Babits himself never fully lived up to this program; indeed, the declaration itself shows his schizoid attitude toward poetry: he wants to say out loud that he does not want to be heard.

They ran over the Sioux escapées with their horses, then beat them to death with their war clubs and tomahawks.[…]The rest of the support group gradually gathered around the relieved and celebrating escapées.

The Government took up the word, and used nihilism to stigmatize all revolutionary, and ultra democratic and socialistic tendencies; and we have seen it play its part in the recent investigations into the attempted assassination of the Emperor.

In America, it seems to have done very well but my usual British publisher, Hamish Hamilton, didn’t want it: they said it was too pandemicky. Even my friends were like: “Who’s gonna read this when it’s published? Covid will be a distant memory.”