New Release: The Straight Line Never Existed | First English Translation of Ret Marut's ‘MAR-Kurve’ (Copy)
Some books wait an extraordinarily long time for no obvious reason.
Ret Marut's Die Zerstörung unseres Welt-Systems durch die MAR-Kurve first appeared in Der Ziegelbrenner during the remarkable years before its author disappeared and re-emerged as the novelist B. Traven. More than a century later, Marut's novels have travelled the world in dozens of languages, while this extraordinary little work remained quietly where it began, accessible only to those able to read the original German.
Bacchus Editions is delighted to announce the publication of what is, as far as we have been able to determine, the first complete English translation prepared directly from the original German publication.
Translated, edited, annotated, and introduced by Fíona Vivienne, this edition grew from years of archival research into Ret Marut, B. Traven, Der Ziegelbrenner, and the broader history of individualist anarchism. Rather than presenting the translation alone, it places the MAR-Kurve within the historical and intellectual world from which it first emerged.
The MAR-Kurve is one of Ret Marut's most unusual writings. At first glance it appears to concern mathematics, geometry, and cosmology. Before long, those subjects begin quietly dissolving into something considerably more ambitious. The work becomes an extended meditation on certainty itself, on the manufacture of authority, and on the curious ease with which human beings mistake internally coherent systems for reality. More than a century after its publication, it remains as provocative, playful, and intellectually unsettling as when it first appeared.
Included in this volume are:
The first complete English translation of Die Zerstörung unseres Welt-Systems durch die MAR-Kurve
Essays on Ret Marut, Der Ziegelbrenner, and the historical circumstances surrounding the work
An examination of its reception among individualists, past and present
Translator's notes and annotations
Archival photographs
Bibliography
The volume has been prepared directly from the original German text and is intended both for readers discovering Ret Marut for the first time and for those who have long travelled in the company of B. Traven, Max Stirner, Albert Libertad, Renzo Novatore, Georges Palante, Han Ryner, et many other old companions.
The physical edition follows a similarly deliberate philosophy. Printed as a compact perfect-bound paperback, the design draws upon the restrained visual language of early twentieth-century French philosophical publishing: cream stock, red rules, generous margins, and quiet typography. The title of Marut's work appears in Fraktur as a small acknowledgment of the typographic world of Der Ziegelbrenner, where it first entered print.
The complete translation will also be made freely available through the Anarchist Library, ensuring that Marut's words remain accessible to everyone. The Bacchus Editions volume offers something different: the translation accompanied by its historical context, editorial work, annotations, photographs, and the broader conversation surrounding one of the most unusual texts to emerge from Der Ziegelbrenner.
The Straight Line Never Existed is now available in the Bacchus Editions Bookshop, where the edition can be ordered today.
Some books wait a century.
We are very pleased that this one no longer has to.