The web site of new-babylon

A project for a complete translation of Herman Gorter - The Workers Council. On this page preliminary translations will be posted.

While internationally Gorter is mostly known for his polemics with Lenin - prioritizing the power of councils over the party - in Holland it's his poetry for which he is credited most, being probably the most famous poet of the country, alongside Lucebert and Kouwenaar. Many bourgeois critics even see Gorters politics as something that corrupted his poetry, and as a result his later, more political work, is often left ignored in favour of his eightyist poem 'May' and his sensitivist 'verses'. It's only that older work which is available in full or in part in English.

It's that later poetry however, that is the most interesting part of his oeuvre. The most important work he produced in that period is the greater Pan, spanning some 500 pages of communist verse, in which many of the theme's present in the Workers Councils - a smaller work from this period - are present in greater detail. Both works though are remarkable for their scientific nature. In the below poem, the Workers Councils, a worldview is explicated that combines, or rather tries to explain being in accordance with each other, Einstein's general relativity and Marxism. Gorter held the opinion that a new great poetry would have to be founded on modern science and in connection with modern social strife, appearantly explicitly so. I would call The Workers Council a 'scientific poem' because of this.

The Workers Councils is a poem in three parts, part I dealing with the individuals and groups that led him to his worldview, part II being something of an explanation of that worldview, and part III a more personal part. The lay-out of these parts, and their many subchapters is a bit chaotic. On top of that some poems are missing, others are not numbered, but seemingly placed somewhere at random and one of the preludes is even repeated twice. This can make a reading a bit more challenging than it maybe should be. I am not sure if this chaos is so much Gorters fault or wether it's to do with his publisher.

Much of the workers councils is set in sonnets, a form that is very 'eightyist', and many others - sometimes loosly - follow properly rhymed verse. A small subset however consists of free verse, something that came to Holland relatively late (as did all artistic developments). Already in the first few poems this variety can be discovered. The prelude is formed by two sonnets, followed by two free poems, after which we find rhyme again. Why this variety exists, I do not know, but I can appreciate such diversity in a poem that attempts to - perhaps experiments with - forming a new poetry. Even if it makes it look even more chaotic, unfinished. I have decided to translate the rhymed verse as much as possible into other rhymed verse to display this variety, while keeping completely in accord with the original meaning because of the scientific nature of the poem, something that does not allow for too much alteration. Because Gorter, like his eightyist contemporaries such as Kloos and Verwey, is so rythmically strong, I also try, but allow some leeway, to copy the cadence of the original.

This is a project that will take time. I have finished a preliminary translation of part I, and a variety of poems from part II, of which none of the subsections are as of yet complete. I hope to complete part II.I and reflections on Einstein first, as they are a great section of the poem and less challenging than part II.II, which is large and completely in rhymed verse. Part III will be tackled later, as I have less of an interest in it.

Please send any comments or other messages to vierenveertigcent@gmail.com. I more than welcome any corrections and suggestions.

prelude

   As we have suffered our defeat,
And the labourers are dispelled
   To the tyrant’s darkness deep,
To sing I wish, soft and light and quelled

   How again they rise from burden
To the sunshine’s golden light
   For my heart lives their life. And it’s certain
They rise anew, strong and bright.

   Again they will fly up to paradise
Out of slavery’s dark deep lake,
   They will win for them the strife

   Of earth. Forever now. The High Stake.
This I wish to sing in a goldenlike glee
   Their poet in defeat I wish to be.

   Like one who goes on a high ascent, –
The distant peak shows his blue-white heads
who climbs it is promised a bliss ahead, –
   In the vale the youth at the great foot stands

   In the clear colours of the day’s dawn,
Which is all around him in bundles bound,
Wherein autums fruits spring from the ground, –
   Inspects his equipment carefully now,

   Wether his axe doesn’t show a tear?
His nails, are they sharp? The fibres of
his steady rope, can a man it hold?

   So I stand when the dawn is near
At my great work, lying still in the folds
Of imagination. And probe into the principles I hold.

I: My teachers

In leaving my Mother’s youthful body
Waking in the universe, new Spirit of the World,
New senses, new ear, new soul, new eye,
New heart like a source, new eye as a sun, –
And after departing in th’ infinite light
Of earth and of the universe, radiating youth, –
I felt th’ eternal love
For the universe, the people and myself,
that in a young man drives the throat to sing,
Cause the heart would otherwise of loving die:
The poets urge. –
But I in this dark society,
In which the struggle of the rulers and
the workers rages, where being uneasy
Is beauty, had still fifty years to go,
Before I found her, the sweet harmony
In rythm and melody of man and world,
The image whole of this time and myself,
And I had much to learn before I found her.
And this is what I learnt:

I found beauty first in nature,
As a child. And her laughing infinity
Filled my eyes and the source of my heart.

And I then found her in the great poets
Of every age. As a boy. And felt them
Sparkling through the ages to the light
Of my time.

And an eternal love for Nature
And for the Beautiful that was, filled me
Ever higher. And I sought the best method
To speak of this flowing love. –

I sought Beauty in Nature great,
I sought Beauty in poets great,
In the world of substance and mind. – Oh!
This is what I found:

Willem, you have taught me
That the beautiful must be ideal –
Karel, you have taught me
That the beautiful must be the real –
And since i've sought in the global realm
The real ideal

From the English to me the lesson came,
   That the beautiful must be ideal –
From the French to me the lesson came,
   That the beautiful must be the real –
And I couldn’t since shake off the thought,
That th’ Idea the fairest in reality laughs,
   And that the real it has to be bathed
   In the light of th’ Idea above arrayed.
And that the one, without the glimmer
Of the other, is like a nightly mirror.

You, you were the one who led me out of here,
Who with one strike shredded all hazes
Of nature and past, and showed me
The truth in the light bright of day:
The labour and the labourers, destroyers
Of the past, masters over substance.
The builders of the future, Communism.
The workers, destroyers of the rule
Of man over man. Founders of the power of All
Together.

Through labour only will man discover
The truth, infinite, thus not all-covered.

And it’s completely to labour bound,
That he proves the truth, which he has found.

   Christ, who taught of love the absolute,
   Spinoza of the universe the absolute.
   Marx, who taught the relative of spirit
and the feelings of mankind, – Einstein of the universe…
   What a race, what a tribe!

Hegel, who the absolute development
of spirit teaches. – That in each Idea
Two contradictory germs exist.
Whereby each thing and each complex of things
Dies. – And of both a new thing comes,
That neither the one, nor the other is.

What must be inverted: That the things
Abolish each other by their struggle and clash. And
That thus The Ideas abolish each other
And kill in everlasting succession.
That thus the being of spirit and of things,
Transformation is.

Dietzgen, who taught of thinking the being
As seeing the general in
The particular. Making thus the absolute
Unthinkable.

Your world is real, your substance real,
No less real is your ideal.
Thus it’s my task, from your reality
To echo your ideality

   Shelley, your phantasmagoria of light,
   Chaotic, must involve in the bright day
   Of the labourers. –

   Dante, your hell is our society,
   Dante, Your catharsis is our battle,
   Dante, your heaven, it is our future,
   Dante, your God, it is humanity.

Not through a marvel, Shelley, does freedom come, not
By the will of one man. It’s the labour,
The labourers, who love and peace will bring.

Not God rules over earth, o Dante, but man.
Man rules only himself, no God rules over him,
This is the volition that you never knew. –

   But your sweet dream, Shelley, it is ours.
   Your noble, soft, golden dreamlike spirit
   Entwines our marble thinking.

   And, Dante, in our furthest and highest dreams
   We hope of your deep-inner virtue,
   Some of it, your clarity and your rigor,
   Your love, your fineness, your entirety.

As once the heroes of Homerus,
As the commons of Aeschylus,
Like the commons in Dante
As the knights in Shakspere rose, –
So may today the Workers
Rise at first in my poetry.

The time is now
The time is now hereto,
drink from the reality
Of the workers. From that well. –
And from a drunken stup’,
And from the deams,
That I get from this of sunlight glowing sap,
To write their image into Poetry,
The ideal theirs and thus true fellowship.
But without this time the zealous fury,
Not with blind hope’s wild energy,
Not with the goals of the visionary,
but with the clear and solid fantasy,
That the gifted is given by society,
When reaching th’ evolution of humanity.

Because the workers themselves now wish to see
To the realisation of all their dreams.
They have found to the deed the road
That will split the chains on them bestowed.
That like a clear, a solid star will shine
Above the ruler’s dawn of rule,
Above the ruler’s forged community
Above the ruler’s brittle authority,
Of the presumed defeat of the labourers,
The rulers rule, which seems to dusk anew,
is merely their dawn in reality.

Until the world war, in which the rulers,
The bankers, merchants and manufacturers,
With their servants, kings and mercenaries,
Murdered the workers in their millions, –
They knew yet this road to victory
Not.
But when after that frightful defeat
And the destruction of all capital
Of the victors and the vanquished,
The Russian workers rose,
Then they found to victory the road. –
And when the Gemans, in mimicry,
Tried to crush what was left
Of capital, that was still in rule,
They found this same road to victory.
And everywhere where the workers rose
In mighty fights or revolution,
In Estonia, Finland, Latvia and Poland,
In Hungary and in Austria,
In Bulgaria and Italy,
There they saw the same road had opened,
The beautiful, to the sun-land
Of the future, on which the sunlight lovingly shines,
And walked it to the end or half-way.
That road, that is the road to the Soviets,
The Workers Councils.
The Council of Workers that took
For itself the power, All power, –
Which had the kings and all of capital
Destroyed and which the intellect
And the farmers to itself subdued,
And had forced to serve them alone.
And which the whole world now rule
Through and in these Soviets.

Though the Russians did not sustain themselves,
Nor the Germans, nor any people
Were able to reach their triumph, –
Now the Star of the Councils as a lodestar is set
Above the world of capital
And of Labour, and it lights the way
For all workers of the whole world.

Councils of Workers througout the earth,
In every factory, in every mine,
On every ship and on evey track,
Each mighty on their own and together mighty,
Everywhere in battle with capital.
Bringing the workers to utter power,
Seperately each and all together,
Of intelect and will and noble deed, –
And then finally to the decisive fight
And to victory, –
This is the light-clear road to communism.

And because this road is now so clear
And lies open so lucidly for the labourers,
Thereby becomes so sure, my Poetry.

The workers alone, and not the mighty,
Not the monarchs, –, o! not the merchants!
Not the bankers, manufacturers!
And not the shopkeeper, not the farmer!
Not one of capital.
The workers alone, are alone powerful.

The workers alone, no more Gods,
No false semblance by the powerful,
Not the clergymen, servants of rulers,
Subject to a false domination.
The workers alone, the only Gods.

The workers alone. Not the learned,
Who serve accursed capital,
Who with their knowledge strengthen capital,
Who sell to capital their knowledge,
And help to subjugate labour.
The workers alone, the truly versed.

The workers alone, and not the artists,
Who embellish for capital the arts,
That whore of capital, the low, lustful,
Who pictures and flatters his lowest ardour,
But cannot see the labourers height.
The workers alone, the only artists.

The workers alone. And not nature,
Not nature, who is more than humanity,
Not nature, who rules and opresses them,
But humanity, the masters over nature.
The workers alone, the true humanity.

The workers alone, and not woman.
Unless she serves the workers,
And th’ only eternal blissful communism.

The workers lone, and not the Self,
Unless it is one with the labourers,
And with the Communist Society.

The workers alone. Inside their Councils.
Cause alone they are nothing, destitute workers,
But in their Councils they are All and Everything.
In their factories they make the Councils,
And these attract the whole of Labour,
On th’ entire world, to them, to them alone.
The workers alone inside their Councils.

The workers alone inside their Councils.
Because it is them, who bring Unity on earth,
The Unity of all people and Liberty
For all through all’s cooperation,
And thus happines for every people on this earth.
The workers alone. Them, them alone.

As your heroes, commons and knights,
Went and go through the highest light
To the world of spirit, – Which higher
And more truthful is than the material one,
Yes, for the people the Only True –
So too will the workers go now
To that high light of the world of spirit
Through my poetry.

Oh soft spirit of beautiful poetry,
When I’ve made her, fair and firm.
Then my poetry will be the lodestar,
Which leads the workers to the victory.
Cause it’s the glowing gleaming Idea,
That to their great deeds the people leads,
And my poetry is the image of the Idea.
And my poetry is the Idea.

Sing softly, oh clear Spirit of poetry,
Workers Councils in my soft ears sound
Out of my head in my soft ears sound,
Workers Councils –
Out of my head – that my throat sounds softly
And my tongue speaks softly their victory.

II. Worldview

Wether his axe doesn’t show a tear?
His nails, are they sharp? The fibres of
his steady rope, can a man it hold?

So I stand when the dawn is near
At my great work, lying still in the folds
Of imagination. And probe into the principles I hold.

I. The universe
II. Mankind
a. Labour
b. Strife
c. Love
III. Communism
IV. The universe, mankind and society

I. The universe

The essense of the universe is energy
The universe not a thing, but it’s history.
Of every being action is the being,
Of itself and the universe changing.

An infinite number of beings, without
Borders in eternity, and oneself moving,
One another, never eternally balancing
Each other, – This is the universe, the wonder

Endless mass of substance or energy,
Revealing itself in countless things,
Countless masses countless things,
Revealing itself by their energy.

All determine –thus themselves – each other,
And thus creating a certain order,
The highest order is this disorder,
Compelled course, ever fixed, never wander.

But yet an ever endless chaos,
Because the sentience to rule it lacks,
A mighty spirit, all controlling ,–

Who brings together what together belongs
Who with their stamp seals all forms, –
Chaos without spirit’s action – and it’s pathos.

And all things through eternal clashing,
And through endlessly commonly jostling,
And through ever commonly sloshing,
And in confusion on each other clashing,

Themselves and each other abolishing.
That the universe is like one weaving,
Her threads always unreefing,
But ever new fabric providing.

Because through energy surge of things
All dies, but is also newly reborn,
From the world rises a world anew.

So that the universe, where we live, is
At every moment like a newly born, –
Ever young, ever new, ever fresh.

But at the blink of an eye, deep in the past,
In the universe on earth the spirit was born,
Through a surge of actions, in what current was,
Of energies, the spirit came to fore.

And thus from out of it’s fragile winding
From nature, as a flower from it’s casing, –
From a raw green, that soft red filling! –
The ordered principle was blossoming.

First very small, in the sea and on land,
In the tender cel of the animal and plant, –
Then, in the greater, with the finest beasts,
And eventually then for humanity, –
So was softly founded in the rivers
Of earth ever boundless intelligence

The spirit’s life became a tragedy,
Or a blossoming clear comedy,
By his concious energy and action,
By his action, simultaneously passion.
In the clear light of the universe a part of chaos
Became a councious action and a pathos.

II: Humanity

The being of the universe is energy,
His labour is the being of humanity,
through his labour humanity is part of that
Infinite force of nature: reality.

But thus strife also is the being of humanity
Because the subject of his labour is nature,
And only the stongest fire masters her,
Thus: the strife of all without disparity.

III: Communism

The proletariat begins the final fight
‘Gainst the tyrant, capitalism.
In a long-lasting dark and bloody fight
It prevails, by labour takes it’s flight. –

It prevails, of truth the bearer!
And turns mankinds divided labour
Into labour of a global organism.
And then arises the golden communism. –

And in th’ unending World-Communism,
Whereout has passed all human schism,
Whereout has passed every egoism,

There is this infinite and powerful love –
Mightier than any other love –
The one-whole mankind one love.

IV: Universe, mankind and society

The three final concepts in the cosmos,
That stood still firm, in this dark quartz,
Time, space, mass, are such no longer.
They are mobile and – like all – tender.

What a notion! What a newfound bliss!
What a liberation fom a heavy stress!
Such blows stricken to a God,
The final strike, destroying God!

There is thus in the cosmos nothing absolute.
A tyranny of one is nowhere true.
Of a few there is too no authority –
All are equal, and the whole’s at liberty.
But this is eternal within time…

Space, mass and time are of these actions
nothing but in conciousness refractions,
And too thus all relational,
With action and reaction breakable,
And, depending the relation, flexible,
Regarding actions, all movable.
Not set, not fixed and not eternal
not ever the same, not substatial.

And they exist not as something absolute,
But not at all in actuality,
Unless as together the four dimensions
Of things and thus not in their essentials
Cause isn’t the essence of things just action,
And all else thus merely abstraction? –
The sum of actions is endless, so not
Absolute. The absolute does not exist.

This is of the golden communism
The world-view, of it the beginning.
Because just as in golden communism
There’s no ruler, the power of each man
Merely through that of all others exists,
So too in the world, where every thing,
After this creed,
Merely through the might of all others exists.
Only the relative is absolute.

Einstein has proven with this for substance
What Marx for sixty years insisted
Regarding spirit

A day is coming, O he’s no longer far,
That humanity’s opinion
On substance, on spirit, the universe,
The truth,
Becomes a vivid one, a clear one,
And very high.

That is the day whereupon of one and all’s association,
Communism,
Is founded.
Then from all's association
Arises the highest truth
On substance, on spirit, the universe,
Already that truth seems softly closing in.

When the division between intellectual
And manual labour has vanquished,
Because capital has ceased existence,
Then too the division between mind and matter
for humanity, who seeks in harmony
The truth, is lost. And if mind and matter
Are declared one from one great principle.
The one Humanity finds the one great principle
Of the Universe

'Cause there is a close bond between th’ existence
Of people and their views and truth.
Because both are founded upon labour.
That is the harmony of life.

Then a blinding soft golden light
Will cover earth.
And a soft and infinite joy
will reign. – A long, near eternal time.

The universe is an infinite mass action,
The things are merely action and reaction,
Thoughts are merely action and reaction,
The relations of these actions to each other. –
Mankind, in the middle, in the universe, labours,
And makes himself, through an ever growing labour,
Of his body and mind, ever more aware, –
In the universe, himself he readies there.
He recognizes in the actions the general
In his mind, of the different, the singular,
And calls it what he found to be truth
He finds ever more, so too is this truth
Like every thing, not absolute,
But as every thing, active and unmoving
As every thing, that lives, changing.
Eterny thus holds not the truth,
And despotism has not one truth.
Truth is part of th’eternal domain
Of the universe that itself is blooming,
Of a form that to others is growing,
Of a matter that to others is growing,
Is from itself ever life-giving
And dying, but eternally moving.

Every thing is action and reaction
Active and unmoving,
Every thing is thus a break, refraction,
Always transforming.
Every thing is its appearance,
The appearance appears,
In her vibrant refinement,
Until again she disappears.
The dissapearance itself is appearance,
The appearance itself is dissapearance,
And of that appearance the abstraction,
And of that dissapearance the abstraction
Is the truth, – itself acting –
The truth thus, ever changing.

progress

Prelude, I, II

PART I: My teachers, I, II, III, IV, V, VI, Four jews, Hegel, Dietzgen, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII, XIII, XIV

PART II: prelude

I The universe: I, II, III, IV, ~~tenzij..., V, VI, VII,~~ VIII, IX

II Humanity:

Labour ~~I, II, III, IV~~

Strife I, ~~II, III, IV, V, VI~~

Love ~~I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX~~

III Communism: I, II

IV The universe, Humanity and society: ~~I, II, III~~

Reflections after reading Einstein's theory: I, ~~II,~~ III, IV, VII, VIII, IX, X

PART III: The workers councils

~~III~~

☭ JULES MAXIMUS ☭

Stadsdichter van New Babylon

HERMAN GORTER

THE WORKERS COUNCIL