The Complete Works of Brann - The Iconoclast, vol 1 | Page 5

powder mill. So far as they are

aware the file of The Iconoclast possessed by the present publishers,
and from which this edition is reproduced, is the only complete file in
existence.
For twenty years this priceless literary heritage has been waiting,
precariously subjected to the vicissitudes of earthly circumstance. Like
a lone great manuscript within the cloister of a mediaeval monk,
Brann's work might have perished utterly soon after its creation, like a
song of magic music held but fleetingly within the heart that heard it.
But the blood of ink now flows again through the multiplying presses
and the flaming phrases of The Iconoclast, shot like shafts of gold from
over the mountains of El d'Orado by the sun of genius, still live and
will endure. Again the million words leap from the yellowed pages like
tongues of fire and beauty; and ten thousand voices will cry and sing
again before the hearths of those who once knew and loved the Waco
Iconoclast, and will sing and cry in the homes of their children and
their children's children who will read and acclaim Brann as a God
whose name is writ forever in the stars.
These facts are here set down that they who read in days to come may
marvel as I do now that two score issues of a provincial paper should
consistently contain such a freight of imperishable literature, revealing
a learning positively prodigious, a style that flows with a sonorous
majesty and crashes with a vitriolic and destroying power, a lavish
richness in figurative language, a beauty of Aeolian harps, of sapphire
seas, of the flushed and ardent splendor of poetic nights.
Whence came the towering intellect, the wealth of knowledge, the
mastery of words, the music of style, the diapason of feeling? It could
only come from the sources that are available to any American who can
read. The most formal aid that could have contributed is the free
shelves of the St. Louis public library.
The miracle of Brann's growth and flowering is more marvelous than
that of Poe, less explainable than that of Shakespeare. That Brann knew
the literary classics of the world is obvious from his every line. But,
unless we invent some theory of universal telepathy to have wafted
inspiration to Waco from all the canonized dead from Homer to Carlyle,
we can only conceive that Brann derived his knowledge and his power,
without encouragement and without guidance, by poring over the
printed page in lonely hours bitterly wrested from the wolf of poverty

that for forty years held mortgage on his time.
What he possessed, however got, was a combination of all those
recognized elements of literary greatness--except one thing; he heeded
not the warning of cultured mediocrity that commands most writers
what to leave unsaid. Brann left nothing unsaid, and because of that
fact was locked out of colleges, libraries, encyclopaedias and halls of
fame.
Where other writers waste half their energies in deciding what may be
written, Brann gave his full energy to writing what he thought.
Whereas in all things else he matched and equaled others, in this one
fact of absolute audacity and complete freedom from fear, he
outmatched all and so closed the pedants' mouths of praise. Colossal,
crude, terrible and sublime, Brann opened the ears of the people by the
mighty power of his untamed language, by the smashing fury of his
wrath of words.
From the point of disadvantage of the little country town lost in the
immensity of the Texas prairie, Brann saw the world, and saw it with
the blazing eye of righteous wrath. He saw the sins of high society in
New York and London, the rottenness of autocracy in Russia, the world
war boiling beneath the surface in the cauldron of Europe's misery. But
he saw also, with mingled humor and anger, the trivial passing events
of his own state and nation and the local affairs of his home town. Of
all these things, great and small, he wrote with equal fervor, equal
venom and equal power.
To-day the war is fought, the Czar is dead, free silver is forgotten and
the local animosities that Brann brewed in his own State live only in
the memories of a few old men.
With the roll of the years, the perspective of time, like a low swung sun,
casts the mountain's shadow ever farther across the valley; and Brann
the Waco journalist has become Brann the American genius. No matter
how dead the issues, how local to time and place the characters of
which he wrote, his writing is literature and the imperishable legacy of
the world.
The Biblical story of Joseph would be equally great if his name had
been Fu Chow, and Pharaoh had been the Emperor Wu Wong