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Read the great story of how early print influenced politics, culture and people.
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And if any kings happen to read this: Schmalk is happy to influence on your behalf the royal court. Just give us a call!
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But back to business. We are proud to present the story of the Mercure Galant by Giorgio Vasari.
Part 1
Part 2
A new article every friday!
This article will be great!
Better than anything we've ever done. Probably written by that one author you secretly love.
Up next:
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Holy shit, how did they top that last article? This is proof: They good.
Maybe this article will be about your aunty's flower collection and how you should call her more often.
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Yes... Yet Another Editorial
As of late there has emerged a strange custom among commentators of current events. In their attempts to both express their pessimism of the world, endowing it with the legitimacy of knowing literature, or to be specific, at least one poem, they have often invoked W.B. Yeats’ “The Second Coming”. Often the verse referred to is the one of the slouching beast, or Yeats’ idea of the “gyre” – a confused new world emerging from the corpse of a not yet dead one like that one creature in the alien movie, bursting through the rib cage of a seemingly healthy man. Sometimes the line about the best being apathetic, and the worst beaming with passionate conviction is strewn on social media from twitter, to threads, and even, as confusing as it may be, on LinkedIn. One need not look far in literature to find other examples of people trying to make sense of burning contradictions. “It was the best of times, it was the blerst of times” hammers away the monkey on Mr. Burns’ keyboard. Charles Dickinson puts it in terms which are only a little easier to understand. In the world right now, there is a lot going on.
Five years after a global pandemic we are reeling with the economic, psychological, and political consequences of trying to preserve human life.
War has returned to the European continent, and large highly war dependent countries are being ruled over by fickle leaders who have neither read Kant’s perpetual peace, nor believe in the mission of a rule based international order. The United Nations and European Union who champion human rights and dignity in the open refuse to prevent people from drowning in the Mediterranean and still have not clearly been able to act decisively against very obvious genocides (yes plural).
Meanwhile our popular culture and opposition politics remain prudent and unoriginal. One may choose to get engaged with far-right shenanigans of “owning the libs” by supporting fascism and building AI powered war machines at the cost of life, liberty and the pursuit of freedom.
The center left meanwhile refuses to engage in any visionary political projects, instead championing incremental reform of predator capitalism.
If so inclined, one can protest by letting the neoliberal market supremacist system be dismantled by the same conservative and reactionary forces which have forced the center left to privatize public services in the first place.
Indeed, the pitch of the voices of public intellectuals has risen with the interest rates. Public opinion is shouted hoarse and diabolical by trolls, provocateurs, charlatans. In terms of optimistic visionaries, the suit wearing leftovers of the once idealistic silicon valley, had sold out their vision of a better world’ replacing it with Union busting taxi companies, predatory short term accommodation rentals and defense contracts.
And yet there are hundreds of quiet voices, beneath the flow of algorithm enriched content. Thinkers and writers fermenting their ideas under the blanket of AI generated slop. People whose ideas will bear fruit to the world once the blaze of the village subsides.
This is our hope with publishing project (a fancy word to say Webzine) SCHMALK, an abbreviation of the full name: The Schmalkalden Print Society. With our quarterly (please don’t hold us to this promise) editions of articles, comics, essays, think pieces, poems, and short stories, we want to create a community of readers, writers, and thinkers.
A group of people brought together in a modern Republic of letters. A community with the goal of sharing ideas. Content curated by trusted experts.
Rigorous writing without the gate keeping of academic publishing. A place where disciplines or concepts can interact with literature and the humanities.
We have chosen the name Schmalk – The Schmalkalden Print Society as the overarching theme, and mythology of our magazine. Our goal is to capture this moment of turbulence. Because it may be impossible or even undesirable to reorder the world with words alone, our goal is more to describe reflections of the world as we see it, and to ask if a different one may be possible.
Like an underground club of village rascals who have secretly purloined a printing press during a medieval war, we seek to regain the popular voice of the nonprofessional, yet dedicated, the maverick yet curious. As the village square of public opinion on social media is collapsing, and as the internets’ public spaces have been replaced by ads, bots, and trolls, we would like to invite you into the damp basement in the library of our mountain village for a conversation, a discussion, a thought, and possibly, a print.