This is a book about what the poet Robinson Jeffers would have described as “rock-solid themes” (CP 3, 35; SP, 567). It is about who we are and how we fit into the big scheme of things. It is about living and dying well in an era of cultural decline and ecological degradation. It is about dealing with the difficulties of existence and determining which things should be of paramount value and importance in our lives. Both Jeffers's poetry and his life as a whole were centered around these rock-solid themes—issues and questions that are as ancient as our oldest extant literature yet as fresh and as pressing for us today as they have been for any previous age.

If, as Charles Baudelaire suggests, modernity is marked by a turn toward “the ephemeral, the fugitive, and the contingent,” then the themes that form the focus of this book and Jeffers's poetic reflections on them must be understood as being distinctively and resolutely nonmodern in nature. Jeffers sought to admit into his poetry only material that spoke to (relatively) permanent realities (CP 4, 391; SP, 714), matters that would be of importance to people who might happen to read them one hundred and even a thousand years hence (CP 4, 422–27; SP, 723–28). It is perhaps this focus on perennial matters that has made his work (which entered its mature phase nearly a full century ago now) newly relevant for those of us who live in the so-called Anthropocene, an age in which planetary conditions have forced us to reckon anew with intellectual and existential battles we might have once thought we had been spared.

Although Jeffers engaged in a wide variety of pursuits and practices throughout his life, he was, perhaps above all else, a poet. Besides the prose contained in his letters, prefaces to various volumes, and occasional essays, his published writing is made up almost exclusively of poetic verse. His poems took several forms, from tightly written lyrics to full-length tragic dramas to sprawling, epic-style narratives that run well over one-hundred pages in length.

In October of 1947, at the age of 60, Jeffers submitted to Random House the manuscript for his penultimate and perhaps most notorious book of poetry, The Double Axe and Other Poems. Written in the midst and aftermath of World War II, the manuscript contained scathing criticisms of US foreign policy and its involvement in the war; it also included harshly negative remarks about President Roosevelt's political judgment and physical paralysis. Saxe Commins, his longtime editor at Random House, was so taken aback by the manuscript's content that he requested from Jeffers substantial edits to several poems and removal of several others. Even after Jeffers had complied with most of these requests, Random House decided to append a Publisher's Note to the beginning of The Double Axe voicing their “disagreement over some of the political views pronounced by the poet in this volume” when it finally appeared in print in July of 1948.

Considerable scholarly attention has been focused on this dispute, with many of Jeffers's supporters viewing Random House's editorial interventions as a scandalous instance of suppressing free speech and artistic creativity. Jeffers himself, though, seems to have taken the matter largely in stride, complying with most of Commins's requests and offering mild pushback on others. Along with the retractions and revisions he made to the main body of the work, Jeffers also substantially revised his original Preface, making it considerably shorter and removing several important philosophical reflections. Fortunately, the original, unpublished Preface has been preserved and is readily accessible (CP 4, 418–21; SP 719–22). It includes a pellucid exposition of Jeffers's mature philosophy of inhumanism and also offers some of his clearest insights into how this way of thinking can address the challenges of finding meaning and beauty amid life's difficulties. In this concluding chapter, I want to examine both Prefaces in order to review some of the key themes of the previous chapters and to return to the issue of evil with which I began my reading of Jeffers.

In the shorter, published Preface to The Double Axe, Jeffers remarks that the book presents “a certain philosophical attitude” that he calls “Inhumanism” (CP 4, 428). This attitude, he tells us, is based on a shift in emphasis from “man to not-man,” a turning outward from the human world to the “transhuman” or more-than-human world.

The Nature of Things

“The poets lie too much”—except, perhaps, the ancient Roman poet Titus Lucretius Carus. Although he admits to rimming the cup of his lessons with honey to take some of the edge off his austere message, Lucretius sees it as his task in his six-book poem, De rerum natura, to provide readers with a forthright and truthful account of the cosmos and the place of human beings within it. As a disciple of the early Greek philosopher Epicurus, Lucretius maintains that our anxieties about life and fears surrounding death are due to patently false superstitions about vengeful gods intent on causing trouble for us in this life and in the afterlife. The aim of philosophy as Lucretius sees it is to dispel “our terrors and our darknesses of mind” by giving us “insight into nature” and a schema of “systematic contemplation” that can help us understand who we really are and how the world truly works.

On Lucretius's account, the universe is constituted only by material particles and the void of empty space. The individual things we see around us are comprised of such particles of varied sizes and sorts and are brought together by chance to form relatively stable (but not invariant) patterns of existence and relation. While the individuals, groups, and patterns that form in nature and the cosmos are subject to change and destruction, the particles themselves are indestructible. Human souls are also, according to Lucretius, built from these same particles and, hence, are subject to the same processes of constitution and destruction. Our souls do not survive us after death and thus cannot be subject to punishment by the gods for anything we do in this life. Furthermore, if there are any gods, they would, Lucretius believes, be utterly uninterested in human affairs. The gods control neither the constitution and destruction of assembled particles nor the vicissitudes of human affairs; both realms unfold according to largely deterministic forces as well as random swerves from that predictable order.

Obscure Human Fidelity

The reading of Jeffers developed thus far has left us with the following questions to consider in this final chapter: What sorts of values might emerge in adopting and practicing an inhumanist approach to life and death? Further, what sorts of changes does inhumanism entail at the level of the individual and at the level of the collective? I begin this chapter with an examination of two of Jeffers's early narratives, “Roan Stallion” and “The Tower Beyond Tragedy” in order to highlight the difficulties involved in adopting and sustaining an inhumanist perspective. I then turn to an examination of other writings by Jeffers that highlight the importance of ongoing practices of self-transformation and the role they play in transforming all-too-human subjectivities in a more inhumanist direction. Finally, I discuss how an inhumanist philosophy allows for a fresh reconsideration of the stakes of collective and political life.

Jeffers's early narrative poem “Roan Stallion” illustrates the risks and difficulties involved in contesting anthropocentric introversion. The action of the poem centers around California, a young woman of mixed race, who is married to an abusive and heavy-drinking immigrant from Holland named Johnny. Living on an isolated ranch, California does her best to care for her daughter, Christine, while Johnny is often gone from the ranch and off gambling. The titular animal of the piece refers to a horse that Johnny brings home one day as part of his winnings. The strong and beautiful horse represents for both California and Johnny something like a portal to a life outside their introverted existence on the ranch, but this “outside” is understood in different ways by the two characters. Johnny's goal is to use the stallion for breeding and to make money for personal economic gain and social standing, whereas California is drawn to the horse's overwhelming power, beauty, and independence, traits that allow her to glimpse a life beyond the restrictive limits of her relationship with Johnny.

Both characters exhibit quasi-zoophilic passions for the stallion, but again the form and end their respective affects take are starkly different. When Johnny arranges to have the stallion breed with a mare, he and the horsemen watch the mating, with Johnny afterward crudely joking with the mare's owner that “to-morrow evening / I show her how the red fellow act, the big fellow” (CP 1, 188; SP, 124).

Who Is Jakub?

A few weeks into fieldwork in Nitra, I met up with Jakub in a local park to discuss my impressions from my research up to that point. I had known Jakub longer than other interlocutors since we had met at a three-day workshop on “Fighting radicalization with art,” an event organized by a Bratislava NGO, aimed at activists and pedagogues right at the beginning of my fieldwork. Now, a few weeks after I started doing participant observation at Pomoc a Nádej, I felt it was the right time, and Jakub was the right person, to go beyond discussion of everyday matters and the little crises of refugee work and address some of the questions I had been brooding over: about refugee supporters’ biographies, their negotiation of values and political pressures, their attitudes toward their clients—and how their actions and decisions emerged from the messy situation surrounding them. It was a warm day in mid-April, enticing dozens of families to recover bikes and roller skates from their garages and take them outside to the sunlight for the first time this year. Amid this jolly and noisy crowd, sitting on an ale bench, with a fragrant beer in front of him, Jakub looked like a man quite content with his life. Jakub was my gatekeeper at the organization in Nitra. Less than two years earlier, he had assumed the project manager's position for a refugee help organization, leading a small team of three social workers, an administrative worker, and a standby interpreter. Jakub was known for getting along with anyone and his extrovert approach and tireless effort to liven up every situation with his witty, mocking, but never harmful jokes.

On the sunny bench near the Nitra park kiosk, Jakub reflected on the recent changes in his life. They were quite substantial. Jakub had abandoned his job as a researcher and pedagogue at the University of Prešov's Faculty of Engineering. It was the kind of work he loved and considered himself to be good at, but the quickly eroding state of the Slovak education system and the meager financial prospects pushed him out of university.

From The Correspondents, 4th ed. (Dublin, 1778).

To the Reader.

How the World came to be obliged with the following Epistolary Correspondence, I shall not take upon me to account; yet however striking in Character the Letters are, it may be necessary more particularly to delineate the Portrait of that illustrious Pair, from whence flowed such Strains of exalted Friendship, and Sentiments of improved Minds, vieing with becoming Ardour to soothe each other's Care, by sweetening Life in the Hour of Decline, and as it were stretching out the Hand, offering Sacrifices of Assistance, prompted by a Similitude of Minds, and Sameness in Disposition, living not for themselves alone. The Current of Tenderness widens as it flows, and will unite Hearts with its Feelings, which good Nature only led perhaps into Pursuits of Mirth or Relaxation; People of this very susceptible Cast have a thousand Pleasures and as many Uneasinesses, of which others have no Idea; but the latter to the very sensible are generally more abundant, marking the Truth of these very elegant Lines:

But not to wander any longer in this Path of sweet Delight, let me hasten to my first Design, and lay before the Reader the Portrait of that illustrious Dead, (while we omit not a proper Attention to its Companion,) to whom we owe our Obligations for the following Performance. He was one of the most remarkable Characters of this Age. To a dignified Station he added Dignity; and to the Honours of Nobility, he gave new Splendour by his Name. He became illustrious by his eminent Virtues and great Abilities; and the Man of Letters was almost eclipsed by the Man of Worth. This Nobleman distinguished himself from the rest of Mankind in various Departments of Polite Literature. As a Poet, he has long been regarded a Favourite. The Characteristics of his Verse is Harmony, Chastity, and Elegance.

It has been observed to his Honour, that his Love Poems are tender and sincere, and that the Friend is never forgot in the Gallant. Thus he made the best Use of Poetry, by subjecting it to the great Purposes of Morality.

The history of war and the history of photography could both benefit from reconsidering women's war photographs. In Australia, as in many other nations, these photographs have generally been excluded from the iconic imagery of war. Yet there are strong arguments for including home-front photography in the analysis of war photography, as Pippa Oldfield makes clear in her recent work on women's photography during the American Civil War. Oldfield also builds a case for examining women photographers’ entrepreneurial and business activities, which are often overlooked by scholars who focus exclusively on artistic issues.

The consideration of women's war photography builds on wider movements to include women in the cultural memory of conflicts. Researchers in numerous fields have emphasised the range and significance of women's participation in war. On the battlefront, women offered voluntary aid, locating those missing, wounded or killed; they were also present in large numbers as nurses and medical support personnel. On the home front, women raised war funds and charitable donations, bolstered morale, took on work traditionally done by men and engaged in political activism both for and against war.

Yet war photography in Australia has generally been considered a male domain. The defining images of the nation during the First World War drew on combat photos by Frank Hurley, Charles Bean (Australia's official war correspondent) and other journalists such as Phillip Schuler. In this chapter, we look at two very different situations where women photographed soldiers on the cusp of battle. The sisters May and Mina Moore ran commercial portrait studios, while Doris McKellar (née Hall) was an amateur snapshot photographer. What these women had in common was that they were not setting out to create authoritative war photography but to make photographs for personal use, manifesting an intimate connection between war and the home front. Their photographs, particularly their portraits of soldiers, shed light on the war experience, offer insights into the experience of war at home, and confer on their subjects a rarely seen emotional depth and range.

May and Mina Moore

May and Mina Moore were two artistically inclined sisters born in New Zealand in 1881 and 1882. They had limited experience with photography before they embarked on professional photographic careers.

From Richard Cooksey, Esq. (1760–98), Miscellaneous Poems (1796).

“To a Beautiful Lady, Residing at Malvern, During the Season of Malvern Wells; on her Proposing to Form a Party to Hagley, the Celebrated Seat of Lord Lyttelton.”

This was written after a thunderstorm. Storms of this nature, when once attracted by this hill, continue nearly stationary till their force is exhausted.

Is It Enough?

“You know, it is a strange feeling when refugees leave the Slovak reception facilities and travel on to Austria or Germany. I mean, we are trying our best here, is it not enough?” Peter, a social worker from the Slovak Migration Office, told me with a mixture of disappointment and irritation. He had just shown me a housing facility for refugees awaiting their asylum trial, about 35 kilometers northeast of Bratislava. A significant amount of asylum seekers leaves Slovakia before their trial, trying to apply for asylum somewhere else—even though they know they might get transferred back, Slovakia being the first country in the EU they registered in. Slovaks who support refugees in their country as social workers, translators, language teachers, lawyers, or volunteers often feel outright heartbroken about these premature departures. They are the dramatic conclusions of encounters with high emotional and moral stakes. The tensions that complicate these encounters are manifold: they encompass disagreements between state and non-state actors in refugee care and reach into the intimate realms of interpersonal relationships.

Slovakia is not a typical destination for refugees or migrants. They are more likely to join kinship networks or diaspora groups which have already established themselves abroad, usually in Western Europe. The Central and East European countries that are EU member states now, but used to lie behind the Iron Curtain, do not belong to the most desired target countries—due to their reputation of being less accommodating toward strangers, and due to being less affluent. Indeed, Western Europe is an attractive destination for Slovak and other Central and Eastern European emigrants, as well, and refugees’ allegedly easy access to the German or Austrian labor markets increases reservations against them (Hann 2015). At the same time, the continually small numbers of people arriving in Slovakia from abroad serve as an excuse for political stakeholders not to develop a more comprehensive integration program or a more welcoming attitude. Hence, refugees avoiding Slovakia and politicians delaying overdue reforms are forming a vicious circle. In public discourse, refugees are arguably the least desired migrants, and their ‘premature departures’ (to wealthier EU member states) are believed to demonstrate the illegitimacy of their asylum pleas, not the inefficacy of the Slovak asylum system.

In the previous chapter, we examined images produced in response to the Great War by three Australian women photographers. Two of those women, namely the Moore sisters, were originally from New Zealand, but they swiftly became part of Australian society and its vibrant cultural scene. In this chapter, we examine the works of two women photographers who migrated to Australia from Europe in the period after the Great War. Both women contributed to Australians’ sense of identity and broadened the imagery that came to be held in the nation's photographic archives.

At first glance, these two women might appear to have very little in common. They worked at slightly different times, came from strikingly different cultural backgrounds and enjoyed markedly different levels of training. They also lived and worked in different locations with vastly different histories – one in pre-revolutionary China and later Sarawak, the other in the Australian-mandated Territory of New Guinea. However, both shared a common interest in ethnography and in photographing people from non-European societies and cultures in a way that did not subject them to the primitivising or exoticising tropes popular among travel writers and the tourist industry. Finally, both lived and worked for an extended period among people who were Indigenous to these places and engaged with them on a personal basis, making the two women an important and fascinating pair to study.

The first photographer was Sarah Chinnery, an amateur photographer who for seventeen years lived in Rabaul, which was the administrative capital of New Guinea, until 1937, when the town was destroyed by a large volcano overlooking the harbour. Chinnery's images serve as records of some of the more obvious changes that took place in Rabaul and its surrounding villages as the Australian administration set about bringing New Guinea's people into what at that time was commonly referred to as the ‘civilised’ world. Chinnery's photographs were realist in style. Apart from a small number of works she published in Australian newspapers and magazines, their only significant impact during her lifetime was among friends and family.

Riešiť Despite the Mess

“We stand in between the different parties, but in the end, we are the ones who have to riešiť despite all the nice slogans and catchphrases.” This statement is key to my understanding of refugee supporters’ positionality. Sofia said this when she came out of the meeting Marginal had organized with Abed and the Migration Office, which led to the decision to let Abed have his will and go to India for a diploma. The social worker from the Migration Office had concluded the meeting by saying that refugees “can achieve anything” and should be encouraged to “fulfill their potential.” In Sofia's view, these were just romantic platitudes, making everyone feel righteous and comfortable while obfuscating the fact that this ‘achievement’ was really a kind of scam.

At the same time, refugee supporters still face other (more disturbing) slogans, the rallying cries of extremists and xenophobes who claim that refugees are “parasites” or “terrorists” who “threaten our culture” and “cannot be integrated.” ‘Slogans’ refer here to the grand proclamations of principles and normative judgments—which may be naïvely simplistic and dangerously ignorant of the messiness of real life. The practice of refugee care in Slovakia is diametrically opposed to the logic of slogans: it lacks the clarity and unambiguity, the claims to truth and comprehensiveness encompassed in snappy catchphrases. Their work also eschews the reductionist, essentialist, manipulative quality of populist slogans. By distancing herself from other people's moral statements and fearmongering, encapsulated in pointed catchphrases, Sofia downplays the role of principles, making it secondary to the short-term, inescapable logic of riešiť. She suggests a realm beyond moral commitments, where the goal is not to find the best but just good enough solutions.

This realm consists of expectations, experiences, norms, lessons, and emotions. They all have the potential to direct action. They are methodically, meticulously, or spontaneously weighed, negotiated, appropriated, prioritized, neglected, or forgotten. Refugee supporters find themselves in a moral laboratory, for instance, when testing and shifting the boundaries between tolerance and accommodation. They go through moral breakdowns that trigger, among other things, leaps to trust or distrust. All these operations belong to a fundamentally ephemeral and unstable situation in which moral sentiments and emotional judgments constantly mix.