DE RERUM NATURA, ETC.

n.p.: n.p., 1935. Very good.. Mock-epic manuscript in six cantos, offering meticulously footnoted anonymous rhyming invective against the New Deal, the Nietszschian Superman, and the unappreciative American publishing industry. This never-published satire presents an array of politico-philosophic opinions and prejudices, refined to a high degree of erudition and incomprehensibility, unified by the author's displeasure with Franklin D. Roosevelt and "Teutonism" in all its forms. Refused by two cowardly American periodicals in previous drafts, the author then turned his furious aspirations across the Atlantic, adding in several verses of explanation and entreaty. These seem to have had no effect on the hard hearts of British editors, who perhaps could not tell from invocation of "The Saxonism which took itself to be / Chief of all 'eaches' in a 'pluriverse'" whether they were being complimented or insulted.
W.B.A.'s crackpottery, stuffed with classical allusions and furnished with appeals to William James and Julian Huxley, is of that pure and dedicated kind all but vanished from the Humanities in latter days: if there still live philosopher-polemicists who can rhyme "apologies" with "Aristophanes" and "gnosis" with "neurosis," few of them are now committed to doing it at such length. As the poet so truly says, "We ex-Puritans are lost in a pragmatized, hystericized literalization." 11'' x 8.5''. Original tan wrappers with black ink lettering. [126] typescript pages, heavily emended and annotated by the author in pen and pencil throughout. Very faint pencil note to front cover: "Cantos 1, 2, 5, 6, 7 - (all since revised.) / Dear Jenny - you can keep this MS. or chuck it away when you have seen as much as you choose of it." Toning and moderate edgewear throughout; light chipping and small tears to wrappers.