Henry Louis Mencken was an American journalist, essayist, satirist, cultural critic, and scholar of American English. He commented widely on the social scene, literature, music, prominent politicians, and contemporary movements.
Please aware that most of these haiku were NOT WRITTEN on the date in the title – for an explanation of this please see The Series link in the navigation table.
A democracy,
never votes for anything,
but against something.
For the Mencken Project.
From Notes on Democracy, 1927
From the line: The whole history of the country has been a history of melodramatic pursuits of horrendous monsters, most of them imaginary. … It was long ago observed that the plain people, under democracy, never vote for anything, but always against something.
since earliest days,
Republic descended to
tergiversations
From the Mencken Project
I had to come up with the this one only to be able to use the word tergiversations.
The online Merriam-Webster defines it “as evasion of straightforward action or clear-cut statement.”
In French, it might mean, Fait de tergiverser ; attitude d’une personne qui tergiverse.
Which translates, Procrastinating; attitude of a procrastinating person.
Been one all my life but never knew I was tergiversationing.
But I do now!
Seems it has been used twice in American Literature.
This time here by Mr. Menckon.
And another time when George Will … was quoting Mr. Menckon.
The line is, “That the United States, in its foreign relations, has descended to gross deceits and tergiversations since the earliest days of the Republic was long ago pointed out by Lecky; it is regarded universally to-day as a pious fraud.”
From Notes on Democracy, 1927
The Americans,
bamboozled, exploited
by their own number
Part of the HL Mencken Project
The American people, true enough, are sheep. Worse, they are donkeys. Yet worse, to borrow from their own dialect, they are goats. They are thus constantly bamboozled and exploited by small minorities of their own number, by determined and ambitious individuals, and even by exterior groups. The business of victimizing them is a lucrative profession, an exact science, and a delicate and lofty art.
From Notes on Democracy – 1927
civilization,
at bottom, nothing but a
colossal swindle
Part the Menckon Project.
Taken from the line:
In the long run, it may turn out that rascality is necessary to human government, and even to civilization itself — that civilization, at bottom, is nothing but a colossal swindle.
From Last Words, H. L. Mencken (1926)
mediocrity!
crass, gross, vulgar, obnoxious
and simply senile
Part of the HL Mencken Project.
This haiku is drawn from the Prejudices – The Sahara of the Bozart – a look a the Southern States 50 years after the end of the Civil War.
This is one of the essays that won Mr. Mencken the everlasting enmity of the south.
Mr, Mencken wrote, “Virginia is the best of the South today, and Georgia is perhaps the worst. The one is simply Senile; the other is crass, gross, vulgar and obnoxious. Between lies a vast plain of mediocrity, stupidity, lethargy, almost of dead silence.”
Mr. Mencken continued, “In the North, of course, there is also grossness, crassness, vulgarity. The North, in its way, is also stupid and obnoxious. But nowhere in the North is there such complete sterility, so depressing a lack of all civilized gesture and aspiration.”
In a preface to this essay printed years later, Mr. Mencken wrote, “This produced a ferocious reaction in the South, and I was belabored for months, and even years afterward in a very extravagant manner. The essay in its final form, as it is here reproduced, dates sadly, but I have let it stand as a sort of historical document. On the heels of the violent denunciations of the elder Southerners there soon came a favorable response from the more civilized youngsters, and there is reason to believe that my attack had something to do with that revival of Southern letters which followed in the middle 1920 ‘s”
No Haiku For You 