Everybody preaches something: Wible, mob violence, Jimmy peaceful communism, the superintendent the industrial prosperity of England, the engineer the future dominion of the machine over the universe, and the insane old man the destruction of God. The play is often as raw as a piece of meat torn bleeding from the side of a beef, is as acrid to the taste as would be a piece of raw meat, and is artistic, if at all, only in the sense that a piece of raw beef is artistic quivering, hot, impressive in its ugli

ness.

Die Maschinenstürmer was clearly the germination, in its author's mind, of ideas that had long been stirring within him. Tangible eivdence of this fact is found in a slightly earlier work of Toller's, Masse-Mensch* (which, it may be noted in passing, the Theatre Guild of New York is planning to produce during the current theatrical season).

Masse-Mensch: Ein Stück aus der sozialen Revolution des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts was written in October, 1919, "in the first year of the German revolution," in the fortress-prison of Nieder

schönfeld, and is dedicated to "den Proletariern." The fly-leaf bears the following semaphoric phrases: "Weltrevo

lution. gens.

Gebärerin des neuen SchwinGebärerin der neuen Völkerkreise. Rot leuchtet das Jahrhundert. Blutige Schuldfanale. Die Erde kreuzigt sich." In a letter to a co-worker, printed as the preface to the second edition, Toller calls Masse-Mensch a "visionary drama," which, he adds, burst from him in two days of feverish composition in his prison cell. He had attempted, as a sociologist, to consider men as individuals and as groups acting under given circumstances which are

*Masse-Mensch, Gustav Kiepenheuev Verlag. Posdam, 1922.

treated as real phenomena. As artist, he looks with considerable doubt upon these "real phenomena," and even asks whether we personally exist. He is convinced that there is such a thing as proletarian art, but only insofar as "die Mannigfaltigkeiten prolterarischen Seelenlebens Wege zur Formung des EwigMenschliken sind." As he critically rereads his drama, a year after its composition, Toller is aware of its technical shortcomings, most of which he attributes to the spiritual slavery and chaos of his prison life. Eevn a cursory reading of Masse-Mensch would suffice to demonstrate just how chaotic are its form and style*. It is the third of the seven scenes of Masse-Mensch that would seem to be the first cast of what was later to become Die Maschinenstürmer.

For stark nudity of form, MasseMensch is perhaps unmatched in contemporaneous literature. Beside so artistically perfect a work as the Iphigenie of Goethe, for example, or the Phédre of Racine, Toller's MasseMensch leaves the same impression one might get from a contemplation of the Winged Victory and a plaster-cast of a skeleton side by side. All that has already been said of Die Maschinenstürmer applies to Masse-Mensch, except for the fact that the earlier production far exceeds its successor for baldness of

style, scantiness of detail, and crudity of treatment. And here again, the didacticism that sticks out all over the play as the quills on a porcupine robs it of much of its claim to true art. This is literature with a purpose, the "píece á

A résumé and discussion of this play, as well as of Toller's eariler play, Wandlung, are contained in an article by Herman George Scheffauer, printed in the September, 1922 issue of The Double Dealer.

I'

N treating of the Illogical aspects of Poetry, I must first make it clear what I understand by Logic, and that is a system of conscious thought deduced from the broadest and most impersonal analysis of cause and effect, a system intended to be followed in all cases of doubt as they arise. The scholastic tradition of logic as finally syste

matized in the text-books makes no allowance for associative thinking, ridicules, for instance, the ancient notion that medical bane and salve are always to be found growing together, or that there can be any communication of thought between the new Moon and the horseshoe nailed over lintel.

the

Poetry, being based on associative thinking, its symbolism being intimately bound up with a vast quantity of logical false premises, logic has had either to systematize and attempt to create a new medium, Classicism, as Aristotle did, or to disown poetry altogether, as Plato did. In ideal Republic there would be no conflicts between individuals, and therefore little necessity for the mental healing of poetry. My general contention is that poetry and traditional logic are in conflict because the analyses on which the present logical system is founded are not exhaustive and need revision.

An example is given in a University text-book of logic of a notorious breach of the rules, a typical non sequitur, as follows:

"Well is this place called Stoney Stratford, for never was I so bitten by fleas in my life before."

thinking on the part of the unfortunate traveller, the point of departure from the logical expression being in the words "Stoney" and "bitten." It is a genuine cry of emotion, and in emotion logic gives place to this associative method of thought, the effect being a mighty con

densation of the circumlocution otherwise necessary. Had he felt only a little less bitter against the innkeepers of Stratford he would have been able to control his speech into the following polite channels:

"Well is this place called Stoney Stratford, for the landlords here have stony faces and stony hearts, and they have the discomfort of my bed! I would have left me 'stony', as the saying goes; and as lief lain out on the stones by the roadside, for there at all events I would have been spared the fleas. In truth I have been badly 'bitten' in two senses, for they made me pay half-a-guinea for a blanket full of fleas and a mattress hard as stones!"

The more condensed version is the method of Poetry and the method of thought in dreams, for which Logic has had for centuries nothing but the sneering patronage of the self-respecting citizen for the grotesque but cheerful village idiot. It is this superior attitude (which, in spite of every attempt at honest thinking, we still inherit from the eighteenth century) that causes most of the confusion in contemporary literary criticism. The Idiot Boy of

a personal allegory in this sense.

The essence of Poetry lies, I would say, in the unforeseen fusion in the poet's mind of apparently contradictory emotional ideas; they find reconciliation, by regression to a primitive mode of thought, in a common pictorial symbolism and a common rhythmic expression. A ready example from a locus classicus would be Aeschylus' phrase of "the sea blossomed with corpses." This compact idea is a reconciliation of the conflict between the fear of death symbolised by the corpses and the love of life as symbolised by the "blossomed." The associative link is here found in the

meadow of Poseidon." Emotional speech, as, for instance, the oratory of statesmen in great national, crises, tends to take this same odd form; I do not agree with those who found the most cynical utterance of the War in Lord Carson's commendation of the Bill for Compulsory Military Service, as reported in these words

"The necessary supply of heroes must be maintained at all costs."

It was a very genuine tribute to the patriotic volunteer ideal which has always had his distinguished support, but he omitted in his enthusiasm the link "conscripts to reinforce" these heroes.