Man, the latest of the ephemera

“Man, the latest of the ephemera” is an expression of human transience set against the immensity of the universe. In the conversations between Martin Eden and Brissenden, it moves from a phrase Martin had quoted to an idea that Brissenden develops into a poem, connecting their discussion of fame and artistic purpose with a vision of humanity’s small place in the cosmos.

Meaning and Use

Brissenden invokes the phrase while urging Martin to turn away from magazines and public success. He argues that fame would be poisonous to Martin and that beauty, rather than recognition or money, should be the end of artistic work. The expression gives force to this counsel: if human beings are fleeting, the pursuit of lasting public reputation is an unstable measure of a life or an artwork.

From Conversation to Poem

Brissenden tells Martin that the phrase had lodged in his thoughts and prompted him to write Ephemera. He describes humanity as a brief, vital presence within an otherwise inorganic world, and the poem expands that premise into an account of human longing against cosmic scale. Its six or seven hundred lines imagine interstellar conflicts and distant suns, while the human voice remains faint amid the vastness. Martin’s response to the poem confirms how powerfully the idea has been rendered as art, rather than merely stated as an argument.

Artistic and Thematic Significance

The expression links Brissenden’s distrust of literary fame to the poem’s contrast between finite human existence and immense cosmic processes. Its significance lies partly in that tension: human life may be ephemeral, yet the poem gives its small, searching voice formal and imaginative force. The phrase thus becomes both a warning against mistaking public success for enduring value and the seed of a work that treats human striving as fragile without making it insignificant.