Compelling passages, notable quotables, bon mots, disjecta, ephemera, and miscellany.

“Get out, Anatole France, Epicure of a homeopathic pharmocopeia,

get out, Jaurés, tapeworm of the Ancien Régime, a Renan-

Flaubert salad served up in fake seventeenth-century

porcelain!

[…]

“Get out, Kipling you merchandizable, practical man of verse,

scrap-iron imperialist, Homer of the battles of Majuba and

Colenso, Empire Day of military slang, tramp steamer of base

immorality!

[…]

“You, German culture, a Sparta rotten by the oil of Christism and

the vinegar of Nietzscheism, a tin beehive, an imperialoid

overspill of hamstrung servilism!

“You, subject Austria, mixture of sub-races, doorjamb type K!

[…]

“You, United States of America, bastard synthesis of Lower Europe,

the garlic in the transatlantic soup, nasal twang of inesthetic

modernism!

[…]

“Today, religion is the militant catholicism of the innkeepers of

the faith, the French-cuisine enthusiasm of the Maurras, of

reason-unwrapped, it’s the spectaculitis of Christian pragma-

tists, of Catholic intuitionists, of Nirvanic ritualists, touting

for business for God!

[…]

“Pass by, vegetarians, teetotalers, vicarious Calvinists, killjoys of redun-

dant imperialism!”

from “Ultimatum” [c. November 17]

from The Complete Works of Álvaro de Campos, by Fernando Pessoa

Edited by Jerónimo Pizzaro & Antonio Cardiello

Translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa & Patricio Ferrari

New Directions (2023)