Max Eastman on Diogenes

In an on-line version of Louis Untermeyer's anthology, Modern Poetry (1919), I found the following small poem by Max Eastman, known more as an editor than a poet. Eastman knew several Harlem Renaissance writers well, including George Schuyler; his politics in the 1920s were leftward leaning. In this poem, he praises the Cynic philosopher, Diogenes, a contemporary of Aristotle's. Diogenes preferred to live like a beggar, although I believe that he worked for a long time as a tutor to a rich person's children. "Worked" makes it sound as if he was employed, but I think he was actually a slave at that point. He disparaged customs, including comfort, money, and funeral rites. For himself, he allegedly wished no funeral rites or even burial but requested that his body simply be flung outside the city's gates, to be devoured by dogs. Instead, somebody built a monument to him--with the figure of a dog on top; at least that's the lore.

Here's Eastman's crisp little homage to Diogenes:

Diogenes

by Max Eastman

A HUT, and a tree,
And a hill for me,
And a piece of weedy meadow.
I’ll ask no thing,
Of God or king,
But to clear away his shadow.

I do appreciate that half-rhyme, meadow and shadow--almost as if, on behalf of Diogenes, Eastman were purposely "bending" the custom of rhyming. Fans of Sherlock Holmes will remember that Holmes's brother, Mycroft, belonged (or I should say belongs) to the Diogenes Club in London.