Everett McNeil - "The Cave of Gold"

Allan Pinkerton - "Bucholz and the Detectives"

Frank Preston Stearns - "Cambridge Sketches"

Franz Grillparzer - "Die Argonauten"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

The Bride of Dreams

F >> Frederik van Eeden >> The Bride of Dreams




But these group-ideas and these group-formations are continually
changing. Not through the influence of the mass, the herd, which may
not judge independently, because otherwise no union would be possible.
The strength of the group depends on the obedience of the members to
the voice of the herd. Did the members think and act independently,
they could not subsist as a group.

But the group-formation is changed through the influence of some few
individuals, original enough to understand humanity's own voice, the
voice of Christ, and powerful enough to make themselves followed by the
herd. And the influence of these few shall be the stronger, the closer
their original ideas stand to the ideas of the group. All the members
of the group feel something of the Original element, of the Genius of
humanity, they are all still bound to our Genitive Spirit, though not
nearly as closely and as fervently as the few originals. If now the
original individual is all too original, the herd does not follow, but
hates and destroys him. That is the martyr the man who is "in advance
of his age."

But if the originality of the single individual is felt by the herd,
then it follows and respects and reveres him, and later it erects
statues in his honor and eulogizes him. And all the more if the seceder
possesses a personally suggestive power, and impresses people by the
display of some one amazing talent - organizing, dramatic or musical.
Meanwhile this leader and example has done nothing more than bring the
outer organization more in unison with the inner life of humanity,
Christ's own being.

This consideration led me to seek for a man sufficiently intelligent
and independent to absorb my thoughts, and yet in his inclinations and
feelings standing so much nearer than I to the herd, that he could
exert an influence. Moreover, some one with the prestige lent by some
extraordinary quality or other - as learnedness, or still better,
organizing talent - and with the ability, the aplomb, the ruling power
which the herd tolerates and demands. Thus a mediator between me, the
all too original and practically unqualified, for whom an attempt to
make himself prevail would signify a useless martyrdom, and the herd,
that in its unoriginality is yet so greatly in need of the stirring
ferment of my ideas.

Before we neared the American shores I had made my choice from the
persons that had come to my mind as qualified for my purpose. I shall
call the man Judge Elkinson, concealing his real name, as he is still
in the public eye. He had been governor of his state and at my arrival
was a member of the Supreme Court, the highest tribunal in the United
States, sovereign in its judgments and only admitting to membership the
most trusted and esteemed men of this mighty realm.


- - -


It was a clear, cold, bright day when we steamed up the Hudson and saw
the white building masses of the giant city rising from the centre of
the wide, grayish-yellow stream. A strong icy wind was blowing from the
blue sky, and the valiant little tug-boats rocking on the turbulent
waters and amid shrill whistles running quickly in and out among the
great ships, like sea-monsters hunting for prey, were covered with a
solid coating of ice from the splashing water.

Upon the elongated island protruding into the wide mouth of the river
stretched the mighty city, a densely packed conglomeration of houses
piled up toward the sea, block upon block, so that the tall masses of
masonry at the point of the island appeared to be heaped up one upon
the other like pack-ice. There where the blocks were the highest and
stood facing each other like giant building-blocks set on end, there
was Wall Street, the centre of activity, where the stony growth seemed
as though spurred on by the restless stir, the yet unregulated and
uncomprehended instinct of accumulation.

As we drew nearer we saw the delicate, fresh colors, the soft reds and
creamy whites of the buildings in the clear, smokeless atmosphere, the
white exhausts of the beating systems, standing out like little white
flags against the light blue sky, and the myriad dark, twinkling eyes
of the houses, row upon row, severe, square, strong, firm and light
with a myriad grave, fixed questioning glances reviewing the new
arrivals from across the sea, who streamed from all the quarters of the
globe to this land of future promise and expectation.

Then followed the confusing and confounding impressions of the landing,
where the great nation, compelled by experience, seems to guard itself
against the instreaming invasion of undesired elements, and
investigates and selects with humiliating, apparently heartless
strictness, as though we were animals to be examined.

Elsje's smile and cheerful endurance alleviated for me the bitterness
of standing in the long line for examination, ordered about by the
gruff officials - I, the proud aristocrat, who had never come here
otherwise than surrounded by luxury, and treated with distinction as an
honored guest.

When we were finally released and found ourselves in the noise and
tumult of that tremendous life, where the selfish seeking of the few is
by a secret and uncomprehended power forced together into a mysterious
and curious order, - as out of the seemingly aimless and orderless
agitation of ants or bees one sees a well-planned structure arise, -
amid the rattling of the trucks, the shuffling of thousands of feet
upon the worn and ill-kept pavement, the ceaseless thunder of the
elevated trains running between the graceless buildings and signs,
designed solely for doing business or attracting attention, in this so
preeminently incomplete, imperfect, half-barbarous and half-polished
world, I saw my dear, delicate wife, overwhelmed and confounded, cling
to me as though she sought everything that still attracted her to the
world with me, powerless to find it in this tumult of life.

I did not remain in the city a day, knowing everything that here preys
upon the inexperienced arrival, but went directly to one of those
vaguely scattered villages in the immediate vicinity of the town, where
spots of nature, still wild or again run wild, can be found in the
midst of the remote, neglected precincts of a quickly and carelessly
growing human colony. There in the woody, rocky territory little,
dingy, wooden houses are to be found, built of unsightly boards,
outwardly no better than sheds or barns, as though put up temporarily
by people who would probably move on further soon - houses that one may
occupy for comparatively little money.

It did not look inviting for a woman accustomed to the choice solidity
of a Dutch house, and the well-sustained intimacy of a Dutch landscape,
where man and nature through long-continued symbiosis have grown
together in a harmonious union.

Everywhere all through the woods were tumbledown houses, heaps of
rubbish, crockery, old iron and dirt, trees chopped down and left to
rot, burnt underbrush, annoying signs of the proximity of a heedless,
careless, prodigal human world. And close by, between long rows of
signboards, monstrously drawn and painted in glaring colors, rushed the
trains, besmirching everything with their smoke.

But after all it was a home, and with all the energy that the long
years of suffering had left in her, Elsje joyously began to turn the
dear illusion of these years of pining and waiting into reality.

And when the humble dwelling had been made somewhat habitable, when
there was a pantry stocked with provisions, an extremely fresh and
spotlessly-kept bedroom, a table with a cover upon which the kerosene
lamp threw its circle of light at night, so that I could sit and read
the paper while Elsje sewed and mended busily, her head full of
tenderly solicitous domestic thoughts, and when to the great
satisfaction of the housewife a young negro girl had been found who
came daily to help a few hours, thereby giving to the household,
according to Dutch ideas, a necessary air of completeness - then I saw
upon Elsje's wan countenance and in her clear, dark-ringed eyes a light
that shone out above all gloomy memories or sad forebodings.

Only then I saw her faithful, loving nature in its perfect radiant
glory, but also, alas! with the distressing realization of its
frailness.

XXIX

The so universally-recognized type of human excellence indicated by the
term "gentleman," cannot go hand in hand with true originality that
makes itself prevail. For one of the chief characteristics of the
gentleman is the respect for group ideas, the obedience to the voice of
the herd; while the characteristic quality of the Original is precisely
his breaking away from the group union, his reversing of ideas, his
making himself obeyed instead of obeying.

The seceder who is not able to change the ideas of the group and to
make the herd follow, is annihilated and deserves annihilation. In the
human economy he is only harmful and his existence is unwarranted.

The gentleman on the contrary has a pre-eminently useful and important
function. He is that member of the group who without separating from
the union retains most of the original element. He combines the highest
possible originality with the strictest subordination to the group
nature, which only very few exceptional natures can defy with impunity.
He changes nothing, but he inclines toward the original, thus making
the entire herd more adaptable to change, while be lacks the
ever-dangerous tendency of the originals to break loose, and keeps
alive in the herd the lofty, indispensable virtue of respecting and
upholding the sacredness of the union.

The more the group ideas diverge from the elemental ideas of human
nature, the rarer the type of "gentleman" becomes in the group. And so
my little brother Shaw's lament that the true English gentleman has
become extinct is comprehensible, as in the entire tremendous herd of
the nations of West-European or Anglo-Saxon civilization, ideas are
current which every original immediately recognizes as conflicting with
the nature of humanity, as hostile to Christ.

The term "un-Christian" is with just consistency applied to them.
Un-Christian means the enriching oneself at the cost of others, the
enriching oneself by means of craft, the enriching oneself without
bound or measure. In many groups of ancient times these things were not
lawful. But the great herd of the nations calling themselves Christian,
include these so unmistakably un-Christian actions among the lawful,
even honorable and generally admitted. And this moreover in the very
worst form. It is one of the group-ideas of the great herd, that
without oneself doing any work, one may enrich oneself unrestrictedly,
by means of craft, at the expense of the very poorest. Only the
unprecedented magnitude of the herd and its unparalleled firm coherence
made so great a deviation from Primal Reason conceivable and possible.

The type of "gentleman" has changed, however, and grown rarer in this
process. It is well-nigh impossible to preserve one's originality
without separating from the union of the group, or without, as the
socialists and anarchists, forming new groups that stand hostile to the
great herd. The respecting of group-ideas and at the same time
preserving one's original human feelings, demands a forcing and
straining of truth that only few sagacious and honest people succeed in.

Judge Elkinson still represented the fast disappearing type of
gentleman, and I knew that for him this was possible through an
extraordinary suppleness of mind, fineness of tact and feeling, and a
philosophic broadness of view.

Honest in the strict sense of the word, with naïve uprightness - that
he could not be any more than any other faithful member of the herd,
with some astuteness. But he was at least capable of giving everyone
the impression that he always desired to be honest. He forgave himself
the necessary distortion demanded by the group union, as the humane
physician does not charge himself with the lies he tells for the good
of his patients. He also comprehended the relativeness of words, the
vagueness of conceptions, the faultiness of all communion, but was
nevertheless not so broad-minded that he found extenuating
circumstances everywhere and for everyone. His great power lay in his
demand for fixedness of opinion. Growth and development were thereby
excluded, but he sacrificed these, for the sake of the support so
necessary to the herd, that positiveness and regularity afford.

One could depend on him absolutely; he was called "a man of character"
and thereby exercised the most beneficial influence at the cost of
personal development, actuated as it were by unconscious love, by a
preservative instinct for the masses. His moral code was as broad as
the group-ideas allowed, but beyond that point - immutable. He
maintained it with the same sacred respect which as judge he demanded
for the law, though his philosophic reason told him that neither could
by any means exclude injustice. He called a rogue a rogue, though he
realized that complete comprehension means complete forgiveness; he
considered an anarchist an enemy to mankind, a harmful monster, even
though he had to admit that the anarchistic criticism of society was
well founded.

If the group-ideas and the group-union of those calling themselves
socialists, had not been so wretchedly vague, confused and based on
pseudo-science and hollow rhetoric, he would perhaps have joined that
brotherhood. For he had the full measure of American courage and
resolution. And he would have represented the "gentleman" in that
confederacy just as well as in the old union. But, as every
"gentleman," he had the intuitive dislike of bad company, the natural
and wholesome aristocracy that makes one shun a group if it is
represented by inferior people. And in the socialist herd he saw
nothing much better than uncultured followers driven by fanatic
leaders, a very sorry realization of the Originals who had brought
about the movement. Moreover the union of this group was so weak, so
entirely based upon the negative, so badly formulated, that it was
impossible for him to transfer to it his natural respect for the union.

With this man, then, I considered that I might try my luck. He had
grown very rich by clever, but according to group-ideas perfectly
lawful money transactions, as commissioner of all sorts of large
undertakings, and he had a fine mansion in Washington and in New York.
Toward me he would, as a philosopher, sometimes jokingly excuse his
wealth, referring in this connection to the example of Seneca the sage.

I called on him as soon as I knew he was in New York, and was received
most cordially.

Elkinson had a large, bony head upon a lean, muscular body. He was not
yet sixty, and his clean-shaven face was of a youthfully fresh and
ruddy complexion. His hair was snow-white, but still thick and full,
parted in the middle and trimly cut. His strongly-pronounced jawbones,
large teeth and firm chin, lent him an expression of will-power and
energy; the thin-lipped large mouth and the clear, gray, steady eyes
commanded respect and marked the man who would not let himself be
imposed upon or put out of countenance; his eyes twinkled at the
slightest occasion with an expression of subtle roguishness, evidence
of the general American inclination for jesting and joking.

"It is very kind of you, my dear Count Muralto, very kind indeed to
look me up again. Have you been assigned to the post at Washington
again? And how are the countess and the children?"

"Don't bother about using my title, Mr. Elkinson. It must be
distressing to your democratic spirit."

The mocking eyes twinkled as though they enjoyed my sally.

"On the contrary! on the contrary! - that is atavism! It does us good.
We are above such things, to be sure, but just as eager to do them as a
worthy professor to sing the college songs at a reunion."

"Then I regret that I must deprive you of this pleasure. I am no longer
a count and intend to become a citizen of your republic."

"What is that you tell me? Well, well, well! that is a remarkable
decision."

"Your enthusiasm is not as hearty as one should expect of a true
American. I believe you think that something is lost by this
transaction after all."

"Perhaps I do! - Italian counts are rarer than American citizens. With
these titles it's the same as with sailing vessels and feudal castles.
They are unpractical and out of date. And yet it is a pity to see one
after another disappearing."

"Would you put me into a museum and have the state support me?"

"No! No! - we are glad to make use of such excellent working powers. We
need men like you. And what does madame say to it?"

"Contessa Muralto remains Contessa Muralto. I have broken completely
with her and with my old life. I wish to make my position clear to you.
I have come here as an emigrant, poor, and accompanied by a woman who
is my true wife, but can never be lawfully recognized as such."

"H'm! H'm! - that is grave, very grave," said Judge Elkinson. The
roguish twinkle in his eyes vanished and he assumed the severe,
inexorable expression of the judge.

Then, as simply as possible and with the trusting uprightness that
would make the strongest appeal to his kind heart, I recounted the
vicissitudes of my lot. Mutely he listened to my story, obviously
interested and touched, wondering what to make of this cage.

"And now?" he finally asked. "What do you expect now? I know that a
deep sensibility to what we here call the tender passion is one of your
national characteristics. But after all you are no longer a boy, and
you have enough sense and experience of life to know that your present
position does not offer you much chance of success, not even in this
country."

"I do not expect or desire success in the American sense of the word. A
frugal, existence is all I want. I shall endeavor to obtain that. By
giving lessons, for example."

"And had you hoped to be in any degree supported by me in that
direction?" asked the careful and practical American.

"No! - I did not come to you for that. I have not the slightest
intention of burdening my old acquaintances by presuming on our former
relations."

"Good!" said Elkinson honestly.

"I know them too well for that," said I, perhaps a bit scornfully.

"You know what it would signify for them, don't you? You can easily put
yourself in their position. You defy public opinion for the sake of a
woman, but you can't expect that your former friends should do it for
your sake."

"If I had thought that they were friends, I should perhaps expect it.
But I know that they are not friends, only acquaintances, and I demand
nothing of them."

The judge looked at me a while, not without kindliness. He seemed to
feel a certain respect for my stoicism.

"Good!" he said again. "But what can I do for you then? What is your
object in calling on me?"

"To make you happier than you are."

"That is indeed very generous. For after all I did not get the
impression that I was the unhappier of us two. And if you would have me
continue to believe in your mental balance, you must give me a more
plausible reason."

"Is it so unlikely that I should increase my own happiness by means of
yours?"

"Aha! Of what kind of happiness are we talking?"

"Of the most desirable, that can alone be attained by straining all our
energies to their utmost capacity, their utmost efficiency."

"Ho capito! - accord! - now for the explanation. What slumbering
qualities in me would you rouse to action?"

"Your qualities as a leader of men. The qualities that I lack."

"And which in yourself then?"

"Those of the thinker. Of the original thinker."

Elkinson glanced at me with a look, sharp, cold and penetrating as a
dissecting-knife. He thought he understood what it was that he had to
deal with.

"A system?" he asked gruffly.

"On the contrary - the release from a system. The shattering of
inhuman, un-Christian morals. The breaking through a wall of horrible
institutions."

"Which?"

"First of all, that which everyone condemns and everyone nevertheless
maintains - the remuneration of the rich simply because he is rich,
even though he does nothing to deserve remuneration. The morally and
lawfully tolerated unlimited squandering of the products of common
labor by irresponsible persons. The exploiting of the weaker, approved
and even accounted honorable, without control, by means of craft,
through the agency of countless middle men. The tenant-farmer, the
laborer; the property owner, the tenant-farmer. The manufactory, the
factory hands; the share-holder, the manufacturer. The landlord, the
lessee; the lessee, the sub-lessee; the sub-lessee, the lodger. The
speculator again exploits all the others, while the waster of finance
exploits the speculator, and thus ad infinitum. The system, in one
word, of mutual ruthless exploitation and of irresponsible, no less
ruthless, squandering. A system in which what each holds in view as the
crowning ideal is to do nothing himself, to squander without measure or
care, and to have as many as possible work for his own personal profit,
without asking who they are and how they live. A system that slowly but
surely must demoralize and impoverish every nation to the core, even
the richest and the strongest. A system that gives peace to none and
can bring none to the highest possible grade of development and
happiness. A system by which at least ninety per cent of the national
wealth is lost without a trace. A system under which no art, no
science, no higher element in man can attain to perfect bloom. A system
that is further removed from the original desires and sentiments of
humanity than any other that has ever been maintained by large masses
of men - a system that no one with any consideration can approve or
wish to preserve, that is only maintained because we know or believe in
nothing better, and that is doomed to disappear because of its suicidal
character. A system that can only be declared lasting and necessary by
him who thinks that men are not capable of education and development
and, with open eyes, shall ever seek their own ruin."

Elkinson remained silent a while after I had finished speaking. The
expression in his eyes was serener now.

"As a criticism nothing new," he said, nodding his head. "But what new
remedy do you propose? - Government aid?"

"First morals, then laws," said I; "no Government initiative; perhaps,
if necessary, Government assistance. Begin with the most powerful
public opinion, the group instinct."

"And how? - orations? - pamphlets? - meetings? and addresses? - That
seems to me nothing exactly new either, nor has it proved effectual. Is
one deformity like the social democracy not enough?"

"More than enough. The dead child with two heads has itself made its
own name impossible. Use that name no more, for the mother who has
borne the child is ashamed of it and will hear of it no more. Give the
potion another label and another color if you would make men take it,
or better, give it no color. And talk as little as possible, but do,
act, carry out. Make of the deed your shepherd's staff and of facts
your milestones and your guideposts. Let your shepherd dog not bark,
but bite, and see to it that the flock find something to graze on."

"Clearer! clearer! - no Eastern metaphors, American facts."

"Very well! Judge Elkinson is acquainted with the psychology of the
mass and he knows the individuals of which it is composed. He has
governed a state, organized and conducted commercial undertakings,
instituted laws and seen them carried out. He knows thousands of
individuals, their worth and their abilities. He enjoys the universal
confidence, and possesses great influence. His name alone guarantees
the help of thousands, and of the very best moreover. Let him form a
group, with better group-ideas, with better group-ethics, better
morals, better customs, and higher standards of right and wrong, good
and evil, than the group in which he now lives and works."

"Clearer still and more concrete if you please. How do you imagine the
beginning?"

"As every group began always. As every business man forms his business,
every general his army. Select a staff of the most capable and tell
them what is essential for them to know. Formulate the plan so that in
the course marked out the chief idea cannot be missed, without
frightening off any one of the great herd by peculiar, unusual or
doubtful terms, theories or visions of the future. And then organize,
practically, systematically, always aiming directly at the concrete
reality without troubling yourself in the least about abstractions. And
see that your herd is fed and sheltered and stabled as quickly as
possible, and that it find gratification of its instincts in the course
once marked out. And on the way - heed it well, on the way, not
beforehand - teach them to comprehend the object of the fight and what
they shall gain. Teach them first to follow and to find gratification
in following, and then they will gradually go of their own accord, if
it agrees with them, and be less and less in need of guidance. Promise
as little as possible, but show and prove by the result, and predict
nothing that you cannot immediately prove."

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