“THE IDEA OF THE INFINITE…”
By:
November 5, 2026
A series dedicated to poems, published c. 1900–1935, the Radium Age sf-adjacent themes of which include: dystopia and utopia, far-out mathematics and the fourth dimension, Afro-futurism, catastrophe, future war, new technologies, scientific breakthrough, dehumanization, cosmic awe, disenchantment and unseen forces, unknowable aliens and singularity. Research and selection by Joshua Glenn; thematic index here.
The idea of the Infinite, and of the absolute Infinity, has been given to the world by the mathematics of our age. The notion of the Transfinite Number, of the Absolute Infinite, is a modern divine revelation. This notion, speaking in an essential and qualitative sense, is the merging point of the Mathesis into Gnosis, of mathematics into philosophy. And essentially it can be said that the system of the Absolute Geometry, the harmony of all geometries, has been reached in modern Meta-geometry. Psychology and the indefinable life, however, is the basis of line and number, of space and limit, of quantity and modality. Will and breath and rhythm are being discovered to be the creators of number and shape. The holy discovery of Bergson the Jew, his great discovery of the Hypostasis of Motion as an independent hypostasis of the Absolute — this discovery, and re-discovery, is a witness to the Christian Apophasis. The temporal, historical, cosmic aspect of the HOLY SPIRIT is DURATION, the continuous life, the singleness of all motions; this identification and re-discovery, we say, is a glory and a sign of our own era. The drift of Western investigation moves towards the ideal of the East. Western mankind is approaching the pan-human truth, the universal truth, approaching it with fatal swiftness and steadiness. The most symbolic of all events in modern science is not, however, an event in mathematics and metaphysics. It is the discovery of the seraphic element, of the volcanic and ecstatic element, RADIUM. It is a material, palpable discovery. Radium is radiating. This element gives birth and delivers out of its own seraphic resurrection and theophany. Radium teaches the mortality of matter and the birth of the spirit through seraphic creation. Seraphia [typo for Seraphic?] creation is nirvana, love universal, affirmation universal. Self- annihilation and identity with the One Fohat, One Glory, One Ecstasy, radium teaches. And the universal release of motion, the universal dizzy elasticity and indeterminateness of motion — the suggestion of Einstein — is another Semitic attempt to bring essentiality of essentiality into cognisance and into soul. The doctrine of Relativity is a European attempt to lead humanity into the supra-Aryan, pan-human dispensation; a European Semitic attempt. The ground of the Son is invaded. The foundations of the West are breaking up to-day, and in Universal Humanity alone they can be re-built and functionally constituted. The essence of the Aryan spirit, the dignity of reason and maleness, is being impaired and transcended. The Son is overwhelmed, eclipsed to-day by a new and infinite need of the Creator.
— Excerpt from the “World Affairs” column by “M.M. Cosmoi” (see author bio), in the July 21 (1921) issue of the British journal The New Age, which describes itself as a socialist review of religion, science, and art. Not technically poem, but to me it reads like a prose poem. I was attracted to this installment of this writer’s column in particular because of his use of radium and the powers of radioactivity — lifted from the writings of the physicist and science popularizer Frederick Soddy, who suggested that the internal energy of matter (discovered by Marie Curie, et al.) meant the universe was not dying but possessed the means to perennially rejuvenate itself — as a profound esoteric metaphor. This bonkers writing reflects an era where some thinkers viewed the scientific breakdown of rigid matter into energy as proof of a continuous, living spiritual presence unifying the universe.
“Fohat”: The primordial cosmic vitality and intelligent energy, according to Theosophists, that links spirit, mind, and matter.
“Meta-geometry”: Following David Hilbert’s groundbreaking work on the foundations of geometry (at the turn of the century), the 1900s–10s saw rigorous efforts to ensure that a set of axioms could never produce a logical contradiction (consistency). They also proved independence — demonstrating that no single axiom could be derived from the others. Simultaneously during this era, Cubist artists and Deco architects were breaking down the physical world into a “meta-language” of aggressive geometric shapes, zigzags, chevrons, and symmetry.
Why phrases like “Bergson the Jew” and references to Einstein’s “Semitic” science? While deeply influenced by Jewish esoteric writers (such as the German-Jewish mystic Erich Gutkind, who’d be forced to flee Germany because of anti-Semitism), Mitrinović often mapped ethnic and religious identities onto his grandiose, panhuman “Aryan” and universal schemes. He had a deeply disturbing habit of reducing contemporary European philosophers (and, in the case of Einstein, scientists) to their supposed racial, spiritual, or civilizational archetypes. Note that German nationalists and anti-Semitic physicists began calling Albert Einstein’s work “Jewish physics” (Jüdische Physik) around this exact same time. What’s odd is that “Cosmoi” seems to be a big fan of Bergson and Einstein; he certainly has a shitty way of showing his appreciation.
PS: Kandinsky, one hears, was influenced by “M.M. Cosmoi” some years before this.
RADIUM AGE PROTO-SF POETRY: Stephen Spender’s THE PYLONS | George Sterling’s THE TESTIMONY OF THE SUNS | Archibald MacLeish’s EINSTEIN | Thomas Thornely’s THE ATOM | C.S. Lewis’s DYMER | Stephen Vincent Benét’s METROPOLITAN NIGHTMARE | Robert Frost’s FIRE AND ICE | Aldous Huxley’s FIFTH PHILOSOPHER’S SONG | Sara Teasdale’s “THERE WILL COME SOFT RAINS” | Edith Södergran’s ON FOOT I HAD TO… | Robert Graves’s WELSH INCIDENT | Nancy Cunard’s ZEPPELINS | D.H. Lawrence’s WELLSIAN FUTURES | & many more.