HUMAN BEING
By:
December 18, 2025
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.
I am above the forests,
green and shining,
high above all,
I, the human being.
I am orbit in the universe,
blooming movement,
carried carrying.
I am sun among the orbiting,
I, the human being,
I feel myself deeply,
close to the high universe-orbiting one,
I, his thought.
My head is covered with stars,
silver my countenance,
I shine,
like him,
the universe;
the universe
like me!
— Found in the 1919/20 expressionist anthology Menschheitsdämmerung (ed. Kurt Pinthus), which in 1933 was banned by the Nazis. Translation from the 1994 edition. Not sure if the poem was first published elsewhere, earlier.
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.