of hatred for poetry. it made its appeal through the traditional sense of the supernatural, whose memory lies in all well born men, and to the instinct for preservation which all beings feel. that was why nearly all tograth's readers were thunderstruck, aghast, and wanted to lose no occasion to obliterate poets, who, because of the great numbers of prizes they received, were the subjects of the jealousy of all classes of the population. the majority of the newspapers advocated that the government take measures leading to the prohibition of all poetry prizes.
in the evening, in a later edition of la voix, the agricultural chemist, horace tograth, published a new article, which, like the other, telephoned or telegraphed everywhere, carried popular emotion to a climax in the press, among the public and the governments. the scientist concluded as follows:
"world, choose between thy life and poetry; if serious measures are not taken, civilization is done for. thou must not hesitate. from tomorrow on begins the new era. poetry will exist no longer, the lyres too heavy for old inspirations will be broken. the poets will be massacred."
* * *
during the night, life went on just as usual in all the cities of the globe. the article, telegraphed everywhere, had been published in the special editions of the local newspapers and snatched up by the hungry public. the people all sided with tograth. ring-leaders descended into the streets and, mingling with the aroused mobs, excited them further. but most governments held sittings that very night and passed legislation which provoked an indescribable enthusiasm. france, italy, spain and portugal decreed that all poets established on their territory should be imprisoned at once pending the determination of their lot.
foreign poets who were absent and sought to re-enter the country risked being condemned to death. it was cabled that the united states of america had decided to electrocute any man who avowed his profession to be that of poetry.
it was telegraphed that in germany also a decree had been passed ordering all poets in verse or prose found on the imperial territory to be incarcerated until further orders. in fact, all of the states on earth, even those who possessed nothing but meager little bards lacking in all lyricism took measures against the very name of poetry. only england and russia were exceptions. the laws went into effect at once. all poets who were found on french, italian, spanish and portuguese territory were arrested on the following day, while the literary magazines appeared all garbed in black, lamenting the new terror. dispatches toward noon told how aristenetius southwest, the great negro poet of haiti, had been cut into pieces and devoured by an infuriated populace of negroes and mulattoes. at cologne, the kaiserglocke had sounded all night and in the morning herr professor doktor stimmung, author of a medieval epic in forty-eight cantos, having gone out to take the train for hanover, was set upon by a troop of fanatics who beat him with sticks, crying: "death to the poet!"
he took refuge in the cathedral and remained locked in there with a few beadles, by the excited population of drikkes, hanses, and marizibills. these last particularly, were beside themselves with rage, invoking the virgin, saint ursula and the three royal magi in platdeutsch. their paternosters and pious oaths were interspersed with admirably vile insults to the professor-poet, who owed his reputation chiefly to the unisexuality of his morals. his head to the ground, he was nearly dying of fear under the big wooden statue of saint christopher. he heard the sounds of masons walling up all the gates of the cathedral and resigned himself to die of hunger.
toward two o'clock it was telegraphed that a sexton poet of naples had seen the blood of saint january boil up in the holy phial. the sacristan had gone out to proclaim the miracle and had hastened to the harbor front to play buck-buck. he won all that he desired at this game and a knife thrust in the breast to the bargain.
telegrams everywhere announced the arrests of poets, one after another, and the electrocution of the american poets was made known early in the afternoon.
in paris, several young poets of the left bank, who had been spared on account of their lack of notoriety, organized a demonstration extending from the closerie des lilas to the conciergerie, where the "prince of poets" was imprisoned.[15]
troops arrived to disperse the demonstrators. the cavalry charged. the poets drew their firearms and defended themselves but the people rushed in and took a hand in the mêlée. the poets were strangled and so was everyone else who came to their defense.
thus began the great persecution which swept rapidly throughout the entire world. in america, after the electrocution of the famous poets, they lynched all the negro minstrels and even many persons who had never in their lives written a rhyme; then they fell upon the whites of literary bohemia. it was learned that tograth, after having personally directed the persecution in australia, had embarked at melbourne.
andré dérain
