"The Surprises of the Superhuman" is a poem from Wallace Stevens

Wallace Stevens

Wallace Stevens was an American Modernist poet. He was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, educated at Harvard and then New York Law School, and spent most of his life working as a lawyer for the Hartford insurance company in Connecticut.His best-known poems include "Anecdote of the Jar",...

's first book
of poetry, Harmonium

Harmonium (poetry collection)

Harmonium is a book of poetry by U.S. poet Wallace Stevens. His first book, it was published in 1923 by Knopf in an edition of 1500 copies. He was in middle age at that time, forty-four years old. The collection comprises 85 poems, ranging in length from just a few lines to several hundred...

. It
was first published in 1918, so it is in the public
domain.

The Surprises of the Superhuman  The palais de justice of chambermaids  Tops the horizon with its colonnades.  If it were lost in Űbermenschlichkeit,  Perhaps our wretched state would soon come right.  For somehow the brave dicta of kings  Make more awry our faulty human things.

This poem was Section V of the poem-sequence "Lettres d'un Soldat"
(1918). It was extracted as "The Surprises of the Superhuman" for the
second edition of Harmonium, along with "Negation

Stevens Negation

"Negation" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first bookof poetry, Harmonium. Itwas first published in 1918, so it is in the publicdomain.This poem was Section VII of the poem—sequence "Lettres d'un Soldat"...

"; the two poems
adjoin each other near the end of the book. Both poems reflect
Stevens's reading of Nietzsche. Bates comments that it contrasts the
bourgeois concept of justice with that suitable to
"Űbermenschlichkeit".