The Poetry Journal, Nov. 1915, Vol. IV No. 3, pp. 103-6
BENJAMIN DE CASSERES*
[Footnote: *The Shadow-Eater. By Benjamin de Casseres. N. Y.: Albert and Charles Boni.]
Metaphysics and poetry may seem to be an impossible alliance, especially as the trend of modern verse is in the opposite direction, forswearing symbol and suggestiveness for stark reality. But since the domain of poetics is constantly enlarging, it is not surprising that Benjamin de Casseres’ fearless little volume is a welcome tribute to individualism and defiance.
Mr. de Casseres is the super-man fired with Nietzschean verbosity. His chants are bold, sonorous declamations, visioning a nether world, scanning dizzy heights. He leads the reader through a labyrinthine maze, crying:
“On! on, my soul thro’ the storm, thro’ the wrath and terror of death.”
He sees life as a pigmy scheme. His gaze is beyond into superterrestrial realms where man’s supreme self-hood stands revealed in all its fullest development. He pictures beings divest of human garb and liberated in infinite spheres. He is the great path-maker, the teacher who “lives behind the mask of things,” saying:
“I am the lidless, dispassionate Eye that pierces the murk and mist. I watch and I wait and record— [104] I am the shadow that is more real than substance, I live and am not, I am the Infinite withered to naught.”
Mr. de Casseres’ vision is of a Titan belching forth flame and fury. His phrases are lightening-like invectives that smack of Nietzsche’s “Geneology of Morals.” His iconoclastic pessimism is malefic, blasphemous. He scorns human life and its futile effort with Promethean contempt. His cynical penetration is the direct offspring of Schopenhauer and Von Hartmann.
“The world is the Temple of Pain grounded and mortised in lies.
And Love they have sanctified because of its delicate tickle….
I, the eel, that slips thro’ the great Bungler’s hand, survey and judge and cannot be lured by these old temporal cozzeners.
Forever I vanish, I change, yet forever stand firm
Flying the flag of rebellion.”
Many of the poems show that their author knows his Vedanta philosophy by heart. He exults in his detachment from experience:
"Passion, hope, pain, grief, leave me unchanged, (I shed universes and moult cycles."
The following is a clearer note:
“Like a polished pearl hid in a pocket,
Like lighted tapers set in the murk of a crypt,
Like the flicker of phosphor on dun seas,
Like a meteor athwart the heavens of Cimmeria [105]
So the secret of my soul shines for me in this timeless night.”
It is easy to predict that Mr. de Casseres’ poems will remain without adequate comprehension from the public and the casual critic. Few took the trouble to fathom the true purport of Leaves of Grass, or Thus Spake Zarathustra at the time of their publication. But it is evidence there is a philosophy in The Shadow Eater that will outlast time itself. The author’s almost gruesomely vivid imagery is Poesque, and his lines are pregnant with great truths. His poems are metaphysical meteors, searching, cataclysmic and rich in satire.
The Shadow Eater is an astounding book of poems. It is a philosophic incantation. Its power is undeniable. Its unpleasant savour penetrates and appalls. There are many ringing lines that scourge and lash and lay bare the piteous heart of man. For Mr. de Casseres is merciless. Nothing escapes his ruthless inquiry. Life is to him a crystal ball that he shatters with gusty derision. He is the arch-satirist sitting aloft laughing to himself at the caprices and blandishments of humanity. Nothing touches him.
“I am the Spectre at the feasts of the strong men.
I, neutral, indifferent, sewed up in my silence, my soul the great menstruum of contrasts.”
He is the Anti-Christ who salutes:
“Hail, passionate rebel, great anarch of Nazareth, slitter of masks, announcer of self procreate of a self.”
[106] The poems most expressive of his clearest vision are The Sleeper, On a Marriage, and that supreme pæan of penetration, Love the Destroyer, beginning:
“I reject Love!
Love in its sibilant, low-murmured lies, sweet sting of fair bodies, old meat of old Death.”
BLANCHE SHOEMAKER WAGSTAFF