I. Literatur

„nothing more horrible can be imagined than the doom
of the Wandering Jew and the Flying Dutchman”
435 SHAW, GEORGE BERNARD, 1856-1950. C.P.A.S. „G.
Bernard Shaw“. London 2.II.1935. 1 Einzelblatt 8°,
die Vorderseite sehr eng beschrieben, mit eigenhändiger
Adresse auf der Rückseite. Briefkopf
„4, Whitehall Court, London, S.W.1.“
(CHF 1’800.00)
An Reverend J.B. Brooks, Pfarrer der Stalybridge
Methodist Church, der ihn nach seiner Meinung
zur Unsterblichkeit gefragt hatte. Shaw holt zu
einem veritablen Rundumschlag aus:
„…The preacher you quote was probably thinking of a
fact that every table rapping spiritualist can confirm:
namely, that the desire to communicate with a lost and
beloved friend or relative is the strongest incentive to believe
in personal immortality among people who are free
from the mere vulgar fear of death which leads to the
common pretence that it does not exist.
The pretence will not stand examination. Those who
maintain it make it a condition that the person who survives
for ever and ever shall not be like themselves but an
ecstatically happy and sinless soul with nothing to do
but enjoy being happy in a celestial city where nobody
works and everybody wears beautiful clothes and the sun
shines always. In this fairy tale there is no real continuity
and identity with Tom and Dick, Jenny and Sally.
The so-called immortality is accepted only on impossible
conditions of transfiguration and depersonalization.
As to real immortality – persistence of the individual
with all his limitations and imperfections and memories to all eternity, I do not desire it, not only because no senile man
desires what he knows he cannot get, but because nothing more horrible can be imagined than the doom of the Wandering
Jew and the Flying Dutchman…”
Das Antwortschreiben von Brooks’ vom 4.III.1935, liegt bei. Es beginnt: „Dear Mr. Shaw, Thanks for your P.C.
What a lot you get on a card! …“
Beilage: 1 C.P.A.S. London 22.XII.1910 an seinen Übersetzer Siegfried Trebitsch in Wien. Der Text auf der Bildseite
im weißen Rand umlaufend: „Burgess is a surname, like Trebitsch, not a Christian name like Siegfried. The preface
will reach you tomorrow (Friday) morning. I wish you were both coming with us to Jamaica. My nerves are as bad
as yours this time.“
436 SHAW, GEORGE
„Neither of them understands Communism. I do.”
BERNARD, 1856-1950. Eigenhändiges Manuskript, gezeichnet „G.B.S.“. O.O.
21.V.1946. 1 Einzelblatt gr.-8°, die Vorderseite mit roter Tinte beschrieben. Am Kopf gelocht, verso
Montagerest. (CHF 2’400.00)
Aperçu über das Verständnis des Begriffs ‚Kommunismus’ bei verschiedenen Gruppierungen:
„The word Communism has never changed its meaning.
Lenin and Morris went through the same process, beginning with every possible mistake in practice by trying to combine
their middle class Bohemian anarchism with catastrophic Marxism, and ending as Fabians, Lenin with his N.E.P.,
and Morris with his abandonment of the ‘anti-state’ Socialist League and his ‘I dare say it will come about in Webb’s
way’.
Unfortunately the organized worker had the money to adopt Fabianism but not the brains nor the knowledge and character.
But the Capitalists grasped its economies and turned it into State Aided Capitalism which is the proletarian form
of Fascism.
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