16

Go, little boo and wish to a

Flowers in the garde meat in the ha

A bin of win a

spice of wi

A hOllS€ with lawn

enclosing i A living lIve

by the doo A nightingal in the sycamor.

TriQ�Jjy EDITOR

Charles Newman

MANAGING EDITOR

Suzanne Kurman

ART DIRECTOR

Lawrence

BUSINESS MANAGER

Janet Clevenstine

ASSOCIA TES

Janet

Levy

Bailey Andrew Cipes

Laurence Gonzales

Mary Kinzie Allison Platt Claudia

Reynolds

Christine Robinson

Mary Elinore Smith TriQuarterly is an international journal of arts, letters and opinion, published in the fall, winter and spring at Northwestern University, Evan­ ston, Illinois. Subscription rates: $5.00 yearly within the United States; $5.25 Canada and Mexico; $5.75 Foreign. Single copies will usu­ ally be sold for $1.95. Contributions, corre­ spondence and subscriptions should be addressed to TriQuarterly, University Hall 101, North­ western University, Evanston, Illinois, 60201.

Unsolicited manuscripts are welcome, but will not be returned unless accompanied by a self­ addressed stamped envelope. All work accepted for publication becomes the property of the editors, unless otherwise indicated. Copyright © 1969 by Northwestern University Press. All rights reserved. The views expressed in this magazine are to be attributed to the writers, not the editors or sponsors.

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Fiction Notes

ROBERT CHATAIN

present configuration of the

the

on

Red-Blue conflict 41 CURTIS

HARNACK

Voice of the town 51

CLARK

BLAISE

Extractions and contractions 125

JAMES

MCNIECE

Dreamlight 137

ROBERT

SWARD

Hotel Rivello 149

Critifiction JOHN

SEELYE

JORGE

LUIS

ADOLFO

SIMON

Huckleberry Finn 5

The true adventures of

BORGES

and

BIOY CASARES

GRABOWSKI

Three lated

chronicles

by

Norman

of

Bustos

Domecq

trans­

Thomas di Giovanni

Odysseus of the fires

167

177

Criticism BERTRAM

D.

WOLFE

Leon

Felipe:

Poet of

Spain's

exodus and tears 21 ALBERT

R.

CIRILLO

The art of Franco Zeffirelli and Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet 69

A rts

KIERKEGAARD'S

JOURNALS

and Letters

Unpublished selections from The Papirer with an

introduction and afterword

by Howard

V.

Hong 100

Translation GAlUS

VALERIUS

FRANCISCO DE

CATULLUS

QUEVEDO

XLI, XLIII translated by Andrew Wylie 46 Love constant

beyond

Lisi which he bore in

death 48 a

Portrait of

circlet 49 translated

from the Spanish by W. S. Merwin

CONSTANTINE P. CAVAFY

King Claudius 96 Artificial flowers 99 trans­ lated by Minas Savvas

Poetry JAMES

The

TATE

eagle exterminating company 40

J. C. OATES

The struggle to wake from

DABNEY STUART

Mop-up patrol 50

DAVID

WAGONER

To be sung

on

DICK DAVIS

The diver 65

JOHN E.

Homicidal 67

MATTHIAS

sleep 45

the water 65 Song off key 94

MARK STRAND

The room 67

JOHN

The double dream of spring 66

ASHBERY

Rural objects 162 HUGH

Materials for

FOX

an

evocation 94

PETER WILD

Fireman 95

W. S.

Ascent 158 As though I

MERWIN

159

The

plumbing

160

was

waiting for that

Footprints

on

the

glacier 161 J.

D.

REED

Livonia, Michigan 164 Politics and Culture

CHRISTOPHER

LASCH

Toward a new program for the university 197

Art TADANORI YOKOO

Illustration

MARY NOLIN

Illustration 4

JENNIFER BRADY

Photos 46, 166

KAREN SAVAGE

Photo 124

BURTON

Photos

L.

RUDMAN

136, 176

Contributors 208

front and back cover

"If you read it you

must

stop where

the Nigger Jim is stolen from the boys.

That is the real end."

The true adventures of Huckleberry Finn as

told by JOHN SEELYE

"De ole true Huck": an introduction Some years ago, it don't matter how many, Mr Mark Twain took down some adventures of mine and put them in a book called

Huckleberry Finn-which is my name. When the book came out I read through it and I seen right away that he didn't tell it the way it was. Most of the time he told the truth, but he told stretchers too, and

some

of them

was

a

number of

really whoppers. Well, that

ain't nothing. I never seen anybody but lied one time or another. But I was

curious why he done it that way, and I asked him. He told me

it was

a

book for children, and

some

of the things I done and said

warn't fit for

boys and girls my age to read about. Well, I couldn't argue with that, so I didn't say nothing more about it. He made a pile of money with that book, so I guess he knowed his business, which was children. They liked it fine.

TrlQuarterly

5

But the grownups give him trouble from the start. When the book

first corne out the liberians didn't like it because it was trashy, and they hadn't but just got used to it being trash when somebody found there

"niggers" in it, which was organized by then. Well, the liberians didn't want no trouble, so they took it off the shelves again. And the crickits was bothered by the book too. At first they agreed with the liberians that the book was trash, but about the time the liberians had got used to the trashiness, the crick its decided the book warn't trashy enough, and then when the liberians got in a sweat about the word "nigger," the crickits corne out and said there warn't anything wrong with that word, that it was just the sort of word a stupid, no-account, white-trash lunkhead would use-meaning me, I suppose, not Mr Mark Twain. They said it suited the book's style. Well, the liberians .and the crickits ain't spoke

out

to each other

There

considerable

was

was

since. a

crickit named Mr Van

Wyck Brooks who was

par­ ticular hard on Mark Twain. He said that Mark Twain was the vic­ tim of women,

mostly his mother and his wife, and his friend, Mr William Dean Howells, who had crossed out all the rough words in his books-including mine. He thought it was too bad that Mark Twain was brung up where he was, in Hannibal, Missouri, which was just a ramshackly river town, and he thought it was even worse that he had got married and went to Hartford, Connecticut, where he got mixed up with the quality, mostly preachers and such. He said if it warn't for

Christianity, women, and Hartford, Connecticut, Mr Mark Twain might a corne to something.

Well, Mr Bernard DeVoto put Mr Brooks straight on that score.

He showed where Hannibal warn't at fault at all, nor religion, nor women,

all them

nor even

Hartford. He said that Mark Twain asked to have

rough words cut out, and that it was his own doing, and

nobody else's. He said it was because he wanted to sell his books.

Mr Van Wyck Brooks, now, even though he said some ornery things about Mark Twain, he kinder liked my book. He said it was the only honest thing Mark Twain ever wrote. But Mr DeVoto corne down pretty damn hard on it. It warn't that he didn't enjoy it, be­ cause he did-some parts of it, anyway-but he couldn't help point­ ing out where Mark Twain went wrong. He could see all the little lies and the short cuts and the foolishness that wrote

6

considerable about them in

two

was

books of his

in

it, and he

own.

He

was

especially hard on the ending Mark Twain had thought up, and said it actually give him a chill.

It warn't that Mr DeVoto didn't like Mark Twain, because he did.

He even called him "Mark" most of the time. But he could see where he had his faults, and he didn't hang back none in telling about them.

bring himself to write about. Mr DeVoto said it was silly having a fourteen-year-old boy like me not thinking about sex some of the time. He didn't say what Like sex, which Mark Twain couldn't

ever

kind of sex. He left that up to Mr Leslie Fiedler.

Mr DeVoto

was

tolerable lengthy, but he didn't settle the

matter.

The next thing you know Mr T. S. Eliot and Mr Lionel Trilling come

right out and said they admired the book. Well, that was foolish enough, but then they went on to say that the ending seemed all right to them, and that was suicide. Mr Eliot let on that Tom Sawyer's pranks and foolishness was on the tiresome side, and Mr Trilling admitted that the ending warn't exactly up to the rest of the story, but they didn't stop here, and that's how the trouble started. Mr Eliot allowed that he didn't know of any ending that was better than Mark Twain's ending, and Mr Trilling said it was fit that I should finish up where I started out, only a thousand miles south. Which was interesting, but a trifle tough. there was this crickit named Mr Henry Seidel Canby, and Well, he got hopping mad. He said that there warn't no ending worse than that ending, and that Mark Twain ought to be shot for writing it, but he had died anyway, so nobody took him up on it. Then along comes Mr Leo Marx, and give both Mr Eliot and Mr Trilling hell.

'Cording to him, that ending warn't moral, and it was all because Mark Twain couldn't face up to his own story-by which he meant mine.

He said that Mark Twain couldn't measure up to the nat'ral ending his book deserved, that he just plain lost his nerve and had to cheat by tacking on a faint-hearted, immoral ending.

Mr Marx said that Mr Eliot and Mr Trilling warn't no better than Mark Twain. He said they was immoral too, and done nobody any favors by making out that ending was worth more than shucks. He said maybe Mr Eliot couldn't think of a better ending, but he knowed of one, and though he warn't up to messing around with Mark Twain's ending, because that warn't very moral either, he didn't think there would be any harm in suggesting how the story should a come out, which he done. He said the book ought to end so as to make some7

thing out of our escape down the Mississippi. He knowed that Jim couldn't ever a found his freedom down river in

no

moral way,

so

that was out, and whatever other ending you chose would just disap­

point everybody. But he said that was the point, and the only honest way to end the book was to leave me and Jim no better off than we ever was, but still more or less trying to get clear. He claimed this

ending was more moral than Mark Twain's, and it certainly would a been disappointing.

Well, Mr. Eliot and Mr Trilling was squshed fiat, and never did answer up to Mr Marx, but Mr James Cox did. He said that maybe the ending warn't as good as Mr Eliot and Mr Trilling claimed it was, but nuther

was

it as bad

as

Mr Marx had let on. He said it warn't

perfect, but it was explainable, and that's what was important. He explained all about death and reborning and nitiation, and how it was

fit that Jim and I should a come back from the river, because the

free and easy life on the raft was a lie. He said what was wrong with the ending was Tom Sawyer, because Tom's style was all wrong.

That made Tom biling mad, but before he had

a

chance to say any­

thing about Mr Cox's explanation, a whole passel of crickits jumped in with theirs, and there was a power of explaining and arguments and reasons

the like of which I

never

heard before unless it

was

at the

coroner's jury where the remainders had been pisoned, stabbed, shot, and hung, and they was trying to figure out what had killed him.

Right in the middle of all this powwow the door opened up, so to speak, and in walked Mr William Van O'Connor. He give all those other crick its

a

ingoramuses,

and then he let

sad kind of

smile, like he felt sorry for them poor

rip with

a

damn stunner. He didn't

around with the ending. He said he was

only interested in that ending because everybody seemed to think it was the only thing wrong with the book. He said he reckoned they was modest in their estimate, and then he got right to work, down in the innards of the book, and showed how sloppy it was put together. He would tear a

mess

part out and show how loose it had been wired in, and then he would reach down and tear out another part. It was bloody, but grand. The floor was simply covered wi-th poor transitors, and c1aptrappy epi­

sodes, and melerdramas, and minstrel shows, and sentimentering. Mr Van O'Connor said

they warn't nothing, though. He said the worse

thing about the book was its innerscents, which was wickeder than the sloppy work by far. He said if you took out the innerscents, you'd 8

have something, by which he meant the book's skin I reckon, because that's all there

was

left.

Nobody said a word for quite a spell, and it did seem there warn't nothing left to say, like at the end of a six-hour funeral, where the dear departed has begun to stink a bit and the windows is stuck shut because of the rain. But if there's one thing a crickit can't stand, it's stillness, and after a time they begun to creep around in the wreck, seeing if there warn't anything worth salvage. Mr Henry Nash Smith, f'rinstance, give it a try. He said the important thing was the way Mark Twain told my story, that's what saved it and made it great, never mind how it was hung together. And he said you couldn't take out the innerscents without making the rest go

and thread for the whole

bust, that it was needle

pair of britches. He wouldn't a had it no

other way, because it was the innerscents that made the wickedness all the worse. If quality and style counted, he said, it was just about the best damned innerscents on the market. Mr Smith allowed the ending was

slack on innerscents, but he seemed to figure the book had stocked

up a whole wood-yard of it by then, and could go the rest of the way on a

credit. Chapter XXXI all by itself had enough innerscents to keep

saint in good supply for

a

year, with

enough left over for a hard­

shell Baptist or two.

Well, that seemed to keep the other crickits satisfied for a while, but then

along came Mr Richard Poirier, and after he got through, what Mr Van O'Connor done seemed like a Sunday-school picnic.

Mr Poirier said the trouble with the book was it warn't innerscent

enough, and not just the ending nuther. He said if you chopped off the end you still had too much snake, that you had to keep chopping back and chopping back till you got to Chapter XV or thereabouts, which warn't much farther south than the neck. All that come after it

just ain't the true Huck, he said, and some parts above it ain't all that long on innerscents either, having too much society or Tom Sawyer or something else bothersome and contrary in them. He let on that finding the bits worth saving was harder than getting a meal off an owl, and he give it up for a bad job all round. He said it was all because of Miss Jane Austin,

Mark Twain didn't much

cotton

a

to

tolerable slim on

old maid which

account of she

was

always

harping on marriage.

After that, it did look like the kindest thing you could do for the

book

was

scrape it up and

bury

it.

People still read Huckleberry 9

Finn, but the ones that see what Mr O'Connor and Mr Poirier done

just ain't the same afterwards. They can't forget the sight of all them parts laying around, and it makes them uneasy.

Well, it was kinder sad, in a way, with everything scattered about and people saying it was a good book they guessed, but it had ter­ rible weaknesses, and nobody really able to enjoy it any more except children. So I thought to myself, if the book which Mr Mark Twain wrote warn't up to what these men wanted from a book, why not pick up the parts-the good ones-and put together one they would like? So I done it, the best I could anyways, only this time I told the story like it really happened, leaving in all the cuss words and the to it say it

sex

and the sadness.

Everything went just dandy till I got to the end. I nailed her down easy enough, but then it hit me that maybe the crickits wouldn't like this one any better than they liked Mr Mark Twain's. Well, after I had sweat over that thought considerable, it come to me that there ain't nothing a body can do except what is in him to do, and since there just warn't no other ending besides that one in me, I said what the hell, and let her ride. All the same, I didn't want no trouble from the crickits if I could help it, so I left in a spare page, where anybody that wants to can write in his

own

ending if he don't care for mine.

I suppose the liberians ain't a-going to like this book much either, but

maybe now the crick its will be a little less ornery.

And I want you to understand that this is a different book from the one Mr Mark Twain wrote. It may look like The Adventures of

Huckleberry Finn at first sight, but that don't mean a thing. Most of the parts was good ones, and I could use them. But Mark Twain's book is for children and such, whilst this one here is for crickits. And now

that

they've got their book, maybe they'll leave the other one

alone.

TriQuarteriy publishes here

Seelye's book, 10

the

introduction

which Northwestern

University

and

the

Press will

final

chapters of Mr. publish in the fall.

XXXI: What happened at the sawmill Well, I slept like a dead man that night, and woke up after the birds did. The sky was heavy and grayish, and even that early the air was

prickly with sweat if you budged. The sun was trying hard to break through, but all it could manage was a sickly chalky streak along the east, low down, and the rest of the sky was a washed-out lead color, like old flannel. It pressed on you, and even the damn birds felt it, and seemed to chirp no more than they had to, and then without much heart for it. A day like that meant so

warm

that your skin got

trouble or tornadoes, pap used to say, and it was best to stay in a hole till it was over. But time was a-wasting, so I crawled out and

rummaged up something for breakfast. Then I squatted on the down­ stream end of the raft to take a dump and figure what to do next.

From where the raft was tied I got a good view of the Louisiana side, for maybe a mile or so down the next bend. There was this little steam-sawmill on the bank there, where they had wood stacked and a landing. That seemed a likely spot to start soundings for the place where they had got Jim locked up. I didn't have no real plan.

I reckoned one would come along when I needed it.

So I put on my store clothes, and tied up a few traps in a bundle, and took the canoe and cleared for the mill. There warn't nobody

about, but it didn't matter front

none,

because

painted right across the

"Phelps Wood Yard," so as to let the steamboats see it, and I knowed I was somewheres near the farm where they had Jim. About a half mile further down there was a clump of cottonwoods run­ ning out into the easy water, and I figured to run in there and hide the canoe whilst I poked around a bit. But I hadn't no more'n cleared the mill before there come a power of whooping and hollering from the shore, gunshots and dogs barking to beat hell. I dug out for the channel, not wanting anybody to see me using around there just was

then. But that was a mistake.

Because when I was already

a

hundred yards out somebody come

a-crashing through the willow thickets-and I see it was Jim! He was all bloody and his clothes was tore up awful. They had been pushing him hard, and he was all weighted down with chains, too. He took wild look around and seen me out in the river. He didn't say a word, he didn't even wave, he just charged ahead like he was a-going one

to run all the way,

right off the cut bank. It was more'n fifteen feet 11

high there, a regular bluff, and he went down like a goddamn stone.

I thought he was a goner, sure, but I turned the canoe around anyway and come a-booming back in; I hadn't gone very far when a crowd of men and dogs come busting out of the thicket, everybody yelling and howling at once, making powwow enough for a million. It was just like a bear-hunt, only with Jim for the bear.

"There he goes!" somebody yelled; I thought they meant me, but now I see, sure enough, there was Jim a-coming on as best he could with all them chains on. A couple of men begun to fire and load, only it's hard to hit a mark in the water, and the bullets didn't come nowheres near to Jim, but went a-whizzing past me with a funny little whispery sound that once you hear it you damn well don't ever forget.

But then a big-assed man with a broadbrim straw and a red goatee held up his hand and hollered: "Hold your fire, goddamn it! That nigger hain't wuth a Continental, dead!"

I figured the man was Mr Phelps, because that's the way it always is. The people most anxious to shoot a nigger that ain't done just right is/always the ones which ain't got any money tied up in him, whilst the man who's got an interest in that nigger, why he's more careful about the nigger's health than his own.

All this time poor Jim kept on a-humping through the water to­ wards me, with only his head showing on account of the chains. He had that worried look a dog gets in the water, and I knew he was having trouble with all that iron on him. But I had to let up paddling because them rips on the bank seemed particularly anxious to shoot somebody, it didn't much matter who.

"You, boy!" Phelps shouted. "Stop that nigger!" He begun to jog along the top of the bank so as to keep up with me and Jim, but warn't having an easy time of it because of the brush growing there.

Him and most of the others was fairly awash with sweat, and their clothes was black and limp. Some had throwed themselves down on the bank and was passing a jug around, watching another man who was running around trying to get the dogs together. But they was having such a good time scampering back and forth barking at the place where Jim had jumped off that they paid him no heed. You could see it made him mad, and when the men with the jug begun to poke fun at him and laugh, he got so riled up he hauled back and kicked one of his own hounds right off the bank into the water.

12

thing to do. There ain't no harm in a hound, only sometimes they get so excited they can't hear nothing but their own It was

an

ornery

barking and howling.

I says to Phelps, polite as pie: "I'd like to help you sir, but I'm only a boy, and that nigger IS a full-grown man."

"Well, bring that goddamn canoe in here and I'll stop him!"

"There ain't no place," I says, and that was the plain truth. The bank was so high along there that you couldn't a beached a danged scow, let alone a canoe. Just then Phelps run whack into a clump of willows and knocked off his hat. I seen then he was bald

except where there was a little turf around his ears

as

an

egg, and the back of

his head. It was black, like his eyebrows, which was thick and bushy

and

run

in

a

straight line across. He didn't look nothing but mean.

All above that line

was

a

bone white, and below

was

red

as

a

turkey where he had been sun-burnt. He was glistening so with sweat it looked as though somebody had varnished him.

He says:

"Listen, boy. You see that cave-in about fifty yards down?"

A body would a had to been blind not to, so I said I did.

"Well, you head right for it, and I'll cut around and meet you there.

"

There warn't I

anything else I could do that I could see, so I said

would, and he and his men cut back from the bank, where there

was

less brush. Jim was getting close now, and I could hear him groan

whenever he could get his head up to take in air. The rest of the time all you could

his wool and his eyes, which was all bloody back and forth. He was having to use most his

see

was

whites, bobbing strength just staying afloat. It was awful to see, but I give him as good a smile as I could work up, the sort of weakly thing you put on when

somebody is in their last sickness, and you knowed it and they knowed it, but nobody will let on anybody knowed it.

I looked ahead to the cave-in place, which was getting closer all the time, and I see that the cottonwoods on that little point of land was just a bit further down, and that if Jim and me could get past that point, we'd be clear, because nobody on the bank would be able to see us through them trees.

So now I had a plan, or leastwise half a plan, and the other half come

to

me

in

a

flash. It

was

for all the world like

one

of those

13

puzzles, where all you got to do is figure out where one piece goes and all the rest simply finds their own way.

Phelps and his crew come out of the thickets just then, and I swung the bow round

as

if to make

a

run

in. The old

man

he

begun to

clamber down towards the water, half-sliding in the greasy muck. He had his gun with him, and was holding it out with one hand, so there

only the other free to help himself with, and being so fat and all when he was about half-way down he fell right on his ass and slid to the water's edge, a-cussing to beat hell as he went. was

I got up and moved towards the stern end of the canoe, like I was about to get the forrard end high so's to beach it. But then I made as

if to

stumble, letting go the paddle so it would fall in the river

downstream and out of reach. Phelps seen it all.

"Jesus H. Christ! What did you do that fer?"

I

begun to rip and carryon,

and told him I couldn't swim and

would drown for sure and it was all his fault.

"Hain't you got but one friggin' paddle?"

I shook my head, but that was a lie. The other paddle was snuggled

down under the front seat, and all the time

we

was

getting closer

to the cottonwoods.

The drift was keeping Jim in line with the canoe, but I see he was

pretty much played out. He warn't pulling ahead any more, just strug­

gling to keep his head out of the water. But if he could only keep afloat a while longer, everything would be all right. Even if I couldn't pull him in, he could grab a-holt of the stern, and I could clear for the Mississippi side. It was wide down there, more'n a mile across, and there was considerable hiding places-creeks and backwaters and such. They wouldn't ever find us. Once it come on dark we would strike out for the island where the raft be

was

hid, cut her loose, and

fifty miles downstream before daylight. Then I could hunt up a

hammer and cold chisel somewheres, and we'd get Jim out of them damn chains for good and all.

Old Phelps was still down in the cave-in, having one hell of a time

trying to get back up on the bank, like a red ant caught in a doodle­ bug hole. One of his men crept down to give him a hand, but when Phelps took holt of it, he give such a tug that the man come a-tum­ bling down with him. Somebody had fetched along a rope, like they always do when they go nigger hunting, and next they got it around Phelps and begun to haul him out. He warn't no lightweight, and it 14

reaching out for the top of the bank, some of the men noticed a steamboat coming in with, up the channel and let out a holler, which the rest joined firing off their guns and jumping up and down, making a power of noise so as to get the pilot's attention. That left only one man on the and rope, so down Phelps went to the bottom, leaving the man cussing took considerable

hauling.

About the time he

was

spitting on his burned hands.

Well, the pilot seen them, and even give a couple blasts with his whistle, but he kept on a-chunking upstream, most likely figuring they was a bunch of drunks and rowdies, wanting to get on board at the sawmill landing.

By now I was nearly to the cottonwoods, but I had been spending so much time looking back that I only then see what I should a seen before, that them trees was on a sandspit built up by the water from a big creek that emptied in right there, and if I didn't buckle to my spare paddle right away, the current would take me where I didn't want to go. I fairly bent that paddle, and got through the wash and in towards the easy water by the bank, but when I turned around and looked for Jim, he was already fifty yards out. Well, I'd druther not have old Phelps see me pull Jim into the canoe whilst we still had less than a gunshot betwixt us, but I didn't have any choice. Besides, the way the current come a-booming out of that creek mouth, there was a good chance we'd be pretty far out before I caught up with Jim. Well, I laid into the paddle again, and went shooting out into the river. It warn't a minute before a ball went whizzing past and then I heard

by, was

pop from the shore, and then two or three more whistled and there came a popping like it was Fourth of July. The creek a

still carrying me,

so

I just lay down in the bottom of the canoe,

knowing my only chance was to stay low. A couple of bullets thunked into the

wood,

but it

two-inch thick cypress and I couldn't been safer if I'd been behind a stone wall. was

I could tell

a

by looking at the streaky gray clouds that the canoe was swinging this way and that, and then after she worked out of the current she swung south and held a steady course. By then the shooting had stopped, so I poked my head up and looked around.

The sawmill was out of sight now, behind the spit with the cotton­ woods, so I sat up and looked for Jim. I couldn't see him nowhere, and next I stood up, bracing myself with the paddle, but it warn't no use. There was nothing on that whole broad river but me, and I 15

knowed then that there warn't no sense looking for Jim, because he was

somewhere

deep

down under,

drug

down

by

them

goddamn

chains.

I knowed it wouldn't do

Well,

no

good to cry, because

all the

crying in the world won't bring a dead man alive, but I couldn't help blubbering a little anyhow. For Jim was the best cretur, and he was the only true friend I had, even though he was a nigger, and a runa­ to me way, too. I guess I didn't rightly know how much he meant till he was gone, and I remembered all the good times we'd had on the river, and how fine everything had been up to when them two thieving sons-a-bitches come along and ruined it all.

And even if that old river took us right down to Orleans, Jim and me could a rigged some kind of sail and headed for South America and had some fine howling adventures there, the kind Tom Sawyer only read about. We might a found the Treasure of the Inkers Tom was always jawing about and come back in fine style, dressed like nabobs and smoking seegars, with enough dt.mn yaIler boys to buy Jim's children and his wife and any other relations he had

a

mind to set free.

just as if he hadn't ever been alive, not even leaving something behind to bury or mourn over, which is a nigger's worst fear, because then he's sure to come back and ha'nt the places where he was happiest, and groan and carry on so because he can't come back, never, only as a ghost, and then only at midnight when everybody is gone or asleep. If I only knew where he had sunk, I would a gone fetched one of them nigger preachers and paddled But

now

he

was

gone,

him out to pray over Jim, but it warn't no use, because the current would

a

carried him somewheres

else, downstream, till he caught on

maybe. There warn't no use in doing anything, because can­ non wouldn't bring him up, nor quicksilver in bread, nor prayer, nor cussing, nor crying. Jim was gone forever, down deep in that old muddy river.

It warn't only that I felt low-down and miserable because Jim was dead, that warn't the half of it. Because my conscience begun to work on me, and told me it was all my fault that Jim was dead, and if I had only listened to it before, and done what it said to do, he'd still be alive. It warn't no good blaming the King and the Duke, because they was sent by Providence to trouble us so we'd do right, along with the snakeskin, and the fog, and the rest. For that's always a

snag,

16

His way, to toss evil in a man's path so he'll do good, and if a body don't pay heed to a little nudge, why Providence'll kick him ass over teakettle next trip around.

First He sets your conscience a-picking at you, and if that don't do it, He'll send you a little misery, like a blister, maybe, or a hole

pocket so you lose something you're particular fond of, or snarl your trot-lines, and if you still don't mend your ways, he'll knock you all kersmash. A body can put up with a talky conscience, but once Providence has it in for him, goodbye! After that, you ain't got no show at all, and only a mullet-head like me will try his

in your

luck and stay in the game for another hand. Providence was. in it from the very start, and there warn't a damned thing we could a suppose I should a been grateful to Him for drownding poor Jim instead of me, but I warn't. It was ornery and done

about it.

I

wicked, and I knowed it, but I didn't even try. That's how bad I felt.

I had left off crying for a

spell, and was just lying in the bottom of the canoe thinking these thoughts when, blump! she runs into some willows hanging down from a bank, and a little shower of tiny leaves came tickling down over me. I sat up then and pulled the canoe in under the willows where there was a kind of cave, cool and dark, and I laid back down and tried to think of what I should do next, but it

warn't no good. Nothing would come.

All around it

still and

Sunday-like, with everything hot and gray. Gray sky, gray water, everything seemed to have had the color squoze right out of it. The air was full of them kind of faint dronings of bugs and flies that make it seem so lonesome and like everybody's dead and gone, like the sound a spinning-wheel makes, wailing along and down and that is the lonesomest sound up sinking along again; in the whole world. When a breeze would come along and quiver the willow leaves it made me feel mournful, because it was like spirits was

whispering-spirits that's been dead ever so' many years, or them that's

just died. It made me wish I was dead too, and done with it

all, and pretty soon I started in blubbering again, and I kept it up off and on until I fell asleep.

Next thing I knowed I woke up with a start, and there was a boom­

booming outside on the river like they had got cannon out to raise Jim, but it warn't,

it

the storm

coming on. The wind swished through the willows something fierce, and I pulled back in as far as I could go. The river was all whitecaps in a flash, foam a-blowing in was

17

line

straight as a ruler could make, and then there come a mon­ strous clap of thunder overhead and another, and the lighting split everything wide open. The rain come then. It beat down like hail­ a

stones, and steam rose up from the river so you couldn't see a thing,

trickling through the willows, so I unrolled my blanket and covered up, lying there and listening to the thunder and the swoosh of the rain until I went asleep again. I dreamt then, bad dreams, but I won't tell you what they was

just a solid sheet of white.

about. I

The water

come

already told you.

XXXII: Nothing more to write When I waked up again it was dark night, and the rain had stopped.

Leastwise it had stopped outside, but it kept a-dripping down around

through the willows. My blanket was soaked,

me

and the skeeters had sat down on me for dinner, so as

well get moving once

and my clothes, I figured I might

again, and pushed out from under the wil­

lows. It took me an hour or two, but I found the little island where I had the raft hid, and clumb aboard. I didn't stay long. I tossed what I wanted into

sack and put it and the gun into the canoe, and the rest I left for anybody that wanted it. Just before I shoved off, I took a

forgot anything, and the sight of that lonely raft, all shadows and emptiness, sent a dern lump into my throat like somebody's hit me there. I got into the canoe and a

last look around to make

never

once

I

sure

I hadn't

looked back.

scrummaged a meal out of some scraps and then I lay down in the canoe with my pipe and thought over what I was to do next.

Money warn't no problem, because I still had a silver dollar left in my pocket, and the canoe was worth ten dollars any day. I thought maybe I would go on down to Orleans and ship as a cabin boy on one of the big riverboats. Or maybe head out for the Territory all by myself. I didn't give much of a damn either way. When there's nothing you want to do, or got to do, why you can do anything, but there ain't much joy in it.

Tom Sawyer, now, I knew he'd give his right arm to be me, and to be able to come back to St. Petersburg from the dead, and have 18

Aunt Polly and Becky Thatcher a-weeping over him and maybe have

big parade up to the jail and then a showy trial before they took him out with a brass band to hang him for helping a nigger escape instead of being killed by that nigger and properly dead. Oh, Tom could do it up bully, but somehow I didn't much cotton to the idea.

Besides, most likely pap would get a-holt of me again, or even worse the widow, who'd start in sivilizing me all over again, and I couldn't a

a

stood it. I been there before.

quiet out on the river that time of night, and somewheres far off there was a church bell ringing, but you couldn't hear all the strikes, only a slow bung and then the bung It

monstrous

was

.

.

.

.

.

.

next one would drift away before it was finished and there

would be

nothing for what should a been a couple of strikes, and then you could hear bung bung, again, and then nothing. At that time of night all the sounds are late sounds, and the air has a late feel, and a late smell, too. All around you can hear the river, sighing and gurgling and groaning like a hundred drownding men, and laying there .

.

.

in that awful dark, I could hear the river terrible clear, and it seemed to me

like I was floating in a goddamn graveyard.

Being out there all alone at that time of night is the lonesomest a body can be. The stars seem miles and miles away, like the lights of houses in a valley when somebody stops on a hill to look back before going on down the road, leaving them all behind forever; and my soul sucked up whatever spark of brashness and gayness I had managed to strike up since that afternoon, and then all the miserable­ ness come some

back, worse than ever before. But dark as it was and lone­

it was, I didn't have

wish for

daylight to come. In fact, I didn't much care if the goddamn sun never come up again. as

no

THE END

19

Leon Felipe: poet of Spain's exodus and tears BERTRAM D. WOLFE

On the

eighteenth of September 1968, one of Spain's greatest poets, Leon Felipe, died in self-imposed exile in Mexico. Because he was the humblest and simplest of poets, a solitary who neither followed the fashion, nor served the directives of a party, he has not been written about in English nor translated.' At his death twenty Spanish­ speaking lands mourned, but the N ew York Times published neither a news note nor an obituary, nor, so far as I have been able to ascertain, did any other journal of our country record his passing.

Since the day in 1919 when he read his first sheaf of still unprinted poems in El Ateneo de Madrid to

intellectual and

a

startled audience of

Spain's

published a steady stream of separate poems, volumes of verse, poetic dramas, essays, and transla­ literary elite,

he has

tions of Walt Whitman, T. S. Eliot, and other poets of our tongue.

1.

In

bibliography of over 100 items concerning him in Leon Felipe, Obras Completas, Buenos Aires, 1963, one article with translations by me, and one by H. K. Jones, and one doctoral thesis, were the only entries in English. a

TriQuarterly

21

He leaves behind him twenty-two slender and not so slender volumes of verses. At eighty, old and exhausted, he bade

good-bye to his muse

in a book entitled

jOh, este viejo y rota violin! For a year or two the broken violin was still, but then he began to write again. When I

visited him in Mexico in 1965, I found him old and spent and over­ warmly dressed on a hot summer's day. Yet he spoke with animation and gave

me

he asked

me

little handful of recent poems in manuscript which to translate. One of these, Auschwitz, the only poem a

he ever devoted to the fate of the Jews,

won

him Israel's top poetry

honor, the Sourasky Prize, the equivalent of 50,000 Mexican pesos, along with twenty hectares of land in Israel planted with 1,000 pines.

The 50,000 pesos he gave to his faithful housekeeper, Trini (Trinidad Corona Zurita), the pine grove bearing' his name he claimed as his burial place. But the President of Mexico and the country's literary notables, as well as his loving sister, Salud, who had shared his exile in Mexico, willed otherwise, so he lies buried in the Spanish Cemetery in Mexico City, the city in which he spent most of his adult life and published most of his work. The book that he had thought would be his last (jOh, este viejo y rota violin!) was published by the Mexican Fonda de Cultura Economica, and a posthumous volume is now on the

press

of

the Universidad

Nacional

Autonoma.

Thus

Mexico

claims him as its adopted son, but President Diaz Ordaz, speaking at his

belonged first of all to Spain and then to all Spanish-speaking lands, pronouncing him "the greatest poet of the Spanish tongue of his epoch."

Though he left Castile in his young manhood, and returned only twice to the Iberian peninsula, once during the Spanish civil war to take his stand and read his poems to the soldiers defending the Re­ public, and a second time to do penance for some regretted act by sitting for six months among the shepherds on the hills of Portugal; and though he wandered for over forty years from land to land in Latin America publishing his books and reading his poems in most of its culture capitals, wherever he went he carried with him the mountains and plateaus and visions of Castile. He entered into poetic quarrels with its Archbishops and Bishops after they blessed Franco's sword, he grieved over its tragedies, carried on familiar dialogues with Don Quixote and Sancho, and with Juan Ruiz, Archpriest of funeral, recognized that

he

Hita (author of El Libra de Buen Amor, dead in the flesh since the fourteenth century). In whatever land he lived, he continued to write and recite the most castizo of Sp�9ish 22

verse

in

a

simple poetic vein

that had its

origins in Juan Ruiz and Cervantes and Jorge Manrique.

The spirit of Spain enveloped him completely. The songs he sang, the moods he expressed, his thoughts and feelings, his landscapes and horizons, his images and gestures, the public and passionate loudness of his voice even in the intimacy of a tertulia, his dramatization of each moment along with the dramatization of self and emotions (in his youth he was for a while a traveling comicoy, his tragic sense of life and his familiarity with God, the Devil, and Death, all proclaim him the voice of the Spanish land. Even when he denies his country, he does it as only a Spaniard could. Consider for instance this succes­ sion of negatives in the self-portrait with which he opened his first book.

WHAT

A

PITY!

What a pity that I cannot sing according to the usage of the times

as

the poets of today sing!

What a pity that I cannot sing with throaty voice those brilliant romances to the glories of the fatherland!

What a pity that I have no fatherland!

I know that history is the same, the same

always, passing

from one land to another land, from one race to another race as

pass those storms of summer from this region to that

region.

What a pity that I have no region, a

little fatherland,

a

provincial country!

I was fated to be born in the entrails

of the Castilian steppe to be born in a town of which I remember

I passed the blue days of my childhood in

nothing; Salamanca,

and my youth, a dark youth, in the Mountain

Since then

...

country.

I have never once dropped anchor,

and none of these lands raises nor exalts me to be able to

sing always in the same tone 23

to the same river

that passes

rolling the same waters, to the same sky, the same field, and in the same house.

What a pity that I have no house!

A house sunny and emblazoned, a house

in which to guard

along with other rare things an

old armchair of leather,

a

worm-eaten

table

(which would tell me old domestic stories

.

.

.)

and the portrait of a grandfather .of mine who won a battle.

What a pity that I have a

no

grandfather

who

won

battle,

painted with one hand crossed on

his chest, and the other on the hilt of his sword!

And, what a pity that I haven't For

.

.

.

even

a

sword!

what am I going to sing if I have no fatherland,

nor a

provincial land,

nor a

house

sunny and emblazoned, nor the portrait of a grandfather of mine who may have won a

battle,

nor an

old chair of leather,

nor a

table, nor a sword?

What am I going to sing if I am a pariah

hardly has a cloak! who is compelled to sing only of matters of little importance! who

...

self-portrait every stroke is a negation, but a negation of traits so profoundly Spanish that what emerges is a poet who is the natural voice of Spain. The "things of little importance" of which he sings are the inward events of his spirit. As we read him we feel that we know him as well as he knows himself, yet the physical happenings of his private life remain as unknown as his name to In this

the multitudes who have read name

or

heard him recite his

verses.

The

they know him by is but his given name, or two given names,

24

Leon

register of the pueblo of Tabara in the Castilian province of Zamora, where he was born on April 11, 1884, his name is set down as Leon Felipe Camino Galicia. His patronymic or family name is thus Camino (Road), a prophetic Philip.

But in the church

name, for all his life he

of a pilgrimage:

de caminante

wanderer. His poetry is the record the titles of his first two books, Versos y oraciones was

a

(Part I, Madrid, 1920; Part II, New York, 1930)

contain the road itself in 'he form of el caminante

(the wayfarer or

pilgrim). Perforce he had to drop his family name lest people see in their title an inept word-play upon his patronymic. Thus, from the outset he entered without family or name into the world of poetry.

Volume I of the Oraciones was published in Madrid in 1920. With the freshly printed volume under his arm he set out that same year for the New World, to continue a lifelong pilgrimage already begun in Spain itself. He had begun his journeying as an apothecary, setting up a shop first in one town, then in another, and ending this portion of his journey as apothecary on the penal island of Fernando Po. His next trade was that of comico: despite the term used, he played tragic rather than comic parts in theaters allover Spain and Portugal.

In the New World he was to continue his career as a wandering comico by reading his own tragic verse in the theaters of every capital of Latin America.

How he got to the

penal island of Fernando Po off the coast of a matter of conjecture. According to published accounts he went as a civil servant, but a member of his family told me that he had knocked down a man in a cafe for insulting his woman companion, the fall resulting in death from a skull fracture. Thus, the year spent as an apothecary on Fernando Po might well have been a gentle sentence for justifiable and unpremeditated homicide. In any case, he was reluctant to talk of his life on the island. One day he recited to me a poem beginning "Gobernador de la Isla, Gober­ nador General ," excoriating the Governor of Fernando Po. When I expressed enthusiasm and asked him to dictate the lines so that I could translate them, he would not repeat them. "It is nothing," he insisted, and would never recite the lines again nor commit them Africa is

...

to

paper. It was after he completed his year he left for the New World.

on

Fernando Po that

He admired the United States from a distance, but when he went to live there from 1925 to 1929, first in New York and then in

Ithaca, he did not feel at home.

In New York he

taught Spanish at 25

Berlitz school,

task, prepared for a professor's post under Maestro Federico de Onis at Columbia University, then went to Cornell to teach Spanish literature. In New York City he found

a

a

thankless

Spanish enclave of the intel­ lectuals who taught the literature of Spain in the various colleges and universities of the city. They talked their nights away in conversation so animated, passionate, and loud that one after another of New York's none too quiet restaurants bade them to take their talk and patronage-more talk than patronage-elsewhere. Their quest for a meeting place ended on Second Avenue in the Cafe Royale, fre­ quented by Jewish intellectuals who were no less noisy, so that there they could talk the night away unmolested. When Leon Felipe got to Ithaca, however, he found the silence deafening. One day, in the middle of a semester, he walked out of the university with the excla­ mation, "En este desgraciado pais, no hay conversacion." He aban­ doned his academic career and headed once more for the noisy talk­ life tolerable enough, for he lived in

a

filled cafes of Latin America.

Though his home now was Mexico City, his spirit continued to haunt his native Spain while he continued his restless pilgrimage from land to land-in quest of what? The places of publication of his many volumes mark the stages in an unending journey: Mexico City, Vera Cruz and Merida in Yucatan; Havana and Panama City; Quito, La Paz, Santiago, and Buenos Aires; New York, Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, and Palma de Mallorca.

What was this caminante looking for? For peace, which to the end eluded him? For answers to the questions, Who am I?, What is man and what is his destiny?-questions that ask themselves

endlessly in all his poems. To Who am I? he finds many answers, all fragmentary, all humble and self-deprecating, except when he lays claim to the mad and sacred office of poet and prophet. On this claim he harbors no doubts; he identifies himself unhesitatingly with all the mad poets and angry prophets of other lands and times, bidding presidents and bishops be silent when he speaks with the ancient voice that is his heritage. At other times he is prone to identify himself with the outraged and injured, with the lowliest and most disfigured of crea­ tures, as in his verses to be set under the painting by Velazquez of the grotesque and misshapen dwarf known as El Niiio de Vallecas ("While this battered visage exists no one departs from here!")

More often he identifies himself with Don Quixote and

Sancho,

readily with one as with the other, for to him both are one. He talks familiarly with them; pleads "put me in your band, knight of as

26

honor!", interposes himself in their debate

on

whether the

shining

object on their road is a barber's basin or the helmet of Mambrino.

From the compromise of the basin and helmet fused in one, as basi­ yelmo (basin-helmet), he moves to an ascending hierachy, "Basin, helmet, halo, that is the order Sancho," voicing the hope that all may follow the ascension from basin to helmet to halo. With that we at

the heart of his creed,

a

are

creed not unworthy of the vision of the

mad knight of La Mancha.

Again he offers himself as a candidate for other bands, the Naza­ rene's as well as the Manchegan's: I too

hungry

am

and thirsty for justice,

Nazarene, take me into your band.

In order to follow you, I have no need to abandon

goods or kin for I am poor and alone and without

a

great love

to

redeem

me.

.

.

.

The poet does not draw much distinction between the knight of La Mancha and the carpenter of Nazareth-are not both mad and both in search of justice in a world where men have forgotten it?

When news of Franco's uprising surprised Leon Felipe in Panama, and the Archbishop of Panama endorsed the rebellion, the poet began

angry debate with the Catholic hierarchy that was to characterize his creed thenceforward. Witness for instance the poem:

an

I KNOW WHERE HE IS

God who knows is

a

and

everything

simpleton he is

kidnapped by some bandit archbishops now

who make him say over the radio "Hallo! Hallo! Here I am with them."

But that doesn't mean he is on their side but that he is there

a

prisoner.

All he tells is where he that

IS

may know and may save him.

so

we

27

There is another aspect of the poet's God, infinitely remote, not to be talked to intimately or called a simpleton. In this aspect God is a Creator who started then abandoned man to his

things going, lines own resources. It is in this spirit that Leon Felipe glosses the of the mystic poet, Fray Luis de Leon: HE CAME HERE THEN WENT AWAY

And Thou lea vest,

saintly pastor,

in this dark vale

Thy flock -Fray Luis de Leon He came here

.

.

.

then went away.

Came, set our task and went away.

Maybe behind that cloud there is one who works even as we

and maybe the stars

only the lighted windows of a factory are

where God has to distribute a

task just as here.

He

came

here

then went away.

Came, filled

our

strong-box

with millions of centuries and centuries left

some

tools

and went away

.

Behind you there is no one. No one, neither teacher,

nor

overseer,

nor

boss.

But time is yours. Time and this chisel

with which God began creation.

theological complexities in this faith: a God who is now a captive simpleton, now a remote creator; a Christ scarcely distinguishable from Don Quixote; a hierarchy that can be challenged to strip itself of its vestments and submit itself to judgment naked There

28

are

no

in the

public plaza; an egalitarianism that concerns itself with the elevation to full human dignity of the lowly and the misbegotten, urging on all human beings the path to salvation of basin, yelmo, halo.

The second volume of his Verses and Prayers

of a Pilgrim begins

with the simple avowal: I ride with rein

tight restraining my flight for the point is not to be first and alone but to get there with all and on time.

The

book contains the

apostrophe to the Nino de Vallecas already referred to, and a conception of the social order expressed same

in: /

REVOLUCION:

/

CANCION MEXICANA

Always there will be superior snow robing in ermine the highest hill and humble water toiling below to turn

the wheel of the mill.

And

always a sun -both slayer and friend­ changing to tears the snow forever and to clouds the water of the river.

When I visited Leon

Felipe for the last time, in 1965, one of the poems he gave me in manuscript to translate showed that the feud he began with the Archbishop of Panama in 1936 had not been altogether patched up even three decades later: WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO THE

The doves

on

DOVES?

the Piazza de San Marco

Which the

municipality of Venice was breeding for the tourists have all died suddenlyThe dove of Picasso that I kept as

a

relic in the

of

an

old notebook

Council,

no

one

covers

has disappearedIn the Ecumenical

knows

what has happened to the Dove of the Anunciation->29

And the Vatican is in consternation because the Dove of the Holy Spirit is ill.

They say that all over the world now there is a deadly epidemic among the dovesAnd the Council of Peace-cannot find anywhere at all a

single dove.

and his prose are scarcely distinguishable from each other. Here are some lines from the introduction in prose Leon

Felipe's poetry

to The Clown Who Gets Slapped and the Man with the Fishing Rod,

written in 1938 at the end of the war:

today and for me, poetry is nothing more than a luminous system of signs. Fires that we light here below, among the shadows we have found, so that someone may see us, so that they do not forget us. Here we are, Lord!

For

And everything there is in the world is mine and worth entering

into a poem, to feed a bonfire

.

.

.

That is my esthetics, old now and enduring still. Old because it was written before the present tragedy of Spain-how many centuries in the consciousness of

a

true and

grieving Spaniard!

-and

enduring because among the shadows of this tragedy it continues to seem to me the only one: the esthetics of a ship

lost

in

the

mist.

Today more than ever poetry is for me organized fire, signal, call, and flame of shipwreck. And every good combustible is excellent poetic material. Everything, even prose. The prose here, now, in this poem, is neither extrapolated nor only exegesis. It is a poetic element which gains quality not with rhythm but with temperature. The line of the flame is today the organizing and architectonic line of the poem.

The image is worth as much as the law, yes, but the image on fire. And the poetry of this hour, to get a place in the vanguard of knowledge, does not have to be music or measure, .

but fire

.

.

....

Here is a comparable passage from his introduction to The Spaniard

oi the Exodus and Tears, read aloud in the Palacio de Bellas Artes of Mexico City to an audience of Spanish exiles and Mexican literary men on

30

September 12, 1939:

DUST AND TEARS

falling apart and where all effort to build is vain. In other times, in epochs of ascension or full­ ness, the dust tends to agglomerate and to cooperate, obedient We live in

a

world which is

in structure and form. Now form and structure crumble and the

dust reclaims its

liberty and autonomy. Nobody can organize anything. Neither the philosopher nor the poet. When the hurri­ cane blows and throws down the great fortress of the King, man seeks protection in the ruins. These are not days for calculating how to set the

main rooftree

free,

but to

see

how

we

can

escape from

being crushed by the old dome that is crashing about us. No one today has in his hands anything but dust.

Dust and tears. Our great treasure. And treasure they would be if man could command them. We are poor because nothing obeys us. Our wealth was never measured in what we have, but in our way of organizing what we have. Ah, if I could organize my tears and the scattered dust of my dreams! The poets of all times have worked with no other ingredients. And perhaps the grace of the poet is no other than that of making docile the dust and fecund the tears.

Finally in the matter of style, we must give the poet a chance to explain the exaltation and passion in his voice, its way of resounding in a restaurant toward

our

that the music ceases and all eyes turn astonished table, no matter how intimate and friendly the talk. so

In his Ganards la Luz=-Biograiia, Poesia, y Destino

(Mexico, 1953), the poet takes account of this hubbub in a remarkable apologia pro

voce sua:

,PERO POR QUE HABLA TAN ALTO EL ESPANOL? This exalted tone of the Spaniard is a defect, very ancient now, of our race. Ancient and incurable

....

We talk in

a

wounded

shout dissonant forever, for ever because three times, three times, three times

we

we tore our

throats to pieces.

had to

The first time when

shout

we

beyond measure.

the word

so

scream

ourselves hoarse in

history until

discovered this Continent and had

to

Land! Land! Land! We had to shout

that it could resound above the

roar

of the

31

sea

and reach the

ears

of

men

shore. We had discovered

who had

a new

remained

on

the other

world, a world of new dimen­

during the great shipwreck of Europe, man's hope would have to cling to. There were good reasons for talking loud, good reasons for shouting! sions that, five centuries later

world, grotesquely arrayed with broken lance and paper visor, that extravagant phantasm of La Mancha, launching outrageously

The second time

into

when there went

was

into

out

the

forgotten by men: Justice! Justice!

Then too there was good reason for shouting!

the wind the word

Justice!

...

The third cry is recent. I formed part of the chorus. Even

now

my voice is still strained from hoarseness. It was the shout we gave from the hilltop of Madrid in 1936 to warn the sheepfold,

Hey! Look out!

The wolf is coming! The wolf is coming! The wolf is coming! the goatherds, to wake up the world:

to rouse

They closed all the shutters. They made themselves deaf, they plugged their ears with -eement, and to this day they do no more than ask like pedants: but why does No

one

heard. No one

....

the Spaniard talk so loud?

Yet the

Spaniard doesn't talk loud.

.

.

.

The

Spaniard talks on

the exact level proper to man, and those who think that he talks too loud think so because they listen from the bottom of a well Above

....

all, Leon Felipe is

the poet of

Spain's tragedy.

If it is

frustrating to try to introduce to my countrymen a poet unknown to them by selecting a handful of examples of his work from twenty­ odd volumes of poems, it is no less difficult to know what to select from the grief that possessed him, filling four successive volumes

coloring all the poetry of the last thirty years of his life. What shall we select to introduce this grief of the poet to those who have and

never

heard his name? Shall

one

take

a

few lines out of the five­

already foresees the ("Syndicalists, Com­ Republic munists, Anarchists, Socialists, Trotskyists, Republican Leftists") who are tearing it apart with their quarrels, who have "used up in a thousand egoistic combinations all the letters of the alphabet for their partisan initials, and affixed in a thousand different ways on cap and jacket the red and the black, the sickle, the hammer and the

hundred-line poem of

angry prophet who is defeated because of the factions

32

an

star," each band seizing its private booty without so much as a decree of expropriation, and

already planning to flee the shipwrecked land

"stealing the seat of a child in an auto bus of evacuation"? This prophetic vision is dated Valencia, June 29, 1937, though the Republic dragged out its existence for almost two years more, until March 28, 1939.

Or shall

long lament for the dead land in the forty-eight-page threnody published in Mexico in 1938 called The Clown Who Gets Slapped and the Man with the Fishing Rod, subtitled Poema Trdgico Espaiiol, where the lament for Spain alternates with bitter scorn for England that, under the shelter of the one

take

a

few lines from the

one-sided "non-intervention" of the "Non-Intervention

Committee,"

fishing during the crisis while the Italian and German members

went

of the Committee intervened with ments

munitions, troops, and bombard­

from the air?

Having apprised the reader of the difficulties of selection, I shall take a few lines from the third and greatest of the four book-length poems of the grieving poet on the civil war. It is entitled The Axe, subtitled Spanish Elegy, and dated Mexico, 1939.2 The poet dedicates it without prejudice: To the Knights of the Axe To the Crusaders of Rancor To all the

and Dust

...

Spaniards of the world.

Thus the poem embraces Francisco Franco and his cohorts no less than the warring factions on the Republican side. The all-embracing lament for all Spaniards is one of the sources of its greatness.

Space

forbids my quoting more than a tiny fragment of this long and simple

monody of pain with its intolerable iteration of anguish expressed in the simplest words of common speech. Yet a fragment may serve to give the reader some notion of what these thirty-eight pages of sustained and cumulative pain must be like. These lines are from the invocation: Ah the

this

sorrow

sorrow

of

no

longer having tears

this sorrow 2. The fourth book is entitled

Spaniard of the Exodus and Tears, also pub­

lished in Mexico in 1939. The four books

are

23 pages, 48 pages,

38 pages,

and 176 pages long in their original editions.

33

of having no more tears to water the dust!

Ah the

sorrow

which is

now

of

Spain

no more

than wrinkle and dryness

screwed up face

dry grief of earth under a sky with no rains gasp of a well sweep over an empty well.

Oh this screwed up Spanish face this face dramatic and grotesque

dry dusty weeping for the

dust,

for the dust of all things ended in Spain

for the dust of all the dead and all the ruins of for the dust of a now

lost in

Spain

race

History forever!

Dry weeping of dust and for dust. For dust of a house without walls of

a

tribe without blood

of ducts without tears of furrows without water

Dry weeping of dust for dust that will neither to make nor

to raise a

no a

longer agglomerate

mud-brick

hope.

Oh

yellow accursed dust given us by the rancor and pride of centuries and centuries

and centuries

.

For this dust is not of today nor came we

are

to us

from abroad

all desert and African

Nobody here has any tears and for what

34

are

we

to live

if we have no tears?

For what have we any longer to weep

if

our

weeping does

not

bind?

In this land tears do not bind

neither

tears nor blood

Sandy earth without water wrung flesh without tears rebellious dust of rancorous rock

and hostile lavas

yellow atoms and sterile of unfruitfulness

vengeful motes sand quarry of envy wait dry and forgotten till the

sea

overflows

.

Why have you all said that in Spain there are two bands if there is only dust?

In Spain there are

no

bands

in this land there

are

no

bands

in this accursed land there there is

are

no

bands

yellow axe which rancor has edged sharp an axe which falls always always always implacable and tireless

only

a

any humble union: on two prayers that fuse on

tools that interlace

on

two

on

two hands that grasp each other.

The order is to

chop

chop to chop to chop till dust is reached to

down to the atom.

Here there are no bands 35

there are no bands neither reds nor

whites

patricians nor plebeians

nor

.

Here there are only atoms atoms

that bite one another

.

From here no one escapes for tell me, friend ropemaker,

is there anyone who can braid a ladder of sand and dust?

Spain your envy

was

mightier

than your honor and better you have than the sword Under its

.

.

guarded the axe

.

edge

has been made dust the Ark the

race

and the sacred rock of the dead; the chorus the

dialogue hymn;

and the

the poem the sword and the

craft;

the tear the

drop of blood and the drop of joy

.

And all will be made dust all

all all

..

Dust with which nobody

nobody will

ever

make

either

a

or an

illusion.

36

brick

Leon Felipe wrote The Axe when he had first returned to Mexico

Spain's last agony. It seemed to him that Spain was lost forever, that the Spaniard in exile, unlike the Jew in the Diaspora, had no faith in his own election to sustain him, no mission and no possession left to him, unless he could squeeze from dry, pain-seared eyes a tear in which there might be hope not of Spain's but of man's redemption. In a public address on the occasion of the poem's publication, there is a moving suggestion of this as Spain's continued mission in exile. And in the midst of the overwhelming sorrow there is, if not a note of hope, yet of defiance of the forces of destruction which have triumphed in Spain. Embedded in the discourse are several more personal fragments of verse, one dealing with his own poetry, one addressed to all Spaniards, one addressed at

the

to

Franco:

of

moment

Yours is the treasury the house

the horse the

pistol.

Mine is the ancient voice of the land.

You remain with

everything and I naked wandering through the world

.

.

.

but I leave you mute MUTE! And how are you going to gather the wheat ...

and feed the fire if I carry off the

song?

To close this

inadequate presentation of a poet unknown in our country, I must remind myself that this is not so much an introduc­ tion as an obituary notice. Hence, I shall close with a few examples of his work culled at random from the poet's lifelong dialogue with Death. When one touches the body of his work, one feels that one has touched not a shelf of books but a man.

Unique. Completely in his that is at one and the same time this single incorporated poetry man's unique life and the expression of the destiny of all Spaniards, and-so the poet thinks-of all

uniqueness,

as

men.

Sometimes he insists

on

when he writes:

Wayfarer,

no

one

went

yesterday,

will go tomorrow towards God by this same way on which I go

nor

goes

today,

nor

.

.

.

37

his

For each man a new ray of light is kept

by the sun

.

.

.

But when he gazes on the distorted face of EI Nino de Vallecas, he

describes

a

trajectory that all men must follow:

From here no one escapes!

As

long as this distorted head

of the Nino de Vallecas exists

departs from here. Noone.

Neither the mystic nor the suicide. no one

First this wrong must be set right, first this enigma must be resolved.

And resolved

by all of us together

And useless, useless is flight

(neither up nor down is there any escape) Until one day (one fine day!) .

.

.

the helmet of Mambrino turned halo

adjusts itself to the temples of Sancho and to your temples and mine as

if made

to

order.

together All of Us off the stage into the wings:

Then we'll exit

You and I and Sancho and the Nino de Vallecas

and the mystic and the suicide.

As befits

a

.

.

.

poet of the Spanish people, Leon Felipe is on intimate

terms

with Death.

Death

moves

to

Spanish civil war, his dialogue with foreground of his poetry. As he reaches his

After the

the

biblically allotted three score and ten, he devotes an entire book to Death, under the title Ganards la Luz=-Blograiia, Poesia, y Destino.

Thenceforth this theme remains central to his writing. Here are a few fragments of a poet permitted to write his own obituary.

I.

EH

DEATH, LISTEN HERE!

And now I ask: Who speaks last the grave digger

or

the Poet?

Have I learned to say: 38

Beauty, Light, Love, God

only to have them stuff my mouth when I die with

shovelful of earth?

a

No. I have come and am here, I shall go and return a thousand times in the Wind to create my

Eh Death I

am

the

glory with my tears.

...

listen here!

one to

speak last:

for your scythe is no scepter

only a simple, necessary working tool.

II.

...

HOWLS

The days pass, and the years, life runs and

one

why he lives

does not know

.

The days pass and the years, death comes and one does not know why he dies.

And one day a man sets to weeping just so, without

knowing why he is weeping, for whom he is weeping or what the meaning of a tear is.

Then, on another day one goes away forever, without anyone's knowing it either and without knowing who he is nor why he came here thinks that perhaps he came only to weep and howl like a dog howl for yesterday's dog who has gone, for tomorrow's dog who will come and will likewise depart without knowing whither and for all the poor dead dogs of the world.

For is not man a poor dog lost and alone .

.

without

.

.

.

.

and without

a master

a

known habitation?

And cannot Man weep and howl in the Wind

just so as

the

.

.

sea

.

because he wants to

howls

Senor Arzipreste

.

.

.

.

.

.

For

why does the sea howl?

why does the sea howl?

39

The eagle exterminating company There

are

There is

a

birds

larger than us,

I know that.

bird in the bedroom much

larger than the bed.

There is a photograph of a dead bird somewhere, I can't remember.

There is

a

wingspan that would put us all in the shadows.

There is the birdcall I must

anticipate each night.

There are feathers everywhere.

Everywhere you walk there are feathers, you can try to hop over and between them but then you look like

a

bird. You

are

too small to be one.

You look like a tiny one-winged bird.

If you are your mother will come and kill you.

If you

are

not

you will

probably beat yourself to death.

But what matters is that every room in the house is filled, is filled with the cry of the eagle.

Exterminating the eagles is now all but impossible for the house would fall down without them.

There is a photograph of a dead bird somewhere.

Everywhere you walk there are feathers.

You look like a tiny one-winged bird.

There is the birdcall. There is the wingspan.

JAMES TATE

Notes on the present configuration of the

Red-Blue conflict ROBERT CHATAIN

.

.

.

the city, once carefully divided into zones designated for specific

modes of operation, has

now

become

an

environment of undifferen­

tiated hostility. This may be in part attributed to the rediscovery and

exploitation of abandoned tunnel systems. Territorial boundaries have lost their former importance, and elaborate perimeter defenses have become wholly obsolete. Mobile squads, lightly armed and equipped only for short journeys, can strike effectively at any area throughout the city by utilizing the labyrinthine systems of tubes and ducts.

Previous distinctions between day and night combat techniques are now no longer respected. In one series of synchronized raids which Blue forces mounted against Red medical facilities during late Feb­ ruary (limiting our specific analyses to the current year now under study), locations attacked reported 40 % destruction of buildings and TriQuarterly

41

equipment, and 80% disruption of activities for a period in excess of twenty days; Blue controllers, however, listed only three casualties among their units, all of them men who lost their way in the ventila­ tion shafts and could not crawl clear before the detonation of the

explosives.

.

.

.

would not, perhaps, have made any difference to the progress of the conflict but for the personal magnetism of one of his subordinate .

.

.

commanders, Lieutenant Maurice Eugene Rademacher, of whom we will have occasion to speak at greater length below

....

only three of them. I watched while they helped each other unsling their radios and packs and sit down on the sidewalk with their backs together, facing outward, their legs in a three-pointed star. Al­ though they maintained a watchful posture, they seemed unconcerned over their exposure to the possibility of sudden attack. Leaning to­ gether as they were, they could not have risen separately. I was about to sneak off to get help when they began an activity, and I grew ".

.

.

curious. All of them

were

dressed in the coveralls of Blue semi­

skilled semi-combatants; from the pockets of their uniforms they had

wrapped in waxed paper, dill pickles or perhaps sweet pickles likewise individually wrapped, hard-boiled eggs and raw carrots. One of the three pried open the top of his battery case and took out a plastic bowl covered with a plastic lid; when they opened the lid I saw that the bowl contained potato salad. Each of the men covered his lap with a white handkerchief. The handkerchiefs were stained brown in several places, as if they had been burned in ironing. The men fell to eating, chewing silently. Again I was about to slip away, but one of them turned to the man on his left and said something, apparently something funny, because all of them laughed taken sandwiches

"

....

.

.

.

entrepreneurs. For example, during the summer months, June,

July, and August, movement of supplies through authorized channels fell off to the degree expected with the onset of warmer weather; yet in this same period, nonessential items such as personal electronic equipment, photographic supplies, liquor, cigarettes, etc., were dis­ covered at a rate more than four times greater than that predicted by Civil Defense officials. Apartments where such commodities were dis­ covered lay scattered in all areas of the city, and the reticence of the guilty to discuss the source of their contraband indicates both con42

fidence in and reliance upon the clandestine network by elements of the

population. .

·

.

.

.

.

following the case of Lance Corporal Whittaker, we note that

the transition from semi-skilled noncombatant to semi-skilled

com­

of the

new

batant

was

made without

not

difficulty.

The

nature

authority structure to which he found himself subordinated did not readily enlist his sympathy, and, on more than one occasion, he was disciplined for negligence and insubordination. In March, a few weeks before his capture by a Red scouting party, he was reclassified from semi-skilled to unskilled combatant. In the unskilled ranks he seemed to find what he had been searching for; letters from this

his satisfaction.

"Dear

finally in it at last ·

.

.

Eleanor," he

writes

on

period reveal

March

16th, "I'm

" ....

elements of the third, fourth, and seventeenth artilleries

were

positioned around the monument, their sights trained (figuratively speaking) on the objective; the remainder of the three units was dis­ patched to key intersections along the avenue and on the outskirts of the park. At dawn on the second day of the siege, under the cover of a chilling rain, ground troops made the initial assault upon the stadium. The accuracy of fire from the artillery positions was re­ markable, taking into account the high trajectories made necessary by the intervening buildings. .

.

.

made

largely of canvas, and painted flat black, all metal fit­ tings and braces similarly blackened. Powered by nearly noiseless propellers, the crafts were invisible in the night sky unless directly ·

..

overhead ·

on

..

the

....

everywhere the same general listlessness and apathy. CD men scene

nude before

were

confounded. Women wandered the streets semi­

who took

notice of them; children

lounged in gutters allowing filthy water to trickle over their limbs; dogs and cats lay down suddenly at random in the paths of military vehicles, and were crushed without a sound. Of course, the lethargy of the animals made it apparent to investigators that the disorder was not of natural origin, and word was quickly dispatched to Blue section headquarters that the area was under chemical or biological attack by incapacitating but apparently non-toxic agents men

no

....

and refuted

vigorously the charge of depersonalization made 43

by Dr. Forbes. Commander McDonald introduced lengthy citations for heroism earned by men of his regiment in the first half of the year.

Testimony was produced to the effect that morale and esprit de corps were higher than ever before. Several Red chaplains were called upon to submit tape recordings of interviews with men who complained of depression or despair, but, counteracting the effect of those melancholy exhibits, psychiatrists from Red hospitals were able to cite "returned to duty" statistics which corroborated Commander McDonald's posi­ tion. A Blue surgeon, invited to participate in the hearings because of his reputation as a brilliant amateur Psychological Statistician, ob­ jected to everything which had been said concerning the morale of men in McDonald's unit. The surgeon claimed it to be highly probable that the men, although enthusiastic over the personal qualifications of their commanding officer and the history of their organization, had lost the goal-orientation which the hearings were convened to discuss.

"Thus," he concluded, "the relative enthusiasm of such an individual combat group has no real bearing on the matter. Better to deal with men

begin

unattached to any of the more glamorous units. If I were to to study this problem, I would deal first with the semi-skilled

and skilled semi-combatants who

shuffled from

are

one

support de­

tachment to another. It is among these men that the sense of purpose and achievement disappears first. ·

.

cost.

"catch fire" .

.

.

."

repairs made at twice the usual rate yet only one-half the

.

previous

·

.

Skilled noncombatants for the first time seemed to

over

the issue of victory or defeat.

frame house. In the kitchen,

.

.

.

Captain Hawes' wife was pre­

paring dinner. His two children lay on their stomachs on the floor of their bedroom, playing with a set of wooden blocks. A black dog dozed on the porch. It was approximately 4: 15. .

·

..

.

.

casualties, however, do not tell the whole story. Psychologically,

the Autumn Offensive

nothing less than a triumph. Following the destruction of communications in adjacent precincts, noncombatants and semi-combatants swarmed into the street, assuming their assigned defense positions without specific instructions. Blue elements mingled with the crowd, distributing propaganda literature, talking to the Red men and women who perhaps had never seen a Blue before. No shots were fired. The reaction of Red headquarters came swiftly, as had been anticipated by Blue strategists. Massive artillery barrages was

....

44

The struggle to wake from sleep morning I wake permanently

every

and then I blow myself up like a balloon

zipper untracked I sense the closets bulging with clothes and piles of shoes to be sorted two by two I

sense a

the

day of my life fills itself out

like

a

balloon

sucking the breath from me in moist red mouthfuls I

and recross the

day's space I have the hobbling humility of an old man inching across a cafeteria floor cross

next

door

our

absent

boys trespassing neighbor's land on the gusty river their fishing poles are

make shadows the black lines are slack, and taut and violent with waves and the impatient muscles of

boys' young arms

all day I sort out clothes and containers of food the

day blows itself up slowly

my human head is stunned that such mountains should go into it in long division the

boys' eyes construct columns

I am afraid of:

all day

wandering, strolling through my rooms I feel the soft brushing of hooks against my mouth JOYCE CAROL OATES

Translations from Catullus XLI

That rutted pearl Ameana tried to take me for ten grand; that piggish, pug-snouted girl who goes down free for Mamurra.

Relatives, you're in charge here: call the doctors and your friends: she's no well woman, doesn't ask her bronze what makes her tick.

XLm

Hello, Madame Big-nose, with a swell-foot, tawny eye,

stubby fingers, slobbering lips not-so-elegant tongue going down free for Mamurra.

The province calls you beautiful?

and

-

and compares you to Lesbia?

0, the rabble! what an age!

ANDREW WYLIE

TWO POEMS BY FRANCISCO DE QUEVEDO

Translated from the Spanish by W. S. Merwin

Love constant beyond death Last of the shadows may close my eyes

good-bye then white day and with that my soul untie its dear wishing

yet will not forsake memory of this shore where it burned but still burning swim that cold water again

careless of the stern law soul that

kept God in prison

veins that to love led such fire marrow

not

that flamed in

glory

their heeding will leave

with their

body

but being ash will feel

dust be dust in love

(1580-1645)

Portrait of Lisi which he bore in a circlet Here I bear in close prison with all its clan of gold burning the rim of dazzling light and in confine the great imperium of love I bear the field where the

starry

the high wild beings with shining hides

pasture hidden from heaven and the East from the

day of light birth increase

I bear the Indies in my hand

pearls that in one diamond through rubies utter scorn in sounds of ice

discoursing it may be of a despot fire lightnings of crimson laughter dawns the regalia and vanity of the sky

Mop-up patrol The way the sun flaks Stone The sudden dust It is hard to tell

Blanched calf shins From the

slough of lepers

These blasted eyes We have

seen

Diet

Char

Of small thousands Their bones Shine

on

the black hills

We have heard The echo of families

Burning In the sky's mouth There is

only one weather

It is all in my mind

Circling Each day above us Motherwit buzzards Who Have their hearts in the

Look out for themselves

Simple We

Second their motion DABNEY STUART

right place

Voice of the town CURTIS HARNACK

Theodore Rueff took

on

his life

as

if it held no mystery he couldn't

solve. He tithed his income and served

as

elder in the Protestant

church, sang the gaunt, sad hymns from his usual spot on the aisle in the fifth pew-even God seemed taken care of. But behind this amiable show of certitude we saw the looming figure of his youngest

Danny, who by age fifteen was seven feet two inches tall.

As he began to sprout, Clara Rueff joshed with her friends about what a big boy she produced. They squinted behind their smiles and son,

let her think what she wanted. Theodore

was

put to the trouble of

buying special shoes and clothes in the city, but all he talked about was what a swell basketball player Danny would become. Years later Danny's surprising marriage to LaVonne seemed to fulfill his father's hopes of a normal life for his son-hopes which we of the town knew Danny could never possibly realize. All the time Danny and LaVonne lived and worked together. We saw their alliance with our own eyes but groped for an important truth lurking somewhere in their privacy.

Who would tell of it? Theodore never cracked. He was Kaleburg's leading banker, keeper of the public confidence, and no one ever TriQuarterly

51

knew what torments of doubt or unease afflicted him. Finally he was to go to the grave clean

heart attack, before any audible whimpers could begin or any revelations. Because of men like Ted Rueff the general faith is held-or deeply doubted. One and fast with

a

wonders why anybody likes to see himself in such a dubious role, and

why we always expect someone to play it.

The Rueffs'

was

the third house in from the

highway as you en­

tered town, green clapboard with steeply pitched eaves and one hun­

running feet of porch, all of it screened. There, on card-party evenings, Ted Rueff was the smiling host clearly visible through the windows to passersby in automobiles, as if he were on display. At the party everyone talked a great deal-but mostly about the tricks just taken and who should have trumped but hadn't. The four Rueff chil­ dren, according to custom, were kept out of the way. But Danny the giant, dazzled by the company, would climb like lack-and-the-bean­ stalk up into those rooms of people from the basement playroom.

"What were you doing in the cellar, big fellow?" a guest might call.

"Lifting the house?"

"Hey, how's the weather up there?" (This from one of Clara's twinkly friends.)

He never answered. Even his face was peculiarly unresponsive; his round jowls simply hung there like a peeled eggplant. "Danny, you get your sleep," Clara said, in her soft-sigh way. "Go on now­ you're the youngest," an excuse she used to hide the fact that some­ times he got so tired he fell asleep standing up or sitting in a chair and had to be caught before he hit the floor and broke his flesh open. dred

He couldn't bear the cold in winter like the

others; he fainted from

the heat if he went out in August without his blue baseball cap. Germs found a haven in his huge interior, and nothing could stop their pro­

liferation-as if inside not all the caverns had yet been accounted for.

Clara was like the hen that sat on a duck egg along with her own and she refused to see a difference among her offspring. She was very

bosomy, such an enormous pillow that it seemed ample not only for the Rueff family to cushion its fears upon but also for anyone who might need this reassurance. In winter she draped herself in a fox­ collared coat, soft as a dog's shank. Her creamy pearls-a double strand, for years the only real pearls in town-stood for the things which were not of flesh, and she believed in them.

While he was young, Danny moved along from grade to grade, 52

high school the principal had a closed-door talk with Ted Rueff. Soon Danny showed up as clerk in his father's bank.

"Hey there, big boy," customers called, "got your hands on the money yet?"

Cheerful as always and now even somewhat handsome in a blown­ up way, he'd grin and wave his baseball-mitt hand. But he never said much. "He understands real good," said the teller. "He's taking it all in," said the cashier. "He'll be a banker yet," said Ted Rueff, think­ ing he was among friends, but it soon got around town.

Danny performed simple clerical errands such as going into the vault with a customer's safe-deposit key. He swept the floor and kept the cooler filled with water. Try as he might, he couldn't learn to work with figures. He found it hard to concentrate, sitting at a desk, his spine curved like a wishbone. Ted had new furniture built but Danny still couldn't remember the multiplication table. "What do they teach in that school!" Theodore shouted one day, and a farmer at the grilled window overheard and passed it along. "What do they teach? What do they teach?" was savored in taverns and stores all week. To think Ted Rueff hadn't been taught the difference between a soft-head and a normal person!

Danny was dismissed on orders from "someone higher up" and for a time not even the family seemed to pay much attention to him.

The two older boys were busy suiting-up for basketball after school; they dribbled down the glistening floor with the cocky good feeling of being loose in the joints. Girl friends tumbled to them quickly. They had no time to look after Danny, and even his sister ran out on the old tender responsibility. She became a cheerleader.

"Luckily, Danny's found something he likes to do," Clara an­ nounced, smiling, imperturbable. "He just loves cars!" Although Danny couldn't pass the written driver's test, he knew how to operate them. He'd take the wheel whenever it was offered and barrel through the curves of the nearest winding road. Each hairpin turn and two­ wheeled squealing corner seemed to thrill him into a skin-close con­ sciousness otherwise unattainable. A couple of no-goods around town got a kick out of letting Danny loose on the highway. As he laughed but at the start of

aloud at the

nearness

of

death, for a few vital seconds he did not

feel buried alive in his

body. The result was, however, he rolled a and was in the hospital half a year.

"He's not the same," Clara said, when Danny got out. "He's been

car over

53

affected," she told her card-playing cronies, shaking her head, and they let her talk. At last she'd been given a respectable excuse.

"He's got to learn a simple trade," said Ted, urging a farmer who was heavily in debt to the bank to take Danny on as a harvest worker.

But it didn't work out. "The lummox," said the farmer, "he's always on

the ground under the bundle-wagons, sucking on a lemonade jug."

In no time Danny was drifting around the pool halls again and one

saw

him drunk in the middle of the afternoon. Sometimes Theodore

Rueff in his neatly pressed blue suit, gold-flecked tie, shiny shoes, and

snap-brim hat walked right down the sidewalk past his sprawled, half­ conscious son who was loafing on the bench in front of the family bank. They wouldn't look at each other or speak.

When the Korean war broke out, the two Rueff brothers, who were

graduating from college, arrived home in their uniforms and made their last romantic impact upon the town: the one in Air Force blue with silver buttons, the other in ROTC Army officer's twill. One on each side of Clara, with Ted Rueff following behind, they walked down the church aisle under the eyes of God and the town. In the excitement they forgot to include Danny, who awoke from a late

sleep to find the house empty, the church bells ringing for the world but not for him. He wept, and he was still weeping when the Rueffs gaily tromped back into the house. "Danny-Danny! Don't be such a big baby!" called Clara, one arm still around Army, the other looped to Air Force.

"Hey there-" both brothers cried out and leaped to Danny's side to pick up the easy old romp of their childhood.

"Don't punch him," called Clara, "you know how easy he bruises."

"Leave me alone! Just leave me alone!" Face still shiny with tears, he loomed up and entered the stairwell, mounting the steps carefully to his room, a giant on business. The family was stunned, almost offended by the discovery that Danny felt he had a right to his own emotions-which might not be theirs. He would not come down to dinner, nor could he be persuaded to tag along as the Rueffs bade farewell to their patriotic sons, later that afternoon. "If they don't come back," Clara said finally, taking leave of him, the horn honking, "just think how bad you'll feel then!"

He looked at her angrily, stirring his huge limbs, and for the first time she felt afraid of him-and fled the house. She didn't tell her 54

husband what had made Danny so furious, only that "he looked about to hit me!"

"If it gets any worse," said

Army, "you know what you'll have

to do."

"But we always said, your Dad and I"

(Ted sitting right beside her

"why have him put away when he's so harmless?"

"Some of the women in town are starting to worry," said Air Force, who'd spent most of his leave getting reacquainted with high school loves. Both boys had already confided to their father that Danny was actually no threat on that score, since he was impotent. They were certain of it. Some years back, in an attempt to explain sex to him, they'd sat on a pasture gate and watched a pony stud in action. Much to their surprise, Danny wasn't the least interested. Now the rumors of his threat to the local girls were just the dirty country gossip one might expect, given his outsize proportions in that department, too.

Every time he was caught taking a leak there were guffaws and com­ ments. But neither Rueff boy could bear to inform their father of the indecent nature of this talk-yet they felt some little warning should

in the back seat),

be voiced.

The following week Danny insisted he be allowed to enlist in the

Navy. Theodore Rueff went through it all: helped Danny pack his bag, watched him bid farewell to his Mom, and drove him to the Navy recruiting office above the city Post Office. He and Danny walked up the steps as if they truly expected to get somewhere. "My son here wants-" Ted began, apologetically, while the Petty Chief on duty, red-faced from sea winds, widened his eyes, pushed back his chair. "My son-" "I come to enlist in the Navy," said Danny, his deep half-muffled voice seeping out of the tower of himself. "I'm of age." A blush suffused his neck and lower cheeks,

as

if the blood of his life

were

coming forth, once he proclaimed himself a man.

The five-foot-three Petty Chief grinned and leaped to his feet. With a side wink to Rueff he reached up and thumped Danny on the back.

"More fellas like you and we'd win this war in no time!"

"Where do I go?" Danny twirled his little satchel nervously, while Rueff blinked, looked embarrassed, and turned to gaze out the window.

"Trouble

is-you're so big you'd put the fleet to shame."

"I'm too big?"

"No, they're too small!" He marched Danny into the examination 55

laughing to leeward all the way. It was a slack day, and the medical officer was waiting. "Look what I've brought you!" took to describe the They great pains narrow, stacked seamen's bunks on a typical U.S. Navy vessel. They showed him skivvies and room,

bell-bottoms so that he could see that none of them fit him. When the interview was

over

they shook hands with Danny, called him a fine

American, urged him to stop in and see them whenever he liked.

"Well, son?" said Theodore, "Ready

to

go home now?"

Danny nodded agreeably but with a new independence. At last he'd gone beyond his father-and the family's network in Kaleburg.

He'd been seriously discussing his life with representatives of the United States government. All the way home he couldn't keep the grin from his face.

Then, through a pool-hall friend, Danny got a job with a pinball machine company, Idle Hour Games. They helped him pass his driver's license exam and loaned him a car. His chief duty was to collect revenue from pinball machines and punchboards. Although illegal, most bars had several kinds of punchboards for the customers' amusement. You could buy a punch for a dime or a quarter, the whole card bringing the company ten times the cash value of the prize for the lucky-punch winner.

Danny took a room in a small hotel in the city, where he could receive messages that came while he was on the road. He collected coins from the pinball machines and learned to fix broken ones.

Without his father close at his side, he managed to keep his accounts

straight. After three months he was courier for half a dozen shady operations, including a numbers pool, ball-game pools, and a system whereby servicemen met girls. He was known and hailed as he made his rounds. Men would clap him on the shoulder and pump his soft hand, and Danny would bray with pleasure, showing his long-toothed horsey grin.

But suddenly Theodore Rueff received a call to bail Danny out of jail. He and the Idle Hour Games people had been arrested and charged with racketeering and procurement for the purposes of prosti­ tution. An understanding judge commuted Danny's sentence, sending him home in the custody of his parents, who were henceforth to keep an

eye

on

him.

"We've been all alone here,

Danny," Clara whimpered. "This big house and all the children gone but you." However, she couldn't make 56

him her baby any more. Before a week was out he fled.

They didn't

know where he'd gone and were afraid to ask the authorities to hunt

surely then he'd have to be "put away." Both Rueffs became highly guarded on the subject; and while the addresses of the two boys in uniform and the girl in Los Angeles studying fashion were printed in the church bulletin, Danny was left out.

Soon everyone read of Danny's marriage-to LaVonne Zimmer­ before a justice of the peace in a town forty miles away, one of those many villages where Danny had become known as a traveling man.

Clara said it was wonderful "to have somebody taking care of Danny."

The Rueffs helped settle the newlyweds in a Kaleburg house available for twenty-five dollars a month, provided Danny and LaVonne would "look in" on the eighty-year-old lady who lived alone next door, their landlady. Wedding presents arrived, but Clara gave no tea to introduce her daughter-in-law, and suggestions of a bridal shower were quashed for no reason, unless it was that Clara and Ted didn't want to pretend they expected grandchildren from this alliance.

The old rumors about Danny's sexual abnormality began to surface -he wasn't interested in girls, everybody knew. So, what was going on? La Vonne was tall and squarely built, as strong as Danny was weak. Her dark brown hair, the color of flaxseed, was done up in a coil over each ear and flat spit-curls just above her forehead were held in place by hairpins that seemed to staple her crown. She had deeply recessed, small blue eyes and run-together eyebrows. Her mouth was a neat, thin line, and except for her nose, which projected a modest she seemed almost bereft of the usual features that distance, one of us from another. distinguish Everyone thought she was up to no good and had probably married the village idiot in order to cash in eventually on the Rueff money. Clara made a point of telling her friends that LaVonne had nursed her father through a long illness, that she was a good, shy, devoted soul-hard to get to know, but in every way worthy of her son.

him up, since

LaVonne didn't entertain in her home Clara

joyously,

did she accept any of being looked after," said

nor

the invitations to join women's clubs. "He's

"that's what counts." The life of the elder Rueffs

separated easily and decisively from that of their son and his wife.

Soon nobody thought to remark that it was odd were never seen

Danny and LaVonne

in the big green house on Main Street. It was increas­

ingly hard to remember he was a Rueff at all.

57

When the old drunk who killed by his own cart,

They acquired

a

ran

the

dray service got run over and

Danny and LaVonne took over his business. sorrel gelding used to plowing and corn-planting

and shod him for service on town streets.

La Vonne showed the horse

where to graze on the strips of pasture ment, and in the evenings he cleaned

along the railroad embank­ up the spilled oats and corn

around the spouts of the Farmers' Elevator. The wagon ancient, heavy box on four thick wheels; panels slid into a

rectangle

was

an

place making stripped down

four feet

deep-or the wagon could be Originally there'd been a pair of horses for the outfit, but something had happened to one of them. Since the old man couldn't afford a new horse, he'd adjusted the rig; the load could be pulled from the whiffletrees by a single brute in harness. like a railroad flatcar.

You may wonder what need there is for a dray service in a town as small as Kaleburg, since most citizens have cars and could make

periodic trips to the dump with tin cans, glass, and junk that won't go into the back-yard compost pile. But some people hate to run the risk of having their tires cut by broken glass or nails. They detest the sight of rats among the refuse, should they go out there in daylight -or the bright little rat-headlights gleaming all over the place at night. They called Danny's Dray. Customers also phoned to have salvaged bricks hauled to the site of a foundation for a new house; or to carry lumber in a hurry, when the normal delivery couldn't be made. Even the stores employed Danny and LaVonne to transport heavy merchandise. The price for service wasn't high, and thanks to LaVonne the job was always done neatly and in good time, without

much fuss.

In

going about their business, Danny and LaVonne wore overalls and heavy work shoes, the leather so thick it didn't much matter what dropped on their toes. The only way to tell it was a man and woman the cart, not two men, cept in summer, when she on

was

that LaVonne

was

forced

wore

a

babushka, ex­

by the intense sun to wear a

farmer's straw hat. Unlike junk carriers the world over, seemed interested in their burdens or considered their

they never freight in any

light except that it was something to be disposed of. No little trinket filched and kept in secret at home. When something of pos­ sible value was included in the load, LaVonne would about it

was ever

speak

to

the person

reply. "Ach, 58

employing her. "That hairbrush?" the woman might its bristles

are

mostly broken. No,

it ain't

good for

it

nothing but curryin' your horsie." And then LaVonne would use for that, as long as it lasted. She seemed to understand the dangers that might develop if she ever wised-up to the business she was in.

She was, in short, incorruptible; but the town believed nothing of the sort. They thought she ignored salvageable items because she was waiting for the Rueff fortune itself, when the old folks died off.

Meanwhile, Danny's Dray made money, though they never seemed to spend any. Now and then they'd go to a movie, settle themselves in the front row where Danny had always sat, share a nickel bag of popcorn, and watch the cowboys galloping across the screen.

They put a dime or two in the collection plate when they attended church, which was infrequently. They didn't drink liquor or even beer because LaVonne said (what everybody knew) it didn't agree with Danny. Their car was a beat-up 1939 Chevrolet. Every morning LaVonne was first at the bakery for day-old bread. She kept a siz­ able garden and canned all summer. She knew what farmers could be approached about picking the tart plums in a forgotten lane, to be made into preserves. The grocery supplies LaVonne bought were of the austere, pioneer sort: flour, sugar, salt. Even the meat was arranged for privately, during the country butchering time in February. The town speculated that perhaps Danny preferred the safety of his mattress or the sugar bowl for his hoard, rather than his father's bank.

Years later the true tale leaked out, in the

surprising, appropriate way these revelations occur. In the prosecution of one of Danny's pinball-machine buddies, who'd been released after serving his term only to return to his rackets, the district attorney discovered that Danny Rueff had been paying hush-money sometimes amounting to two hundred a month. The convict had terrorized him into believing he could be re-arrested at any moment, and even LaVonne was con­

vinced.

Nowadays some blame Theodore and Clara for not inquiring into the reason why Danny's and LaVonne's back-breaking drudgery showed so little profit. But misery is often obscured because of the pride everyone takes in hard labor, the virtue it entails-the fact that "work never hurt anybody."

But it broke Danny-or rather the strain did. He was such a big, calm, plodding creature no one thought he might be a mass of anguish inside. One day he got into the Chevy and drove to the state insane asylum twenty-five miles away "to turn in." LaVonne was 59

summoned for

interview,

and

the authorities talked to Clara and to remain safe inside

Ted, each of them separately. Danny planned the walls, LaVonne reported; "he's real happy there." She spoke without bitterness

or even

resignation. "Now I got to carryon with

the Dray alone, I guess."

The town would have

speculated at length about Danny's surpris­

ing action had not Clara succumbed to a stroke the same week. Her right side was paralyzed from top to bottom. She could only speak disjointedly with half a tongue, smile with half a mouth, and think with half a brain. It happened because of her grief over Danny's collapse-that's what people said. LaVonne immediately began to nurse her. In the morning she'd go over to the house on Main and fix Theodore's breakfast before he walked to the bank, then lift Clara from her

bed, carry her to

the

bathroom, wash her and dress her

and put her in the wheelchair. After a ramp was built over the front

steps, Clara's trips in the mobile chair could be down the block or stores, LaVonne always in attendance. The dray service dwindled, but she still maintained the business. She continued to live to the

even

in the little house next to the very old lady (now in her nineties) and checked each morning to see if the woman was alive.

Clara was expected to regain use of her arm and leg; there seemed to be

improvement for several months. But Clara enjoyed being taken care of by LaVonne and wasn't much interested in using the doctor's spring-contraption to exercise her hand, biceps, and calf. She had no reason in particular to want to get up and walk again. "I've got it pretty easy, wheeling along," she'd say with a laugh. "I don't know's you folks have it so good." She would never be quite right in the head again, that was the trouble. There were no devices to fix that lesion. The doctor told Theodore that the end would most likely come suddenly, one of these years, with another series of strokes.

Hard to tell just when.

During this time the three other Rueff children didn't come back.

They had youngsters of their own, of course, which was fair excuse, but it seemed odd that in those four years none of them was able to make the trip home. Mostly it was thought the reason was guilt over

Danny-and shame that he was where he was, when the Rueffs could certainly afford a private sanitarium. But who would start doing something? Theodore washed his hands of it-he had enough to think about with Clara; his face in profile was pewter gray and stern, the look of George Washington on twenty-five cent pieces. The letters 60

between the Rueff children flew back and forth, from New York to

speculating on what should be done about the home situation. But the last word was always, "Thank

California and Washington, guardedly God for LaVonne!"

When Theodore died of

What

a

a

heart attack, all of them

came

back.

strange procession they made: the children in their well­

walking behind the coffin, along with dotty Clara, who was weeping, snuffling, and carrying-on aloud; and sober, lean-faced LaVonne, pushing the wheelchair down the church aisle, looking no more grim than usual-in fact, she was "just the same's ever!" She was about as tough as a mortal could be, in the best sense of the word, for no matter what was dished out, she took it without tailored dark clothes

a

whimper.

She was not entirely of iron, however. A few weeks after Theodore's

burial, when she moved into the house on Main Street in order to be closer at hand in ministering to Clara, she put her horse in the barn out

in

back, which had been used as a garage. The city fathers said

there was an ordinance against it. She received

an

official letter from

the mayor,

warning her that she'd be fined if she didn't remove the animal. But she had to have him close by, not in the shed giving onto a pasture (outside the city limits) where she'd formerly kept him. She was wildly attached to the beast who'd been her companion all these years. She wouldn't give in-no, she'd pay the fine.

But the penalty, it was explained, would be levied again next month and each succeeding month until she did something about complying with the city ordinance. Ladies who came to visit Clara got a full, emotional report from the invalid, slightly off-key, a peculiar wheez­ ing screech, as if a half-melted phonograph record were being played on a faulty machine. "She got Theodore's pistol out-oh yes, she found that! And she cleaned it up real good, and dug up some bullets, too. Just you wait-anybody comes trying to move her horse-you'll see some shooting, you will. Our property, ain't it? They can't do this to us. And after all we've done for this town!"

That kind of talk, bruited about the

village, was just the sort of thing the high school hoodlums liked to take up. They deviled La­ Vonne as she walked the streets or drove her dray cart in the alleys.

They cackled and hooted and even threw firecrackers, daring her to shoot the pistol. She never gave them the satisfaction of paying any attention.

A special dispensation for the horse was

finally granted "in respect 61

to the memory of Theodore Rueff."

Everybody knew LaVonne had

because of her strange, fierce love for that animal. In farm country you seldom hear of anyone getting affectionate over a cow

won

pig or a workhorse because that sort of thing upsets the sys­ tem. These beasts are in bondage to man; it's not the other way around. If only LaVonne had had the sense not to put that straw hat of Danny's on the creature, cutting out holes for his ears. If only the horse hadn't had such big blue eyes which did indeed resemble Danny's; if the animal had been given some name like Nick or Dobbin. But he had no name, and so the high school kids began calling him Danny. Then you began to see other connections: the fact that he was a gelding; his lumbering gait and size; his sad, half­ witted look. The effort LaVonne made protecting the horse got her into closer alliance, really a companionship. Cart, horse, and woman roamed the alleys even when there was nothing to be hauled, the

or

a

cart

empty

..

Some

village gossip must have written to the Rueff daughter in California, describing the situation and saying that Clara was being neglected because of LaVonne's infatuation with the horse. A prac­ tical nurse was suddenly engaged to come and live in the house.

LaVonne was no longer to attend the invalid. The stranger, sent by a city agency, was a hearty, gray-haired, meat-and-potatoes sort. She was righteously indignant over the filthy condition of the house, which apparently hadn't been cleaned for a couple of years. Moths had in­ fested the

clothes, mice and rats had the run of the basement and

attic, and even poor dear Clara Rueff herself was so dirty on the back of the neck that she had to be scrubbed hard with a rough washcloth and strong laundry soap. Purveyor of all this juicy news, the practical nurse

was

welcomed into every household

on

the block.

She told more than she should have. Or rather, she kept repeating

everything Clara said, and these ravings were increasingly unreliable and not to be listened to. For one thing, apparently LaVonne had been in the habit of caressing the old woman in those regions where one would imagine only the young feel intense pleasure. Clara liked to be handled gently,\dreamily, and for a good long time, until she went off to sleep. La Vonne, questioned about this by the practical nurse, who was shocked by such manipulations, was reported to have answered: "She'd smile and feel so good, I never had to give her no sleeping pills. That's more than you've done for her!"

The remark, coupled with Clara's own peculiar notion about La62

quoted Clara as having said: "LaVonne's got whiskers like a man. A girl ain't supposed to have a chin like that. No, I don't think she's a girl at all." Actually, LaVonne had always carefully shaved the stubble she'd been afflicted with, on her upper lip and chin. As these growths flourished in later years, she'd tried to cover them up with talcum powder. But one time Clara's hand had happened to reach out, in a moment that might have been ecstasy, in the evening when the light was dimming in the bedroom, and La Vonne was soothing the old lady for the night. She touched LaVonne's face-her eyes widening-suddenly she thought she under­ stood the mystery of this creature who'd come so accidentally into the Rueff household and now was such an indispensable part of it.

"Always in overalls, she is. Works like a man. No wonder my poor Danny sent himself away!"

Vonne, began

spread.

to

So when Clara from the far-off

The

nurse

died, and after the funeral and the dutiful visits

children, when the practical nurse lost her job and

had to return to the city, in the settlement of the estate the clapboard

house

on

Main went to LaVonne,

plus a small income from farm

property-largely because the Rueff children realized that she'd for­ ever make those twice-a-month visits to the state hospital, keeping an eye on Danny. She lived alone and never went out in the streets or alleys with the cart any more. The horse was too old, and nobody phoned to have LaVonne do a job. They knew her circumstances had changed. By now LaVonne's hair was streaked with gray, and she wore it severely back in a bun and looked like some prairie sod­ house woman of the nineteenth century. You might guess that she'd be left alone to live out her years in peace, with whatever private hells she experienced, and wherever she found her heavens. But you don't know our town, if you think that.

The kids

kept talking about the rumor that LaVonne was really a man dressed up in woman's clothing. One night in late spring a bunch of the graduating seniors, out drinking and celebrating, sneaked through the back yard and walked right into the Rueff kitchen-be­ cause nobody, not even widows and old maids, locks their doors.

Maybe she knew why they'd come and what they meant to do to her.

She did not shriek or run for the telephone. They tried to corner her in the front parlor, but she escaped up the stairs. Yelling like animals, they were hot after her. They thought she was merely flee­ ing-and she was in part-but she was also trying to remember where she'd last put Theodore's Colt .45. Finally they pinned her 63

down

on

a

musty bed in

a

back

room

and

ripped every shred

of

clothing from her body. She fought so wildly that the young athlete astride her got aroused-a local football hero I shan't name, for he

joined the Marines and died in Vietnam. With his teammates cooperating, as they used to do on the playing field, he made the full discovery of her womanhood, something no man had ever done before-not even her husband Danny. They saw the deep stain on the bedspread and knew her secret, a different one from what they'd later

She writhed free of their grasp in the moment her assailants saw the blood. The pistol lay on the washstand next to the

come

to find.

only window with a clear view of the barn door. She grabbed the gun and, naked in the starlight, flung herself through the window,

shattering the glass as she flew.

Aghast and suddenly sober, they raced downstairs and out the front door, got into their cars and spurted away. They didn't even have the decency to go round back to see what might be done to help her. They just wanted to get away and not be caught. A neighbor heard the crash but couldn't figure out for a long time what had caused it. Then he saw the pale, nude figure on the lawn, slowly moving through the grass, long hair down her back. He'd have gone over at once if he hadn't also noticed that she was entirely naked, her breasts flat and loose. There seemed to be

some

dark stuff like

paint here and there on her body. He figured that whatever she was up to, she wanted to do it alone. She squirmed across that long back-yard lawn, hung awhile on the picket gate till she worked the latch open, then slumped down again to wiggle through the hollyhocks.

It took nearly twenty minutes for her to get to the barn-the horse whinnying and trampling the earth as she came. She reached him at last and somehow managed to .pull herself upright in the stall-so that she could explain to the horse and to herself what she was about to d<r-in a voice none of us ever heard give utterance to anything that mattered.

You can be sure she spoke. She got very close to his wall-eye, we know from the wound, and pulled the trigger. Then she shot herself,

left hand

clutching the mane, a fistfull of sorrel hair. Her head lay near his furry ear, as if she'd just stopped speaking. Those who came up after the pistol fired and saw the naked woman sprawled across the horse's body said, later, that Lady Godiva herself had not been more beautiful. Isn't it just like them to say something like that? Her leg had been broken, the doctor reported-her leg, not the horse's.

64

To be sung on the water for Rolfe Humphries, 1894-1960

sing On the water should be fading.

Whatever you say

or

The air has far to go

After it leaves you, Rising and falling down To the

sea

like the weather.

sing at all If, when you hold still,

You needn't

The wavering of the wind

Against you, against you Is simpler and more telling.

Listen, and end now Moved only by the water.

DAVID WAGONER

The diver The blue-cold spasm passes, And he's broken in.

by silence he descends Lost suddenly Assailed

To air and sunburned friends.

wholly underwater now He plies his strength against

And

The element that Slows all probings to their feint.

Still down, till

losing

Light he drifts to the wealthy wreck And its shade mariners Who flit about

a

fractured deck

That holds old purposes In darkness. He Wreathes his DICK DAVIS

hesitates, then

body in.

The double dream of spring for Gerrit Henry

days, the mindless years, perceived With half-parted lips The way the breath of spring creeps up on you and floors you.

I had thought of all this years before But now it was making no sense. And the song had finished: Mixed

This was the story.

Just

as

you find

men

yellow hair and blue eyes

with

Among certain islands The design is complete And one keeps walking down to the shore Footsteps searching it that way Yet they can't have it can't not have the tune that way And we keep stepping down The rowboat rocked as you stepped into it. How flat its bottom The little poles pushed away from the small waves in the water And so outward. Yet we turn dolefully .

.

.

.

.

.

To examine each other in the dream. Was it fine sap

Coursing in the tree That made the buds stand out, each with a peculiar coherency?

For

certainly the sidewalk led To a point somewhere beyond itself Caught, lost in millions of tree-analogies Being the furthest step one might find.

And

now

amid the

churring of locomotives

Moving on the land the grass lies over passive Beetling its "end of the journey" mentality into your forehead Like

so

much blond hair awash

Sick

starlight on the night That is readying its defenses again As day comes up JOHN ASHBERY

Copyright ©

1969 by John

Ashbery.

The room It is

an

old story, the way it

happens

sometimes in winter, sometimes not.

The listener falls to

sleep,

the doors to the closets of his unhappiness open and into his

room

the misfortunes

come­

death by daybreak, death

by nightfall, their wooden wings bruising the air, their shadows the spilled milk the world cries over.

There is

a

need for

the green field where

surprise endings; cows

burn like

newsprint,

where the farmer sits and stares, where nothing, when it happens, is

never

terrible

enough.

MARK STRAND

Homicidal Zero

ice.

on

Tire spun: smoke to three a.m.

and

Hail

also

headlight dimming. Oddly out.

Weep then weeper, headlight out and hail.

(Who is now beside me

now

and

Break it

dear?)

(having

buckled) with a fist.

She had cried

for

years.

JOHN E. MATTHIAS

The art of Franco Zeffirelli and Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet ALBERT R. CIRILLO

We shall have done one braver can can

thing than all the Worthies did when we understand that a truly creative artist with imagination and insight

do more to make a classic live and breathe than we

ever can

with

all of the

scholarly and critical skills available to us. Once we have this understanding, unlike Donne's lover whom I have just irreverently paraphrased, perhaps we should not keep it hid. This ability to make a classic live is no more apparent than in Franco come to

Zeffirelli's screen version of

Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet; and I

hope that in the following pages my readers will remember that I am talking about a film, not a stage performance. Failure to distinguish the different demands of and film has frequently led to bad stage films being made of good plays, even of great stage performances (Olivier's recent Othello is a case in point). Just as often, failure on

the critic's part to realize the different demands of

the

TriQuarterly

different 69

mediums has led him to find a film wanting in those qualities which it really should not have if it is to be successful as a film. What might be

a

virtue in

one

medium is not

necessarily a virtue in the other.

In the theater where the audience is distant from the action on stage,

where certain things simply cannot be staged because of the physical

dialogue and expository scenes to explain events and provide transitions. In a film, which can and should be more flexible, which can and does give us that sense of closeness and intimacy by which the expression on an actor's face as well as his gestures can be pregnant with significance, many of the words and scenes necessary on the stage are merely a

limitations of even the best equipped theater,

we

need

detriment.

Even if we allow the mistaken theory that everyone of his

plays

automatically provides a good script, transferring Shakespeare from stage to film does not always lead to success. It is to Franco Zef­ firelli's credit (he has worked successfully for both stage and screen) that he has recognized and used the differences between stage and film to make his Romeo and Juliet one of the most unified films ever made. Although he and his script-writers have cut the play more than

essentially cinematic; they make the story move as a film. Romeo and Juliet is a play of Shakespeare's artistic youth, full of poetic excesses in imagery and language that he was later to outgrow and refine; cutting should not, therefore, be regarded as tampering with holy writ. Because it is a play about the joy and pain of youthful love it has become enormously popular, even overfamiliar; for it can still speak to us about the basic truths of experience, but not when, as so often happens in the theater, they are made incredibly distant and alien by the kind of stodgy treatment which makes the play an object of idolatry rather than an intimate and shared experience.

One has only to recall the version which Hollywood filmed during many would

like, the cuts

are

the '30s. Unless my memory of a recent revival fails me, the text was

presented virtually uncut. Nearly every line was there, literally filmed, and reverently pronounced by mature actors. It was an extremely dull movie, a museum performance of what was obviously regarded as a museum piece in one of Hollywood's occasional, ceremonious bows to "culture," that remains memorable only for the Mercutio of John Barrymore, then in the twilight of his career. At least. one of the major difficulties with this version 70

was

its too strict adherence to the text,

adaptation to film, in spite of an elaborate produc­ tion, a superficial one at best. Hollywood wanted to prove to the pro­ fessional Shakespeareans that it had the proper reverence towards that poet whom we have made a distant god. This kind of literalism which made its

Zeffiirelli has thrown to the winds

as

unessential to his medium; he

design precisely the kind of ef­ fect which can be achieved by a perfect synthesis of color and sound, of visual and aural techniques. In short, he understands the differences between a filmed play and a play adopted and adapted to a visual medium in such a way that visual as well as aural techniques become poetic, or, if you prefer, in such a way that poetic techniques are realized in visual and aural terms; the film is, in this respect, one of the perfect examples of the historic cultural phenomenon which Fr. Walter Ong and Marshall McLuhan have been analyzing at some length during the last decade: the transference of a verbal mode to a visually oriented culture. Zeffirelli shows that his apprenticeship to understands and makes part of his

the great Luchino Visconti has not been in vain. From his master he

suggestive blending of color, of groupings, and of pictorial composition, of gesture and movement, that every viewer of Visconti's stage and screen productions recognizes as contributory

has learned that

to

the tone of

a

work.

Examples will illustrate what I mean about this use of visual com­ munication particularly as it is related to cuts in the text as they contribute to the pacing of the film. In the play, Romeo's first appear­ ance, announced by Benvolio shortly after the opening fray between the Capulets and the Montagues, leads into a long discussion of Romeo's obvious melancholy, the cause of which is, we learn only after some discussion, his infatuation with Rosaline. It takes a long expository dialogue filled with the kind of wit-writing typical of Shakespeare at this stage of his career to reveal this. Romeo is the romantic young lover, the expository scene suggests, in love with love. Indeed, the

name

of his

infatuation, Rosaline, should immedi­

ately alert one to its potential symbolic character. By Shakespeare's time Rosaline had become almost a stock name for the object of a young male's affection; she is that which one loves. Yet, Zeffirelli eliminates all of this in the film; until the later to marry

scene

Juliet. The

no

mention is made of Rosaline

with Friar Laurence, after Romeo has decided reason

for this omission is

simple,

but

subtly

handled. On the stage where visual communication would be vitiated 71

by the distance, both actual and psychological, between the audience and what is transpiring on the stage,

we

need to have these relation­

ships articulated. In a film, they can be communicated with more im­ mediacy without dialogue. What is important in the Rosaline business is simply that Romeo is ripe for love; he is a romantic young dreamer, an idealist ready for Cupid's arrow. In the space of a short but exquisitely beautiful scene, Zeffirelli communicates this visually.

As Romeo first enters the film, immediately after the opening battle, he is in the distance, coming up one of those quaint, narrow streets so common in the Italian hill towns. The camera pans in on him through a soft-focus lens; he is dressed in deep blue (Romeo wears blue or blue tones throughout the film; it is the color associated with him), and the scene is suffused with a bluish tint. Up the street he walks with a slight, youthful jaunt, oblivious of his surroundings, a rather silly, sickly-sweet, moonish smirk on his face as he smells a flower which he holds in his hand. All of this action is orchestrated in the sound track by a predominance of wind instruments playing, in haunt­

ingly melancholic strains, a theme which will recur when he first sees Juliet at the Capulet ball. With this scene-which could be played convincingly only by a very young actor (a mature actor would look rather ridiculous trying to appear sheepish while smelling a flower)­ we need no lengthy dialogue to tell us what is wrong with Romeo. We have seen his malady in his appearance, in his gestures, in his move­ ment. He is quite clearly in a romantic dream-world. The soft-focus lens, the bluish hues, as well as the music, are used, not to make an already very young actor look younger, but to surround him with the soft, dreamy quality of his romantic illusions, to suggest, better and more effectively than any dialogue could, the emotional state of this young man. When, later in the same scene, he tosses his flower away what angrily after seeing evidence of the battle he has missed (". fray was here? /Y et tell me not, for I have heard it all./Here's much to do with hate "), the simple gesture of tossing aside the flower tells us immediately that he wants nothing to do with a feud that .

.

...

represents values alien to him.

In the second half of the film

(all that follows

the

wedding se­ quence) Zeffirelli cuts Juliet's famous "Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds" speech as well as her potion scene, that favorite of audition­ ing actresses. These scenes are, of course, highlights of any stage per­ formances, moments for which we wait as an opera buff waits for a 72

virtuoso aria.

They can be very effective in the theater, but even a

reasonably casual viewer may notice that in this half of the film Zeffirelli is increasing the pace of the action to suggest and heighten the sense of a swift movement towards the inevitable tragic climax of the crypt scene; all of the forces of circumstance are propelling the lovers towards that moment in the crypt when they will miss one another (and a possible happy ending) by a breath. Zeffirelli uses his medium to suggest this: he cuts rapidly from one scene to another.

The potion scene (which, I understand, was actually filmed but cut from the final print), even if well done, would have dragged terribly here; it would have been an isolated moment rather than part of a unified

design.

When Zeffirelli cuts Juliet's brief scene alone after she has dismissed the nurse, following the powerful confrontation with her father about

only because the cut contributes to this "pacing," but because the scene is wholly unnecessary. In it Juliet tells us that she will no longer trust the nurse ("Thou and my bosom henceforth shall be twain"); but we do not need to be told this since we have seen disillusionment and maturity registered on her refusal to marry Paris, it is not

Juliet's face, "heard" it in the music that italicizes those facial expres­ sions to make this one of the most graphic scenes in the film. As the Juliet's

nurse answers

desperate request for advice and counsel with

the

suggestion that she should marry Paris and abandon Romeo to his exile, Juliet suddenly grows up before our eyes with the realization that her only companion among her elders is a hypocrite. The camera focuses on Juliet's youthful but serious face as it reacts to every line the nurse speaks; the eyebrows arch when the nurse calls Romeo a dishclout to Paris; the mouth sets firmly as the nurse tells Juliet that this match excels her first, blessing herself in what we have come to recognize as one of her habitual gestures even from her first scene.

All of these details expose the nurse-with whom Juliet has been closer than with any adult-as a hypocrite, and we can chart this

realization

on

Juliet's

face, hear it

in the tone with which she tells

the nurse to "go in" as she forcefully shoves back the curtains of her

bed, significantly, pulling away from the nurse's attempt to touch her

sympathetically. This is to transfer to visual terms what needs to be verbalized on the usual stage.

When Romeo we

know he is

sees

Juliet for the first time at the

originally looking

for another

girl

Capulet ball, no girl in

who is

73

particular; his face and

manner

tell

us

so.

As the

camera

lingers

lady dancing gaily in the foreground he seems to have found her. Immediately, something happens. With the face of this nameless lady (obviously Rosaline) still in the foreground, a swirl of crimson velvet comes around a pillar behind her, and suddenly the face of Rosaline blends into, becomes, the face of Juliet -that incredibly beautiful face with its large, melting eyes, and olive­ on

very Italianate

a

skin, which Zeffirelli seems to have cut out of a Botticelli. The moment has arrived. There have been no real transitions, either verbal

toned

or

visual, because Zeffirelli can rely on an audience acclimatized to

the cinema and its techniques where explicit transitions are not neces­

general object of a young man's erotic awakenings yield to the particular object, a definite young lady who has already been identified for us a little earlier in the film. Juliet becomes the particular of which the nameless (in this film) Rosaline is the general, all without dialogue, in a series of frames so incredibly beautiful that the viewer wishes they would remain on the screen forever. Repeating-as Juliet whirls into view­ the music which accompanied Romeo's first appearance, now orches­ trated as a typical Renaissance dance, joins or relates the two scenes sary. In visual terms, he has shown

us

the indefinable,

in a way similar to that in which a poet suggests the relation of one

through the use of recurrent imagery.

The entire ballroom sequence is one of the masterpieces of the film. Here-as throughout the film-Zeffirelli and his cinematographer, Pasqualino De Santis, display that uncanny sense of color and pictorial quality that seems to give the film different textures to suit different scenes, from the grainy quality of the duel sequences which capture the bright yellow glare and dry dusty atmosphere of a hot Italian afternoon, to the smoky quality of the ball sequence here, with its shadows and lights suffused through a burnished gold patina splashed with crimson velvets, pink and yellow satins. Never have textures been so closely reproduced on a screen; one can almost see the nap scene

to another

of the velvets and feel the sheen of the silks and satins; and in the

breathtaking long-shots during the dancing one feels one remembers this scene hanging on the wall of some forgotten European art gallery. Zeffirelli makes the scene a lengthy series of images in which Romeo and Juliet, after having seen one another, seek one another for some time before they exchange their first words (at face value, the bare printed text would suggest a more immediate exchange of words).

74

technique in a somewhat cruder form in The Taming of the Shrew, an unrepresentative test, however, since the built-in interest provided by the participation of the Burtons, man and wife, was somewhat distracting. Nevertheless, the earlier film revealed that Zeffirelli knew how to make a play into a Zeffirelli had demonstrated this visual

film, knew how to make use of the medium in such a way that the material became part of it. He absorbed the play into the film and broke the ground for his greater and more difficult achievement in Romeo and Juliet where he fuses his cinematic elements into a unified work of art which moves to an inexorable conclusion of overwhelming

pathos that made capacity London audiences file out of the theater in stunned silence, in spite of the predictable mixed reactions of ultra-conservative film critics. He has worked carefully to produce this impression and the techniques are cause for admiration.

If, in The Taming of the Shrew, Zeffirelli cleverly merged the public personalities of his stars with the personalities of Katerina and Petruccio (Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton do, after all, fit nicely into the image of a flamboyant shrew tamed by the clever and virilely boisterous rowdy), we never really could forget that it was Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, super-stars, up there on the screen. That is perhaps what we most enjoyed about the film-the implicit identification of one with the other. By choosing two com­ plete unknowns for his Romeo and Juliet, however, Zeffirelli makes an even

greater effect, for we view them with no outside associations,

image of public personalities whose Rabelaisian wanderings through the fashionable spas have provided picaresque reading in the tabloids.

These actors have no existence until the film begins, when they are simply Romeo and Juliet, an illusion deliberately heightened by the no

suspension of the

credits until the very end of a film which begins with a brooding shot of a bright-yellow, hazy Verona basking

in the

cast

glare of an Italian summer sun. While the prologue is intoned

by a solemn voice (which sounds suspiciously like Olivier's) we are given only the main credits, the title, the director, little else.

There is another

significant fact about these actors: their youth, their approximation to the ages of the characters they play; and that is one of their principal virtues in spite of the controversy this has provoked among British film critics. It allows Zeffirelli to carry his with through conception perfect logic and plausibility, and it allows him to approach it afresh, without the standard, rigid Shake­ spearean style, almost completely eschewed here. By Shakespearean 75

style I mean not that there is really a definitive, set way of acting Shakespeare, but what we have been conditioned to accept as proper Shakespearean acting by years of stifling reverence which has tended to make the plays monuments of stone. We have, for example, been so accustomed to seeing Romeo and Juliet played by mature, if ac­ complished, actors who make the recitation of the poetry an end in itself that the image of two actual teen-agers who have been directed to act naturally, to bring something of their own feelings and experi­ ence to the text and discard the customary rhetorical, golden-toned articulation, makes us a bit uncomfortable at first. They seem so young, like such children. But, then, this is the point. Romeo and Juliet are young; they are adolescents on the brink of experience, on the brink of consequences which their own guilelessness and innocence lead them to; we ought to have some awareness of this as it unfolds.

The fact that we are moved, that we do laugh, that we are brought to the brink of tears, should demonstrate how right this conception IS.

We

are

not

just listening

to

the poetry;

we

are

also

seeing it,

feeling it. One wants the meaning made relevant to a dramatic situa­ tion-here that of youthful, impetuous love-to a specific dramatic context, not solitary, virtuoso arias in which sheer sound hypnotizes us. Naturally the sonority of the poetry suffers somewhat, but it suffers in the interest of verisimilitude, particularly important in the close proximity and intimacy of a film. This means that actors whose voices and speech patterns, as well as whose appearance, suggest youth rather than maturity can be more convincing and moving than the tried and true Shakespearean veterans. Restoring the roles of Romeo and Juliet to the young-the very young-gives us actors who can not only bring the immediacy of their own experience and youth to the

roles, but

actors

with

become instruments to

still unformed

voices which themselves

wring all of the youthful pathos out of the

lines and scenes. These are actors who have a kind of intuitive under­

standing of the situation; who have not yet acquired the overly melodi­ ous voice, the mannered diction and approach that afflicted Renato Castellani's visually beautiful but badly miscast and misdirected film version of a few years ago.

Given his youthful protagonists Zeffirelli

can

make

a

film which

shows, without embarrassment, what he has said he intended to show, the life and love of

78

a

young couple sacrificed to the outdated values

of

older

an

generation.

In the overall framework of the film he

ac­

complishes this in two general ways. First, he so structures the film that it falls into two natural, complementary halves. The first half, up to and including the wedding sequence, is youthfully exuberant, almost humorous and light in tone. It ends on a note of serene tran­ quility as the two are married in the golden hues of a quiet old church.

The second half of the film, which begins immediately after the wedding, brings the lovers face to face with those factors in their environment which are working against their happiness from the beginning, factors personified in the neurotic (as portrayed in the film) Mercutio, whose restlessness is symbolized by his constant fiddling with his handkerchief, an object associated with him from his first scene where he uses it dramatically in the Queen Mab speech, and continues to use it in various ways, ultimately shielding his fatal wound with it until Romeo makes his challenge to Tybalt by rubbing this bloody object in his face. The headstrong Tybalt, and the willful­ ness of the older generation, particularly as seen in Lord Capulet, are other aspects of the lovers' environment which, though potential in the first half of the to their

film, now become intrusive, and force the lovers

tragic end.

This half of the film suddenly becomes serious when the brilliantly

staged duel between Tybalt and Mercutio, which had begun (as Zeffirelli conceives it) as a playful joust, becomes fatal simply because Romeo, with the best of intentions, gets in the way. The fortunes of Romeo and Juliet which up to this point seemed in the ascendant are now suddenly reversed by a chance encounter for which Romeo himself is partially responsible, lending considerable force to his piti­ ful cry that he is fortune's fool.

Certainly, the "interaction of ill­ doing and ill-luck" which is the essence of this scene is "basic in the design of the playas a whole," as Harbage has said; but Zeffirelli's

handling of the scene makes this potently clear in performance. The tragic seriousness

of this half of the film is all

the

more

effective

because it is

superimposed on our consciousness of the lighter tone of the first half with its indelible sense of youth.

On this

with

an

point,

I must say that the film

was

made to be shown

intermission after the wedding scene. It was so shown in Lon­

don where I first saw it

some

months ago, the lead-in to the second

half, with the erratic Mercutio wandering aimlessly about the church square

during the afternoon, being a gradual one, prepared for by 79

introductory music and a slow fading into focus on the scene from the image of a broken circle which had also been projected on the screen at the beginning of the intermission, just after the fade-out on the wedding scene. In the American screening, this has been vitiated by the elimination of the intermission and a quick, rather jarring cut from the fade-out on the wedding scene to Mercutio's wandering, eliminating the projected image of the broken circle which I take to have some import. The intermission gave a respite at the best possible moment, providing a period of calm to prepare the audience psychologically for the second half of the film with its change and development of tone.

The second general way in which Zeffirelli underlines his contrast between the values of the young lovers and those of the older genera­

implicit in the former's less accomplished articulation. All of the older characters in the film are more adept at handling language and verse than the young protagonists; they are more articulate: the Prince, who very majestically makes his first judgment from his white horse and, in the final scene, movingly pronounces against the two families; the mature, rich voice of the unseen narrator who speaks the prologue and the epilogue; the Montagues and the Capulets; and even Paris. Their means of communication is essentially verbal and articulate in accordance with the old rhetorical values'. Yet, they achieve no real communication or relationship, Zeffirelli's direction suggests. Juliet's parents are, ever so subtly, shown as unhappily married. When we first see Lady Capulet, it is as Lord Capulet looks at her sourly through a window, across the distance of a courtyard (the image of separation and distance here is telling), warning Paris that women too early wed are too soon marred. Discordant chords sound as Lady Capulet returns his sour look, closing her window haughtily.

In her first full scene, shortly after, she is shown as a vain, impatient woman who barely has time for or interest in her daughter even to discuss something so important as a possible marriage. With its color and quality of a Flemish painting this scene, accompanied by gentle lute and recorder music, is only one of many such scenes of excep­ tional beauty in the film. Lady Capulet repeatedly primps herself, looks in the mirror, and seems nervous about, and virtually incapable of, talking to her daughter. Referring to her own early marriage (we have already learned that she was marred by it), she is the image tion is

80

of a mature, yet still attractive

woman

(she is cast younger than the

Capulet), early and unhappily married to an older man, just ready for a young lover. The suggestion that she is having an affair with her nephew, Tybalt, is quite clearly made in the intimacy with which she can calm him down at the ball (Zeffirelli helps this by giving her a line or two here that belong to Lord Capulet in the text), in the incredibly aggressive stance of her grief at his death, with her vehement cries for vengeance on Romeo. She is always quite articulate-except with her young daughter--even musical in her speech. So, too, is Lord Capulet, whose only interest, in the final analysis, is shown not to be the happiness of his daughter, but the

customary Lady

"I'll not be forsworn" attitude which he expresses in his anger at Juliet's refusal to marry Paris, an attitude which seems to be part of the code of his

given his word in promising Juliet to Paris and that is what is important. Thus, we see Juliet in a

generation.

familial circle which is

not a

He has

harmonious

one

and with which she

has no real communication.

The Montagues, who have less to say in this film, say it well; but we never see Romeo with them. In contrast to Juliet, he does not seem

to

exist

in

a

family.

Like

most

Italian males he

wanders the streets, either alone or with his friends

aimlessly (both Tybalt and

Mercutio, too, generally move about the streets with a group of young friends); and Zeffirelli's management of the scene in which the nurse learn of Romeo's arrangements for the wedding is the epitome of this Italianate vision. Romeo and his friends seem to haunt

comes

to

the central square, passing remarks at itinerant females of every age. the with her elaborate regalia and haughty stance, is the Here, nurse,

focus of attention as Romeo and his friends "A sail, a sail!" deflating her obvious

greet her, in unison, with

pretensions to grandeur, partic­

ularly in the bawdy exchange which follows. Romeo has no home, no family, it would seem, except these companions-and Friar Laurence with whom his relationship, as Zeffirelli's direction shows, bridges the age gap between them.

There is some significance in the fact that the Friar has been both tutor and companion to Romeo since the latter's childhood (he refers to Romeo as "pupil mine"); Friar Laurence thus

seemingly

combines youth and age. He is at once Romeo's brother and father -both the younger and the older generations. His whole relation­

ship to Romeo, Zeffirelli shows as that sort of camaraderie which 81

exists between young

men

who

are

close friends. It is

an

intimate

relationship expressed in gesture and action rather than words. Friar Laurence playfully pulls Romeo's hair, lovingly and gently slaps him, shakes his head several times. Romeo can giggle, the way one can at one with whom one is close, when the Friar trips after telling the impatient Romeo, "They stumble that run fast." All of this suggests an

intimate bond of instinctive communication between friends and

companions. Yet, Romeo's courtly gesture in bowing to let the nurse precede him from the church after he has told her of his plan to marry Juliet, as if to make amends for her rough treatment by him and his friends earlier; his impulsive throwing of a kiss to the crucifix when he realizes that he and Juliet will be wed, show that he has learned what the Friar had to communicate as a superior-manners, and the kind of religious background that would make an ardent young man throw a kiss to the crucifix when his love is about to be sanctified by the church. Even later, when the Friar chides him hard for his suicidal gesture after learning of his banishment, it is the kind of action that communicates love

severely, striking

him

rather than disaffection. That Romeo understands this is vividly sug­

gested by his impulsive kissing of the Friar's hand, through his tears, as

he leaves to ascend to Juliet's chamber on the Friar's orders. These

gestures are of Zeffirelli's devising and consistent with an interpreta­

emphasizes a gap between the young and the old which cannot be mediated by words. The kind of relationship Romeo has with the elder Friar Laurence simply does not exist between Romeo and his family, nor between Juliet and hers. tion which

What Zeffirelli suggests is that the means of communication between the young,

those who understand the young, is not essentially words, as it is for the older generation, but gesture and action. Romeo or

and Mercutio, for example, seem to establish their rapport not through the words they speak to one another, but through action and gesture.

During his dynamically staged and spoken Queen Mab speech (which makes that speech indicative of Mercutio's restlessness rather than a static recitation) Mercutio shakes Romeo understandingly; and when Mercutio fades off in seemingly vacant ravings, Romeo touches and embraces him; their heads meet in understanding and communication.

As Mercutio is propelled to the Capulet ball by their companions, leaving Romeo behind, the two extend their hands out to one another.

The epitome of this kind of communication is seen in Romeo's 82

relationship with Juliet. The beautiful, lengthy sequence by which they come together at the ball is done with looks and gestures long before they exchange a single word; they see one another; they touch one another while dancing; they look at one another across a closed circle of their

make their way around the circumference of

elders,

that circle to make their first contact

through the touching of their hands as Romeo grabs Juliet's left hand from behind a pillar. The playful little flirtatious sequence which follows, in which Shakespeare is flaunting his wings in youthful wit-writing, is essentially oblique in its language. The two speak indirectly of pilgrims and shrines-all of the time touching hands in rather ceremonious fashion-one of Zeffirelli's most inspired pieces of business in the film; for when Romeo first sees Juliet she is using her hands, palms held up, in the dance. Romeo can hardly refrain from touching her, and this is visible. In spite of their seeming inarticulateness, their inability to speak well-at least as well as traditional Shakespearean actors would-one has probably never had so complete a sense of their immediate, almost intuitive contact with one another. They really do not need the words, as young lovers seldom do. Zeffirelli has his Romeo almost literally breathe, in a tone of hushed ecstasy, the final words of his lines to Juliet as he kisses her hand: If I

profane with my unworthiest hand This holy shrine, the gentle sin is this, My lips two blushing pilgrims ready stand To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss. (my italics) Kiss is the

important word here: gesture, action are the effective expressions of one's feelings and thoughts. And it is the kiss on the lips, later, that seals this rapport. This touching of hands is one of the most

repeated gestures

in the

film; it recurs, with the vows of

their love, in the balcony scene; and as they part at the end of that scene, the camera focuses on their hands extended towards one another until

they subsequently

back away from one another with thrown kiss. At their last parting, as Romeo

their hands raised in

a

descends the balcony

to go into

out to one

exile, they again stretch their hands

another.

The young can achieve through gesture and action what the old have been unable to achieve through words roundly uttered. This 83

is what makes the

balcony scene one of the highlights of the film, and probably one of the most refreshing balcony scenes ever staged, for it fits in with the overall production; it does not stand in isolation as the purple passage everyone waits for. It is played between two very young people obviously eager to touch one another, eager for one another even in the hazardous circumstances of the meeting, not

as

a

between two

scene

accomplished

actors

self-conscious of

their facility in handling iambic pentameter; and it is not played as a

piece before which we must genuflect as before a sacred, and ever so distant, religious scene. For once Romeo is really young enough to climb balconies, to swing from trees, so that these actions seem genuine projections of his youthfulness. All of the customary "dignity," the "high seriousness" is gone, because it does not belong there.

As Romeo enters the garden to escape his tipsy companions, the sound-track is silent. Suddenly, he sees a light, and with the famous "What light through yonder window breaks?" the camera begins to pan through the trees just as we hear the barking of a dog in the distance. The effect of the distant barking in the silent orchard is almost magical-like the whistle of a train or a ship in the night­ a remote, lonely sound, followed by the beginning, very softly, of a rather rapturous musical theme that develops while the camera moves through the trees to the spot of light. To the ringing of a distant church bell the foliage parts, revealing Juliet bathed in white light against the dark blue background of the night. Now the ringing of church bells occurs in six scenes of the film (four of which are signifi­ cant here), each time with specific dynamics to dictate a specific effect. The bell is first heard when Romeo,

his way to crash the about the outcome. In one of the most on

Capulet ball, has misgivings haunting passages in the play, he says: .

.

.

.

..

my mind misgives

Some consequence, yet hanging in the stars, Shall bitterly begin his fearful date With this

night's revels, and expire the Of a despised life closed in my breast, By some vile forfeit of untimely death.

But he that hath the steerage of my

term

course

Direct my sail.

He

IS

84

in the church square; the bell

begins to toll as he utters the

causing him

word "death,"

to

look in the direction of the church

ringing of the bell which in the immediate vicinity gives a heavy foreboding quality the underlines his sense of dread. Each of the other times (except in the immediate vicinity balcony scene) the church bell rings, it is when he

his last line and

speaks

a

half. The

of the action and conveys the same scene of foreboding:

when Romeo

the end of is banished, and when the two lovers are laid to rest at and that the film. Only in the balcony scene is the ringing distant; distance softens both its sound and its effect, making it one' of promis­

and romantic, sweetly melancholy. sory ecstasy; it becomes evocative When the foliage opens on the bright radiance of Juliet to the romantic few hundred years of romantic symbolism effect whether we are aware of the progeny or not.

of distant bells,

notes

do have

an

a

bells which rang, and this is the same light which shone, when Beatrice appeared to Dante, when Laura appeared

These

are

the

same

apparently divine beauties who became petrified in literary convention appeared to ardent young lovers who just happened to be poets. Romeo's subsequent reference to

Petrarch, when

a

whole series of

"bright angel" places her in this line; and the omission of the overfamiliar passage beginning with "It is the East, and Juliet is the sun" (already trite when Shakespeare wrote it, as his audience to her as a

probably have recognized) is not really felt because we have seen it projected on the screen.

As played here the balcony scene assumes all of the exuberance

would

and

passion

one

would

associate

with two young

people

in love.

Obviously, in Zeffirelli's conception, Romeo is anxious to touch Juliet.

With Romeo's sigh, "It is my lady; 0 it is my love," it becomes clear that he has all he can do to keep from making himself known. Later, he is all motion, leaps, and gestures; he climbs a tree, leaps onto the edge of the balcony towards Juliet with a deep sigh when she tells him she is indeed "too fond." Zeffirelli suggests, with engaging subtlety, that Juliet is the more articulate one here, is really in command of the situation, as she should be, as the lady in these romantic situations really always was. Even as she-with studied coyness-tells Romeo that she should have been more strange, looking down demurely, yet furtively glancing at his reaction, she is clearly controlling his re­ sponse. At the nurse's interruption of their embraces with her repeated calling from within, Juliet's command of things is concretely, humor­ ously, suggested by the way in which she grabs Romeo's sleeves to 85

along the rim of the balcony, tantalizingly pulling herself hack just as he is about to complete another kiss; yet she commands him to "be true," to "stay but a little," she will come again. For all of her obvious girlishness this Juliet is in charge of a properly boyish, move

him

ardent Romeo. His inarticulateness-he "

heart's dear love

finish his oath, "If my Juliet and smothering her

can

only by grabbing with kisses at which she repeats her delightful giggle-his awkward­ ...

when he bumbles out of the bushes, earlier in the scene, to reveal .his presence while blurting an uncalled-for response to her ness

musings, suggest perfectly the adolescent in a passionate situation which probably has no real precedent for him, for his previous in­ fatuation with another has undoubtedly been much less close and intense than this.

Important in this scene, as it is throughout the film, is Juliet's deep-throated but girlish giggle. Zeffirelli uses it to suggest her youth and charm, to evoke in an instant that girlish vitality which would enrapture a Romeo. In fact, this giggle had been established as a kind of leitmotif for her in our first distant glimpse of Juliet when her father and Paris glanced at her through a window across the courtyard of the Capulet home. There she was playing with the nurse, and her giggle drifted across the courtyard to enrapture the watching Paris. It contrasted with the immediately subsequent image, through another window, of her mother, whose sour expression was underlined by discordant, flatting chords in the background. Juliet's giggle, on the other hand, becomes a kind of charming harmony that surrounds her even at the ball when the giggle accompanies her raising of her arms to shake the tiny bells she has put on for the Moresque dance. All of this exuberance, all of this charming bum­ bling, can only be effective because the actors are young enough not to seem ridiculous. With such actors it works, so that Romeo's ques­ tion when Juliet takes her first good night, "Wilt thou leave me so unsatisfied?" becomes the impatient question of an impetuous young lover at the height of passion, as it should be, rather than, as it so often appears,

a

call for more mellifluous poetry.

II

Let me now try to suggest, in rather broad strokes, the kind of pattern

develops in the film through a synthesis of sound, color, and music, by recalling three particular scenes: the wedding scene, Zeffirelli

86

the crypt scene, and the final funeral, in order to show how he relates one to the

scene,

as

It would

other so as to build towards his final catharsis. The wedding I

pointed out earlier, really ends the first half of the film.

seem to

be the culmination of the lovers' romantic dreams,

spite of the split in the adult world around them, they have, with the help of two members of that world-the nurse and Friar Laurence-managed to form their own circle of love. The image of

for in

special importance in this scene as the culmina­ tion of a series of circle images established earlier. During their first meeting at the ball, Romeo and Juliet had danced in concentric circles whirling in opposite directions. Shortly after, one of the principal the circle takes

on

musical motifs of the film is established when at the center of a

a

young

man

stands

circular design on the floor surrounded by a circle

of guests, the circle around which Romeo and Juliet

move

to come

together. The song which the young man sings is about youth and love. As Romeo moves around the circle the camera lingers briefly on various older faces listening with nostalgic expressions to this song of youth and its fading. The series of patterns suggests that the young exist either at the center of

a

circle to which

elders look

longingly from a distance, or outside the circumference of that circle where they must meet to form their own circle. In the wedding scene, where they will actually be united, where the whirling concentric circles in which they passed one another will become one, the floor of the church is covered with mosaics which form circular patterns.

In this scene Zeffirelli has calculated every detail to emphasize the

childlike

quality, the youth, and innocence of the two lovers. The costuming of the two-Romeo is again wearing blue tones, and Juliet is in a pale, very simple costume that makes her look exception­ ally tiny and childlike-is one factor. Romeo's hair is carefully, noticeably, trimmed and shaped, very neatly and boyishly combed.

The importance of this otherwise negligible detail may be measured by his appearance in the following scene in which he appears in the church square immediately after his wedding. His hair is then longer, very unkempt, and ragged. An ordinary director, with an obvious emphasis on false realism, would have taken pains to have Romeo's appearances match in the two scenes (which were obviously filmed at two very different periods). But this is not what is important to Zeffirelli, a director who so consistently emphasizes visual communi­ cation for its symbolic qualities. What is important is that Romeo, 87

Juliet, in this climactic scene of the first half, be made to seem as childlike and innocent as possible. This is why their impulsive "smooching" when they run to meet one another in the church, with Friar Laurence trying to hold them apart, is so charm­ ing. They are children-at least symbolically-hardly aware of the implications of what they are about to do; they are innocent. In the second half of the film, where they are forced into maturity, their appearance becomes somewhat older-Romeo has ragged hair, even

as

a

well

as

distinct beard when Balthazar comes to inform him of Juliet's death.

wedding scene is achieved by camera angles and lighting as well as atmospheric music. As the two kneel, within one of those mosaic circles, bathed in the radiant white and gold tones of the church, unable to be really serious even at this solemn moment (Romeo knowingly pokes Juliet with his elbow), the voice of a single choir-boy is heard in the echoing tones of a haunting theme in sacred measures. As Friar Laurence begins the ceremony the camera takes and holds a medium shot as if to impress this image on our memories. What we see-in one of the most unforgettable moments of the entire film-is two tiny, innocent children, radiantly happy, surrounded by an aura of peace. As originally shown (with an intermission at this point) this shot was held, like a still-life, for a few brief minutes until it faded into the image of the broken circle, mentioned earlier, while the curtains slowly closed. This emphasis on their youth and innocence increases the pathos of the second half where that circle of love is immediately penetrated (the broken circle was flashed on the screen again at the beginning of the second half) by the adult world, and the young lovers are suddenly, visibly, forced into maturity.

The final effect in the

In the crypt scene, where the lovers take their last farewell of one

another, Zeffirelli weaves his pattern more closely. When Romeo, look­

ing at the drugged Juliet whom he believes to be dead, says "Why art thou yet so fair?" we realize how right Zeffirelli was to cast a very young actor in the part. For the effect here depends on the nature of the youthful male voice, still unformed, still uncertain. It breaks on this question; it wavers, falters with the naturalness of youth that brings home to the audience with heartbreaking immediacy the sense of a very young love, a youthful passion, about to be unnecessarily thwarted; we know why Juliet is still so fair: she is not really dead, and

we

wish

we

could tell Romeo that and avoid what is about to

happen. With the beginning of Romeo's famous passage over Juliet's 88

embrace. And lips, body ("Eyes look your last. / Arms take your last o you/The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss/ A dateless in the back­ bargain to engrossing death.") the music that swells in a different ground is the same music heard at the wedding, now dies with the words tempo, and, of course, orchestrated. As Romeo "Thus, with a kiss I die," instead of kissing her lips, as is customary

(he has, in any case, just kissed them at the conclusion of the phrase "seal with a righteous kiss ."), he grabs and kisses the same .

.

hand he had kissed at the ball when he first met her. Just

as

at the

ball, he has to wrench that hand loose (it is clasped on her breast in the attitude of the

dead).

Later, after Romeo has expired, the camera focuses on that hand

suddenly begins to pulsate with life. The camera follows its movement up Juliet's body which its touch seems to bring to life. Only when that hand touches her eyes do they open-this awakening accompanied, one should notice, by the rapturous musical theme from the balcony scene. It is as if the force of Romeo's kiss, flowing from her hand through her body, brings her back to life. The kissing of the same hand that he had kissed when first they met connects the beginning of love (life) with the end of love (death), and perhaps new life. hangs over the bier until

it

as

it

The colors of the final funereal

scene

are

stark

blues, grays, and

wind, the solemn tolling of the church bell, torch flames spitting in the wind, underscoring the echoing foot­ steps of the mourners, are the only sounds. Only at the very end, blacks. A mournfully howling

after the Prince has made his solemn

families,

two

(".

.

.

when the voice of

never was a

softly and slowly,

castigation of himself and the the narrator begins the epilogue

story of more woe the

.

.

.") does the music resume,

lingers on the two young bodies.

The theme is the one heard at the wedding and again in the crypt scene

as

camera

to Romeo's last embrace.

balanced with the first:

a

The second half of the film is thus

death with a wedding,

an

end with a begin­

ning. In fact, there is some suggestion that the lovers' death is a new beginning, that their sacrifice initiates a new era of peace, in the final image of the two families embracing and looking at one another under­ standingly during the final procession.

Having a musical theme, established in earlier, happier contexts, recur in a different tempo and orchestration at a tragic moment moves the audience profoundly in the way described by Dante's Francesca da Rimini: "Nessun maggior dolore /Che ricordarsi del tempo felice/ 89

Nella miseria"-"There is

no

greater

sorrow

than to recall

happy

times in times of sadness." With the recurrence of the musical theme, scene, one moment, is filtered

one

ness;

one

scene

through another in our conscious­

is infused with the emotional color of another. The

effect depends on the integration of all of the elements of the film; but

repetition of musical themes: the two lovers are buried in the same costumes they wore at their wedding. The solemnity of the Prince's final statement, the picture of the two very young, attractive bodies displayed, in death, in their wedding garments, all underscored emotionally by the sounds of silence modulated into a musical theme with earlier, happier associations, make the pathos of the final moments almost unbearable.

One could discuss other aspects. The beautifully paced bedroom scene, for example, is so carefully cut into after the highly charged scene in Friar Laurence's cell by having the sacred sounds of organ music modulate into the aubade of the lovers' awakening, the melody played on the organ being that of the Gregorian chant sung earlier by the monks in the church when Friar Laurence agreed to marry

Zeffirelli has

one

them. The whole

final touch of the

scene

is bathed in

same

a

order

as

the

soft, bluish tone which seems

to radiate from the triptych of the madonna hanging opposite the bed: a

tone which lends

a

soft, almost sacred quality to the scene, surely

film. Its purpose seems simply to make these very young, trapped lovers look like innocent babes asleep. Nino Rota's memorable score delicately, almost among the least sensual nude

scenes

ever

put

on

poetically, punctuates the dialogue and its pauses here (notice the effect of this "pacing" and the effect of the music as Romeo pauses to bend down to kiss Juliet after saying "night's candles are burnt out," to resume with "And jocund day jStands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops" after the kiss).

Some of Zeffirelli's other touches are the highly original handling and development of the character of Mercutio; and most of all, the direction of Juliet's final moments with her faint little whimpers when she comes to the full realization that Romeo is dead, her "Thy lips are warm" after she kisses Romeo's mouth, just before showering his body with kisses, said so as to bring home the full force of her knowledge that he has only just died. Every aspect of the film is extraordinarily enriched by Nino Rota's musical score, which con­ tributes to the effect by providing a kind of sonic coloring and punctu­ ation that are complemented by the color photography itself.

90

All of these are details of sight and sound which, of course, do not

impress themselves on one's consciousness at a single viewing. They are the elements which, together, make the unified impression. But, just as an intelligent reader of a good poem, wanting to know what makes the poem effective, rereads it, isolating those details that have contributed to the poem's power, so the intelligent viewer of a good film becomes aware of those techniques, those directorial touches, which have brought the film to life. Invariably, they will be details,

seemingly inconsequential in isolation, which when wedded into a COll­ sistent, unified pattern provide the film's life force. Perhaps nowhere but in a film can so many details, so many effects, be so closely meshed when a director knows what he is about; and though I hate to use current, fashionable cant terms, I think that in this film Zeffirelli

certainly made the medium at least part of the message. And this, in essence, is all I have meant to suggest: that an inspired director

has

can

so

make

a

work part of his medium that

one

becomes the other

meaningful way. He can take what is today's most popular, perhaps even most significant, medium and make it a life-giving force for a work which has long been merely embalmed. For one of those rare times in the history of the cinema a man has so succeeded in harmonizing the means available to him that the result is a film which brings us closer to an immediate sense of the tragic pathos of this play than most stage versions could. in

a

What, then, is Zeffirelli's art in this Romeo and Juliet-aside from his obvious

ability to make a play into a real film? Quite simply, he has taken an old story, a story not only old in the sense of familiar, happening again and again throughout time, but a story old in the sense that, by our over-reverent attitude towards it, we have petrified it into an Elgin marble; he has taken this story and restored it to youth in every conceivable way. I mean, not that he has simply cast young actors in the leads (although it is the genuine youthfulness of his cast that makes all of the rest convincing and workable), but that he has made it young again, restored it to life and freshness. He has done what only the rarest scholars and teachers could do, brought to the story the ability to paint in the colors, in the music and sound of a modern medium, its meaning in the chiaroscuro light of the present and shade of the past simultaneously. Just as he has made almost every frame a Renaissance painting come to life, he has made the play live for us here and now as a kind of life we see around us 91

of

day. This is an art which makes the past present in terms the past in such a way that both become one; an art by which he

every

sound

techniques, the tools of his medium-sight, (not simply music, but sound-effects: bells, barking dogs, the hooting

utilizes all of the

of an owl), color, photography, pictorial composition-in the way that

rhythm, rhyme, and recurrent imagery, to move us as most of us, perhaps, have never been moved by this play before. Much of this is admittedly spectacle or pageantry, but it is 'spectacle or the pageantry inspired by, indeed which proceeds from, the text, kind of spectacle or pageantry by which a real director fills out the

a

poet

uses

implications of the text.

All has been done in

a

series of images so intensely-almost pain­

fully-beautiful that, even in this era of overlong, overblown movies, one

wishes the all too short two and

one

quarter hours of this film

had been longer; that, as one London viewer stated

it, it would never

end. Not the least of Zeffirelli's achievements is that he has shown us, would have called "pregnant images of life," in what

Philip Sidney that Shakespeare's attitude towards romance is not stuffy tradition hardened into literary attitudes, but a truth of life that we all know or remember, a cycle that renews itself every day in the life that surrounds us, grows old and dies, only to renew itself again.

This will not be a Romeo and Juliet for the purest of the purists.

If you are among those who must have your Shakespeare syllable

perfect museum

and line or

complete,

who must visit Romeo and Juliet in

a

library rather than in the streets around you, who must

have it transferred to rather than recreated in a new medium; if what you want is

a

document, not a movie, then this is not for you. But

when, and if, the time ever comes to decide who gave us the Romeo

Shakespeare wrote, and felt, as a young man feels the first real pangs of love, I do not think it will be the man who did the definitive edition, or the man who corrected that edition to give us the definitive-definitive edition, and so on down through the last cycle of scholarly time; it will be the man who gave the play life and vigor even in a new medium, who made it meaningful here and now; the man who gave it something of the immediacy it had when it was lived in the Verona of long ago, and reenacted in the London of some four hundred years ago. I think his name will be Zeffirelli, and perhaps it is he, after all, who has done one braver thing than all the Worthies and Juliet

did.

92

Materials for an evocation A suede

finger, A run proof fuchsia toe, A pierced earlobe, A hollow thighbone to blow.

HUGH FOX

Song off key I needed to make music, but look what's coming:

Something off key, ungainly, with a rat and a bum in it, A song like a dish of peaches spilled on the floor With nothing fitting or touching anything else except by flopping Slice over juice to meet the linoleum.

Who said there should be

a

song like

a

split ragbag?

Nobody needs it-a song with a hole in the middle Through which some garbled, red-wigged, black-faced gag Is sticking its head to be conked with baseballs, a song Like all the wrong weather tangling sunshine and blizzards.

A song should have its tail in its mouth like

hoopsnake, Or come to a neat point like a stack of belongings, Or link and labor its opposites in a fixed sword-fight.

Who wants a song like a dump where anything comes or goes?

Here come that rat and that bum for no good reason.

DAVID WAGONER

a

Fireman Look, the fireman has a pipe in his mouth, turtles sprout on his greasy vest. he looks down the runway of the hill to where the truck,

polished, red, stands mired in the swamp, bellowing. above him the are

singing

harpies

in the tower, their

black hair with the north

wind twining among the bells,

golden ropes and hoses. on

.

the mountains he sees

.

a

shiny

colt, and dreams of girls with tawny haunches drinking water; his nails are cracked. oh look, a

puppy lies dead

by his feet with the stack of greasy magazines. .

do not

pull the flower from his coat, the pipe from his mouth, or

you will

pull out his skull,

his vessels and viscera.

.

.

from the clouds

they lean out and tickle his ears with straws.

PETER WILD

TWO POEMS BY C. P. CA V AFY

Translated

by Minas Savvas

King Claudius My mind travels to distant lands, I walk the streets of Elsinore, I roam the squares and recall

the saddest of

stories,

of that unfortunate

king who was murdered by his nephew because of certain imaginary suspicions.

In all the houses of the poor

secretly (because they feared Fortinbras) they mourned him. Peaceful and composed he was; and he loved tranquility (the land had suffered much from the battles of his predecessor).

He acted

courteously toward everyone,

great and small. He hated

high-handedness, and advice he sought always for the kingdom's affairs from serious and experienced men.

Why he was killed by his nephew they never explained with certainty.

The basis of the youth's suspicion was that one night while pacing over one

he

of the ancient ramparts

imagined that he saw a ghost and with the ghost he exchanged words.

And supposedly he learned from the ghost certain accusations against the king.

It must have been the vexation of

fancy

certainly an optical illusion.

(The prince was indeed nervous to the extreme.

While studying at Wittenberg he was considered as a maniac by many of his schoolmates.)

Few

days later he went

to his mother to

discuss

certain family affairs. And suddenly while he was speaking excitedly he began to roar, to shout that the ghost

appeared before him.

His mother, however, had seen nothing.

And on that same day an old

nobleman he killed without

cause.

As the prince was to set out

for

England within one or two days the king advanced punctually his departure to save him.

But so enraged were the people for the most horrible murder that they rose

as

revolutionaries

and

sought the palace doors to break together with the victim's son the nobleman Laertes (a brave youth and also ambitious; in the disturbance

"Long live

King Laertes!" shouted some of his friends).

When later the land

was

calm

and the king was laid to rest

assassinated by his nephew

(the prince did not go to England,

having escaped from the ship on the way), one

Horatio

came

on

the

scene

and

sought with certain stories to justify the prince.

He said that the trip to England was a secret scheme, giving orders there to have him killed.

(This, however, was never clearly proven.)

He said also of some poisoned wine,

poisoned by the king.

That was also said, it's true, by Laertes.

But was he not disproven? was he not deceived?

And when did he say it? When wounded, when dying his mind was delirious and he seemed to be

raving.

As for the poisoned weapons,

it was later revealed that the

poison

placed by the king at all, but that Laertes himself had placed it.

But Horatio out of necessity had even summoned the ghost as witness.

The ghost said that and this!

The ghost did this and that! such things when they heard him say, was

not

most men within their conscience

grieved for the good king who, because of ghosts and fairy tales, was unjustly murdered, and is gone.

Yet Fortinbras who

and

profited

easily gained the throne gave much validity and attention to the words spoken by Horatio.

July, 1899

Artificial flowers I don't want the real narcissi-nor lilies

do I like,

nor

real

roses

They decorate the weathered, the common gardens. gives me bitterness, fatigue and sadnessI get weary of their perishable beauty.

Their flesh

Give me artificial flowers-the glories of tin and steelWhich do not wither and do not rot, with faces that never age.

exquisite gardens of another place, Where Theories, and Rhythms, and Ideas reside.

Flowers of the

Flowers I love made of glass

or

gold,

faithful Art's faithful gifts;

With colors painted

more

beautifully than the natural,

blended with silver and enamel, with ideal leaves

and branches.

They take their charm from learning and the purest Good Taste; they did not grow, filthy, out of dirt and mud.

We'll burn before them sentimental fragrances.

If they do not have aroma, we'll pour perfume, Feb., 1903

Translator's note: Cavafy had the habit of writing poems and passing them out to his friends

(as noted by E. M. Forster in his study of Cavafy in Pharos and

Phari/lon). All of these "gifts," along with more than one hundred other unpub­ lished poems found among Cavafy's possessions, comprise what G. P. Savvidis calls the "Cavafy Archives," from which the poems in Anekdota Poimata (G. P. Savvidis, 1968, Icaros Press, Athens) were taken. Each poem had a typewritten note attached which read: "NOT FOR PUBLICATION; BUT MAY REMAIN HERE." King Claudius,

of his earlier poems, had been in the possession of Cavafy's legal heiress, Mrs. K. A. Segopoulou; Artificial Flowers was

found among the

one

manuscripts of one of Cavafy's friends, P. Anastasiadis.

The Kierkegaard papers HOWARD V. HONG

"The apparent wealth of fancies and ideas which one feels in abstract possibility is just as unpleasant as, and it develops an uneasiness similar to, that which a cow suffers when it is not milked at the proper time. There­ fore one's best method, if external conditions cow,

to

milk oneself"

are

of no help, is, like the

(Sf)ren Kierkegaards Papirer, II A 119). Even

though this did not literally mean, as Kierkegaard wrote, "Nulla dies sine linea" (II A 208), it did result in an amazing mass of journals and papers now being made more extensively available in various languages.

In 1967-68 appeared the first volumes of the second printing (photo­ offset) of the second Danish edition of Kierkegaard's Papirer J plus sup­ plementary volumes of hitherto unpublished materials. At the same time the first volume of an extensive selection from the Papirer appeared in English translation.x Simultaneously volume IV of a German translation of selections was published.t and an Italian scholar began work on a transla­ tion of the entire collection.s which most likely will also be done In Japanese.

The substance of this multiple translating and publishing activity in various parts of the world was in Kierkegaard's lifetime a secret, a hidden third-track parallel to the pseudonymous works and the signed works. In quantity (over 8,000 pages in the 20 volumes) they more than equal both series of published works (about 6,500 pages of comparable size). In time­ span (1831-September 25, 1855) they antedate and outrun both series (1834-September I, 1855). In content they embrace the range of themes 100

TriQuartedy

in the published works, supplement them, and in some instances go beyond them.

The writing of an intellectual journal on loose sheets and in notebooks was

many

things

for

which extended from

kind of

workshop activity his student days through the period of intensive

Kierkegaard.

It

was

a

public literary activity and terminated only a few weeks before his death.

The varied entries were what Hamann had called "culmination points in thinking," written down "with the umbilical cord of the original mood" (II A 118), yielding the rewards of articulateness, self-awareness, the capture of ideas which may come only once in a man's lifetime. Some entries were like seeds which flourished in the published works (the pub­ lished

Papirer also contain draft changes, etc., of the works). Others

authorship and constitute a wider context for approaching Kierkegaard's thoughts and works.

The portions of the journals and papers which clearly go beyond the published works fall into a number of different classes. The most obvious categories are comments on published works, finished or partially finished unpublished manuscripts, themes not wholly absent from the works but discussed in the journals in far greater detail, and entries about personal

remained in the hidden

issues and the contemporary situation. In addition there are the notes for

changes in, and the omissions from, manuscripts of the published works as well as notes on reading and lectures; these two categories are included in sections "B" and "C" of the Papirer.

Papirer are the marginal comments in copies of The Concept of Irony (IV A 198-212) and Either/Or (IV A 213-256). He writes, for example, of Either/Or: Included in the

The first Ota�IXA(l.O� is essentially the task of the entire work, which

is resolved only in the last words of the sermon. A tremendous dis­

saying in effect "Explain it." A total break with actuality is posited, with a basis not in vanity but in melancholy and its preponderance over actuality.

sonance

is set up,

The last Ota�IXA(l.O� suggests to us how such a life has found its satis­

factory expression in laughter. Through laughter he pays his debt to actuality, and now everything takes place within this contrast. His enthusiasm is too vibrant, his sympathy too deep, his love too ardent, his heart too warm to be expressed in any way except by contrast.

Therefore A himself would never have decided to publish his papers.

(IV A 216).

Although one could wish that all of Kierkegaard's private copies of his own

works

were

available with notations like the

one

above, the

most

important comments are scattered throughout the papers, not least in the form of changes, omissions, and additions at various stages of writing.

101

When

one

considers that Kierkegaard published

over

thirty major and

minor works within seventeen years (1838-1855), beginning three years before completion of his graduate studies in 1841, it is amazing to find among the papers ten other specific works of various lengths and at various

stages of completion. Some of these have subsequently been published as

separate works in various languages. In English we have Johannes Clima­ cus, or De

omnibus dubitandum est (IV B 1-17), On Authority and Reve­

lation (VII2 B 235-70; VIII2 B 1-27), Hr. Phister as Captain Scipio (IX

67-73, in English translation together with Crisis in the Life of an Ac­ tress), Armed Neutrality (X5 B 106-109), and Prayers of Kierkegaard

B

(throughout the Papirer).

In addition to these

works, there is in the papers a fine article-length

piece on telling stories to children (II A 12, in S¢ren Kierkegaard's Jour­ nals and Papers, I, designated hereafter as J. and P.). Another work in the papers is "The Battle between the New and the Old Soap-Cellars" (II B 1-121), Kierkegaard's only attempt to use the dramatic form. Written sometime between 1837 and 1840 (the editors of the Papirer give 1838) while he was still a student, it is a humorous and satirical characterization of contemporary Danish H.

Martensen, Peter C.

Hegelians and others, including J. L. Heiberg, Kierkegaard, and Seren the student himself. It

appeared in Italy last year, translated by Alessandro Cortese, Milan, under the title La lotta tra il vecchio

e

il

nuovo

negozio del sapone (Padua:

Liviana, 1967), and the edition of 5,000 sold out within a few weeks. It will be included in volume V of J. and P. At

one

point Kierkegaard undertook the preparation

of

a

series of

lectures on communication. There are many shorter and longer entries on

this important theme in the papers from the 1840's, the decade of his most

prolific publishing. In 1847 he worked out the structure of the introductory lecture and the first two lectures (VIII2 B 81-85) and completed the writing of the first two (VIII2 B 86-88). The writing of the second lecture is incomplete (VIII2 B 89). The series of lectures was never completed or delivered, presumably because of his uneasiness (apparent in the intro­ duction) over the incongruity of direct communication about indirect communication, although in principle this is as legitimate as philosophy of art. The tenuousness surrounding a possible appointment to a teaching position no doubt helped ease out the lecture-writing in favor of writing on Works of Love (published Sept. 29, 1847) and Christian Discourses (April 26, 1848). Although incomplete, the lectures on communication (1. and P., I) are significant in themselves and also for an understanding of Kierkegaard.

Another category of writing enriching the deposit in the papers is that of reports and comments upon lectures and reading. This is notably repre­ sented by the accounts (III C 27) 102

Kierkegaard wrote of Schelling's lectures

also by (Berlin, winter 1841-42), attended not only by Kierkegaard but Engels and Burckhardt. These accounts were not written for publication, but they could have been published just as well as H. E. G. Paulus's pirated in "pre-print" of the lectures in 1843; they have not appeared separately Danish, but a translation is included in A. M. Kotanek's Schellings Seins­ lehre und Kierkegaard

(Munich: Oldenbourg, 1962). They will appear in

volume V of I. and P. and in new

one

of the

supplementary volumes of the

Danish printing of the Papirer.

Other completed writings in the papers are prayers, scattered throughout the papers, and also

a

few

sermons

which

were

written for

delivery at interchanges

places. And then there are the various written for possible printing in some newspapers following response to his works, etc., the Postscript, for example (VIII B 86-92). These range from

various times and

(III B 1) and the copious ruminations on 1-73; XJ3 B 8-14) to the polemics of 1854-55

"Just a moment, Mr. Andersen"

the Corsair affair (VIII B

(XP B 14-end).

Although the journals and papers are definitely not diaries «IV A 85: "After my death no one will find in my papers (this is my consolation) the slightest information about what really occupied my life "» but primarily a many-roomed workshop of ideas, there are portions which can appropriately be called autobiographical in the ordinary sense. Yet here, too, there is "emotion recollected in tranquillity" rather than an attempt at day-by-day direct transcription. For example, in 1849 Kierkegaard wrote a number of entries under the heading "My Relationship to 'Her' with the subheading "somewhat poetic" and a marginal notation on other journal entries about Regine. Even the journal (III A 85-196) covering the year the engagement was broken (1841) has no entries which directly report events or states leading to the crucial events. It is quite probable that Kierkegaard did write such entries somewhere, perhaps many, but they are not at hand. Characteristically, there are reflective entries about Regine and their relationship, usually in the past tense. They are nonetheless poignant and revealing, short of "another person's innermost secret" (III A 165).

Even Schelling (whom he went to hear in Berlin shortly after breaking the engagement) could not make him forget. In the same entry (III A 179) where he says all his hope is in Schelling ("the embryonic child of thought leapt within me for joy, as in Elizabeth, when he pronounced the word 'Actuality' "), he wishes that she could share his happiness, and if he were sure he could make her happy, he would take off for Copenhagen "this very evening."

Other autobiographical clusters include scattered direct and indirect references to the deep relationship between Kierkegaard and his father and also to his brother Peter. Some of these are found in the engaging pages (III A 14-84) written while he made a journey of filial piety to Saeding, ...

"

103

Jutland, his father's birthplace. "I cannot recall any change in my father, and now I shall see the places where

places

poor boy he tended sheep, the for which his descriptions have made me homesick.

I learned as a

.

.

.

from him what father-love is and

through it I got a conception of divine father-love, the only unshakable thing in the world, the true Archimedean point" (III A 73). Earlier in the papers there is the famous student letter (I A 75) written in Gilleleje, a coastal town north of Copenhagen. There few other letters, but the editors of the Papirer did not fulfill their intention (I, p. vii) of collecting letters and documents for inclusion. This are

a

done later

by Niels Thulstrup for separate publication (Breve og Aktstykker cedrerende S(Jren Kierkegaard, I-II; Copenhagen: 1953-54). was

Some of these additional letters will be included in volume V of Journals and Papers. Similar considerations of personal plans

about the

are

found in entries

possibilities of teaching and of seeking a rural pastorate, and

also about financial matters (for example, VIlli A 422; IX A 213; XI A 167,281,424,510; X2 A 511).

Kierkegaard's own way of envisioning his life and writing is present in the papers primarily in a manuscript which was published posthumously (The Point of View for My Work as an Author) and Armed Neutrality (X5 B 107). There are also many illuminating entries pertaining both to himself as a person and to his task as a writer and thinker. Some of these bear the

heading "About Myself." Others are reflections on his use of indirect communication, plans for writing and publishing, and interpreta­ tions of his own works. These are so scattered throughout the twenty volumes that a consolidation of them could be very helpful to most readers of the journals and papers.

Relations with his contemporaries also find a place in the journals and papers, but

again not as diary jottings but as formulations of issues and polemics involving some leading men: M. Goldschmidt, editor of the Corsair; Bishop Mynster, family friend and posthumously the occasion of the attack upon secular "Christendom"; N. F. S. Grundtvig, poet, historian, educational theorist, and politician; and Professor R. Nielsen, the closest Kierkegaard came to having a confidant. In connection with the Corsair affair Kierkegaard wrote a whole battery of articles which remained among the papers (VIII B 1-73). The journals and papers in volumes XJl-XJ3 from March 1, 1854, to a few weeks before Kierkegaard's death are pri­ marily, although by no means exclusively, centered around the cultural accommodation symbolized by Mynster.

In the journals proper (Papirer A), and occasionally in categories B and C, there are rich veins of insight and reflection along certain themes which, although not wholly absent from the works, are treated in greater detail and exhibit a dialectical character not always immediately apparent in some particular work.

104

From the journals Presuppositions If it were the case that philosophers are presuppositionless, an account

would still have to be made of language and its entire importance and relation

speculation,

to

for here

speculation

does

indeed

have

a

medium which it has not provided itself, and what the eternal secret

qualification of nature and a qualification of freedom, so also language is partly an original given and partly something freely developing. And just as the individual, no matter how freely he develops, can never reach the point of becoming absolutely independent, since true freedom con­ sists, on the contrary, in appropriating the given and consequently in becoming absolutely dependent through freedom, so it is also with language, although we do find at times this ill-conceived tendency of not wanting to accept language as the freely appropriated given but rather to produce it oneself, whether this appears in the highest regions where it usually ends in silence or in the personal isolation of jargonish nonsense. Perhaps the story of the Babylonian confusion of tongues may be explained in this way, that it was an attempt to construct an arbitrarily formed common language, which, since it lacked fully integrative commonality, necessarily broke up into the most disparate of consciousness is for speculation

as

the union of

a

differences, for here it is a matter of the totum est parte sua prius, which was not understood.

IlIA 11

July 18, 1840

The fact that

philosophy has to begin with a presupposition must not be regarded as a defect but as a blessing; therefore this an sich also becomes a curse from which it can never become free-it is this

conflict between consciousness

as

empty form [and]

as

the retained

image of the floating object, which corresponds to the same problem in

freedom,

how

the

empty arbitrium which, like the scale, has

do with the content but, like an infinitely abstracted elas­ nothing ticity, remains triumphant and indifferent through all eternity, how this becomes positive freedom-here also we meet a presupposition because this liberum arbitrium is really never found, but world-exist­ to

ence

itself

provides it.

III A 48

n.d., 1840 105

philosophy-if there ever comes to be such a thing-will be different from German philosophy in that it definitely will not begin with nothing or without any presuppositions whatsoever or explain everything by mediating; because, on the contrary, it begins with the proposition that there are many things between heaven and earth which no philosophy has explained.

By being incorporated in philosophy, this proposition will provide the necessary corrective and will also cast a humorous-edifying warmth Danish

over

the whole.

V A 46 n.d., 1844

Freedom

The

whole

question

of

the

relation

of

God's

omnipotence and

goodness to evil (instead of the differentiation that God accom­ plishes the good and merely permits the evil) is resolved quite simply in the following way. The greatest good, after all, which can be done for a being, greater than anything else that one can do for it, is to make it free. In order to do just that, omnipotence is required. This seems strange, since it is precisely omnipotence that supposedly

being] dependent. But if one will reflect on omnipotence, he will see that it must also contain the unique qualifica­ tion of being able to withdraw itself again in a manifestation of omnipotence in such a way that precisely for this reason that which has been originated through omnipotence can be independent. This is why one human being cannot make another person wholly free, because the one who has power is himself captive in having it and therefore continually has a wrong relationship to the one whom he would have to make [a

make free.

Moreover, there is a finite self-love in all finite

wants

to

power

(talent, etc.). Only omnipotence

can

withdraw itself at the

gives itself away, and this relationship is the very inde­ pendence of the receiver. God's omnipotence is therefore his good­ ness. For goodness is to give oneself away completely, but in such a way that by omnipotently taking oneself back one makes the re­ cipient independent. All finite power makes [a being] dependent; only omnipotence can make [a being] independent, can form from nothing something which has its continuity in itself through the continual withdrawing of omnipotence. Omnipotence is not ensconced in a relationship to an other, for there is no other to which it is corn-

same

time it

106

parable-no, it can give without giving up the least of its power, i.e., it can make [a being] independent. It is incomprehensible that omnipotence is not only able to create the most impressive of all things-the whole visible world-but is able to create the most fragile of all things-a being independent of that very omnipotence. Omnip­ otence, which can handle the world so toughly and with such a heavy hand, can also make itself so light that what it has brought into exist­ ence receives independence. Only a wretched and mundane conception of the dialectic of power holds that it is greater and greater in pro­ portion to its ability to compel and to make dependent. No, then Socrates had a sounder understanding; he knew that the art of power lies precisely in making another free. But in the relationship between man and man this can never be done, even though it needs to be emphasized again and again that this is the highest; only omnipotence can truly succeed in this. Therefore if man had the slightest inde­ pendent existence over against God (with regard to materia), then God could not make him free. Creation out of nothing is once again the Almighty's expression for being able to make [a being] independ­ ent. He to whom lowe absolutely everything, although he still absolutely controls everything, has in fact made me independent. If in creating man God himself lost a little of his power, then precisely what he could not do would be to make man independent.

VIP A 181 n.d., 1846

Freedom of conscience, freedom of belief, etc. Ideally, it must be acknowledged that every human being has freedom of conscience,

freedom of belief,

etc.

But what then? Where

the

spiritually strong that they it, genuinely able to stand absolutely alone, alone with God? Here is the untruth, the demagogical flattery, in talking as if every human being were such a great fellow-if only there were no con­ are

men

so

can use

straint,

no

law. 0, my God!

No, the truth is that everyone who is

subjectively a person to the degree that he consults only with God and his conscience and is able to endure it-such

the time of day to whether or not there

person does not are laws or regulations a

give against it; for him such things are nothing but flimsy thread. Yes, if he is in truth great, he desires all

possible opposition lest he run wild or go wrong, but that human regulations would be able to compel him 107

-no,

that he does not

fear; before God and in his conscience he

knows that he need not.

But

people want to eliminate inhibitions and constraints, etc., in order to play the game of being such real men that we can stand alone under such conditions-but, instead, it is precisely the opposi­ tion given us, if we win over it, which alone is able to prove that we real men.

are

Take away all constraint, which is

just what men need and espe­

cially in the highest concerns [in margin: and logically all more, the higher the concern ]-and the mass of men will either cease to be anything at all or will fall into the hands of parties, etc.

But it is so vain and so flattering to our vanity to think: We want to be almost like apostles or at least like Luther-take away all con­ straint and that's just what we will be. 0, you fools or sophists, the apostles, Luther, etc., were just what they were because there was all possible constraint and opposition against them-but they overcame it. Had there been no constraint,

we

should never have come to see

that

they were what they were.

Nowadays people want to have all constraint removed and then play the apostle-which is about the same as if someone wanted to elimi­ nate cannons, gunpowder, and bayonets and then play the brave soldier. Precisely in order that it shall become clear whether it really is "conscience" alone which decides (not a belch, a lazy notion, caprice, confused thoughts, foolish aping [Efterabelse], etc.), precisely for this reason there must be opposition and constraint. The qualifica­ tion "conscience" is so inward that it takes all the filtering possible to find it; but if it is found, if it really is that and only that which determines me-then all regulations be hanged-I laugh at them. It is precisely because "the conscience" is infinitely sacred to the man who is at all conscientious that he wants opposition, constraint. He would rather discover in time with the aid of constraint that it per­ haps was not his conscience at all which determined him to will to risk this under

an

or

that step, rather than to discover too late that he

illusion

was

concerning the most sacred of all, concerning his

conscience.

The person who in truth

consulting only

can

stand alone in the world this way,

with his conscience-he is

well say: Do not be embarrassed

on

a

hero.

And he

my account; you may want to

tighten the constraint still more; I would even be glad for that.

108

might

But take away all constraint and let

us

flatter each other that

we

all, each one of us, are such heroes.

clamoring for freedom of conscience, freedom of belief, etc., in these times when someone who really has a thought is already a great rarity. What does this clamoring mean; does it signify strength, heroism? Not quite. It signifies softness; it signifies that we are weaklings, coddled, who are eager to play the hero at bargain price.

It was not like this with our forefathers; when the berserker felt There is

a

power in his bones he shouted for others to come with shields and if possible to force him down-for he knew well enough that he had power. Nor

was

it like this with the heroes of

demand that all constraint be removed. 0, no,

faith,

on

who did not

the contrary,

they

yearned for it, and a quite different kind of constraint than is even remotely conceivable among us; they yearned for imprisonment, chains, the stake, in order to prove that they had freedom of conscience, freedom of belief, etc. Now men want the state to loosen every bond,

perhaps make a present of freedom of conscience, freedom of belief. In the old days men believed that it was the conscience which gave freedom of conscience, that if one had conscience, free­ dom was sure to come along, but that, on the other hand, to eliminate every constraint, to loosen every bond, meant at best to make it as free and as convenient as possible for everyone to have no conscience and to imagine that he had one. to give or

It is above all

entirely mistaken dialectic to conclude that the greater, the more serious the good, the more intolerable all con­ straint. No, no. In relation to insignificant things, even the slightest constraint is intolerable, as, for example, if the wearing of hats were prohibited by law, and everyone, all men and every man, was ordered to wear a cap. On the other hand, the greater and the more serious the good, the better I am able to bear some constraint, in order that I can have an opportunity to test myself and to get to know myself, in order that the decisive steps are not made too easy for me­ an

because in the last resort there is really no constraint which can com­

pel the spiritual; at most it can make one buy freedom dearly.

Therefore all this talk about

eliminating constraint comes either from coddled men or from those who perhaps once felt the power to fight but are now exhausted and find it nicer to have all constraints taken away.

X3 A 618 n.d., 1850 109

The individual

The

Single Individual [den Enkelte]-the Crowd,

Statistics.

"The

single individual" is a spiritual definition of being a human being; the crowd, the many, the statistical tion of being a human being.

or

numerical is an animal defini­

The operation is, of course, very simple. The single individual ranks

spirit according to the extent he can endure, wholly unchanged, having statistics thrown at him (something like being splashed with mud by street urchins).

The distinction of the God-man means absolutely unalterably to be the single individual, without the change of a letter or an expression, unconditionally, absolutely unconditionally in opposition to the count­ less millions of the whole race.-Even the apostle needs a few who

qua

agree with him.

XJI A 81 n.d., 1854 Of all debaucheries, the brilliance of this putrefaction * is still the

youth, let him seduce girls, let him crave wine-there is still hope that this may some day rest on his conscience as sin. But this refinement, this wretched glitter of perdition-that the individual evaporates into the generation, con­ most nauseating. Let a man sin personally in his

fuses himself with Rome and Greece and Asia, this mildew of pom­

posity, with the result that the individual does not belong to those who lustfully in a physical sense are deliciis diffiuentes but, intellectually understood, are diffluentes in the nincompoopery of thoughtlessness!

VI A 120 n.d., 1845 One must see it for himself (otherwise he would not believe it), how

nice, good-natured people become like different

even

creatures

as

they form a "crowd." One must see for himself the lack of character even in otherwise upright persons who say: It is a disgrace, it is shocking to do or to say anything like that-and then contribute their own little share to envelop city and countryside in a snowstorm of blather and town gossip. The hardheartedness with which other­ wise kind people act in the capacity of the public, because they regard their participation or non-participation as a small matter-a small matter which becomes enormous through the contribution of the many. soon

i,<

In

as

margin: pantheistic.

110

One must see how

attack is

no

as

dreaded

that of laughter, how

as

courageously would risk his life for a stranger would well nigh betray his father and mother if the risk is laughter,

even

the

man

who

because this attack isolates the one attacked more than any other and at no point supports its

victim by being done with pathos, but silliness

curiosity and sensuality grin, and cowardice, which itself trem­ bles before such an attack, continually shouts that it amounts to nothing, and the cowardice which contemptibly buys its way out of It is an attack with bribing or kowtowing to those involved says: nothing, and the participants say: It is nothing.

and

IX A 277 n.d., 1848 The more latitude individual differences loss of 'continuity-instead of

a

continent

given, the greater the

are one

gets

South Sea of

a

islands-perhaps this development is coming, and this is why that part of the world is preserved.

II A 267 October 3, 1838 The main thing is to save as many of the universally human quali­ ties in

an

individual life

as

possible.

III A 136 n.d., 1841

Collectives

The numerical is like

envelope. One receives a large package, thinks it is something important, but look, it is a package of envelopes. an

So it is with all these thousands and

thousands, who

then confuse

having overt power with relating oneself to the idea.

XJl A 582 n.d., 1854 The numerical

become

the

law

(which of

as

human

numbers increase existence

more

[Tilvaerelse])

and also

more

has

has

the

demoralizing effect that the sight of these thousands and thousands prompts men to live merely comparatively and all human existence to dissolve in the nonsense of comparisons, the mud of numbers, which then is

prettied up to look like something under the name of history and politics, where the whole point (the mark of spiritlessness) even

is

always that what counts is a large number of participants, the numbers confer significance, almost as if the idea were like a teller in a bank, who ponders numbers.

111

Alas, in ancient days there still lived men who thought primitively about being human, what it means on the whole to be a human being, what

meaning it has within itself and within the whole of existence.

Lost as everyone now is from the earliest years in the man-made non­ sense

of numbers, no one thinks of such things.

This is why there lives scarcely a man who has

even an

intimation

of the dimensions of Christianity, that Christianity was established by

God and has the dimensions or proportions of all existence, the pro­

portions of the whole cosmos, that Christianity is an event which literally interests heaven and earth, as Christ portrayed it (for example, what he says in Luke 21 about his return). But here again the non­ sense about "Christendom," these millions times millions of Christians, has jabbered Christianity down to a sorry state so that being a Chris­ tian is regarded as nothing, something we all are-thus beginning this mutual nonsense in which the whole point is always how great a number has been set in motion-always numbers.

But how ironical, the law is this-everything which needs numbers in order to become significant is eo ipso insignificant, and the greater the number it needs, the less significant it is. Everything which can be arranged, executed, completed only with the help of great num­ bers, the sum of which startles men in amazement, as if this were something important-precisely this is unimportant. The truly impor­ tant is inversely related, needs a progressively smaller and smaller number to implement its completion, and for the most important of all, that which sets heaven and earth in motion, only one man is needed, and a need for more becomes a subtraction. European wars and revolutions and art exhibitions and gigantic newspapers and the like certainly cannot be operated by one person. This is why people believe that such things are the important things rather than that their very unimportance makes large numbers necessary, that their lack of importance forces them to acquire importance from numbers.

But what is most important of all, what interests angels and demons, that a person is actually involved with God-for this one single human being is enough.

Shudder, then, when you consider how we live-and that the truth is that every human being can be that one single person.

XI2 A 167 n.d., 1854

112

After all, it is very convenient to be "one with the age," especially in the sense of the public, for then we act in the first person but judge ourselves in the third person

as

if

we

were

not ourselves.

We

give

ourselves every leeway to obstruct the extraordinary; if this succeeds,

it is concluded that this person and that person are not the extraordi­ how it dealt with nary. But the entire role and behavior of the age, him-this the age itself talks about objectively.

There is a curious kind of self-contempt in wanting to go along with the world this way; it is the public which actually despises itself

profoundly; to be irresponsible, somewhat like horse and a dog, is the most pitiful of privileges.

most

the wind

or

a

x. A 458 n.d., 1849

There

are

on

the whole very few

men

who

are

Protestant view of life. If the Protestant view is

able to bear the

really to become

strengthening for the common man, it must either structure itself in a smaller community (separatism, small congregations, etc.) or ap­ proach Catholicism, in order in both cases to develop the mutual bearing of life's burdens in a communal life, which only the most gifted individuals are able to dispense with. Christ indeed has died for all men, also for me, but this "for me" must nevertheless be inter­ preted in such a way that he has died for me only insofar as I belong to the many.

II A 223 April 6, 1838

The corrupting and demoralizing aspect of journalistic communica­

tion is not so much in its communicating something false

as

in the depraved guarantee it furnishes that there probably is

much

as

goodly number who say the same thing and make the same value judgments; just being printed in a paper is, of course, sufficient guarantee for that. What men fear, unfortunately, is not that they may say some­ thing true or untrue but that they come to stand alone with an opinion. Such a guarantee is therefore a demoralizing leash which makes men more and more mediocre and base, and this tragedy is far greater than journalistic communication of untruth. The daily press, like all journalism, is more or less impersonal communication and is designed to furnish the guarantee that there are many who a

113

think the paper,

same

way. This does

for the fact

that

the

not

have to be said

communication

is

in

explicitly 10 the a

paper

is

the

guarantee. x: A 409 n.d., 1849

people call themselves after "the day" (Journalists). It seems to me they could better be named after the night. Therefore, since journalist is a foreign word anyway, I propose they be called "night-carriers," "night-garbage-carriers." I do not think the word nearly as well fits the sanitation department workers for whom it is used. But journalists are really night-garbage-carriers. They do not carry the trash away at night, which is both a noble task and a good work; no, they carry the trash in during the day, or to describe it more accurately, they spread night, darkness, confusion over men­ in short, they are night-carriers.

These

XII A 342 n.d., 1854

The Significance of Cholera is in its

tendency to train men to be

single individuals [Enkelte], something neither war nor any other calamity does-they herd men together instead. But the plague dis­ perses into single individuals and teaches them, physically, that they are single individuals.

XII A 506 n.d., 1854

Inscription on a Grave. The daily press is the state's disaster, the crowd the world's evil.

"that

single individual"

["hiin Enkelte"] IX

A

282

n.d.,

1848

In the old days they believed that whatever one hears concerns the

individual himself (de now

te

fabula), that everything concerns himself;

everybody believes that he can tell a fable which concerns all

mankind but not himself.

VI A 20 n.d., 1845

114

One does not become

an

author

nowadays through his primitivity,

but-by reading.

being by aping the others. One does not know by himself that he is a human being but through an inference: he is like the others-therefore he is a human being. Only God knows One becomes

a

human

whether anyone of us is that!

And in our time, when people doubt and doubt about everything, no one

hits upon this doubt-God knows whether anyone of us is a

human

being.

XI A 666 n.d., 1849

Irony, humor, jest

Irony is the unity of ethical passion, accentuates the ness

private

which in inwardness

self, and of

infinitely

which in outward­

development, (in association with people) infinitely abstracts from the private

self. The effect of the second is that

no

one

notices the first; therein

lies the art, and the true infinitizing of the first is conditioned thereby.

VI A 34 n.d., 1845 In his sermon on the epistle for New Year's Day, Luther says that a

man

is saved

by faith-works are only "training exercises."

This is what I have often put this way: Grace is earnestness-my works

are

else to

me.

only a' jest-and so get going, the more animatedly the better, but all the same it is a jest to me and must not mean anything And this is

Christianity. Lucky is the

one

who has

only heard

this doctrine and never got to see on what a horrible scale it is taken in vain, who consequently has not been made anxious by that tragic

knowledge as to whether he himself has taken grace in vain and in his

anxiety become something of a self-tormentor.

Here again we see how infinitely important it is in respect to the essentially Christian to take the proclaimer along. For they took Luther's doctrine about faith-but Luther's life, that they forgot.

X3 A 672 n.d., 1850

115

Hamann could become

good representative of the humor in Christianity (more about this another time), but in him the trend toward humor necessarily developed one-sidedly (a) because of the humor intrinsic to Christianity, (b) because of the isolation of the individual conditioned by the Reformation, an isolation which did not arise in Catholicism, which since it had a Church could oppose "the world," although in its pure concept as Church it probably was less able to be predisposed to do this, and in any case it nevertheless could not develop humor to an apex opposing everything and thereby rather barren, at least devoid of prolific vegetation and bearing only dwarfed, scrawny birch (the reason this was not the case with Hamann is to be found in his profound sensibility and enormous genius, which had depth corresponding to the degree of its narrowness in width­ and Hamann found a real delight in inviting his knowledge-greedy contemporaries, platter-lickers, to his long-necked stork-Bask-but just the same he can be a very good representative for the true center of this position), and (c) because of his own naturally humorous dis­ position. Thus one can truthfully say that Hamann is the greatest humorist in Christianity (meaning the greatest humorist in the view of life which itself is the most humorous view of life in world-history­ a

therefore the greatest humorist in the world).

II A 75 n.d., 1837 Now I

perceive why genuine humor cannot be caught, as irony can, in a novel and why it thereby ceases to be a life-concept, simply because not-to-write is part of the nature of the concept, since this would betray an all too conciliatory position toward the world (which

why Hamann remarks somewhere that fundamentally there is nothing more ludicrous than to write for the people). Just as Socrates left no books, Hamann left only as much as the modern period's rage for writing made relatively necessary, and furthermore only occa­ sional pieces. is

II A 138 n.d., 1837

In margin of II A 138: Therefore the humorist can never actually become

a

systematizer, either,

for

he

regards

every

system

as

a

renewed attempt to blow up the whole world with a single syllogism in the familiar Blicherian manner; whereas the humorist himself has 116

come

alive to the incommensurable which the philosopher can never

figure out and therefore must despise. He lives in the abundance and is therefore sensitive to how much is always left over, even if he has expressed himself with all felicity (therefore the disinclination to write). The systematizer believes that he can say everything, and that whatever cannot be said is erroneous and secondary.

II A 140 n.d.

Most systematizers in relation to their systems are like a man who

alongside it in a shed; they themselves do not live in the enormous systematic building. But in the realm of mind and spirit this is and remains a decisive objection. Spiritually understood, a man's thoughts must be the build­ ing in which he lives-otherwise the whole thing is deranged. builds

an

enormous

castle and himself lives

VIII A 82 n.d., 1846

Understanding I understand very well how I ought to conduct myself in order to be

understood-honored and esteemed-how I could gain these benefits

by preaching Christianity. But this is simply unchristian-that the one who preaches Christianity is not himself what he says is Christianity. Christ has not inaugurated assistant-professors-but imi­ tators [Efterf¢/gere]: Follow me. It is not cogito ergo sum-but the opposite, sum ergo cogito. It is not: I think self-renunciation, there­ fore I am self-renouncing, but if I truly am self-renouncing, then I must certainly have also thought self-renunciation.

The one who preaches Christianity shall therefore (he shall, it is something he has to take care of himself) himself be just as polemical as that which he preaches. even

IX A 49 n.d., 1848

Let

no

one

mismterpret all my talk about pathos [Pathos] and

passion [Lidenskab] to mean that I intend to sanction every uncir­ cumcised immediacy, every unshaven passion.

V A 44 n.d., 1844 117

Accurate, clear, decisive, impassioned understanding is of great im­ portance, for it facilitates action. But in this respect there is about as much difference among people as there is in the ways birds take off in flight. Some take off quietly and neatly from the branch on which

they are perching and ascend heavenward in their flight, proudly, boldly. Others (the heavier and more indolent-crows, for example) make a big fuss when they are about to fly; they lift one foot and then promptly grab on again, and no flight takes place. Then they work their wings while they continue to cling fast with their feet; in this way they do not take wing but instead remain hanging on the branch like a lump-until finally they make enough headway to attain a kind of flight.

In so many ways men are just like this when it comes to achieving movement from understanding to action. On this point alone a sharp psychologist could have enough work for a lifetime if, after meticulous observation, he were to describe the abnormal motions which are made. For the lives of most men are and continue to be a simulated

posture of purely sensate existence. A few arrive at the proper under­

standing of what they should do-and then they pull back.

.

.

.

IX A 365 n.d., 1848

On translating the Papirer Barfod, the first Danish editor of the papers found after Kierke­ gaard's death, added an appendix to volume II (1872) of Efterladte H. P.

Papirer. In a bracketed sentence he explained why: "[After Seren Kierke­ gaard's remaining manuscripts had been organized by the editor, another sackful of papers

light among them the appended entries no. 1, 2, and 5.]" This amazing line points up the chanciness of any pub­ lication at all. Although Kierkegaard definitely thought this hidden author­ ship would be published, he made no provision for anyone to take charge came

of these and other papers

to

.

.

.

(see ibid., VIII, p. 594; also

" ...

anyone could

publish my remaining papers" (IX A 228)).

In addition, this line says something about the order of the journals and papers. Although they were not as atomistic as the multifarious slips and 118

sheets Pascal left behind him

as

pensees, they do not have a complete,

given order. Most of the entries are undated. If it were not for Kierke­ gaard's use of notebooks (marked AA-JJ and NBI_NB36) for the journals proper, there would be hardly any external clues to the order of writing.

The Danish editors of the superb edition of Papirer found that Kierkegaard

non-chronological and thematic impulse in going back and adding undated marginal notations of later reflections on par­ ticular themes, also in the grouping of entries according to topic in some parts of the notebooks. Some periods are represented by entries in the

himself had followed

a

notebooks and also on loose sheets. Since it is impossible to determine the

precise chronological order, the Danish editors have simply placed the "loose" entries together following the notebook entries from a certain period.

Since there is no complete, given order, it is not surprising that there is a variety of patterns in the two Danish editions and the large selective editions in German, French, and Italian. The editors of the second edition of the Papirer, because there is no clear externally determinable order apart from the notebooks and the comparatively few dated loose entries, followed Kierkegaard's thematic intimations and placed lecture and reading notes in a

separate section within category C.

Confronted

by the over ten thousand entries in twenty volumes, plus letters and some unpublished papers, in a combination of chronological order (partly hypothetical) and substantive grouping, the editors and translators of Seren Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers chose another combination of these two orders, a stricter chronological order

(insofar as this can be determined) within thematic groupings. The primary reason for thematic grouping was the greatest possible accessibility for readers to the multiplicity of entries on the many themes which Kierkegaard pondered. Furthermore, the development of thought upon a given theme over two

decades becomes more apparent within the thematic sections. As

the editors of the

Papirer maintained, what is lost of a broad, complex (and uncertain) chronological sequence is replaced by a larger gain in

availability of substance and also by the more transparent chronological sequences along many lines.

The main possible objections,

weighed and set aside in advance by the ordering violates the order laid down

editors, by the writer. But as noted above, there is no clear and complete chrono­ logical order; every editor from Barfod on has been obliged, to some degree, to construct an order; and Kierkegaard's own approach does not indicate

are

three. First,

an

exclusive, scrupulous concern for time-order, but includes

a

thematic

thematic concern. Second, and therefore his

a

Kierkegaard was a "highly SUbjective thinker," journals and papers are essentially diaries to be read 119

chronologically as self-revelation. Whatever is to be said about subjectivity/ objectivity in Kierkegaard, he maintained that the primary loci are the reader and the work, that

a

reader's

concern

about the author is in the

sphere of gossip-hence indirect communication and pseudonymity or polynymity (VIII B 76). The journals themselves have a strikingly mini­ mal proportion of entries that could be regarded as "diary" entries. Even here we find Kierkegaard's genius for transmuting personal experience into "double reflection" available for a reader. The center of gravity is still substance for appropriation rather than autobiography for third-party scrutiny. The journals and papers are not diaries; they are essentially intel­ lectual journals and records of a keen mind and profound spirit centrally concerned with reflections upon existence for the existing subject. Kierke­ gaard cannot be either the primary subject for us or the proper object for us. The reader is the primary subject, and the substance is the proper intermediate object, and Kierkegaard, like Socrates, is a vanishing point.

Third, whatever success Kierkegaard had in writing down his thoughts "with the umbilical cord of the original mood" is diminished by editorial ordering, which makes the journals and papers the "editor's Kierkegaard."

It would seem that whatever order is used

(and every editor has had to do

considerable

organizing), the birthing of each entry is a separate event and is not immediately related to other entries-except insofar as each one springs forth at different. times from a continuing concern with persistent issues. The character of each entry, with its own degree of internal fresh­ ness, belongs to the entry itself, not in utter isolation, however, but related to recurring expressions of the same ongoing line of thought. The entries are a medley somewhat like the flashings of fireflies, culminating points of illumination from multiple moving sources of emission. The particularity and immediacy of each flash are not diminished by its being related to others with a common source. The danger of transmogrifying an author's works into someone else's "version" lies not in the ordering of fresh, individual entries but in the translating of each entry-and in the reading.

Any consideration of the task of translation, certainly the translation of Kierkegaard's writings and especially of his unpublished papers and jour­ nals, must be prefaced by a disclaimer. In principle one cannot ever say that the text at any stage is an "example of an impeccable translation" (Fear and Trembling and The Sickness unto Death, Anchor, p. 5). One may venture to claim that something he himself has said or written is the

expression of what he wanted to express, but such fine con­ gruity between an original text and a translation, even the best, is precluded in principle. consummate

In addition to the

common

demands of faithfulness to the text and of

correlative feel and intelligibility for the reader, the translation of Kierke120

mode gaard's works requires change of pace, change of style, change of and mood. These additional requirements are also implicit in the journals and papers, and perhaps to a greater degree because of the different stages of refinement of the various entries. Some are tone pieces of considerable

polish, such as the items on autumn and clouds (VIII earlier entries VI A 89-91); others

are

B

205;

see

also

transcribed versions from earlier

jottings; many trail the umbilical cord of immediacy; some are incompletely formed seed ideas; others again are the complicated paths of an active is pursuer of implications. One impulse which needs to be fought against the temptation to "improve" rough originals or to "clarify" ambiguities or to re-do

prolixity

of

expression,

even

to eliminate

the Greek, Hebrew,

Latin, and German terms and quotations. If, as editor, one is required to construct

some

order and

as

translator goes far in the interests of the

reader, he must step (as on a leg cramp) on this temptation to "improve."

Generally the writing is amazingly finished and richly freighted; when this is not the case the entries must stand "as is."

Certain terms in the journals and papers create special problems because

they have appeared in the translated works in less than fortunate or faith­ ful forms. That this could happen is not mysterious. Sometimes the choice among good alternatives is not sharply narrowed. David Swenson and Walter Lowrie argued at length over Smuler in Philosophiskae Smuler: "crumbs" or "fragments"? Either would have been suitable, although "fragments" seems preferable because it is not such an obviously extreme understatement and also because it has a closer negative relation to "system." In Journals and Papers some words have been translated differ­ ently from what appears in current English translations: for example, Angst as "anxiety" rather than "dread" (The Concept of Anxiety), Tilbli­ velse as "coming into existence" rather than '''coming into being" (1 ed. of Philosophical Fragments), Efterjelgelse as "imitation" rather than "following" or "discipleship" (Training in Christianity), Forstandighed as "sensibleness" rather than "understanding" (The Present Age), Virkelighed as "actuality" and Realitet as "reality" rather than "reality" for both (various works, excluding The Concept of Irony by Lee Caple), "i Fort­ vivelse at ville at va ere as "in despair to will to be rather than "in despair at willing to be (The Sickness unto Death), and "opbyg­ gende" as "upbuilding" rather than "edifying" (Edifying Discourses).

Although these improvements have not been carried through to all titles including these terms, the various changes do have a basis in the meaning and usage in the works and the papers taken as a whole, for example, the temporal and the eternal as the larger context of Tilblivelse and Kierke­ gaard's critical appreciation of Roman Catholicism as the larger context of Efterieigelse. With regard to the translation of du as "you" rather than "

"

...

...

"

...

121

"thou" in

religious language and personal address (Christian Discourses), forcing the anachronistic and highly distanced English usage upon the intimacy and contemporaneity of the there seems to be no justification for Danish familiar form.

A

journals and papers is the relationship for a reader between them and Kierkegaard's published works. For Kierkegaard there was a continuous, although to larger problem in

others not obvious,

the

editing

interrelationship

and

the

translating of

betweeen the

pseudonymous

works

and the signed works and between them and the secret parallel authorship.

Although one can read the journals and papers alone with a great reward of substance, tone, and expression, they should not displace the works, as happens with some discoverers of the Papirer. The Papirer illuminate and the

supplement

works, and the works

are

the

consummation

of

the

Papirer. To indicate this relationship in a way that is helpful for a reader and at the

same

time is not

a

distraction from the text, the editors of

J. and P. have used the

ordinary device of notes in an appendix rather than on the pages of the text. These notes include not only direct refer­ ences at particular points but also direction to relevant portions in various works and to secondary studies.

Finally, the prior question of the publication of the journals and papers in any language: Alt eller Intet or can a selection be justified? The first Danish edition (in eight volumes) of the Papirer was a selection from the whole. The second Danish edition in twenty volumes was also a selection, so

that only with the new Danish printing, including supplemental volumes,

will all the available papers be in print. In other languages no such edition exists. If one wants to use the Papirer in toto he will have to go to the Danish. The present edition of J. and P. (in process) will at least for a time be the

most

comprehensive

non-Danish

source,

comprising

about

two-thirds of the ten thousand entries. The justification for such an exten­ sive selection is substantial

although not conclusive. Apart from the fact that translating Kierkegaard's writing with illuminating helps for the reader takes considerably longer than it did for him to do it in the first place, there are two main reasons for a selection. Extrinsically appeal may be made to the existence of independent publication of translations of some portions of the Papirer (see pp. 102-3 of this article). The larger of these units will not be included in -J. and P.

simply because they are otherwise Intrinsically appeal may be made to the general character of categories Band C of the Papirer. Category C is composed mainly of lecture and reading notes, plus some observations on the material. The available.

comments

are

included in the selection of J. and P.,

the notes and accounts are

as

well

as

some

of

(the Schelling lectures, for example). Those who

interested in the intellectual background of the young Kierkegaard will 122

do best to go to the Danish, German,

Greek, and Latin works of the

writers and lecturers in question and to correlate them with Kierkegaard's Danish accounts. As for the drafts of manuscripts in category B, J. and P.

significant versions of crucial portions and of the most important changes. If, however, one wishes to make a thorough textual study of any of Kierkegaard's works, he will again do best to go to the Danish Papirer and finally to the manuscripts in the Royal Library in Copenhagen. For others a translation of a very comprehensive selection from the Papirer will bring closer the substance and the spirit of the works and the mind of a rare thinker with something to say to every

includes translations of the most

"common man"

or

scholar who is concerned with human existence.

Notes

Kierkegaards Papirer, I-XI" (20 volumes), ed. P. A. Heiberg, V. Kuhr, and E. Torsting (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1909-48), 2 pro with supp!. vols. and index, ed. Niels Thulstrup (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1967- ).

The Efterladte Papirer, I-VIII, ed. H. P. Barfod and H. Gottsched (1869-81), was the first edition of the posthumously published papers.

2. Seren Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers, I-[V], tr. Howard Hong and Edna Hong (Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, 1967).

3. S¢ren Kierkegaard, Die T'agebucher, I-IV-[V], ed. and tr. Hayo Gerdes (DUsseldorf: Diedrichs Verlag, 1962).

4. In 1963 the second edition of a copious selection had already appeared: S¢ren Kierkegaard, Diario, I-II, ed. and tr. C. Fabro (Brescia: Morcelliana).

J.

Soren

1.

Knirsch's Kafe i Hotel d'Angleterre.

Extractions and contractions CLARK BLAISE

Student power

Leaving my office on the twelfth floor and boarding the elevator with ten students, I have this winter's first seizure of claustrophobia. Eleven of us in heavy overcoats, crammed shoulder-to-shoulder in an over-lit stainless steel box, burning up. The elevator opens on eleven, and two students turn away, seeing it is full. We stop on ten but no one is waiting. We are trapped by the buttons other people press before they take the stairs. We will stop on every floor, it is one of those days, though we can take no one in and all of us, obviously, are dressed for the street. On eight as the doors open and no one presses "C" to close them quickly, I have a sense of how we must appear to any onlooker-like a squad of Gothic statuary, eyes averted up­ ward, silent, prayerful. On seven I sense there will be a student waiting as the door opens. He looks in, smiles, and we smile back.

The doors do not close and assembles

a

we

wait. He opens his briefcase and

machine gun. We cannot move; we are somehow humil­

iated by overcrowding. No one presses "C." A burst of fire catches us

all, economically gunned down by a grinning student. The doors close and do not open

again till we tumble out in the main lobby.

TriQuarterly

125

The street

Early November is colder this year than last. Twelve floors up, without windows, I forget about the cold. I have been reading Faulk­ for five hours and haven't

thought once of winter. I have been thinking, in fact, that with my citizenship papers I can now apply

ner

for government support in the didn't seem right.

I could have

summer.

It is cruel to confront the streets

now:

before, but it

snowless but

windy and

in the lower twenties. Such mildness will not return until late March.

November and March, deadly months. Depressing to think the dentist, like

winter, is waiting; the cold wind on a bad tooth anticipates so

much. I try to remember these streets as they were in June; a side­ walk cafe, the devastating girls in the briefest skirts and bra-less sweaters.

These streets had so many tourists in the summer, forever

asking directions and making me feel at home. At the end of the block, parked in

a

taxi space, I spot

a

modest

car

with

snow

on

the trunk and Maryland plates. On the left edge of the back bumper is

faded

"McCarthy for President" sticker and on the right, as I kick off a little snow, is the red-framed bilingual testament: "I'm Proud To Be A Canadian/Je suis fier d'etre canadien." a

The dentist

My teeth, my body, my child, my wife and the baby she is carrying are all in the hands of immigrants. All Jews. I do not know how this develops; because I am an immigrant too, perhaps. Our friends warned us against the indigenous dentists. Between hockey pucks and Pepsi caps, they said, Quebec teeth are only replaced, never filled.

This dentist's office is in

a

large, formerly-brick

office

building

stripped to its girders over the summer and then refaced with concrete panels and oblong windows. Inside, however, not a change. The corridors are still reminiscent of older high schools, missing only the rows of olive drab lockers. The doors are still darkly varnished and gummy from handling. The doctors and accountants still have their names in black on stippled glass. All this, according to Dr. Abramovitch, pains a dentist, whose restorative work is from the inside out. "Rotten inside," he snorts, poking my tooth but meaning the building. He is a man of inner peace, rumored to be a socialist. The rest of our doctors are socialists. His degrees are in that

was

126

Hebrew but for

one

for

that

Latin. I

puzzles me more, in take

in the

realize

I

before

effect

am

that

chair

waiting

Monte

Regis means Montreal. I then remember a novel I have just

the

freeze

to

read, a French-Canadian one, in which the narrator, a vendor of hot

dogs,

must

suggest AU

decide

on

ROI

CHIEN

DU

a

name

for his hot

CHAUD.

stand. The

dog

He chooses

AU

ROI

DU

purists

HOT DOG.

The author, I am told, is a separatist. I wonder if he cares that at least one

outsider has read him. Poor Montreal, I

now

think, puts up

with so much.

pulp is lost but the enamel is good. It is cheaper, he explains, to pull the tooth. "'' 'e.�� But after pulling there must be a bridge and, years later, another one.

But pulling only the nerve (his brow smooths out) and packing the canal, though the work is tedious and expensive, is lavishly recom­ mended. "I get forty-five for a nerve job, ten for a straight extraction," There is

a

battle this afternoon

to save a

tooth. The

,

he says. Pulling a nerve is a sinister phrase, smacking of an advanced,

experimental technique. But he is appealing, I can see, to all that is aesthetic in dentistry. No McTeague, this man, though his wrists bulge with competence. His extractions have been praised. I debate denying him my nerve, for with a numb jaw I can play the hero.

Lace the boot tighter, doc, 1 gotta lead my men Finally, though, no John Wayne stuff for me; I consent and he rams a platinum wire up the holes he has drilled, plunges it up and down then pulls it out, yellow with nerve-scum. This is not how I pictured my nerve, though I had never hoped to look at a nerve, surely not my own, surely ....

not this afternoon

when I left my office. Brain surgery too, I am told,

is painless after cutting through. I can hear the platinum probe grind­

ing in my cheekbone nearly to my eye and I think of those pharma­ ceutical ads that used to appear in the National Geographic of Incas performing brain surgery, spitting cocaine juice into the open skull as they cut.

"Success," he pronounces. He is happy, the tooth will drain, in a week he'll pack it. Leaving, I have doubts. No John Wayne, certainly, I'm beginning to feel like Norman Mailer. A nerve ripped from my body at twenty-seven. I am a young man, haven't deteriorated much since twenty-one, expect to remain the

least till

thirty. But somehow, some day, some minute, the next long decline begins to set in. At thirty-five I will be middle-aged. At forty, twenty-five years from my grave. When does it start-with a chipped tooth? A broken nose? same

at

127

A broken leg even?

Oh, no. It begins in choices. The road downhill

is slick with fat and fallen hair and little

pills. Bad styles and bad convictions. Pain killers, contraceptives, tranquilizers and weak erec­ tions. Pulled nerves.

St. Catherine Street

From the

dentist's,

east

on

St. Catherine is

finer street exists in my experience,

even

an

urban

paradise. No

in November. St. Catherine

should be filmed without dialogue or actors; just by letting the crowds swarm

around a mounted camera and allowing a random sound track

to pick up the talk,

doppler-ing in and fading out, from every language

in the world.

But west

St.

Catherine, especially in November, is something else. Blocks of low buildings after Guy Street, loan offices on top and business failures down below. Auto salesrooms forever changing franchises, drugstores offering two-hour pregnancy tests, news and tobacco stands, basement restaurants changing nationalities. But if it can be afforded, or if one lives only with a wife, a convenient loca­ tion. Someday Montreal will have its Greenwich Village and these on

short streets between St. Catherine and Dorchester will be the center.

I stop at

bin is

full

unlighted tobacconist's for the papers. One window of pipes and tins of tobacco, the other of dusty sex an

magazines from every corner of the Western world. The owner stands all day at the door and opens it only if you show an interest. Other­ wise, it's locked, without lights. I stop in daily for my Star and Devoir.

I always have two dimes because he keeps no observable change. He always responds, "Merci." His face implies that he has suffered; also that he survives now in his darkened store by selling far more than the Star, La Presse, and all the Greek and German stag magazines.

I have seen men enter the store and say things I couldn't understand and the owner presents them with Hungarian, with Yiddish, with Ukrainian, with Latvian papers. Then they chat. Perhaps he speaks no English and just a word or two of French. Like my dentist, a man, ultimately, of mystery.

My wife Is it most significant that I say first she is a Ph.D. teaching at McGill and making more than I; or that she is mother of our three-year-old

boy and is now eight months pregnant and still teaching? Or that 128

she is Indian and is

one

of those

small radiant

women

one

sees

billowing under Western overcoats? I'm home early to let the frozen jaw thaw and to see if the nerveless tooth will keep me from lecturing tonight. My

on

larger

campuses,

their red

or

purple

sari-ends

wife should be in her office and our son at the sitter's.

emptier than usual: there's been some attempt at tidying, the lights are off and the afternoon gloom through the fiberglas curtains is doubly desolate. I drop the briefcase, turn The

apartment

seems

lights in the front room, then put coffee water on to boil in the dark narrow kitchen. Roaches scurry as I hit the light. I realize, on touching the cups, that the heat is low-maybe off. We have only four rooms but a very long hall; it curves twice and divides the apartment sharply. It costs us a great deal.

There is nothing distinctive about our place; given our double incomes, our alleged good taste, our backgrounds, this becomes distinctive. Other Indian, or semi-Indian, couples we know keep a virtual bazaar of silks and brasses and hempen rugs and eat off the floor at least once a week. Curries five nights a week, which keeps the wife (Indian or not) slaving away all afternoon. Fresh incense burned each day. And though I do not like them, I sometimes envy them. There are days in November even without aching teeth that I realize how little I've done to improve our lives, how thwarted my sense of style has become.

I am sipping coffee when I hear the toilet flush in the rear of the apartment. I hurry back and find my wife rearranging the covers over her belly. She smiles and tells me to sit and keep time while on

the

she rests.

Contractions

Starting three hours earlier she's been having regular contractions of a mild variety; so mild that she hasn't bothered to call me. The cycle is steady but speeding up. "I'm sorry I haven't done the shop­ ping," she says, smiling like a Hemingway heroine whose pain would crush a man. She assures me the contractions are light-almost delicious. Indians like massages, have special names for pressures and positions; it is something I have learned, something I can ad­ minister. "It's

a

false alarm," she insists. Nevertheless I decide

call Dr.

to

Lapp. He seems ignorant of the case until I remind him that my wife is the Indian lady. "Ah, yes," he says, "don't panic."

129

I

to

am

take her in

only

if

they get severe

and

come

every two

minutes.

"This is

silly," she protests when they begin coming every two minutes. "I'm actually looking forward to them." She wants me to leave her at home and go back to school to eat and prepare my lecture. But I stand by my duty: pack her bag, call the sitters and tell them I'll pick up our boy around ten-thirty. They offer to have him

spend the night, but I refuse. I want him with me.

The

hospital

We live

just off St. Catherine, just where we want to be, but the hospital is suburban, in the deadly Western sections, because all of Dr. Lapp's patients live there. We do not have a French doctor because, I suppose, of the rumored Catholic position on the primacy of the fetus. Dr. Lapp is from Boston but interned at McGill and, for some reason, stayed. One doesn't trust a people until he trusts their doctors. This suburban hospital is reached by a three-dollar taxi ride. It fits into the neighborhood like a new church or modern school: low, long, red-brick, like every duplex on every street in the far Western sections of Montreal. This is where my colleagues live; this is all they know of Montreal if like me they came here late: a bus line, a transfer point, the Metro stops, and school. Some shop­ ping, some bookstore browsing, a movie or two a month. None of them speaks a dozen words of French.

The doors of this hospital are marked: TIRER/PULL, POUSSER/PUSH, and beyond the CAISSE/RECEPTIONIST, I see a sign: ASCENSEUR/ ELEVATOR. For some reason I am thinking of a little test I once administered to some friends in the English Department, and not of my wife, who is being admitted. It was a recognition test. All of the

men

had either been born

or

had lived at least five years in

supplied some everyday words and asked if they could give equivalents in English, and some of the words, I recall, were tirer and pousser, and defense de stationner, and arretez. A man who Montreal. I

owned

a

car

barrassed and

such

a

identified both arretez and sortie. The others felt a

little defensive.

test to some of

They told

me

the others, those who

em­

that I should

give

harder

know

were

to

and not quite so friendly, who lived in converted stables and in lofts down in the old

city,

and whose children men

were,

130

whose second wives

were

French-Canadians

rigid little lycees in Outremont. Those admittedly, a little frightening. Also a little foolish. Is went

to

there nothing in between? I wonder

now

what I

was

trying to prove

evening courses in conversational French, my subscriptions to French magazines, my pride in reserving English for school and home, no place else. The depth of my commitment, to

my first year here with my

trivia.

Mongolism

Secretly I have been worrying that this second child will be Mon­ goloid. It seems that the papers and all the polite journals that flood our

house have featured technical articles for the

common

reader

Mongolism. I know the statistics and I know what to look for even in a newborn infant. Position of the ears, size of tongue, bridge of nose, shape of feet, length of fingers. Blood, heart, lungs. The options: to commit him on sight to a home that will clean him, feed him, and let him die from the simplest illness; or to take him home and try to make him comfortable, all the time hoping that his weakened organs will overcome our love, our guilt, and will fail him. Strangely, I do not fear anything physical. Because I am a professor and tend to minimize the physical? Because I seek punishment for the way we live, what we're doing to our older boy who deserves better, with

on

too many sitters and too much

and prepare? I support, in

a

unlicensed television while

we

read

bloodless and abstract way, euthanasia.

Youth in Asia. I fear for the child because I refuse to doubt myself?

I fear for the child because I fear

even

more

my intentions towards

him?

I remember the

night he must have been conceived. My wife had been off her pills, for they make her sick too many mornings. She would vomit and teach, vomit and teach. I was sick with migraine.

We had been quiet in bed, I gave her a kiss and turned away. A few minutes later, as I turned back in the dark, my lips brushed her nose. She had turned towards me, not away, and suddenly it was like discovering a beautiful stranger in my bed; there was nothing tender that night, nothing to become this child like his begetting. The only good sign. As for the rest, no health can come from something so unplanned, from parents so slovenly, an apartment so pest-infested and uninviting.

Evening lecture Another three-dollar ride home, quick change from

possible-paternity clothes, no supper or preparation, heat definitely gone, then a brisk 131

walk down St. Catherine to school. Even in winter, when the weather be the most

unpleasant on the continent, I've found myself sur­ facing from the Metro and gawking at the buildings and people rather than moving on, out of the cold. Tonight, maybe a father for the second time, I walk slowly, smiling. I'll never be quite at home here, though now even a citizen; I'm as much a stranger, in my way, as the others that I know. Colleagues in the suburbs, legendary swingers down in the stables near the docks-this city makes fools of us all.

Then I think that living here is perhaps a low-grade art experience.

I feel the life of the sidewalk, feel content for inexplicable reasons, simply for being here. Where else in the world is Englais spoken? I read in the paper of a French-Canadian student leader explaining in English why he demonstrated: We are not complotting, he said. We are manifesting for more subventions. And I understood every word.

I shouldn't complain of those Western suburbs and of the isolation

can

of the housewives that I teach,

nor

should I worry about my tolerant,

scholarly friends who see so little around them. Perhaps they see beyond the obvious, beyond the neutralizing bi-lingualism that sur­ rounds them. Perhaps I'm only stuck on the obvious.

There are hundreds, thousands, of evening students milling along the boulevard and side streets in front of the school. The boulevard is five lanes wide but pinched to

trickle while parents,

boy-friends, moving slowly drop caught towards the revolving doors, and I am thinking now only of the lecture, wondering how I'll pick up my boy after the lecture and get him fed and dressed in the morning and finally-Lard-what we'll do if this is the real child, tonight, six weeks before the Christmas holidays when he was providentially due. Must everything we do be so tightly budgeted? In Buddenbrooks the hero dies prematurely after die a dental visit, without a nerve even being discussed. I could tonight of a dozen things, all deserved. and taxis

off students. I

a

am

in

crowd

a

An Indian

From the hundreds in front of the school,

I

am

grabbed by an

high Tashkent fur cap and lamb's wool coat. He seizes an elbow as though in anger, his gloved fingers press painfully through my coat and sports jacket.

"This is not the Krishna Temple?"

I give him directions.

He frowns, presses me harder, for this does not please him. Crowds Indian

man

132

in

a

Why seize me, I want to cry, the scent of a martyred wife is that strong? He can tell? But his grip is serene, impersonal, and painful.

"Nevertheless I will enter," he says, "this place." of students swirl around

us.

"Fine."

"I must present documents."

Again, he is asking.

I tell him he

mustn't.

place is."

"A university." I know this will confuse him. This is the largest academic building in the Commonwealth, but it looks nothing like a "What this

school. He presses harder.

"It is very late."

The

is

like

department store, which it already resembles with its escalators and high ceilings. We push through a door, two-by-two, and his grip loosens until I begin to pull away.

"You are not a student," he says, or asks; "you are," and he strains as though making a difficult judgment, "another thing."

And then suddenly he drops my arm and takes off through the lobby

packed

a

crowd. No chance to catch him, shake

him, and demand how he

found me, of all

people, tonight of all nights. A brown angel, not of death but perhaps of impairment? My wife in pain? Dying? The baby? Me? I push to the escalator then turn quickly in order to find him in the lobby and it is not difficult; he cuts through the crowd as though somehow charmed, just as I had feared. Students part to let him pass, I

call

even

those who do not see him.

wife

during the intermission. The contractions have stopped, she's had a pill and will spend the night. Home after breakfast. A little fatigued, they said. She is preparing her Wednesday my

lecture.

The

night

From school I take

a

taxi to the

baby-sitter's-two

dollars-and

gather my son in his blanket and carry him back to the waiting cab.

Another

two-fifty. I get home to find it much colder, the first heat

failure of the winter. What does this mean? I put him in our bed, look for extra blankets but can't find them, call the landlord's an­

swering service,

then crawl in with my clothes I lectured in.

boy, fully dressed

in the

Sometime deep and cold in the night he pulls the cover from me and tugs my hand until I waken. He is

crying, standing on the rug 133

with his

pajama bottoms down and pointing towards the bathroom.

I follow his hand and see-in several peaks-the movement he'd run to the bathroom to prevent. The two largest mounds are on the rug; several more, including what he's stepped on and carried far down the hall and all

over

the bathroom floor, is

on

the hardwood

overlap around the rug.

It is three in the morning. The time of the crack-up. I stoop, shiver­ ing, over piles of gelatinous shit on our only decent possession, an Irish wool rug. My boy, guilty and frightened, steps up his crying.

Back to bed, I snap, weary but forgiving, and he counters, "Where's mommy?" but there is no time to explain. "You bad!" he cries, and hits me,

screams

wonder,

not so much

louder,

and I'm close to tears. Can I leave

it, I

wanting to but not knowing how to start. I carry him to the bathroom, clean his feet, his bottom, then return him to bed. I have never been so awake; I see perfectly with no lights on.

I mop the hall and the bathroom floor. In the half-dark kitchen I grab a knife and cereal bowl, then the rug shampoo and brush from an undisturbed plastic tub under the sink. I scrape the rug with the knife, try to pick up everything I can see with the help of the bathroom light, then dip the brush in hot soapy water and begin to scrub.

For a minute or two it goes well, then I notice glistening shapes staggering from the milky foam; the harder I press, the more appear.

My child has roaches, his belly is teeming, full of bugs, a plague of long brown roaches is living inside him, thriving on our neglect. The roaches creep and dart in every direction, I whack them with the wooden brush but more are boiling from the foam and now they

appear on my hand and arm. I see two on the shoulder of my white shirt. I shout but my throat is closed after an evening lecture-I sputter

phlegm. These are not my son's; they are the rug's. The other side of this fine Irish rug that we bought for a house that we later de­ cided against, this rug that we haven't turned in months and haven't sent out to be cleaned, is a sea of roaches. I drop the brush and look underneath. Hairpins and tufts of tissue: an angry wave of roaches walking the top of the brush and glistening in the fibers like wet leaves beginning to stir. My brush, I want to cry, feeling betrayed: the brush was my friend. I pick it up and run with it down the hall, the filthiest thing I've ever held. I hear the roaches dropping to safety on the floor. It occurs to me as I open the apartment door and then the double doors of the foyer, and as I fling the brush over 134

one

curb of parked cars, that a drop of soapy water anywhere in this

apartment would anger the roaches: the drawers, the mattresses, the good china, the silverware at night. First brushes, then rugs, and any­

thing fine we might possibly buy or try to preserve; everything decent will yield to roaches. All those golden children of our joint income, infested.

Morning dawns After the rug I do the floors again, even the kitchen and hall and living room. I rewash every dish, spray ammonia where I can't reach.

Then I throwaway the mops and sponges, as the pharaohs had killed their slaves, then killed the slaves that had dug the graves, killed the slaves that killed the slaves

....

Not

a

sponge,

a

rag,

a

bucket,

a

scrap of newspaper or length of paper-toweling left. At six o'clock in a freezing apartment, with an aching former nerve, I open the windows and clean the outside, wiping with my handkerchief,

mop,

a

then

throwing it away. By six-thirty near-light, by street and alley lamp, the place looks clean and ready for people. Ready for more than our basic used Danish. Ready for youth, I let myself think: for sitars in the corner, fishnets on the wall, posters, teakwood chests.

In with pillows and garish cottons, out with sofas, tables, and doors.

Sitting on the Danish sofa, wrapped in my overcoat, I can almost hear the guests arriving, smell the incense, sway to Ravi Shankar records. No more getting by, child by child, book by book, lecture by lecture.

I part the fiberglas curtains. It is snowing heavily now, with tiny flakes. The threw is

cars

will be stuck-thank God

we

walk. The brush I

white, straddled by the tracks of an early car. After such

roaches, what improvement? A loft, a farmhouse, a duplex five miles out? Five years in this very

place living for the city, the city our prize. For what we've caught, stopped, saved, we could have camped along St. Catherine Street. Holding on to nothing, because we were young and didn't need it. Always thinking: no compromise. Always thinking: there is nowhere else we'd rather be. Nowhere else we can be, now. Old passports, pulled nerves, resting in offices. I think of my friends, the records they cry over, silly poems set to music, and I could cry

as

windshields,

well. At the window I watch the hear the

men

brush off their

engines trying to start. My son will

soon

waking. I drop the curtains and go to put on water.

135

be

Dreamlight JAMES McNIECE

.

the Six Characters enter.

.

.

.

A tenuous

light surrounds them, almost as if irradiated the dream lightness in which they hy them seem suspended ...

...

along the back wall. Spotlight on the table at center. All sit just beyond the perimeter of bright circle.

Martin and Georgia. Peter. The buxom woman with the striptease

Stone cool and dim. A bar

name:

Jewele Caprice.

Martin, "Six Characters? In the summer? Up here?"

Peter, "You city folk! We're very sophisticated. Up here. You

just have to look close."

Jewele (flouncing, flapping, the bangles on her wrists clicking and glittering in the spotlight), "Like me. A beauty shop owner. Who'd ever think I want to be on the stage?"

Martin, "But isn't it a little strong? I mean, who wants to see Pirandello on their vacation?"

Georgia (to her husband), "Who wants to direct it on his vacation?" (to the others) "Martin's first summer off in four years. He's been up to here with the goddamn theater!"

Jewele, "You don't like college theater, Mr. Franklin?"

Martin, "Well, it gets you down." (lights a cigarette, blows smoke up into the spotlight above the table) "Everything's really burlesque.

Padded out bosoms. Powdered gray hair. You know what a kid's idea

TriQuarterly

137

of thirty-five is? to

Somebody can barely drag from one end of a table

the other."

Jewele, "You teach them. I'd say that's an opportunity."

Martin, "But everything's so Well, unprofessional. Never feels like the real thing."

Jewele (primping, clacking her bangles again), "I don't suppose this is the real thing, either. We only do it once a summer. To keep .

up

our

.

.

illusions."

Peter, "I have no illusions! A saloon owner without any customers.

Who likes

pretending at actor once a year. God knows, I've got the time!" (stands) "Nobody ever comes in here. Except free loaders like you." (takes a step back, holds an imaginary pad and pencil) "Beer all around?" (as he turns, the light above the table falters.

He swears loudly) "Damn this electricity!"

On his way to the bar, Peter stops at wall right and adjusts the switch. In a moment the light steadies at the table. Martin, dis­ tracted by the quivering light, continues to look up at it while the ladies talk about him.

Georgia, "Martin's trouble isn't illusions. It's taking everything too seriously."

Jewele, "Why, no one gets serious up here. We wouldn't allow it. This is just our summer thing. For our own enjoyment."

Georgia, "My husband do a play for enjoyment! That I'll have to see!"

Martin

(smiling), "The author tells us it's a comedy. Why should I take it too seriously?"

Georgia, "Because you never learned to follow directions."

The light begins to shake once more as Peter returns to the table.

Martin, "What is it with that thing?"

Peter, "Oh, those damn electricians!"

He distributes the

right and adjusts the switch again until the light steadies. Then rejoins the others at the table. They all lift their glasses and touch them before drinking.

Martin, "Besides, our producer's the one with the problems. A big beer, goes back

to wall

cast, Peter. Where do you find that many actors?"

Peter, "You ever wonder where all your former students are?"

Martin, "No." Peter, "They're all up here. In disguise. They own stores. Antiques.

Hardware. Art 138

supplies. Mostly tourist traps."

"My former students!"

Peter, "Certainly. This is a regular graveyard Martin (with mock disbelief),

"

....

Martin, "Please!" for (laughing), "Okay. Let's say: resting place. Anyway, the play, everyone's lined up. That is, practically everyone."

Martin (to the ladies), "Interesting word. Practically. Maybe we'll practically put on a play!"

Peter

Peter, "I admit the male parts idea. There's this guy. Has a big sort of retired. I thought maybe

little vague. But I've got an place outside town. Thing is, he's

are

a

you'd go

background in New York.

Martin, "He's experienced?"

Peter, "Oh, yes."

know. With your

ask him, He

Marty.

You

might go for it."

Martin, "What's his name?"

Peter (looking around sheepishly as if wanting to avoid the answer),

"Bobby MacDrew."

Jewele (bangles clattering), "Good heavens! That foolish little boy from the movies! The little creep with the dog!"

Peter, "Well, he was an actor."

Georgia, "Bobby MacDrew in Pirandello! Who on earth would he play?"

Either The Son. Or The Father. Hard to pic­ Peter, "I guess. ture. He's got to be older than in those movies! Anyhow, he must have had training."

Georgia, "So did the dog."

Peter (looking hurt), "Oh, hell. It's just an idea. What do you think, Marty?"

Martin, "Okay with me. I've got no reputation to lose."

Peter, "You'll go ask him?"

Martin, "Why not? So he turns us down. No disaster. Anything to help my embattled producer."

Peter, "That's the spirit!" (jumps up, slaps the table, and the light is set off flickering again) "Damn! Those lousy electricians!" (heads for the switch on wall right) "This rotten wiring!" ..

Short, bulbous, the lady at the door wore long skirts and a polka­ dot kerchief. She looked right from the

pancake box. But as if per­

manently miscast, she was white.

"Come right in. Mr. MacDrew is expecting."

139

"I'm Martin Franklin."

"That's right. You sit down in there. He's expecting."

The

sitting room was almost as large as their whole apartment in New York. There they often felt cramped. Was it possible to feel too much space in the country? The room, anyway, looked hardly used. A large painted wood mermaid stretched outward from one corner. Meant to be a ship's figurehead, it had that precise unreality of a prop on a movie set.

"I'm

Bobby MacDrew. Glad you could corne, Mr. Franklin."

Martin jumped. It was like a cue had been missed and someone popped onstage at the wrong place in the action.

"Hello. Hope I'm not bothering you."

"Not at all! Don't have many people these days."

"Well, I know you must guard your privacy."

"Really nothing much to guard anymore."

"Suppose there are compensations in that. After all your public years."

"Oh, I live on compensations now, Mr. Franklin. Glass of sherry?"

His face looked-how to put it?-prepared. Even up close it was hard to say if he was right for The Son or The Father. His white shaggy hair pad youthful lustre. Eyebrows another shade of white altogether. Cheeks wrinkled but firm. Blue eyes definitely the product of contact lenses. An absurd Hawaiian shirt fell almost to the knees of his baggy salmon colored trousers.

All together, he held two stemmed glasses and a cut glass decanter, but he managed to pour the sherry all right.

"So you're in the theater, Mr. Franklin?"

"Well, I teach drama in college."

"I see. Never had the time to go to college myself. Those were the years I worked. And before. I retired at twenty-three. Curious, isn't it?"

"You

were out

"Quite

out.

of films that young?"

Just

as

well. I felt rather worked

through by then.

That's curious, too, isn't it?"

"Well, you look the picture of health, Mr. MacDrew."

"Oh, yes. The picture. That's what it really is. Pictures. I mean all this."

He

gestured around the sitting room.

"Looks very comfortable."

140

deny that. The Studio built this house for me, you know. Sort of like the gold watch others get when they retire. They gave me Bessie, the housekeeper, too. I can't deny it's comfortable."

"Y ou read about so many penniless actors. I mean, in their old age."

"Oh, no. I was provided for very well. They can't be faulted for that. Listen. Hang on to your glass. You might as well have the grand tour."

Bobby led the way, stemmed glass in one hand, decanter swinging in the other. He padded ahead with a gait that suggested his feet had worn sandals for decades. His body drifted, with easy fluidity, in abso­ lute leisure. It was difficult to imagine him picking up the hills, through the woods of his estate. He was the perfectly adjusted indoor man.

Decanter of sherry swinging in his fingers at ten in the morning.

Ambling, ambling through his hallways. They pressed gently at doors, pushed softly at entrances. The kitchen with its polished woodware.

The sun room with its rattan furniture, trees outside the glass walls.

More deliberately, they entered the game room. Under the shaded lamp the pool carpet lay green beneath the carefully racked triangle "Yes. I can't

of colored balls.

"They're all ready."

"Afraid I'd be a little rusty."

"Just

well. Here. Have another

glass." His voice had the same ambling softness as his body. "Actually I play better alone. Make impossible shots. But, then, that's the problem. Can't drop a thing when I play with others. Curious, isn't it? I practice all the time."

He smiled as they stepped from the room.

"You wouldn't be putting me on? That trophy in the case "'Putting you on.' That's an expression these days, isn't it?

No, the Studio gave me that trophy. Of course, first they gave it as

"

....

to the mayor of some little town. Then he gave it to

me

in front of a

crowd of people. It says 'For Humanitarian Feelings.' Whatever that means. I got it when I was fourteen. Let's go in the den, Mr. Frank­

lin. That's a nice place to have one's

sherry."

Mac Drew switched on a light and the sun appeared to blaze from a painting that almost covered one wall. Leaves, branches, the sky.

It seemed

incongruous when the real thing was on the other side of the wall.

They took chairs on opposite sides of the room, facing the

picture. Martin

turned toward MacDrew. Then

saw

the

dog.

141

chair, front paws extended and head down deep between its legs. The long russet coat was settled on its form. Even in sleep it had that benign and handsome Curled

on

the floor beside the man's

and intelligent demeanor.

someplace they always kept a stable of them."

"Yes. That's true. But none was like the original Sandy."

MacDrew sipped at his sherry, free hand dangling toward the floor, gently probing the limp russet hair behind the dog's head. Could he possibly have known how people thought about him? Even now, he looked more natural with the dog. Did the Studio keep him stocked?

With descendants of the original? Or maybe just replicas. That looked close enough.

"So you live in the city, Mr. Franklin?"

"Yes. I'd never be comfortable in the country. Like you."

"I read

"Oh, I'm not a native, either. Born in the Bronx. In my teens I

thought

I'd retire to

an

apartment

Central Park.

near

Suppose I

could have. Just didn't work out that way."

"Shows you my gullibility! I always believed movies. Would've sworn you were from Scotland."

that

stuff in the

MacDrew laughed broadly.

Peacefully, the dog slept on.

"Surprised at you, Mr. Franklin! A man from the theater! My name's really Mendel. Isn't that absurd? When I was a kid, the closest thing to Scotland I ever saw was the Polo Grounds. It was absolutely forbidden in my contract to tell anyone my identity. In those days, I don't think

even

the other actors knew."

"Y ou had to do a Scotch brogue all the time? When you were just a

kid?"

"No, I spoke normally. You know, I No

one

ever

never

thought

seemed to notice. Of course, I had

She must have known. But the others of everything, I guess. Names. over there."

....

a

about that.

diction coach.

Well, it was the suggestion

Scenery. The lakes and heather. Like

Through the woods down a hill to the right was a lake. Still farther, on a distant slope, the faint daub of flora. Indistinct, but vaguely purple.

"Gorgeous painting!"

"Why, Mr. Franklin. You must be-what's the expression?-put­ ting me on."

He pointed at the painting.

142

"No, no. It's beautiful."

"But, I should have told you. It's not a painting. Sorry. I would've

thought anyone could tell. That's a movie on the wall."

"A movie?"

haven't started running it yet. Frankly, I wasn't sure you'd want me to. After all, those old films were a perfect bore to a lot of "I

people." one

of your movies?"

frame.

They've given

"I don't get it. This is "Yes.

The

opening

me

the

whole series.

Beautiful panorama, isn't it? Of course, the heather's dubbed in.

They were all filmed right up in this country, you know. That's why

they built me the house here."

"And you can show the picture now?"

"Oh, yes. There behind you. In the wall. Listen, I don't like to be a

bore. But

are

you interested in

seeing it? Bessie will be glad to

bring more sherry."

"Well, okay. Be delighted."

"Takes about an hour. They made them mercifully short in those days." He turned to a panel of dials like an elaborate hi-fi set. "With or without the sound? I've been running them without lately. Seem to have a better effect that way."

"Sure. Let's just look at the picture."

"I've rung for Bessie. Of course, feel free to talk while the picture's on. I hate solemnity about old things. This is the first one, I think.

SANDY FINDS HER. HOME."

Whatever it was-wall, painting, scene-it jumped alive.

There was a breeze. Big green leaves with yellow veins fluttered in the foreground. A bird grazed swiftly across the

top. The sunlight,

longer constant, flickered over trees, shrubs, the ground. Speckling shadows toyed with the branches. A squirrel darted, sat up, perked its head left, darted again. Everything seemed to move for the camera,

no

which remained still.

"You know, that's a fine idea. As though in the woods yourself.

Taking it all in."

you're standing quietly

"Yes? I suppose it was their intention. In those days I could

hardly

have known the subtleties. But look there, Mr. Franklin.

Way off by the lake. I've always admired this. The way they brought us in."

The

foreground trees and leaves gradually lost their focus. Two tiny figures in the distance took form. The boy seemed to be sitting.

143

Did he throw a stone in the water? Was that a

splash? It made the eye struggle. But the camera was patient, as if waiting until the figures were ready to make their move. Now it was clearer. The boy knelt on one knee, pointing up the hill toward the camera. The house.

It had to be his house. The boy stood and he and the dog headed up the hill. They grew larger, but slowly. The boy stooped at intervals, picking up stones, tossing them into the trees. The dog bounded off in all directions. Then, its patience expended, the camera zoomed in and there they were, overwhelming in size. Ears up, almost smiling, Sandy. And in a natty green tam, spotty-toothed, blue-eyed Bobby MacDrew.

The present

MacDrew, with his sherry, scraped at his knee and grunted approval. The present dog, curled on the floor, slept.

"By God, always admired that! Got to hand it to them. Even in those days people were clever."

"It's

a

nice idea.

Identify you with the woods. Then bring you

right into the mind from the outdoors."

A panel of light, first a sliver, then wide, marred the effect. Mo­ mentary. The panel snapped out.

"Sorry. That was Bessie. Here. It'd be easier if you poured your own. You know, I enjoy having you, Franklin. Don't get out much myself. Just doesn't seem to agree with me. Not sure why. The com­ fort here, I suppose."

Martin poured his sherry and peered into the movie kitchen.

Bobby was whittling an apple and Sandy snapped for the scraps as they fell to the floor. Bobby withheld the remainder of the apple.

Sandy pleaded, pawing at the boy's lap. Soon, they were happily en­ tangled, rolling, tumbling, wrestling on the kitchen floor. A fadeout and new scenes. But in a while the sequences became distorted. With the

sherry. With all of it. Being in the house with the current Mac­

Drew. Out in the movie with the old. The

man

with no age. Retired

twenty-three. A public idol who found public life didn't agree.

Bessie, the housekeeper, at his every call. Provided. As everything.

His comfort, his life, provided. It all fused and the scenes of the movie pushed madly against one another. Angry dog owner, with shotgun, come to claim his dog. Sobbing boy in rustic attic. Stiff-lipped mother.

White-haired father puffing pipe. A little girl in calico skipped some­ how between scenes and trees. All pushed toward an overpowering radiance. The dog owner, without shotgun, disclaiming ownership. at

144

Mother and father alive with pride. The little girl aglow with love. And,

triumphant closeup, Sandy and Bobby beaming into each other's eyes with joyous adoration. Now back to the panorama. Trees

in

a

final

and leaves in front. The lake and the heather distant once more. The

regained its composure to watch them file away.

"You're right. They knew what they were doing. I try to tell my kids at school. Learn from the past. But they resist. You know what camera

had

I mean, MacDrew?"

"By God, they had imagination! Look there! I've always admired the way they handled this!"

Just before the end, the dog and the boy turned. Dog first, as though its conception. The boy waved, slowly.

"I'm sorry you don't get out much, Mr. MacDrew. As a matter of fact, I came up to ask you But the man wasn't listening. Sherry glass discarded, he was gazing "

....

at the screen and

waving at the boy in the movie before he faded into the wall. His other hand hung toward the floor, stroking the long russet hair of the sleeping dog. It lay there with forepaws extended and head planted down between its legs. Perfectly still.

The

light falters. Under it, Martin sits hunched at the table over the script. Repeatedly he looks up at the light with annoyance, finding it hard to read with the flickering. Peter enters, looks toward the table, walks to wall right. He adjusts the switch until the light steadies.

Martin, "This happen all over town?"

Peter, "They say there's nothing dangerous. But they don't get it fixed! Damned fools

are

in every week!"

Martin, "Suppose they went out during the play?"

Peter, "No trouble there. Just here in the saloon. It's the rotten wiring!" (sits at the table, puts his copy of the script before him) "Coming along pretty good, isn't it?"

Martin, "Splendid. You were right. There are people with talent up here."

The ladies enter, dressed in work clothes. They head toward the bar. Jewele is laden with various brushes, paints, rags, cans. Georgia carries

huge roll of white paper. She unrolls it atop the bar, along its whole length.

Jewele, "Poster painting day! Any orders?"

Peter, "Orders about what?" a

145

Jewele, "Why, anything! to

use

What color to

paint the letters. Whether

the word six. Or the number."

Peter, "Where's that thing going, anyway?"

Jewele, "From one lamp post to another. Over Main Street. You're

putting it there, my dear."

Peter, "It won't make any difference. Nobody ever comes."

Georgia, "That's not the point. One just doesn't have a play with­ out advertising."

The ladies go about their business, giving the impression they're quite uninterested in whatever advice the men might offer. They arrange themselves so that Georgia sketches the outlines of the letters and Jewele follows behind painting them in.

Martin, "Well, I guess it's not so bad. Having illusions once a year." (lights a cigarette, blows smoke upward into the light) "You know what I learned, Peter? When I was in school? That I'd never make it as an actor. I mean, that was the one real thing I learned."

Peter, "You're still in the theater."

Georgia (without looking up from her work), "And you've done very well, too."

Martin, "In a way, it was a good thing. I mean, finding out when I

was

young. I've

always been conscious of it. As a teacher. Know

what I mean? You encourage them. At the same time, puncture their

illusions."

Peter, "You mean false illusions."

Martin, "Sure. What else are they then? You know, it must be a hell of

a

thing to realize-say at thirty-five-you've got no talent.

What do you do then?"

Jewele

(also without looking up), "Become a pervert and live in

the

Village."

Georgia, "Are you getting too serious, Martin?"

Peter, "He's just brooding. It's called Director's Disease."

Georgia, "Let's pray for a mild case. Because it's decidedly communicable. I know. I've caught it many times."

Martin, "Nothing to worry about. It's unfatal." (stretches, puffs smoke up at the light) "Anyhow, it isn't the play. It's that guy up there."

Georgia, "Bobby MacDrew?"

Peter, "You're worrying about him?"

Martin, "Not worrying."

146

Jewele, "If you ask

me,

it's

a

good thing he turned you down."

Peter, "Agreed. He wouldn't have fit in at all. It was a stupid idea in the first

place."

Martin, "Well, actually he didn't."

Peter, "Didn't what?"

Martin, "Turn me down."

Georgia (glancing up), "Martin! You told us he did."

Martin, "Fact is, I never asked him. Of course, I knew what his answer

would be."

Peter, "Who cares? You'd think he was some great old Laurence Olivier.

Decaying up there in the hills for lack of work."

Martin, "It isn't the kind of actor he

was.

It's the kind of

man

he is now."

Georgia, "Whichever. It's absurd to get sad over him."

Martin, "I'm not sad. Little shocked. But not sad." (puffs on his cigarette, pages idly through Or young, either.

He's not

script) "You know, he isn't old. really anything. Not dead. Not alive." the

Georgia, "For heaven's sake, Martin! If you must, be serious.

But don't be morbid, too!"

Martin, "The thing is, I didn't tell you all of it. What I said was true.

Watching the old movie and that. But I didn't tell you everything."

Peter, "You said he's contented. That's enough for me."

Martin, "It was the dog. Remember I said there was a dog? Sleep­ ing, on the floor beside him? Slept through everything. Laughter.

Movie. And when the film was over I asked him a crazy thing. I asked if the Studio supplied him with dogs. Ones just like the original."

Peter, "That should've been evident. They gave him everything else.

"

Martin,

"I

that's

he

surprised at my question.

Anyway, what he told me was a little startling. He said that was the original. guess

why

was

"

The ladies both look up.

Georgia, "What on earth did he mean?"

Martin, "Just what he said. That is the original Sandy up there."

Jewele, "That's impossible! Those films were made years ago.

That dog couldn't possibly be alive."

Martin, "It isn't. It's been preserved."

Peter, "Mounted? People don't do that with dogs!"

Martin, "They did it with this one. I saw it."

147

lewele, "It's revolting!"

thing is it's real but not alive. There. But not there. And that's exactly how I felt about him. Bobby MacDrew. I can't get it out of my head."

Georgia, "Unnatural! Disgusting!"

I suppose it's like us, too.

Martin, "I suppose so. Then again Martin, "Well, certainly strange. And, you

see,

the

....

Isn't it? Like all our illusions."

For

a

brief

second, everyone freezes. Then the ladies go back to

their task. Peter opens the

script and pages through it.

Peter, "Yes, sir. Really coming along fine. Isn't it, Marty?"

We'll have To see.

Martin, "Well, in rehearsal. (stands, walks around the table, causing the light to falter once again)

"

...

" ...

have to see.

....

" .

.

Peter, "Goddamn those lousy electricians! Goddamn that

rotten

wiring!"

Peter starts to get up but Martin motions that he will take of it. He goes to wall right.

care

'

Martin, "Yes. We'll have to wait. To see." (reaches for the switch, then turns

slowly with a playful grin, suddenly twists the switch, puts out the light. He shouts out loudly in the dark) "BECAUSE about

SEEING'S BELIEVING!

WE ALL KNOW

A moment past his

THAT!"

voice, a swift explosion of light like a photo­

flash from the spot above the table. For an instant all is blazingly recorded: By the bar from left to right: Georgia and lewele. Bobby MacDrew

and Bessie.

Peter

and

Martin.

On

the

floor,

the inert

lump of the mounted sleeping dog. Together the people hold up the unfinished poster with its carnival color letters.

SIX CHARACT

Then, flash of light dead, the Stone cool and black.

148

room

turns

vacant.

Still.

Silent.

Hotel Rivello ROBERT SWARD

Working-is it room 1 or B World A or Ward C

Radios in

Spanish, a village in the mountains, A small boy in Mayfair The Red Giant in Stockholm.

Here are the flies. A great many weird bells The woman in the next bed aching in every muscle.

If she

could, she says, she would stay

asleep for the next 3 months.

If only this were possible Or that I

were

the Red Giant

Or Donald Pleasence in some really creepy movie.

I conceive of

And feel In

a

few large moves,

wholly destructive,

only relief.

village 2000 miles from America It takes so little to inhabit a single lightbulb, a

To reside whole weeks in

one

another's mouth,

To go under the couch and shake for two nights It feels so good to release ALL THAT POWER 149

One looks afterwards, she says, almost smug That fucked-up ecstatic look

Certainly it's a new discovery Should we go further South?

I don't like heat and the temperatures are

currently 1150

I go up onto the roof, the Hotel Rivello, And fly one red kite and one green kite and wait, H. D. Thoreau wrote, "There

are

few

or

no

bluish animals."

I hear her coming up the iron stairs.

The Mayan bellboy.

Yesterday, as I did yesterday she came after me with Why are you doing this? Coming back today. Across the street they slaughter chickens. All I was doing was walking. I heard pigs. The factory where they boil sugar cane. But mostly I heard pigs. I began. I knew you were lying. I saw the kite. The Mayan bellboy.

I've never been anywhere where it rains as it does. Then heat.

The insides of all the

buildings and the restaurants and this hotel.

Whenever I think of it I think cellars. Whenever you think

anything you think cellars. Watch it rain. Where's my gun?

If you ever do that again. I'll knock you down. I'll suck you until you have convulsions.

What of someone who every morning between 3 and 4The 30 lb. dictionary The

bowling ball

"Well look at what she's moment in her

just done, purposely," (says

this at this

sleep.)

*

night I was too sleepy to write and I dreamt of you instead.

It was a most peculiar dream and I woke from it because both my arms were over my head and both had gone to sleep.

It is difficult to wake up more than one sleeping arm; you can't "Last

contact

either one in order to

move

the other and

again. So I lay there ordering them to move over and over again until, finally, they did. make it

150

come

to

life

between my school and my church at home. There is a road that runs there and the river took its place. We walked on the church side.

"We went for

walk

a

along the river.

The river

ran

"The water looked nice. It was spring but the water wasn't cold and we

three

She

was.

went

swimming. My arms went to sleep and I woke up."

She could feel them. The heat.

She was

full of anger.

And the honey bees so

Full of anger. *

That summer I mailed all my letters in envelopes made of carbon paper, I tried to get her to massage my scalp.

I

was

losing hair.

My beard had white hairs in it.

I developed a second forehead.

With the help of a friend who spoke Spanish I found a loft.

Why must I try? Why must I try so hard?

I saw people walking through town carrying headstones.

I had a dream. I was letting some favored dog eat a scorpion.

The darker scorpions are less poisonous than the lighter.

This scorpion the dog was eating was lightskinned, fteshcolored.

The dog did not die. What is it I'm waiting for?

I remember sharp pools of water. The dog mine. He belonged also To friends.

Something then to do with women. I'm on a train with incompleted poems. Asking women if they can help.

But find I have

only fragments. (The dog scene follows this one.)

151

Her breasts

were

human heads that

were

alive and

moving about.

I buried

everything I had.

The panic wells up where I breathe. It's not in the belly or even high up in the belly. It's at the diaphragm or above or behind the diaphragm. The panic wells up and I breathe and detest myself.

There's a bear or the outline of

a

I want to

leather.

die.

I want to

bear. It's made with shells.

nights I dream and dream I am comfortably and in innocence sucking my own cock.

Waking quietly it is 15-20 minutes before I realize the complexity, the enormity, the sheer pleasure/and not even coming. eat

Some

One

day I make a chart with buttons. Dr. Button. (Heal me with warm faith-healing hands). Panic button.

(Help, attend totally). Animal Button. (Be a fox, dog, monkey, polar bear, grizzly bear, Daddy Bear, Mommy Bear, Baby Bear, a Gorilla, a unicorn, a pig .). Another button read: Whatever way I can, let me help.

I invented games: A Power Button which can be pressed or seized only once a day and whoever does can ask anything of the other-totally in X.'s power for 5 minutes. .

Her

.

spend a day wearing one another's clothes, saying one another's things, writing one another's books, bed at meals in work in all ways.

Another: Each writes the other's (imaginary) dreams. Or, to literally dream the other's dreams. Better yet, to wake and game:

That

we

should

become the other.

Stay be always.

Another: No arguments.

Another: All the monster powers of nature our

come

as

guests. Storm wind.

Smooth water.

Item: He

regards everyone as near a breakdown and compulsively speaks to them as if they were. That's his thing. The down breakdown man.

152

Half

our

together she's

time

in bed

asleep.

I hear her. This time

question? There's a question!" A few minutes later when she's wakened by my getting out of bed I ask her if she remembers saying that. She does. What was the question? I ask her. She can't remember. She says she simply she's

saying:

the

"What is

knew there was a question.

they use to melt down the sugar cane. Everything smells good here except the fuels they use to convert things to other things.

Item:

The fuel

Sweeping streets. More people hauling water, one or two gallons at a time. A young Totanacan Indian tilting his hat either to Y. or a passing dog. The dog looks

The water-bearer.

up. That stillness when each sound and gesture is performed as in a trance/for the first time.

definite,

Falling as cliffs. Freezing as pieces of ice.

"What does it mean your life changes?"

What is it precisely that has changed?

DOES ANYTHING GO FAST

ENOUGH?

5 goes into 35 7 times What does it mean your life changes?

That

summer

every 5 minutes your skull

or

my

skull turned inside out.

A friend admitted his

compulsion for molesting small children.

What happens when the inside becomes the outside?

When

one

day where there was hair there's skin and where

there's skin there's hair?

Or warts

or

foreheads, where before there weren't?

And in the mirror only the tensions in your

belly and no face?

And what you wash is your eyes?

Food tastes a

as

if your entire mouth

and tongue too

belonged

to

child aged 7 or an old old man-

I wrote my friend: Granted the

transmigration of

souls. What about mouths?

His reply: A mourning candle in the window. An old woman cleaning.

153

Item: Once

twice she

massaged my scalp. Other times I rubbed my own chest with the wings of butterflies.

One morning I set 4 different colored wands in the ground. or

*

I'm taken into

custody. This is done by soldiers, willy-nilly gestapo

people. Y., without emotion, mask-like/unfazed walks off. I've lost her completely. I'm to be marched to town with 3 guards. They're unarmed, unwilling even to be armed, but forced to carry one tommy gun. They're young, confused, unenthusiastic. Hotel.

Luggage, books, boxes of paper. I've made no arrangement with Y. about the books. Then I hear a child in the next room.

Y. is there too, but it's not her child,

someone

else's (J.).

Adjoining rooms, the closet door. The closet's a room. I think of Prague, Munich. The two invasions. But what has this to do with that?

My mood now: happy

sad

x

strong

x

weak

fast

x

slow

unpleasant light cold

x x x

pleasant heavy hot

longer had a language The constraint, the inability to speak.

Other times, walking down the street Seeing her with her head down, Walking into lampposts I go running on listening intently, deflecting With antennae I've grown specially for the purpose, There are no lampposts, only people with their heads down.

Then I try to reply to what she was saying.

What memory does, memory re-dots the painting.

Hallucinations. I have no hallucinations, I

no

I have cartoons.

"The stylistic intensifications-"

154

Item: The month of February 1968

(London)

people with acrylic color.

"The sky has no actual position-it's best represented by optical effects."

The enamel

coming down, isn't he?

Let us pay you for that, bring some booze.

Yes. Yes. Well B. doesn't drink that much actually.

He's going to stay with his family.

Yes. Yes. Father's

I know.

Yes, I know, all that train business.

Yes, I did you know last Sunday's paper.

What did you do?

Well, good.

Was that very

tricky-even the buses.

No.

Oh, golly.

Well, he's notified them but they just haven't taken any notice.

Oh, I doubt I'll have anything.

Oh, dear.

Yeah.

But that wasn't, but that wouldn't.

Conversations in a public box.

"Physical penetration is not necessary for an illegal intrusion."

A truck passes. It says

Prophecies bricks.

A

hospital in which four lines detailing certain facts-such as my name and the operation to be performed-are inscribed on my back.

The operation is to be performed by the poet Paranoia Lungstorm.

At

last,

set in a

a

single line (technique similar fO.r engraving on glass)

few inches above the rest.

155

is

At

times, like my own previous incarnation, he re-inhabits the new

body. All the while I hear a dubbed version of the man's voice. My father's as stand-in for my own. I'm aging. I'm aging.

Is it

snowing-or the pane, the mist running?

Make love to me with your dark part. Remember, you did it once in

__

and afterwards I

dark part. The rage,

was

crying.

Make love to

me

with your

holding her. Hold me. Why start

it like that, waits till we cannot go on, then asks that, coaxes me, then freezes, goes all

tight, Why are you so tense? No, I can't it's too much. Hearing her, Damn, damn you, soaked with sweat, her damning me. What to do, to face her this day.

What's wrong, I say, just waking. Don't you know? Toenails and feet like horns of some animal thrashing hating her.

No, I thought we'd quarreled. Hadn't. Not like that. Led on.

Knows we do both well enough. What's the point. Her wanting to come through, impulsive, forcing it. Then leaving, gobbling her Librium. Almost instantly sleep.

You're getting out of bed are you-leaving me like that.

Brains like tendons in a green sauce. A cement rubber plant.

A cellophane box car. A feast of nerves. Help me, don't evade.

Do it with all your voices. What sort of man

are

you. What's

it about. How can you go on like that evading. I know at some

point you will kill me. Why sleep in the same room with a vacuum cleaner? What is the nature of my low-grade infection?

Peeing then having almost immediately to repeat.

That Immigration form. I'd nearly forgotten. The rain. To shop with her. To be in with her when she cleans. The dishes,

each

day two or three. The quarrel with the kitchen, the quarrel with the bed.

Man in

a

bowler hat with loaf of French bread, breaking it off,

stuffing his mouth. His eyes, his head rolling on his neck. It's 10: 15 Thursday and not possible pigeons with their rolled umbrellas.

Last night and the morning and when I see her.

156

hand she says relax---on the other, no selfishness. How can I relax and not be loved for what I am? As for cheerfulness,

On the

one

I've always felt it was the woman's part to be cheerful, regardless.

Cheerfulness, grace and an absolute willingness. What of the instinct then that shifts from love to loyalty. When one or

the other says, We're out of rhythm. That M. requires one kind of reassurance: love. And I,

a

faith in

me

that I can love.

That the blue

Goes over, That the light Goes

over

The

wedding

mountains. of

tortoises,

Blowfish Camels And faxes and eels.

Relaxed and

whole, admitting once and for all: I'm beats women, can slander, hate. Kill.

a

pacifist who

Item:

What of a woman who allows no life other than the life one devotes to her No life other than the life No love without loving Void If you love, your love will inhabit

here

There's no love without inhabitation.

Eat void. You

must eat my

void.

Fuck void. Not only is void void, but it's

desperate void.

Precisely, You must eat my void because it is desperate.

(From a novel-in-progress, The Jurassic Shales)

157

FOUR POEMS BY

W. S. MERWIN

Ascent I have climbed

there

are

my

a

long way

shoes

minute larvae the dark parents I know they will wait there looking up

until

someone

leads them away

by the time they have got to the place that will do for their age and

are

in there with

nothing to say

the shades drawn

nothing but wear between them I may have reached the first of the bare meadows

recognized in the air the eyes by their blankness turned

knowing myself seen by the lost silent barefoot choir

As though I was waiting for that Some day it will rain

from a cold place and the sticks and stones will darken their faces

the salt will wash from the worn gods of the and

good

mourners

will be

waiting

the far sides of the hills

on

and I will remember the calling

recognized at the wrong hours long since and hands a long way back that will have forgotten and a direction will have abandoned

their way that offered

itself vainly day after day last gone like a color or the cloth at elbows at

I will stir when it is

getting dark

and stand when it is too late as

though I was waiting for that

and start out into the weather into emptiness

passing the backs of the trees of the rain of the the backs of the of the darkness

for

no

reason

hearing no voice with

promise praying myself no

to

be clear

mourners names

the back

my feet

The plumbing for Adrienne Rich New silence

between the end and the The

beginning

planet that was never named

because it was dark climbs into the

evening

nothing else moves laundry the hour have stopped and are looking away the lungs stand moon

a

stars the black

frozen forest

into which no air comes

they go on standing like shadows of the plumbing that is all that is left of the great city the buildings vanished the windows

extinct the smoke with its strings of names

wiped away and its fire at

the still note

the throwing of a switch

only these pipes bereft of stairs of elevators of walls of

girders lamps from roofs grow into the night crowding upward in rows to desolate heights their blind hope awakened from

and their black mouths locked open hollow stars between the dark

planets a famine a worship the heirs

of the dials among their feet my heart is still

beating by itself

thinking it understands and might feed them

Footprints on the glacier Where the wind

year round out of the gap

polishes everything here this day are footprints like my own the first

ever

frozen

pointing up into the cold and last night someone marched and marched on the candle flame

hurrying a painful road and I heard the echo gone and I

some

a

long time afterwards

connection of mine

the

high slopes for a dark speck that was lately here scan

I pass my hands over

the melted wax

like a blind man

they are all moving into their seasons at last my bones face each other trying to remember a question

nothing moves while I watch but here the black trees are

the cemetery of a great battle

and behind me as I turn I hear

leaving the bark in growing numbers and flying north names

Rural objects Wasn't there some way in which you too understood About being there in the time

as

it

was

then?

A golden moment, full of life and health?

Why can't this moment be enough for us as we have become?

Is it because it was mostly made up of understanding How the future would behave when we had moved on To other lands, other suns, to say all there is time for

Because time is just what this moment is?

Even at the beginning the manner of the hourglass Was

all-severing, weaning of that delicious thread

That comes down even to us, "Benediction de Dieu dans fa Solitude," Sand

shaper, whistler of affectionate destinies, flames and fruit.

And now you are this thing that is outside me, And how I in token of it

am

like you is

In place. In between are bits of information

That circulate around you, all that ancient stuff,

Brought here, reassembled, carted off again Into the back yard of your dream. If we are closer To anything, it is in this sense that doesn't count, Like the last few blank pages of a book.

This is why I look at you With the eyes you once liked so much in animals:

When, in that sense, is it to be?

An ultimate warm

day of the year

With the

light unapproachable on the beaches?

In which

case

you return to the fork in the road

Doubtless to take the

same

path again? The second-time knowledge

Gives it fluency, makes it less of a choice As you are older and in a dream touch bottom.

The laburnum Mountain ash

darkened, denser

at

the deserted lake;

mindlessly dropping berries: I tell you, we are being called back

to whom is

all this?

having forgotten these names

For

falling like nameless things On unfamiliar slopes. To be seen again, churlishly into life, Returning, as to the scene of a crime.

For

forgetting

our

names,

proper

for

That is how the singer spoke,

In vague terms, but with

an

eternity of thirst

To end with a small tumbler of water Or

single pink, leaning against the window frame in evening,

a

The mind of

birth. It

our

was

the bubble

all sad and real.

They slept together at the commercial school.

The binding of a book made a tall V, like undone hair, "To say all there was never time for."

It is

triumph to point out That no accounting was ever asked. no

The land lies flat under the umbrella Of anxiety perpetually smoothed As though

token

over

required of how each Arrived early for the appointment in different cities.

The least suspicion would have crumbled, Positive, but in the end you were right to some

were

Pillage and obstruct. And she Stared

her toes. The argument Can be brought back intact to the at

Of summarizing how it's Of letting you

point just a cheap way

off, and finally

How blue objects protruded out of the

Potential, dying and recoiling, returning as you meet them Touching forever, water lifted out of the sea.

JOHN ASHBERY

Copyright © 1969 by John Ashbery.

Livonia, Michigan Done got

cloudy and started to rain,

tooted my horn for the

passin' lane.

Rainwater blowin' up under my hood, knew that

was

doin' my motor

good.

1.

Sunday evenings sparrows flash shadows in the crumpled skylights of a factory.

No hum of winch

whine of electric starter

slap of belt or drill press gears: no

exhaust of hi-lo's, ratchet of the Coke machine,

or

rattle of wax paper, salt

on

an

egg.

Silent machines stand in the slow haze, in films of oil, old sawdust sopping grease on

the concrete:

Machines that tomorrow will rend flesh,

shear

a

finger, throw filings

in an eye.

2.

I've

seen

them drunk

on

the job,

Polacks

sleeping on piles of dirty wipers.

Drunk enough to miss the time clock, stumble in the parking lot and faint delirious in their

cars.

day steward drank, bought crackers from a machine and sat with me talking shop The

talk.

3.

Grievance

Report:

My name is Dewey Thacker of Pikesville,

now

of Livonia

with my wife and the kid my first wife left.

I operate

a

wire-straightener,

you know that,

which

nips oil-tempered wire

to the tolerance you set.

In the morning I take one

fifteen-minute break

and half an hour for lunch

(you followed with a stopwatch once) then the same in the afternoon and sometimes I

punch out too soon,

because the wire gets to my eyes or the oil does. I can hardly see to drive home sometimes, it hurts so.

I like the work, but the doctor

said that ointment wouldn't can

I

change jobs?

I know I'll lose

seniority, but that's life's little breaks.

4.

$4,000 and nothing down with the G.!. bill, there's my Stingray see her glint.

Sure the wife cries: women.

J.D.REED

help:

Three Chronicles of Bustos Domecq JORGE LUIS BORGES and ADOLFO BIOY CASARES translated by

NORMAN THOMAS

DIGIOVANNI in collaboration with the authors

Homage to Cesar Paladion To extol the manifold achievements of Cesar Paladion, to wonder at the tireless hospitality of his mind, is-as we know-one of the truisms

of contemporary criticism; yet, is it not worth bearing in mind that any truism, once in a while, yields a kernel of truth? The parallel to

Goethe, then, is no less inevitable. It has often been suggested that the

affinity between these two worthies is shown not only by their physical likeness but also by the more or less fortuitous circumstance that, in a way, they share an Egmont. Goethe declared that his whole spirit was

open to the four winds; Paladion refrained from this affirmation

(at least it is not included in his Egmont), but the thirteen Protean volumes he has left us are proof that he might very well have adopted Goethe's dictum.

Both men,

Goethe

and Paladion,

exhibited

that

health and vigor which are the firmest foundation for the erection of the true work of genius.

Hardy tillers in the fields of art, their hands guide the plow and mark out the perfect furrows!

The brush, chisel, shading stump, and modern camera have made Paladi6n's lineaments familiar the entire world over; still, those of us who knew him personally have undervalued-perhaps unjustly-e-sc TriQuarterly

167

profuse

an

iconography. An iconography, it may be added, which

does not always transmit the

authority and the probity that the man radiated with a constant, gemlike, never-bedazzling-the-eye flame.

In the year 1909, Cesar Paladion held the office of Consul of the Argentine Republic in Geneva, where he published his first book, The Abandoned Parks. The edition, which today is highly coveted among bibliophiles, was scrupulously corrected in proof by the author; but nonetheless, the most outrageous misprints crept into the text, for, as it happened, the Calvinist typesetters were wholly innocent of the language of Sancho Panza. Those who thrive on gossip will be grateful for mention here of a rather regrettable episode which no one any longer remembers and whose single virtue was that it made abundantly clear the almost scandalous originality of the Paladionian theory of style. In the fall of 1910, a critic of considerable renown collated The Abandoned Parks with a work of the same title by the Uruguayan modernist Julio Herrera y Reissig, arriving-incredible as it may seem-at the conclusion that Paladion was guilty of plagiarism.

Long extracts from both works, printed in parallel columns, justified, according to him, the daring indictment. The accusation, however, fell on deaf ears; not one reader paid it the slightest notice, nor did Paladion himself condescend name

I

do not

care

to

to

answer

it. The muckraker, whose

remember, comprehending his

error

soon

enough, dropped into everlasting silence. His astounding critical blind­ spots lay fully exposed!

The period 1911-19 was one of almost superhuman fertility. From Paladion's pen, in rapid succession, came this outpouring: The Pathfinder, the pedagogical novel Emile, Egmont, and the Eclec­ tic Reader (second series). At this point, under the pseudonym ol H. Rider Haggard, he wrote the novel entitled She, using the Spanish version for young readers by Dr. Carlos Astrada (Buenos Aires, 1914).1 Next came The Hound of the Baskervilles, From the Appen­ ines to the Andes, Uncle Tom's Cabin, The Province of Buenos Aires up until the Establishment of the Federal Capital, Fabiola, The Georgics (in the Ochoa translation), and the De divinatione (in Latin).

And then, in mid-career, death overtook him. From what inside in­ formation we have been able to garner, it appears that he had nearly 1. It is perhaps worth

noting that Paladion never again took up this particu­

pseudonym although his knowledge of the African scene was unerring, as may be evinced by even the slightest acquaintance with the book. lar

168

completed the first draft of the Gospel According to Sf. Luke, a work of biblical character, of which unfortunately not a page has come down to us, but whose text would have been of the greatest interest.s has been the subject of numerous critical Paladion's

methodology

monographs and doctoral theses, making any new discussion here superfluous. Let us concern ourselves, however, with a few main points. The key has been given us, once and for all, in Farrel du Bose's authoritative study The Paladion-Pound-Eliot Line (Viuda de Ch. Bouret, Paris, 1937). As du Bose has stated definitively, quoting the words of literary critic Myriam Powell-Paul Fort, it is a case of "an amplification of units." Before and after Paladion, the literary unit that writers took from the at

most, the stock

common

tradition

was

the word or,

phrase. The long Byzantine centos, weaving to­

gether passages collected from various sources, were the earliest fore­ runners of the Paladionian technique; in our town time, a copious frag­ ment from the Odyssey opens one of Pound's Cantos, and it is a well-known fact that the work of T. S. Eliot admits lines from Gold­

smith, from Baudelaire, and from Verlaine. But Paladion, in 1909, had already gone further. He annexed, so to speak, a complete opus,

Reissig's The Abandoned Parks. A confidence leaked out

by Maurice Abramowicz is one more proof of the delicate scruples and unswerving rigor that Paladion always brought to the arduous task of poetic creation: personally he preferred The Twilights of the Garden by the Argentine poet Lugones, but did not consider himself worthy of assimilating them; instead, he perceived that Herrera's book fell comfortably within his range at that time, inasmuch as in Herrera's pages he found a full expression of himself. Paladion granted the book his name and sent it on to the printer, neither adding nor omitting a single comma-a rule to which he remained ever after steadfast. We are thus confronted by the major literary event of the Herrera y

century: the appearance of Paladion's The A bandoned Parks. Cer­

tainly nothing could be further from the book by the same name by Herrera, which duplicated no earlier book. 1909! Annus mirabilis!

At that moment, Paladion stood at the very threshold of his labors, of

life work such

attempted. Reaching into the depths of his soul, he published a series of books that expressed him utterly-completely without overburdening the already unwieldy

a

2. On

an

as no one

before him had

impulse which reveals the

man

to the

full, Paladion chose,

seems, the standard version.

169

as

it

of

bibliography or falling into the all too easy vanity of writing a single new line. The unfading modesty of this man who, in spite of the lavish banquets tendered him by the well-stocked libraries

corpus

of East and West, denies himself the Divine Comedy and the Arabian

Nights and condescends, benevolent and smiling, Reader (second series)!

to

the

Eclectic

The development of Paladi6n's mind has not been fully explained; for example, nobody as yet has the Eclectic Reader

(etc.)

interpreted that mysterious leap from

to The Hound of the Baskervilles. For our

part, we do not hesitate to put forward the theory that this course is

really out of the ordinary, but follows the pattern of the writer of stature who, growing out of the romantic mold, crowns himself at last with all the noble serenity and limpid grace of classicism.

Let us make it clear that Paladi6n, aside from early schoolboy exercises, had no knowledge of the dead languages. In 1918, with a timidity that today touches our hearts, he published The Georgics, in the Spanish translation by Ochoa; a year later, by now aware of the range of his mind, he sent the printer, in Latin, the De divinatione. not

And what Latin it was! Cicero's!

Certain critics felt that to

publish a gospel following the texts of Cicero and Virgil amounts to a kind of apotheosis of classical ideals; we prefer to see in this last step, which Paladi6n did not live to take, a spiritual renewal. In a word, the mysterious and clear path that leads from paganism to faith.

Everyone knows that Paladi6n had to payout of his own pocket for the publication of his books, and that the small printings never exceeded the figure of three or four hundred copies. Today, of course, these books are virtually out of print, and the reader who is lucky enough to come upon a copy of The Hound of the Baskervilles and is transported by so unmistakable a style, finds in aspiring to relish Uncle Tom's Cabin that this latter title is all but unavailable. For this

fully applaud the initiative of a group of Congressmen, representing all parties, who propose a national authorized edition of the complete works of the most original and catholic of our men reason

we

of letters.

170

The sartorial revolution (I) According to the facts, the complex revolution began at the seaside resort of Necochea. The date, that interesting period that runs from 1923 to 1931; the leading actors, Eduardo S. Bradford and retired police chief Manuel M. Silveira. The former, whose social background was rather dim, came to be an institution along the old wooden board­ walk, but that was no obstacle to his being seen as well at afternoon dancing parties, at charity fairs, at the celebration of children's birth­ days, at silver wedding anniversaries, at eleven o'clock Mass, in the hotel billiards room, and in better summer homes along the shore.

Many will recall the figure he cut: his soft Panama with its snap brim, his horn-rimmed glasses, his dyed handlebar moustache that did not quite hide the fine full lips, the wing collar and bow tie, the white suit with its set of imported buttons, the matching cuff links, the heeled boots that enhanced his middling stature-as all the while his right hand gripped a malacca cane and his left held a mouse-colored glove that softly flapped in the breeze off the South Atlantic. His always amiable conversation circled the widest range of subjects, but invariably came back to the world of tailoring. Bradford was fond of pronouncing upon buttonholes, linings, shoulder padding, trouser cuffs, underclothes, haberdashery, velvet collars, scarves, spats, cream­ colored garters, and-especially-winter apparel. Such a bias should not strike one as strange; Bradford was singularly sensitive to the cold, so much so that no one ever saw him bathe in the sea. Instead, he strolled the boardwalk from end to end, his head sunk down into his

shoulders,

frame

shaking

arms

crossed

or

hands in his

pockets,

and his whole

with the shivers. Another

idiosyncrasy that did not elude the eye of the keen observer was that in spite of the watch chain connecting his lapel to his left pocket, he mischievously refused to give anyone the time. Also, though his liberality was beyond a doubt, he never picked up a check, nor was he ever known to press the smallest coin upon a beggar. On the other hand, he was often nagged by a cough. Sociable as could be, he nonetheless maintained-with praiseworthy aloofness-a discreet space between himself and others.

His favorite motto: Noli me tangere. He was friendly to everyone but his door to no opened one, and up until that fated third of February, 1931, the cream of N ecochea never suspected his actual place of residence. One of the witnesses testified that a few days earlier he 171

had seen Bradford enter Quiroz's paint shop with a billfold in his right

hand, and come out again with the same billfold plus a heavy cylin­ drical package. No one, curtain

perhaps, might

ever

have rung down the

guise had it not been for the perspicacity of retired chief Silveira, a man who had won his stripes dealing with the Cosa Nostra in Rosario, and who, spurred on by a bloodhound instinct, came to have his suspicions. Over the course of several seasons, Sil­ veira tracked Bradford with every caution, although Bradford-who seemed quite unaware-night after night gave Silveira the slip, thanks to the darkness on the outskirts of Necochea. The activity of the tire­ less sleuth was the talk of the town, and consequently many a citizen gave Bradford the-cold shoulder, their cordiality passing from a former hearty give-and-take to a dry nod of the head. However, accredited families rallied round him and with a nobility of sentiment expressed their loyalty. That was not all; on the boardwalk certain newcomers appeared who followed in Bradford's footsteps and who, under close examination, were dressed in an identical way, though in paler shades and with a frankly down-and-out aspect about them.

The bomb hatched by Silveira did not take long to go off. On the above-mentioned date, two plainclothesmen, headed up by the chief himself, appeared in person at the door of a small wooden shack on one of those still unnamed streets far out beyond the town limits.

They knocked and called out repeated times, then finally forced the door and, revolvers in hand, broke their way into the rickety dwelling. on

his

Bradford surrendered

the spot. He raised his hands, but did not let go of his malacca cane nor did he take off his hat. Without losing a

policemen threw a sheet around him that had been brought along expressly for that purpose, and off they whisked him while he sobbed and trembled. His scanty weight drew their attention.

Accused by the prosecuting attorney, Leonidas Codovilla, of breach of trust and indecent exposure, Bradford immediately gave in, thereby letting down his backers. Truth prevailed, self-evident. From 1923 to 1931, Bradford, the gentleman on the boardwalk, had strolled the town of Necochea naked. Hat, horn-rimmed glasses, moustache, collar, necktie, watch chain, suit and set of buttons, malacca cane, gloves, handkerchief, and heeled boots were but drawings, in color, applied to the tabula rasa of his epidermis. In such a hopeless predicament, the timely influence of strategically placed friends might have rescued him, but unfortunately a circumstance came to light that totally es­ tranged him from everyone. His financial position left much to be moment

172

the

on

desired! It seemed he had not even the wherewithal to scrape together

enough to get himself a pair of eyeglasses. He had been forced to paint them on, in the very way he painted on everything else-includ­ ing the malacca cane. The judge brought down on the accused the full penalty of the law. After the trial, Bradford, in the martyrdom of the State Penitentiary, revealed himself as the pioneer he was. He died there of bronchial pneumonia, wearing no more than a striped suit stubbornly drawn on his lean flesh.

In the wake of all this, Carlos Anglada (with that nose of his for smelling out the most remunerative aspects of modern life) dedicated a series of articles to Bradford in Vogue. President of the Commission Pro-Bradford's Statue on the ex-Wooden Boardwalk of Necochea, Anglada got together a considerable number of signatures and contri­ butions. As far as we know, nothing concrete has come of the monument.

More cautious and highminded, perhaps, was Don Gervasio Monte­ negro, who gave a small course at Summer School on Pictorial Ward­ robes and the eventual unrest this

might create among members of the needle trades. But Montenegro's hairsplitting and reluctance to commit himself were quick to give rise to Anglada's now famous Plaint-c-rEven after death they slander him!" Not satisfied with this alone, however, Anglada challenged Montenegro to put on the gloves in a ring of his choice, but too impatient to wait for the reply, Anglada was last seen boarding a jet for Boulogne-sur-Mer. Meanwhile, the sect of the Piets had multiplied its ranks. The latest and boldest of them fronted the inherent risks and began imitating the Pioneer and Martyr down to the last T. Others, by nature inclined to the pian piano, re­ sorted to a middle road: a real toupee, but a painted monocle or an indelibly tattooed suit coat. About their trousers we choose to pre­ serve

silence.

But such

precautions were useless. The Reaction had set in! The Honorable Kuno Fingerman, who at the time was head of the Public Relations Office of the Center for Woolen Products, published a a volume entitled The Aim of Clothing Is to Keep Oneself Warm, which he soon after followed up with a sequel called Let's Bundle Up! Such shots in the dark found their echo in a group of young men who, driven by a quite understandable urge for positive action, came rolling out into the streets, in named spherically wrapped something they Total Suits, which-devoid of a single opening-completely enclosed their happy owners from head to foot. The most highly favored ma173

terials for the Total Suit were tanned hides and waterproof canvas; a later refinement, intended to deaden the knocks, was the wraparound woolen mattress.

Nevertheless, the esthetic touch was missing. This was supplied by the Baroness von Servus, who launched a new departure. As a first measure, she went back to verticalism and to the freedom of the arms

legs. In connection with a mixed group of metalworkers, artists in crystal, and makers of lamps and lampshades, she constructed what came to be known as Plastic Attire. Except for the problem of its weight-which no one has as yet denied-this Attire allows the wearer all the mobility desired. Consisting of metal plates or sections, and reminiscent of the deep-sea diver and the medieval knight, Plastic Attire is high pointed by a show of revolving flashing lights that are designed (and guaranteed) to bedazzle the passerby. It also sends and

out intermittent tintinnabulations that many class as ous

as

useful and melodi­

automobile klaxons.

Two

rival

trends

evolved from

the

Baroness

von

Servus, who

(according to hearsay) gives her blessing to the second. The first is the somewhat dandified Downtown Look; the other, of a more popu­

lar flavor,

Uptown Casual. Partisans of both followings agree, despite bitter antagonism, on keeping themselves in the main indoors and out of sight. is

The sartorial revolution (II) If, as has been duly pointed out, the epithet functional is wholly out of fashion in the small world of architects, in sartorial circles it has attained prestigious and

dizzying heights. Clearly, men's clothing pre­ sented a rather vulnerable flank to the onslaught of younger genera­ tions. On the part of the hidebound there has been a signal failure to justify the beauty-or even the utility-of lapels, trouser cuffs, buttons that do not button, the knotted tie, and the hat band (or,

as

the poet

has it, the "frieze of the fedora"). And so the scandalous arbitrariness of such useless embellishments has finally come under the public eye.

In this respect, Poblet's 3 condemnation is unanswerable.

It may be worthy of note that the new order springs from a passage

by the Anglo-Saxon Samuel Butler. Butler remarked that the so-called human body is a material projection of the mind and that, when you 3.1. D. F. Poblet

174

(or Pobblet), b. 1894. [Translator'S note.]

come

down to it, there is hardly any difference whatever between the

microscope and the eye, inasmuch as the former is merely an improve­ ment on the latter. The same, according to the trite riddle of the sphinx, might be said of the walking stick and the leg. The human body, in brief, is a machine: the hand no less than the Winchester, the buttocks than a wooden (or electric) chair, the skater than the skate. This is why the itch to flee from machinery is meaningless; man is but a working sketch to be supplemented, finally, by horn­ rimmed glasses, by crutches, and by the wheelchair.

As is not infrequent these days, the great leap forward was born of the happy coupling of the dreamer (who operates in the dark) and the business tycoon. The former, Professor Lucius Scaevola,

was

responsible for the general theory; the latter, the tycoon, was practical­ minded Pablo Notaris, owner of the popular Red Monkey Hardware &

Kitchenwares, Inc.,

now

refurbished from basement

to

roof and

universally known as Scaevola-Notaris Functional Tailoring, Ltd. We cordially invite the reader to pay a visit, without cost or obligation, to the

modern establishment of the aforementioned firm of Messrs.

Scaevola and N otaris, where he will be

warmly welcomed and will

receive the utmost in

personal attention. A well-trained staff is on hand to see to the full satisfaction of the reader's every need, provid­ ing him-all at low, low prices-with the patented All-Round Glove, whose two components (matching, down to the last detail, the hands of the buyer) include every single one of the following finger exten­ sions: On the

right hand-The Thumb Drill, The Index Corkscrew,

The Middle-Finger Fountainpen, The

Ring-Finger Rubber Stamp, The

Small-Finger Penknife; on the left hand-The Thumb Awl, The In­ dex Hammer,The Middle-Finger Skeleton Key, The Ring-Finger Um­ brella-Walkingstick, and finally, the Small-Finger Scissors. (No sub­ stitutions, please.) Other customers, perhaps, may wish to be shown the All-Purpose Highhat (second floor), which permits the easy con­ veyance of food products and valuables, to say nothing of a variety of things better left unmentioned. Not yet in stock but coming soon is the File-Suit, whose leading feature is the replacement of the old­ fashioned pocket with the

sliding drawer. The Trouser-Seat with Springs-at first opposed by the chairmaker trades-has so won the general approval of the buying public that its overwhelming success leaves us at liberty to omit it from this prepaid advertisement. Remember, readers, shop now and save later! built-in Double Steel

175

Odysseus of the fires SIMON GRABOWSKI

Every time the sun shines, my wife, that slowest of learners, talks about going out. It is mostly the lake she wants to go to; we can read there, she says, or I can work on my list. She reads best in the sunshine-at least she has been able to maintain, as a rationale for going out, the idea that she does so. But she should know by now that I cannot work on my list in the sunshine, or under any other circumstances in the open. Unfortunately it does not seem that I make real progress with it inside either. But that is not the point.

If we are to have it finished at all-and I had got used to thinking that I had at least had her convinced about that a long time ago-then she cannot expect me to be able to concentrate on it anywhere but indoors. I have explained that to her many times, and she has seemed to understand it. I have also explained to her that it does not really matter now how much I used to like to go out myself. Even if I would want to go out to read or perhaps even just for the sake of going out-and I doubt very much, after all, that I would really want to do that now-even then there would be no point in doing TriQuarterly

177

it under the present circumstances, no

point in doing it as long as the

list has not been finished.

One

might say that it was not a very big fire, but then that was just because it happened to occur at one o'clock in the afternoon.

If the downcast truck-driver who, having kept himself locked up in his room for some days, suddenly went berserk and set fire to the furniture in order to burn himself to death because his wife had left him: if this

accidental, potential agent of fate would have acted, say, at three o'clock in the morning instead, that whole half of the house

might easily have been on fire before the fire department had gotten here. And, since we are living on the uppermost floor in the eastern half of the building-why might we not just as well have been living on

that

same

floor in the western half? Or he in

matter? What I do not, cannot

our

half, for that

understand, is this: How

possibly conceive of such things as simply

matter

a

of

can

one

"good" or

"bad" luck?

No, but therefore I am also glad that it did happen. Because once you have had a close-up of the anatomy of that whole, pitiable abstrac­

tion called

"good luck," you know that there is no such independent companion to catastrophe; that wherever catastrophe is concerned, bad luck is the true and legitimate attendant and good luck an ac­ cidental substitute, a mere impostorous reflection of the real thing.

As long as you have seen neither the one nor the other you may still hope that, should catastrophe come your way, yours will be an instance of good luck; but once you have actually experienced that combination, you realize its essential perversity, its whole basic contrariness to nature. How naive, really, to think of this as "your good luck"! And, with this monstrosity attached to you, haven't you now become a much more explicit, a much more personal target of catastrophe? Is it conceivable, after all, that from now on there should not be a continuous, specific exertion towards the settling of this special account with you-that, once established, your ambiguous notion of catastrophe should really be left uncorrected for the rest of your life?

If I

It has happened, capable of such a naivety myself to be sure, a few times since that day last Winter now and then when it all seemed to get just too complicated that it occurred to me how much simpler that would make everything were

.

.

.

...

.

178

.

.

Simple! Yes, indeed! Simple as those whom such a simplicity befits -simple as listening, half unaware, to the distant roaring of the fire­ engines, or watching them go by, three or four times a week, in the big street half a block to the east of our windows. The fire-engines!

Always-invariably, trivially, decoratively-going somewhere else.

And even now, as they failed to emerge from behind the corner build­ ing, charging into and along down past my open view across the lawn and the stupid old tulipomaniac's silly flower-bed, and there began to dawn upon me-but so far only as an abstractly logical conclusion, on the still-periphery of my awareness-the realization that they must have turned up our own street:

even

now,

even

then, there remained

basic, incontrovertible understanding of somewhere-else, mixed with a mild, and strictly still-peripheral, intriguedness at this occa­ that

narrowing-down, this rare proximity of elsewhere Yes, indeed: the sirens of the fire-engines, how they contain the whole simplicity of a simple life! Could there be less drama, really, to anything on earth, less insight into the real conditions of life itself?

Indeed, it is in the stopping of the sirens, the outbreak of a previously unencountered silence outside what, in wonder, you begin to identify as your own house, that a whole new awareness-your first and only real awareness-is born. But it is not really until seconds later-in the coming together of the silence down there with the sound of many running steps in the corridor outside your own apartment­ that, shooting out from your mind, it washes all through you with the quick-congealing surge of a total reality.

A new definitive reality.

The fire itself was really a very minor thing. I had not opened the door, I had been standing-no, not a minute, I suppose it could have been just twenty or perhaps a little less than fifteen seconds, but initially-but then the door was opened and as my wife who had been downstairs for some minutes to pick up the mail was entering

sional

the

.

room

I think I noticed that there

.

.

no

smoke in the corridor

was

not in our half of the

was

behind her.

Indeed, it was a very minor thing.

It

building, and even the tenants of that same corridor as the truck­ driver

were

in

no

immediate

danger at any time. But did they feel

that way themselves, I wonder? The corridor had been full of smoke; had been able to leave his apartment until the fire had been extinguished. At no time between their discovery of the fire and the no one

179

arrival of the firemen had

they known anything certain with regard to the actual seriousness of what was going on. The fire had not yet burned through the truck-driver's door, yet the heat in the corridor must have been considerable; some of the plastic numbers on the apartment doors

were

half melted. Behind the locked door

was

the

truck-driver, raving madly. At one time he also smashed the window, in

an

attempt to throw himself into the yard. I don't how you would

have estimated the situation if you had been behind one of those other doors in that corridor, but I think I know what conclusions I would have

come

to.

What does it matter, that I had been

Could the subsequent relief at the lack of real

wrong?

danger have made up

for the ten or fifteen minutes preceding that certainty-those minutes of my own impulsive certainty?

Yes, it was a minor thing, but the fire had burned through his ceil­

ing, and the big roof-beams were already smouldering all over. We were looking through the glass of the fire escape door on our side; a car-length from us, behind the broken window-he had just one window, facing the gorge-like little yard which separates the two wings of the building-his room was a bottomless sea of fire. Like an un­ manageable serpent the fire-hose was being hauled endlessly towards the top of the airy, inhospitable iron staircase, each new landing being like a dubious and painful conquest. Little tongues of smoke were licking upwards at the chimney-edges and along the top of the roof; some firemen were already up there, banging away at the fester­ ing wood with their axes. Then the banality of drama was added as the policemen were struggling to get him down the tricky stairs. He was obviously in a senseless rage, for the three or four grown men managed to hold him only with the utmost difficulty, and their down­ ward advance was slow and uncalculable in the beginning. With their disappearance, and the final. turning-on of the water, most of the excitement had been used up. The fire in the room was soon put out;

the firemen continued their work into the afternoon, but by that time

everybody had long ago lost interest. Surely, there hadn't been much to the whole thing, nothing much to speak of in any way-a suc­ cession of small events adding up to an episode, and a rather trivial one

at that.

Of course there had

never

been the remotest

possibility

might spread to the eastern half of the building.

That evening, for the first time, I told my wife about the list. It had happened occasionally in the past, I said, that this realization that the fire

180

though always then as a mere stray cerebration, a mental exertion rather than a spontaneous, organic realization-a logical conclusion drawn in passing, now and then, by an idling brain, and to be forgotten at the mere change of reflectional focus.-Or had it been there all the time, perhaps, deep down, emerging only now and then on the surface--disguised, merely, as an extraneous and inci­ dental, visiting idea? Indeed, that would explain a great many things!

And I would only have been externalizing it, intellectualizing it-asso­ ciating with it periodically on the surface of my existence without recognizing it as my own innermost, permanent concern! All silent fears and misgivings, all whisperings of a secret, fatal unpreparedness, undermining from the outset any crucial commitment I might eventu­ Of course, it was this unknown, unidentified ally resolve to make center of fear which had continually excavated all plans for a resolve, sapped them beforehand of all substantiality and meaning! While from time to time I would come across it, as I thought, in the lumber-room of my silly-season subjects-not a silly project in itself, only one out of those many of which you have come to know that, despite the tre­ mendous gain that it would be to have them carried out, there prob­ ably never will be time for any of them Now there was going to be time for this one. For today, during those fifteen or twenty seconds, I had at last realized that this was not one of life's primary or secondary projects, it was the fundamental prerequisite for life itself. And so long as it remained unsatisfied, all projects, all commitments in life were ultimately mean­ ingless and futile.

It is not possible for any thinking person, so I explained to my wife, to base his life on the wishful assumption that he will not sooner or later be involved in a fire. The destruction of his apartment-for it would be ridiculous to expect in general that, once the fire strikes,

had

come

to me,

...

.

.

.

he will not be forced to leave his apartment to the flames-will face

him with an entirely new situation. The smoothness

or

abruptness of

his transition to the latter will decide his future. Will he be able to re­ establish himself in life after the fire,

or

will the fire unseat him once

for all? This will

depend entirely on how far he succeeds in salvag­ ing, out of all his belongings, that which is of material importance to

him. While a total success will leave him free to concentrate on all

explicitly new aspects of the new conditions ahead of him, failure in any degree will set him back accordingly: forcing him to spend a 181

greater or lesser proportion of his energy on the mere replacement of a

number of basic necessities. A setback of this

ridiculous at the would

same

time

as

it

kind, ruinous and

is, would indeed be intolerable. It

the

interruption-maybe for so long time that no re­ sumption would eventually be possible!-of whatever significant com­ mitment one had previously been engaged in. To engage, then, in anything of long-term significance without having prepared against mean

this paramount risk would be an act of vanity and absurdity.

No, I was not going to wait for the fire and rely on my presence of mind to moment

prescribe

the

priority

of selection.

For in that actual

I would be-had been-unable to select

according to its

relative

one

single item

unable to think of any items in other than the absurdest and most arbitrary ways. With even ten or

importance,

fifteen minutes to decide in I

with

a

number of third-

most vital ones

and work in

might still find myself in the street

fourth-order items in my hands and the burning to ashes up there in the apartment. To live or

disregard of this vision was just not possible. And so from now on I would disregard everything else, would forgo every thought, every plan, every decision about alternative choices and com­ mitments, postpone all speculation on the future and direction of my life, until the day when the fire inventory-the definitive list of all the, basically indispensable, items to be salvaged-was ready. That day would be the greatest day in my life so far. For it would mean that, whenever the fire eventually occurred, we could set to work, swiftly and silently and almost with a shrug, to assemble the things that we were going to take with us. Whatever the initial shock of today's fire had been, it was through this very fire that the identifica­ tion, and eventual resolution, of what I now recognized as the basic problem of my existence had been enabled. In the future, the setback through fire would find no access to our life.

I had explained all this to my wife in great detail, and she had listened without comment. When I finally stopped, she talked just very briefly, and what she said made it seem unlikely that she could have been paying any attention. She said: "I guess we could settle that list right now in five or ten minutes."

I have asked myself now and then whether at that moment, maybe for a fraction of a second, I was actually contemplating-as a wildly crazy, wildly dilettantic but nevertheless fascinating possibility-the idiotic suggestion which she had just made. But since that suggestion 182

listening or not understood anything, there would hardly be any point in entering into a discus­ sion with her. And since there was no basis for discussion, I just

indicated that she had either not been

replied with my own official estimate, pretending to have misheard her: "Yes, that's more or less what I have figured myself. Five weeks at least

and no more than ten at any rate."

I suppose there isn't very much

more

to

tell. The events I have

place a year, or almost a year, ago. To my wife I had indicated that I might be finished by the end of the year, or not very much later. I knew that that might have been a little optimistic; I could also have gone to the opposite extreme and said half a year, but this might have made the whole thing too abstract for her, and I didn't want to jeopardize her cooperation. At that time, however, I was convinced that I would be through, at the very latest, by the end of the winter, which would not make a possible delay too great.

Of course I could have based my list primarily upon such items as are traditionally considered the most immediately vital of one's belongings. It may have been an idea of that kind, actually, that had prompted my wife's suggestion; at least this would make it under­ standable, although not in itself less amateurish. And by all means, this possibility might also have been good enough for a lot of other people, people with very simple or at least very average lives. Not that these generally basic items were not going to be included-of course they were!-but they were so simple to define, after all, that one could get around to them at any time and catalogue them at some quiet moment when the whole project was already well under way; thus to have started with them now, postponing the real tricky items till later, would have seemed an only too clear act of escapism.

What made these tricky items so tricky was not that there are so

mentioned took

very many of them-and I am still pretty convinced there are-but that it is so difficult to establish how many there actually are. To make it even worse,

a

considerable proportion-perhaps the majority

-of them may normally be quite out of focus, so that you would hardly remember having them among your possessions, much less where you have them. Yet you know from frequent, definite experi­ ence

that, given the right

may all of

a

sudden

set

move

of circumstances,

sharply

into

one

of these items

focus; in other words: 183

a

certain, perhaps in

itself not very exceptional occurrence may un­ expectedly-through the use which your, often half-way forgotten,

possession of this very item now

enables you to make of it-turn extraordinary opportunity! Not that a utilization of this op­ portunity through a replacement of the item would not be possible.

On the contrary, your former possession of such an item would probably have left you better oriented with to how to

into

an

regard replace regard to how to acquire it for the first time.

But on the other hand-the difficulties, the expenditure of time and energy which such a replacement could most possibly involve might not stand in any reasonable proportion to the actual magnitude of the opportunity-especially as, above all, the latter derived its partic­ ular flavour of extraordinariness primarily from the accidental fact, the exquisite fortuity of your possession of the item! While, then, objectively speaking, the resulting loss of the opportunity might not in itself be tragic (inasmuch as the extraordinariness had been relative, rather than absolute), the thought of actually having once possessed the very key to the fulfillment of such an exhilarating fluke, then lost it, would, whether tragic or not, be highly aggravating.

As it turned out, my realizations along these lines made it in­ creasingly difficult to sort anything out as really unimportant. Towards the end of April, then-by which time I should, according to my original expectations, most definitely have been finished-I had reached the conclusion that, from the view of future possibilities and potentialities, everything had to be considered more or less equally important. I must confess that the immediate effect of this was rather bewildering. I simply did not know how to handle this new situation and as a result found myself, temporarily, in a deadlock.

The following weeks were difficult. The issue had been complicated beyond measure, and I saw no immediate way ahead. At the same time, I was beginning to fear that this might also lead to complica­ tions in the relationship with my wife. While the winter had not seen any great change in our lives resulting from my absorption in the new project, the arrival of the spring, together with my failure to finish the project, had introduced a slight element of delicacy into the whole situation. Now that the weather was getting mild and it than a non-owner with

sunny, my wife's chief concern was to get out, away from the streets -to the lake, the beach, or preferably into the forest. To her, this has

always been the essential thing; only her feminine lack of self184

sufficiency has continually forced her to depend on me for company and the actual arrangement of our outings. And now that-to my own regret-I was tied down, I knew she would not want to go out by herself; but I wanted her to see this, if possible, as a natural sacrifice necessitated by our present, total commitment, rather than a matter of personal frustration. Of course, this had not been made easier by the fact that I had long ago exceeded my official time estimate and at present had nothing but the vaguest promises to offer with regard to the actual termination of the project. When she finally declared that she could see I was right, I think she had reached her result more out of loyalty to me than out of a basic commitment to the cause.

The deadlock which I reached not too long after this placed me in a twofold dilemma. Not only was I personally stuck as to the technical consequences of my finding; but if I told my wife the result I had come to-that all items were in principle to be looked upon as equally important and therefore in the end all to be included in the selection program-this to her would seem a total contradic­ tion of the principles originally underlying the idea of the list, with the possible result that she might lose some basic confidence in me.

Yes, I felt really up against the wall. Although I had not openly admitted the existence of a deadlock, I suspected that she had gradu­ ally become aware of it. Formerly, I had been constantly engrossed in all sorts of preliminary tables and calculations, but now I spent most of my time staring directionlessly into the air-trying, whenever she entered the room, through some hasty and very convincing pose or gesture, to feign an active engrossment of sorts: reading, speculating, figuring. Sometimes she took me by surprise, and then I wondered whether she thought that I might as well have taken some hours off and spent them outside with her. Most probably she wasn't thinking anything of that kind at all, and I was just magnifying all occurrences within reach. The worst part, however, was when she spent longer periods of time in the room and I had to prolong indefinitely my pretense to being busy: this protracted kind of pseudo-activity I found infinitely more exhausting than any sort of direct activity of its own.

Then

day-about a month before midsummer and half a year after the beginning of the whole thing-the deadlock was all over.

Throughout the deadlock, I had never let go of that basic conclusion which had initiated it, I had only been searching for a way of transone

185

lating it into action. The solution, when it finally came, was obvious.

Since everything had to be salvaged from the fire, and since this would probably not be possible on the occasion of the actual fire, a considerable part of our belongings-more or less everything in excess of what we could reasonably expect to be able to save our­ selves on that occasion-would have to be permanently stored in a commercial storage house. Of course there were going to be problems in actually determining which items were to go into storage and which ones would remain with us; but since all these decisions might very fittingly be made with a simultaneous view to current moving and storage rates, there

was

every

reason now

to take up

immediate,

preliminary contact with a number of actual firms in order to collect the necessary information.

During the next five or six weeks I entertained extensive communi­ cations with

a

dozen

or two

different storage companies,

writing and

receiving an extraordinary amount of letters every day, as well as conducting an even vaster number of telephone conversations; on a few occasions I even went out, for the first time during these many months, to have personal conferences with a number of junior storage executives who had become intrigued by the great project and were beginning to wonder, I think, whether my idea might perhaps have general appeal to a wider public, so as to suggest the possible exist­ of a whole new area of business within this field. On the whole,

ence

these

were

very

satisfying weeks

with lots of

with my solution to the all-inclusion

stimulating activity;

problem I had at last hit, so I thought, the right track, and each new day, however confusing in itself, seemed only one step closer towards the definitive arrangement.

But one night in the beginning of July, the second biggest storage house in the city burned down to the ground and everything that had been stored in it was destroyed. I had been basing my storage program on a wild miscalculation, a gigantic oversight worthy of a five-year-old child. I had left out the recognition that, in principle, a storage house is as perfectly susceptible to fire as an apartment building. True, there are no residents that may go berserk and set their rooms on fire; but once the fire gets there, everything that is in there may very likely be incinerated, including your own, judiciously accommodated belongings. So you get out of bed, perhaps, to take a taxi, arriving outside your storage fortress in the middle of the spar186

kling night, to share the spectacle with a thousand others. And while the crowd slowly disperses and the spectators go home, you remain on your post, watching closely, picturing in silence your emprisoned, inaccessible items as they are consumed in there, one by one, item by

against all interference, all hasty, confused of their proportional claim to salvage.

item,

secure

evaluation

plan had to be abandoned, and we moved on into a hot and endless summer, a long and painful retreat from my crumbled master plan. My task had now become a seemingly im­ possible one: the reconciliation of the original all-inclusion principle with the inexorable corollary of the storehouse fire. All belongings were of importance, yet there was no certain way of preserving every­ thing from the flames While on the one front I was facing this long and arduous battle, on the other my relationship with my wife was slowly deteriorating.

A decisive break had occurred already with the introduction of the storage plan, since she refused, as she put it, all loyalty to a project which required the removal and permanent storage of a major part of our belongings, not excepting some furniture, clothes, etc. Ap­ parently her loss of confidence had been irreparable, for when I told her that the storage plan had been abandoned, this information did And so the storage

....

way seem to put her back into a more favourable attitude to the project at large; she even dropped a veiled remark, now and

not in any

then, to the effect that I had lost track completely and had ceased to make

any progress at all. Under these circumstances there

was

hardly any basis for keeping her informed about the development in the project; and while the steady silence surrounding my work was thus really the result of her own negative attitude, it nevertheless created in me a rather uncomfortable feeling, as if I were now under some constant, silent scrutiny with regard to both the intentions and the actual seriousness of my effort. The very idea of any truancy or slackness on my part was groundless, of course, yet I could not help, in some indirect and irrational manner, feeling guilty. How much easier

hadn't it been to confront my wife's open antagonism over the storage

plan; she had known of that in detail, and so her inability to support it had been just another unambiguous manifestation of her own basic

lack of perceptiveness.-Now her general hostility was driving me into 187

observing a virtually total silence concerning my work; but in so doing I almost seemed tacitly to admit that I had grown fearful of her criticism.

No, the household atmosphere wasn't precisely congenial

to

the

waging of such a total effort. Her perpetual longing for fresh air was adding increasingly to the tension. With the final explosion of spring into summer, and her loss of loyalty to the project and me, it had become unbearable to her to have to spend all her time indoors while the sun was

blazing outside from a cloudless sky; but still unable to overcome her great dependence, she was reduced, none the less, to staying inside with me continuously except for a few minutes every now and then when she went down to the store to get something.

But now she was no longer afraid of me to asking go out with her, ignoring in this way my obligations to the project or implicitly disput­ ing the legitimacy of its demands on me. I suggested a few times that she go out alone, but she responded to this merely by going into her own room, or else pretending that she had not heard me. After all, we both knew that she wasn't capable of doing it.

Meanwhile, under circumstances like these, I was exerting myself to the utmost to carry my great task to a conclusion. Throughout these considerable adversities, one thing above all had kept me up con­ tinually: the thought of the unprecedented freedom, the unparalleled lack of worry which was awaiting us beyond the fulfillment of my project; the freedom to enjoy and rest, the freedom to abandon our­ selves to the boldest enterprises and adventures; a total, uncontested, forever untroubled freedom, the beginning, in short, of-life itself!

Having confronted the fact, once for all, that we might not be able to salvage the entire body of our belongings, I had at last achieved to work out the foundation for a plan which effected a compromise between this fact and my basic principle of all-inclusion, at the same time as, through a built-in expansibility factor, it allowed for what might actually, under particularly favourable circumstances, amount to a virtual total inclusion. In contrast to the selection plan and its underlying construct 'important' vs. 'unimportant' from before the establishment of the all-inclusion principle, this plan called for the items according to a system of eighteen or classification of a I 1 twenty importance categories, each item being listed within its respec­ tive category on the basis of a primary evaluation. All items within one list category were then to be assembled into one physical category 188

unit in the apartment; thus all items in

a

certain closet would

con­

stitute, say, category unit number eight, another body of items in a

larger trunk might be identical to category unit number fourteen, and so on. The salvaging of our belongings would then be conducted in automatic accordance with this physical arrangement, beginning with category unit number one, thence working downwards as far as time allowed. Given the facts of reality, this was the closest chest

one

or

could get to

ideal solution, since in each and every case the

an

volume of items salvaged would be determined entirely by the actual

fire, and the importance of the salvaged items, as expressed by a weighted sum total, would invariably be one and

circumstances of the

the same, namely the maximal. Said in a slightly different manner, our of the actual salvage time allowed by the fire-as

uti liz a t ion

determined by the arrangement of all items into category units-would

importance of the actual items saved; in other words: never in any future fire would it happen that an item was saved which was actually of less importance than any item left behind in the evacuated apartment! Seen under this particular angle, the total classification plan seemed especially con­ vincing to me. For hadn't THIS always been my waking nightmare­ to find myself in the street with a number of items, collected at total random, in heedless confusion, of varying or altogether inferior im­ portance: While up there in the broiling apartment a multitude of highly important, highly accessible items were burning to ashes, the wages of my fateful lack of organization?! To be sure, the extensive physical regrouping of our belongings which would follow upon the completion of the classification effort was bound to arouse serious opposition on the part of my wife; but since communications between us with regard to the project had been discontinued anyway, there wasn't any reason why I should not simply go ahead and work the whole thing out on my own, then present her with the result as a completed fact. The changes entailed by this whole plan were obvi­ ously going to be very considerable. Beside those pieces of containing furniture which were immediately adaptable to the plan, a whole new apparatus of containing pieces would have to be specially constructed and introduced into the household. I was thinking especially of a new type of bureau in which all drawers-preferably metal-would be closed, like cases, so that each individual drawer could be thrown

always be

directly

m

out

a x

i

of the

m

a

I

in terms of the

window

without

any

loss

or

scattering of 189

its

contents. There were other innovations like

that, along even bolder

lines. But this whole practical side of the project would have to wait for

while yet, until the basic scheme had started to materialize.

However-if the plan had proved to offer an ideal solution, it also a

proved to place ideal, unprecedented demands on me in terms of mental capacity and strength. For the time being, I was concentrating on the classification effort itself-establishing and defining categories, listing items preliminarily, experimenting with criteria for individual evaluation, and so on. The shift from the old bipolar 'important vs. unimportant' construct to an all-inclusive, multiple system of pro­ portional importances stirred up swarms of stinging difficulties, difficul­ ties on an unthought-of scale. I was trying desperately to avoid arbitra­

riness in my evaluations, yet every morning I found that items had assumed new qualities, or lost a previous quality, thus rendering

yesterday's evaluation questionable, if not wholly meaningless. Almost every day I had to re-evaluate a large number of items from the day, or two days, before; once or twice a week I had to redefine three­ quarters of the categories and start the whole preliminary listing over again. The actual, definitive classification seemed weeks, months away.

And little by little I began to feel as if the vastness of the task would eventually overwhelm me. .

.

.

Every time the sun shines, my wife talks about going out. She knows that I am busy working on my list and cannot engage in anything else until it is finished. Yet all through the spring and the endless summer she has kept talking about it, and even now, as the autumn is more than halfway over, and only at a sudden caprice of nature the dead summer has been conjured back to life for a few hectic days, feverish with the accursed colours of its corrupted host-no, I cannot see it from my window, but my memory of what it used to look like serves me well enough-even now she has kept talking of it from day to day. The thing is that she is too ridiculously dependent

organization, and so we both know that she is never going to make it away from the house, the streets, the city, on her own. Lately she has been at it for a while again; every day, as the sun has gone on to shine, she has talked, as usual, about going out.-Yes, but last week she finally did it.

Last Thursday she finally did it, and the day after, and during the weekend, and immediately after that again. And now it is Thurson

my company and

190

day again, and she has been out every single day, but she has also been decent enough, so far, to come home for dinner so that I won't have to take time off from my work to get something to eat. I am grateful, in a sense, that she has been away from the house so extensively, for I have been suffering a mild setback in my work these last few weeks-a condition which always makes me more sensitive to whatever tension there is in the atmosphere between us. I am thinking especially of the tension experienced by me whenever her presence seems to imply a scrutiny, however unspoken, o'r a down­ right questioning, of my efforts or basic purpose. On the other hand, this remarkable new independence of hers may have other, less favour­ able implications that I cannot at present overlook. Once she has come this far, one can never really know what she may ultimately be up to.

A few days ago I had an unusual experience. I was standing in the bathroom, taking a shower, when I became aware that I had

been

hearing the fire-engines for a while, far away-maybe it was not very far at all, and even now I could hardly hear them because the falling of the water was drenching almost every other sound.

How deceptive! And for a few seconds I was paralyzed at the thought of how easily one day I might be standing, for any length of time, under this interminable cataract of forgetfulness-its tall, sirenian waters flowing on and on to extinguish, in playful deceit, all signals of fire from a house, which had already long been going up in flames around me.-My next picture was even more freezing, yes, even liter­ ally so: for I was down in the street, advised of and rescued from the fire at the very last second, to be sure,-but naked, and in the ice-grip of a merciless, to

empty-handed,

deep winter. With only one second

leave in, I hadn't had the choice of one single item that I wanted

to take with me.

No choice!

And

suddenly I had a vision like none I have ever had. The fire of total suddenness, the triumphant vaporization of choice-wasn't this the one and only liberation, the one unequivocal exit from prison into untrodden life? Yes, that was it! But oh how could I be assured of its total suddenness, how easily could it not that it would leave me thirty, forty, fifty seconds, perhaps a happen minute and a half in which to surrender to the panic, the wild paral­ ysis of unpremeditated choosing. ! No. If I were to believe in this .

event at

.

all, I must believe in it in the form in which I had first ap191

prehended it; for evidently one must have either this belief or the other, the belief of the split second or the belief of the lifelong list, but not both together. This-THAT-was the only choice, and then Then slowly I became aware of another, secret exhilaration inside, as it were, of the first one. Yes! If I believed that everything was going to be everything that it had been, then I would be alone in ...

the moment of my fire, as I had been it in the moment of my vision

...

And I would walk away, naked in the mumbling newness of Winter, naked into the unknown of life. But my wife would come home in the

long, daily walk and she would grieve over the burned apartment with all our belongings and over my departure too. And yes, heartbreak, you second continual chain of my prison­ evening from

her

life, of course I would have to be there to console her and kiss her tears away. And no, heartbreak, of course I would not be there, could not be there

now

that I had left; but maybe, within that split second,

I could after all have

managed to save one thing of hers, just one little item that she had valued very highly; and then I would send that to her, some day, from a distant season back across the deep, dark

sea.

-But if the fire could do all this, if total suddenness was the solution to the salt riddle,

I

supposed,

even

then why could I not just

Winter, it

Autumn, the dream

?! And since decision,

could do without the drama of accident, I would not

have to leave naked, and it wouldn't

it wasn't

..

secret

was

even

have to be Winter;

Autumn, the cool and glowing, brilliant

rebirth of

youth

.

.

.

courage

.

.

.

spirit

.

.

.

...

Yes, the decision was mine, the fire was in and since

the

autonomous

me

decision-maker has

now, not outside;

that fraction

of

a

why should he bereave himself of EVERYTHING, starting out at an exaggerated disadvantage, which, seen from his own position, is just a mere symbol of advantage? The Spartan necessaries of the wanderer, this is the narrow forward road between clipped wings and leaden feathers, the reconciliation of nothing and too much.

The Spartan necessaries-! But that was the very emergency cate­ gory, the brief catalogue of ultimately indispensable items! To write THAT down was supposed to be the most trifling formality of all, yet it had remained unwritten till this day; and every time that I had been lost in the labyrinths of the list itself, I had thought with terror of the continued non-existence of this simplest of catalogues: thought of moment extra,

192

how, if the fire struck right at this second, it would find me unprepared

gathering of even these most elementary of all items, leave me, the great list-maker, in the street afterwards more empty-handed than any unplanning idiot, the sufferer of a greater setback than anyone in the history of fires-leave me with the unbearable recogni­ tion of how easily these few simple items could have been salvaged, how beautifully I would now have managed to get on with them, just

for the

them, alone

.

.

.

To think that I

started out, at

might have

one

time, with this

despised, this most fundamental list instead, drawn the whole thing up in on, or at the most two days-and found, perhaps, that nothing more was really needed

most

....

Now, with the door open, the decision made, it could be worked out in twenty minutes.

I sat down to write. The

thinking went slowly in the beginning.

With my regular and rather tranquil life of later years, I hadn't really thought of such things in any explicit way for a long time. The first three, four items came forward mechanically like former designations, a rigmarole retained by memory. I paused and tried to think. Another two-three offered themselves from some unexpected quarter and I put them down in a distant manner. This was a fast job, the way I had always known it would be. But the names and terms there on the paper hadn't really the convincing quality of fin din g s, which would have made me certain of their basicness. Maybe they were the central items all right, but I had to project myself into the past, no, what did I say, the future, in order to ascertain myself, in a dynamic way, of their importance. Of course I still knew in a formal manner that they were essential, only I had a feeling, all the time, that I might finish the whole list and still have missed two, or three, or perhaps four altogether paramount items without which the value of the entire list would be reduced to thirty-five percent. How much more spon­ taneously didn't this dynamic conviction usually offer itself in response to all the other items, the untold numbers of special purpose items around which,

once

upon

a

time, I had chosen

to

concentrate the

groundwork of my great effort! Here, you didn't work from a given,

general situation of existence, a major whole of which each assigned item was

just a subordinate component-no, each item in this area corresponded to a special, a unique, self-contained situation of its own, each item

was

its own unique,

potential situation! Perhaps the real 193

situation

might not occur in ten years, perhaps it might not occur once in thirty-five years, or perhaps it might, in actual fact, never occur; but since, in every single case, there was this total congruence between item and situation-since they covered each other so totally that the mere contact with, or even the mere thought of, the item sufficed to call the entire, undiluted situation immediately before your eyes-there never was, never would be any doubt as to the relevance of a given item; on the contrary, each item had a relevance which was, in this sense, absolute.

But how

obvious, then! What the Spartan list lacked, in all its

banality, was not a number of mysteriously missing paramount items of a more or less elementary kind, but a small, exclusive grouping of rea I items, a sub-division of six or eight genuine special purpose items carefully selected from the extracts of the total classification system! The best way of doing this would probably be via a prelimi­ nary, substratal cross-selection, a matrix to be composed of about twenty-five highly representative items from which the final six or eight would then eventually be chosen. If only I could get this whole task accomplished really fast now-it might be feasible in much less than two hours, for that matter-then I could finish the Spartan list in five minutes afterwards, and then I would be ready to pack and leave.

Today must have been an unusually busy day for the fire depart­ ment. In this street alone, I have watched the fire-engines go by four times: once in the morning and three times in the afternoon.

The two last turn-outs even seemed to be really big. This is as much in one day as ordinarily you get in a week.-I have also heard the sirens in other streets, farther away from here. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that there are actually getting to be more fires around.

No, there are really no places where you don't have to adapt yourself to the fact of fires. I was thinking the other day that the only place where you are safe against fires is out on the ocean.­ Well, we can all make complete fools of ourselves once in a while I wonder actually whether there is any more perfect residential target ...

for fires than a passenger liner-at least, there is nowhere where you

would feel more perfectly trapped. Still there is one advantage. If you

ship, chances are that you have only a fraction of your belongings with you-unless you are emigrating, most of your be1ongare

on

194

a

ings are likely to be in the apartment where you live. But that brings us to the whole question of traveling. It goes without saying that under the present circumstances I could not go traveling anyway, even if I wanted to. On the other hand, the idea that we could travel I

get my list finished

rather

self-contradictory. Unless, of course, two people who had beforehand received thorough instruc­ tion in the order and location of our category units were willing to stay in our apartment in the meantime. Then they would be leaving their own apartment unguarded, to be sure, but you will be surprised at the actual number of people who are just too stupid to want to once

seems

bother about that.

And, talking of emigrating!

I have heard

that there

are

people

who emigrate just with their emergency items, or even without them.

Do you think they are any safer? Do you think that they are going

emigrate around for the rest of their lives or live in an apartment just with their emergency items and nothing else? Well, I suppose that we have all been diogenizing a little at some point or other to

of our lives. But I would like to

handed of wake up to

emigrants, a

see

who does not

anyone,

the most empty­ get established and

even

eventually

conclusive

change in his item situation. He may have running away from the fire, but sooner or later

thought that he was the fire is going to get him where it wants him.

-I have been thinking lately of a plan for a simplification of the total classification system-perhaps not what you would really call a simplification, rather a method for stabilizing the categories, so as to avoid too frequent and extensive revisions. In fact, I have rather good hopes about the results to be gained from it. The only draw­ back about getting engrossed in this new effort is, that the emergency list which I took a look at the other still awaits completion and day should not be left much longer. If the fire struck one of preferably these days before I had had a chance to finish the entire system, it would be disastrous indeed to be

caught short of even an elementary items list. I am therefore planning to take the emergency list up alongside of the category stabilization effort, working at it off and on in my spare moments. It shouldn't require many hours altogether, the basic trivialities of the items and the total lack of considering necessity for evaluation. As a matter of fact, I am starting on it right away as soon as I have got past the initial stages of the stabilization

plan.

195

I have been bothered

by the weather these last few days.

You would think that it was only when I looked out of the window, and then it would be simple enough. I only look out a few times during the day, but once I have seen it, it doesn't help that I sit with my back to the window; I know it is there and it looks at me from behind. I have never been bothered by a blue sky in the summer, but there is something about the blueness of an autumn sky which I can't stand.-Yes, many people have been known to respond irrit­ ably to a certain color, but I bet you haven't heard of anyone being unsettled by a certain s had e? At any rate, it has been a rather perverse weather for this late time of the year, and it has been going on for quite a while. But now they have predicted rain for tomorrow.

I am sure it is going to rain for a couple of weeks now, and then we will have Winter here right after it stops and have the whole thing over with. I suppose my wife won't be able to keep on with a

little

her walks to the same extent then. In a way that's bad, because now that I

am

going into a new phase of my work, with new demands

my energy and concentration, any increase in tension is bound to feel doubly troublesome. But such discomforts, like all the others,

on

have to be put up with if we

goal; and when you think of that goal, when you think of the splendid, almost un­ limited freedom that we are ultimately going to enjoy, then you have to admit that they look rather small.

196

are to

reach the final

Toward a new program for the university CHRISTOPHER LASCH

In advanced capitalist society the university

performs three functions.

( 1) It provides the members of the ruling class with a broad and

general culture that enables them to look after the general affairs of society and also helps to legitimize the existence of the ruling class by identifying it with the highest human aspiration, the search for order and

meaning. This was the original function of the university in the West, to which was later added the training of lawyers and other professionals needed to run an increasingly complicated system of production. Throughout most of its history, however, the university has trained not specialists but men of general culture who govern not the society through application of specialized skills to the solution of technical problems, but through the elaboration of a unified world­ view that makes sense of experience and to which all activities can be related. Thus the highly practical business of law could be re­ garded until recently as a branch of ethics, for which one prepared TriQuarterly

197

merely by mastering a body of specialized technique but through the study of history, philosophy, and even theology. Nor was science conceived as specialized problem-solving, a sort of higher technology, as it is considered today; it too was regarded as a special form of general knowledge, the pursuit of which was intended to lead to synthesis and the discovery of unifying principles.

Since these principles remained, for the most part, the monopoly of the ruling class, the university throughout most of its history was an instrument of ruling-class domination. At the same time, the search for a unified world-view demanded in the university an atmosphere of unrestricted inquiry and freedom from outside interference. The universities early achieved a high degree of autonomy relative to most other institutions of ruling-class control. This permitted them, on occasion, even to become centers of opposition to the ruling class.

General culture has always been potentially subversive of elitist pre­ rogatives, as the bourgeoisie demonstrated during its long struggle against the feudal nobility; for by identifying itself with the universal needs and hopes of mankind, the ruling class provides the cultural values by which its own hegemony can be called into question.

One of the most important facts about modern society is that the bourgeoisie has largely outgrown its dependence on general culture and now requires, for the maintenance and growth of its institutions, a quite different kind of culture-instrumentalized knowledge, knowl­ edge as problem-solving. Pragmatism and behaviorism provide the philosophical (or anti-philosophical) rationale for this new culture or anti-culture, which increasingly expresses itself in non-verbal sym­ bols instead of words. The decline of general culture is closely related to the decline of the universities as centers of independent and creative thought. The pursuit of humane learning, once the central purpose of the university, has become peripheral, and the humanistic concep­ tion of education now serves merely as window-dressing for a factory­ like operation to which such learning is increasingly irrelevant, or as a means of training sophisticated consumers (particularly in the case of women) with expensive tastes and habits. The idea of the univer­ sity as a place of general learning survives mostly as an ideal to not

which educators pay lip service but in which few of them believe.

(2) This does not mean that the university no longer trains mem­ bers of the governing elite; only that the kind of training the ruling 198

.

changed. Formerly the university provided the ruling class with general culture; now it provides advanced training in the new mathematical and computerized culture on which an ad­ vanced economy more and more depends. The "hard sciences"­ those in which data can be easily quantified and expressed in sym­ bols-have established themselves as the only legitimate means of apprehending objective reality, while everything else is relegated to the sphere of esthetics and "value judgments" that are supposed to be subjective by definition and therefore irrelevant to the search for truth. The new ruling class, still bourgeois in the sense that its interests are bound up with the survival of capitalism, no longer consists of men broadly trained in law, philosophy, and the classics; it consists of managerial types who speak a symbolic language as incomprehen­ sible to the masses as Latin was incomprehensible to the medieval multitude. It is the business of the university to provide advanced training in this new language, and also to carryon governmentally financed research that will be directly useful to the corporations and to government, particularly the military. Because this research is di­ rectly financed by the corporations and the state, the university no longer enjoys the relative autonomy it formerly enjoyed. Moreover, the new symbolic culture, though it demands a certain degree of in­ tellectual freedom in the university, no longer necessarily implies, as the old humanistic culture implied, the freedom to raise philosophical questions about the very premises of the society it serves. Those premises now tend to be taken for granted by the scientific elite.

Hence there is no longer any reason that the university should be open to dangerous ideas, except that to suppress them would violate the traditions of the university, which retain some lingering force.

class

requires

has

(3) So far we have considered the university as a ruling-class in­ stitution pure and simple. In the last twenty-five years, however, the university has also become, in a special sense of the term, a working­ class institution. It trains

people, in large numbers, who can only be described as intellectual and technical workers-people with the spe­ cial skills needed to run the industrial and governmental bureaucracies and to carry out all the commands of the managerial elite. Advanced society, as is well known, tends to replace manual work with brain work and thus to create what has variously been described as a new middle class and a new working class. The brain workers are middle199

class in income and

life-style but working-class in the sense that they are salaried servants of the ruling class who have little to say about the

general conditions of their work or the social purposes it serves.

The demand for such workers is insatiable; hence the unprecedented

expansion of higher education.

The training of intellectual workers-bureaucrats, technicians,

engi­

researchers, teachers-has become the most important reason for the university to exist, especially the mass universities that have proliferated so rapidly in the last three decades. The first of the func­ neers,

tions of the

university-promotion of general culture-has become peripheral. The second-training the new scientific elite and doing scientific research for the corporations and the state-can be per­ formed elsewhere almost as easily as it can be performed in the university. This last is a point that is not clearly understood by those who would ban military research from the university. There are good grounds for getting rid of this kind of activity, for its undermines the autonomy of the university. But many of those who seek to banish war- and production-oriented research do so under the illusion that purifying the university of these influences will at the same time deal a fatal blow to American imperialism. They see the university as the weak link in the institutional structure of imperialism, and they hope that by destroying its capacity to serve the corporations and the military they will thereby bring down the whole system. Nothing could be more naive. The university, as we have seen, is already ob­ solete as a ruling-class institution in its traditional sense. (For this reason

the attack on ROTC is

an

attack

on

an

anachronism; ROTC

is the last survival of the archaic concept of the officer-gentleman.)

And it is rapidly becoming obsolete as a ruling-class institution in the

new

sense

of

training a scientific elite and carrying out war re­

search. Those activities do have to go forward (whereas humanistic learning can be dispensed with entirely); that is, they are necessary to the survival of advanced capitalism. But there is

pressing reason why they should be associated with the university. In fact they are not really compatible with the third function of the university, to train a new type of worker. The latter demands that higher education no

become universal and that the universities become, in effect, trade schools. It also gives rise, unavoidably, to student discontent which

(for reasons analyzed below) will probably become chronic, unless it becomes too threatening and has to be bloodily suppressed. For these 200

reasons,

high-level

researchers

may

themselves and their most faithful

it convenient

find

apprentices

to

the

to

remove

student-less

research institute. Indeed this peace and security of the advanced is place. From the point of view of the

already taking development is not altogether a desirable development, because it ruling class it bestowed deprives the new mathematical anti-culture of the prestige An by proximity to the old humanist culture (however attenuated). academic environment, moreover, affords a few concrete advantages that may be hard to duplicate in a research institute. Nevertheless it has been apparent for some time that "teaching" and "research" are

splitting apart in the university itself, and the logical result of this process is for the split to become formalized in completely separate institutions. Attacks on military research, therefore, although they down the may help to improve the university itself, will not bring "power structure." Unless they are combined with a much broader strategy of university reform, they will only hasten the conversion of the university into a trade school.

For the trade-school function is the

one

function that cannot be

performed by some other institution-not without changing our en­ tire social system. The ruling class no longer needs the university to train its

own

intellectual elite; that

can

now

be done elsewhere. It

university, however, to train the working force. That fact underlies all the nonsense, preached by the most prominent edu­ cators and incongruously echoed by the left itself, about the universal "right" to higher education. What the "right" to higher education means is that in order to qualify for admission to the new working force of brain workers, the prospective worker has to undergo com­ pulsory training that will equip him with a specialty while at the same time systematically depriving him of any critical points of view that might enable him to understand the meaning of his work, its relation to other work, or the general social purposes it serves. Uni­ versity students, it is true, are ritually exposed to the "humanities" as part of their "general education," but the content of general educa­ tion has become demonstrably so thin that it has fallen into complete discredit. The general tendency is toward early and narrow specializa­

does need the

tion. Mere exposure to the humanities, in any case, does not make the engineering or science or sociology major automatically into a

well-rounded man of letters. Since and "soft sciences"

most

teachers in the humanities

implicitly accept the judgment of the "hard sci201

ences" that these fields have no relation to objective

reality and deal only in judgments, exposure to the humanities may only reinforce the contempt with which most students already regard them.

If one considers the universities principally as trade schools, as a form of industrial

apprenticeship, the proper goals of university reform appear to be quite different from those to which the student left has given most of its efforts. The attempt to disrupt and paralyze the university not only reflects the naive theory of state power already criticized, it also runs directly counter to the interests of the workers in the name of which the new left claims to speak. The student left hopes to use confrontations within the university to "radicalize" other students, but its conception of radicals as people who have opted out of the system reflects the movement's elitism, its preoccupation with the spiritual turmoil of those who are bored or sickened by affluence, and its essential indifference to the needs of people who cannot afford the luxury of dropping out. These people, whether they come from the ghetto, from the white working class, or from the middle class it­ self, are determined to get what they consider to be an education, and they (together with the communities from which they come) are therefore determined that the universities shall remain open. They know-what affluent dropouts from suburbia can afford to overlook -that higher education represents their only chance to acquire the skills that lead in turn to economic security. What they do not know is that the same system that provides them with those skills also serves to make them into passive and easily manipulatable workers, at once highly trained and intellectually docile, proficient in specialized skills but incapable of questioning the underlying conditions of their new

existence.

opportunity to make the reform of the university into a wider issue capable of speaking to the needs of working people in general. Calls for the disruption of the university, for student power, or even for an end to military research do not speak to those needs-a fact that incidentally explains why SDS has This presents the left with the

scored its few

successes

at

elite universities like

Harvard, Cornell,

and Columbia. In order to win the support of the new technical and intellectual workers and of the working classes generally, the left would have to put forward

a

very different kind of program for the

university, the main elements of which can be characterized as follows: (i) An end to violence and terror on the campus.

202

(ii) An end

opposed

to

to

demonstrations that

demonstrations

that

disrupt academic work,

as

merely disrupt the administrative

routine.

The left cannot afford to deprive itself of forceful methods of mak­ its influence felt, falling in with the official civil libertarian posi­

by

ing

disruptions and strikes of any kind have no place in the con­ university and that those who oppose the existing system should

tion that

fine their opposition to speech.

But radicals do not have the right to interfere with the free speech to shut down the classes of professors with whom they do of

others,

happen to agree, or to prevent the majority of students (whose patience in any case has begun to wear somewhat thin) from pro­ ceeding with the terms of their apprenticeship.

not

military research and other ties with government and the corporations that undermine the autonomy of the university.

As already explained, elimination of these functions will hardly (iii)

An end to

society. Nevertheless it is a necessary condi­ tion of any real reform of the university, for the general objective of reform should be to defend the existing autonomy of the university and steadily and systematically to expand it. revolutionize American

(iv) Humanization of the conditions of industrial apprenticeship.

Having recognized that apprenticeship, disguised as liberal education,

principal function of the university, the left should proceed to organize a broad coalition of forces within the university community (and eventually in American society in general) for the purpose of providing students with the means of becoming not merely intellectual workers but workers who can think and question and thereby defend their own class interests against those who would keep them docile and passive. This emphatically does not mean providing students with courses in guerrilla warfare or the crimes of American imperialism. It implies something far more serious than that-res­ toration of the unity of learning. Science must become once again a branch of philosophy, a means not simply of solving predefined prob­ lems but of raising questions about the ends and means of human has become the

existence. The

arts and humanities must

be rescued from their pres­

ent

degraded, diffuse, essentially ornamental position and established on an equal footing with science, as studies that make their own indispensable contribution to the understanding of the objective world. Unless these things are done, the working class-broadly de203

fined to include the intellectual and technical strata-will have

no

defense against a technological anti-culture that incinerates its ene­ mies abroad and increasingly reduces its own citizens to a state of

general insecurity, while trying to buy them off with a great plenty of consumer goods.

What is required, therefore, is not more curricular reforms designed to provide a sugar coating of the humanities and "general education" for industrial apprenticeship, but a fundamental reform of appren­ ticeship itself in the form of a general attack on the instrumental conception of culture that has become so pervasive. The issue, re­ duced to its simplest terms, is the issue between an enlightened and a degraded working class; but bound up in that issue is the very sur­ vival of all that is best in Western culture.

Indeed the fact that the

ruling class in

advanced countries

now

tramples on that culture, which it claims to defend against the in­ fidels without, is the best reason for overthrowing it and replacing it with a genuinely democratic regime. (v) Creation oi a new system ot secondary education. The last stage of a radical program for the universities-one that can be reached

only after the others have been at least partially accomplished, but which should be borne in mind throughout-is to remove the trade­ school function altogether and embody it in a new system of sec­ ondary schools. So far I have considered the problems of the uni­ versity without any reference to the problems of youth. I have con­ sidered students chiefly as prospective (intellectual and technical) workers; but they must also be regarded in their capacity as young people subjected in great numbers to an entirely novel experience, namely the prolongation of adolescence well into the twenties. Ad­ vanced capitalism requires that masses of young people be kept off the labor market and maintained in a subordinate and dependent status at a time when they are mature and formerly would have quali­ fied for adult status.

These

changes, superimposed on an already existing tendency to make the school into a total educational environment (a tendency that goes back as far as the seventeenth century, and was based on a

sensitivity to the needs of children and adolescents), spelled the final death of the medieval concept of education, which left the pupil free of supervision outside school hours. In the twentieth century the older concept, already extinct in the secondary schools, has disapnew

204

peared even from higher education and is replaced by the phenom­ university in loco parentis: the residential college with its close supervision of all aspects of students' lives. The university, like the high school, becomes among other things a place of detention and custody. enon

of the

These conditions underlie the generational character of the student

revolt and

are

reflected in

some

of its demands. The demand for

"relevance" and the demand that the university involve itself more di­

rectly in life reflect the highly artificial isolation of young people who are forced to extend their years of preparation for life far beyond what was demanded by any previous society. To make matters worse, many students are doubly victimized by the national cult of youth (largely the creation of Madison Avenue) and hence do not really want the adult status they claim to be demanding. Perhaps because they believe their position to be essentially helpless, they prefer to insist on the special virtue and wisdom peculiar to youth.

Universal higher education is a cruel fraud; it does a direct dis­ service to the people whom it is supposed to benefit, namely the young. Ostensibly an unmitigated blessing and "opportunity," it in fact is a manifestation of society's refusal to provide young people with a training that would enable them to qualify for employment at eighteen or nineteen instead of at twenty-two, twenty-three, or even twenty-six or -seven. The effort to humanize technical education in the university, therefore, should be seen merely as the first step toward the creation of an entirely new system of higher and secondary edu­ cation designed to destroy the custodial function of schools; to dis­ sociate education from the process of qualification for work, so far as that is possible, and where it is not, to recognize more frankly the character of education as apprenticeship and to provide institutions to that appropriate purpose; and finally, to provide unstigmatized alternatives to formal schooling, both for young people and for adults. This last is an essential part of any such reform, but requires detailed treatment in its own right and will have to be passed over •

here.

Another essential part of a new educational system is a new kind of secondary school, the technical school or college of science,

gradua­ eighteen or nineteen) would not necessarily mean the end of a person's education but would qualify him for most work now to holders of a open only college degree. The technical college tion from which (at

would abandon the

pretense of educating scholars in the old-fashioned 205

sense

and would concentrate instead on a

rigorous program in science, aimed at training skilled workers with a broad understanding of science in its many forms. It would train people without many of the accomplishments and refinements traditionally associated with liberal scholarship and high social status, but who, unlike the present college graduate, would be capable of critical thought on a variety of subjects, particularly on the social consequences of applied science.

By sacrificing its pretensions to a classical education-and these now survive only as pretensions in the university itself-the college of science would be in a better position than the university to capitalize on students' hunger for "relevance" by emphasizing, for instance, the scientific understanding of society and the relation of scientific re­ search to social decisions, instead of burdening students with required courses in the humanities that seem "irrelevant" for various good and bad

reasons.

The

college of science, in other words, would abandon the claim

-which in any case has become very hollow-to offer a rounded, liberal education. It would also retreat from the present swollen con­

ception of the school as the only education, the spm total of a person's intellectual training. In the existing universities, and even more in the high schools, this conception is a necessary counterpart of the cus­ todial function of the school; the school becomes the only educational agency (even to the exclusion of the family) because the students expected to spend all their time there. In the technical college, by contrast, young people from twelve or thirteen to eighteen or nine­ teen would be required to spend only part of their time in classes, thus leaving time for games and jobs (is it necessary to insist that these too are educational?), putting an end to the absurd regime of a five-day school week, breaking down the enforced separation between learning and "life," and in general breaking down the segregation of are

the young.

A parallel system of secondary schools, also for students between twelve and nineteen, would offer a six-year program of studies in the

again, as preparation for university work (although it might serve as such) but as a complete course in its own right. It might be objected that separate systems of secondary schools, one for the arts and one for science, merely reinforce the division between science and the humanities. This objection disappears, however, when arts-not,

science itself is defined, not

cialization, but as 206

a

as

branch of

a

collection of discrete fields of spe­

philosophy which aims, like the hu-

give order and meaning to human life. Parallel systems of secondary schools, one for the arts and one for science (both broadly defined), imply, not a radical divorce between the two (with the consequent trivialization of the humanities as essentially orna­ mental and oriented to the consumption of culture), but recognition of the practical difficulty that a full synthesis of the two can take place only in the university, at the highest level of academic thought, and that students meanwhile have to make decisions (not necessarily irrevocable, as they tend to be today) that force them to emphasize certain kinds of studies over others. We have already seen that in the existing university the humanities have largely become a mere appendix to technical training, and it should be obvious that the attempt to gather all learning together in one institution does not at all guarantee a synthesis. That ideal can be realized only in a true university where scholars pursue advanced studies for their own sake; a university, in other words, shorn of the extraneous functions it now exercises and restored to its original purpose of disinterested inquiry-without the elitist view of society with which that purpose was formerly associated. maruties, to

This hasty survey necessarily simplifies a complex subject and leaves

large parts

of the argument unelaborated.

culture, for

instance,

cannot

be

The decline

understood

solely

as

of a

general

result of

changing modes of production. It has to be seen, more broadly, as a manifestation of the collapse of a unified view of the world and of the entire rationalist tradition. The attempt to reestablish general culture in the university, while at the same time providing a new system of industrial apprenticeship, cannot, therefore, be seen as a matter

that

concerns

educational reformers alone.

I have

already tried to show that educational reform concerns the working class as a whole-particularly its technical and intellectual elements-and will not be achieved until it becomes part of a general social program embodied in a new mass political movement. But such a movement will itself come to nothing unless it has as its over­ riding objective nothing less than a new cultural synthesis, based on the rationalist tradition but transcending its narrow elitism and its traditional disregard of the social consequences of individual achieve­ ments. Without such a synthesis, industrial civilization--capitalist or socialist-will become increasingly brutal and meaningless.

207

Contributors Williams stories

CLARK BLAISE teaches at Sir

University in Montreal and his wife is at McGill.

George

Four of his

published last year in New Canadian Writing (Clarke, Irwin

were

and Co. Ltd., Toronto). JOHN ASHBERY lives as an editor of Art News.

His fourth volume of poetry, The Double Dream of Spring, will be lished

early

in

1970

by

E.

P.

pub­

FRANCISCO de GOMEZ de

Dutton.

QUEVEDO VILLEGAS, magnum decus Hispanorum (Lipsius), nacio

en

Madrid el 26 septiembre de 1580. Fue educado en la Universidad de Alcala de

Henares, donde estudio teologia. Su primer trabajo publicado fue

Zahurdas de Pluton. Quevedo murio en San Marcos et came

celda del Convento Real de

una

Leon, el 8 de Septiembre de 1645. CURTIS HARNACK

this way from

a

place he was likely to come from by a route where

he found the hedges white. JOYCE CAROL OATES's story in TriQuarterly 15

won

Illinois

O.

an

Henry

award.

in

DeKalb.

University

JAMES

McNIECE teaches at Northern

A

nice

very

TriQuarterly 6. MINAS SAVVAS is

College.

now

story of his

teaching

KONSTANTINOS PETROU KABAPHES

at

'0

San

appeared

Diego

in

State

Kcovorovrivoc

'

n E'tpOU

Kat56:<jlT]<; £YEvv�8T] El� 't�v AAEE,6:vOpElav 't�<; AtYLJ1l'tOU T�V 17T]v AnplAlou TOO 1863, aAAa £!lEy6:AwOE ak; 't�v Ayy Alav.

Apyorapo; EylVE "EAAT]V nOAlTT]<;, nap' OAOV Oll El:T]OE TO !lEya­ Aun:pov !lEpO<; T�<; SW�<; TOU Et<; T�V AAEE,6:vOpElav, onou Kat '

'

,

'

anE8aVE TO 1933. To

np{;hov rrorqrucov TOU EPYOV £E,E0681'] TO 1904.

BERTRAM D. WOLFE is

tion

on

teaches

a

senior research fellow at the Hoover Institu­

War, Revolution and at

Peace

Washington and Lee.

His

DABNEY

STUART

Particular Place will be

published

at

Stanford.

by Knopf, and his essay on "Laughter in the Dark: Dimensions of Parody" will appear in TriQuarterly 17, a festschrift for Vladimir Nabokov. DAVID WAGONER edits Poetry Northwest. HUGH FOX is with the Department

of American State

Thought and Language of University College at Michigan

University in East Lansing and edits Ghostdance. JAMES TATE is

traveling Europe. His second book, The Torches, appeared recently from Unicorn Press. HOWARD V. HONG is a Professor of Philosophy at St. Olaf College in Minnesota where he has been since 1938. Dr. and Mrs.

Hong received the National Book of the five-volume edition of

Award in

1968 for their translations

Kierkegaard's Papers and Journals.

W. S.

Transparence of the World (Atheneum)

MERWIN's the

Products

and

0/

Perfected Civilization (Macmillan) will appear this year. ROBERT

CHATAIN has appeared in Poetry and New American Review, and lives in New York with

his wife.

DICK

is

DAVIS

a

English poet

young

recently graduated from Kings College, Cambridge.

J. D. REED's first

published by Simon and

collection of poems, Expressways, has just been

The

Schuster. JOHN SEELYE teaches at the

University of Connecticut.

True Adventures of Huck Finn will

be available from Northwestern

soon

University Press. JORGE LUIS BORGES recently published a brief story in the New York Review 0/ Books. NORMAN THOMAS DI GIOVANNI

is collaborating with Borges in translating ten of his books for E. P.

Dutton.

ALBERT R. CIRILLO specializes in the literature of the Renaissance and has

published essays on

16th and

17th century literature

as

well

as

on

George Eliot variously. PETER WILD's untitled collection of poetry will be published

(Lillabulero Press) in spring 1970. The Afternoon in Dismay

(The Arts Association of Cincinnati, Inc.) was published in 1968. He lives in

Alpine,

Notre

Texas. JOHN E. MATTHIAS teaches

Dame.

Anthology

II

He

appears

in

GAlUS VALERIUS

ejus ultimum valedictio Lesbiae ROBERT SWARD's work Brinkman's

The

will

fuisse. appear

CATULLUS

translated &

History Department

Veronae

migravit. Putamus opus

DCXCIX

anthology (Kiepenheuer

LASCH teaches in the is

University of

Experiments in Prose and New Poetry

DCLXIX A VC natus est. Romam DCXCI AVC

book

the

(Swallow Press). ANDREW WYLIE will edit the spring

issue of Agenda (London).

Rolf

at

A VC

by

mortuus

Peter

Behrens

est.

in

Witsch). CHRISTOPHER at

Agony of the American Left

Northwestern. His latest

(Knopf

1969).

SIMON

GRABOWSKI has been changed to protect the innocent. MARK STRAND's most recent book is Reasons

ROBERT LOUIS

lor Moving (Atheneum 1968). A poem by

STEVENSON

appears

on

the

cover

of

this

issue.

TADANORI YOKOO was recently insulted by the Vice President of the United States. More of his work will

appear in future issues of TriQuarterly.

--=--

The Fool and H",

Scepter A Study in Clowns and

Jesters and their Audience

by William Willeford The Author-examines the materials of folly, the nature of the fool spec­ tacle made of these materials, and the interactions, both conscious and unconscious, between the fool and his audience.

288 pages

$8.50

On Neoclassicism

by Mario Praz Professor Praz relates the history

of the neoclassical taste to its liter­ ary and social background, from its seventeenth-century precursors to the writings of Winckelmann, the milieu of Madame Recamier, and on to its continuing influence from the late nineteenth century

onward.

Likeness

400 pages

$12.95

A Conceptual History of

Ancient Portraiture

by James D. Breckenridge The author holds that the art of the portrait can be understood only in relationship to its total cultural set­ ting, particularly in the relation­ ship of the individual to the whole of society. He demonstrates that the occurrence of the portrait within a culture is significant in our understanding of both the de­ velopment of art and the history of civilization.

309 pages $16.50

Daumier and his World

by Howard P. Vincent This study shows the development of Daumier

and as an artist, through close attention to his work as well as to the facts of his life. It considers that work, espe­ cially the lithographs as both bio­ graphical and aesthetic facts. It traces and isolates his central sym­ hols, the metaphors of his art.

284 pages $12.50 as

NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY PRESS 1735 Benson Avenue,

Evanston, Illinois 60201

a

man

LILLABULERO A Journal of Contemporary Writing

Number Six initiated a Second Series, with

work by Creeley, McCord, Tate, Kuzma, Hitchcock, Haines, Wild, Stuart, and many others. Poetry, fiction and reviews. With An Appreciation of W. S. Merwin, featur­ ing new work by Merwin, translations of Jean Follain, and an essay on Merwin by George Hitchcock.

Number Seven introduces several new poets, with work by Simic, Ammons, Sterry, fiction by Henry H. Roth, and reviews by Banks, Matthews and Hewitt. With An

Appreciation of Gary Snyder, featuring new work by Snyder and an essay on Sny­ der by Howard McCord.

Lillabulero may be purchased for one dollar per copy or four dollars per 4-issue sub­ scription, from:

LILLABULERO Krums Corners Road, R.D. 3 Ithaca, New York 14850

Chicago

The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Illinois 60637

PHIL Volume I

PHY

KARL JASPERS Translated by E. B. Ashton Although Jaspers occupies a position of eminence in Continental philosophy, his central philosophical works, which form the very core of his thought, have been inaccessible to English readers. This translation of Philosophy makes available one of his strictly philosophical works. It contains an "Introduction to Philosophy" and "Epilogue 1955", a rare example of a philosopher reviewing his work at a distance of twenty-five years.

1969 LC:69-19922 350 pages $11.50

THE

HUMAN

CONDITION Hannah Arendt Hannah Arendt's The Human Condition is a startling and penetrating study of the state of modern man. The freshness of her approach is a result of her unique consideration of mankind and men from the point of view of the actions of which they are capable. "Every now and then, I come across a book which gives me the impression of having been The Human especially written for me Condition belongs to this small and select class."-W. H. Auden. "The combination of tremendous intellectual power with great common sense makes Miss Arendt's insights into history and politics seem both amazing and obvious."-Mary McCarthy, The New Yorker. ....

Chicago Collector's Editions.

1958 LC:58-5535 333 pages Slipcased $8.95

Selected Letters of

FRIEDRICH NIETlSCHE Edited and translated by Christopher Middleton Middleton has assembled a selection of letters which, as a whole, gives a sympathetic portrayal of a much maligned personality. Traditionally cast in the popular mind as the ultimate anti­ Semitic German nationalist, Nietzsche has been misrepresented, misinterpreted, and misused for decades. Although Nietzsche's circle of friends at times included such men as Wagner, Rhode, and Burckhardt, he gradually became more and more aware of his isolation not only from these a friends, but from humanity. His letters, in Middleton's words, "are like arial photography of of subterranean labyrinth." This selection of more than two hundred letters-about one-tenth Nietzsche's total correspondence--successfully reveals the framework of that labyrinth.

1969 LC:69-20453 370 pages $10.00

liMy mind has been in jail all my life and I've always been planning a jailbreak"-E,W.

With these books

WILDMAN has been sprung Eugene Wildman, a former editor of Chicago Review, has taught literature and creative writing at Northwestern University and, at present, teaches at the University of Illinois, Chicago Circle Campus.

He is completing two experimental novels: MONTEZUMA'S BALL and THE SUBWAY SINGER/THE GARBAGE BARGE and is, simul­ taneously, at work on four plays.

EXPERIMENTS IN PROSE

ANTHOLOGY OF CONCRETISM

Eugene Wildman, ed.

352 pp. intro,

Eugene Wildman, ed.

illus, photos,

ou�

fold­

$10.00

The purpose of EXPERIMENTS? "To be out of beat and in time.

To explore and represent some of our formal and contentual possi­ bilities of expression. To put to­ gether a book that would express

really contemporary conscious­

a

ness but could not be reduced to faddishness. It is not faddish. (It

draws no arbitrary lines.) It is not about anything. (It is something.)"

-Eugene Wildman Contributors: Kaplan, Mattingly, Gerz, Doria, An Pei, Dupree, Bory,

Matthias, Ramanujan, Arias­ Misson, Tavel, Wildman, Hunt, Vojacek, Odessa Burns, Koste­ lanetz, Katz, Astle, Leider, Tristes Delarue, Magowan, Wildblum, Blaine

"Wildman and Swallow Press have given us an essential book­ essential because unique. Uneven in

the

best

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difficult-'Experiments

in

and Prose'

lets us see. Fine."

-Thomas Mandel, BOOK WEEK Chicago Sun-Times

165 pp. intro, afterward $7.50, paper $2.50 "The

poems

collected

TIlE

are

clude most of the mediums that be used to apply letters to

can

paper.

Although some of the poems are familiar individually, they take on new meaning when seen in close combination. The texture of the anthology is subtle and varied, ranging from delicate patterns created on a typewriter

to bold, fragmentary

collages."

-Virginia Quarterly Review

An international collection includ­

ing Seiichi Niikuni, Spatola, Saroyan, Burkhardt, Pignatari, Valoch, Furnival, Xisto, Dick Hig­

gins, Emmett Williams, de Vree, Bory, Mary Ellen Solt, others. With an

Introduction

by Peter Michel­ indispensible to the uniniti­ ated; an Afterward by Eugene Wildman defining concretism, son

book, literature. Now in a second

revised and

enlarged edition.

at your bookseller or

� �,

here

representative of the various ap­ proaches to concretism, and in­

SWALLOW PRESS INC. CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 6060S

Explore Latin America through the poetry, short stories, and critical essays of the leading writers in Latin American Literature today. ...

This expanded version of the highly acclai med special Latin American issue of TriQuarterly includes works by Carlos Fuentes, Julio Cortazar, Jorge Luis Borges, MiguelAsturias,PabloNeruda, Cesar

Vallejo,and Octavio Paz (among others).

All countries of Latin America

are

represented.

The Triquarterly Anthology of Contemporary Latin American Literature Translations by Gregory Rabassa and Clayton Eshleman, among others

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Cloth $10.00 Paper $ 3.95

WILLIAM H. GASS

Willie Masters' Lonesome Wife TriQuarterly Supplement 2 funny, experimental, self-absorbed, arbitrarily involuted, belligerently special­ ized, tedious, delightful, much work to a mood story zany, comprehend mildly obscene, serious about memory and Eliot Fremont-Smith, The New idiom "

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boldly experimental than ever even an ingenious piece of obfuscation more strikingly than in his novel and the short stories he is forging a new style to serve a new purpose." Granville Hicks, The Saturday Review ...

more

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"We have

begun to get letters from New

Yorkers who are fed up with the false and artificial being peddled to Americans in the guise of experiment and newness. One

magazine comes up more often than others: TriQuarterly. Poor Gass. He may be done for it now." John R. Milton, South Dakota Review

;---------------------------------------------------: TO: TriQuarterly, University Hall 101, Northwestern I

University, Evanston, Illinois 60201 Please send me copy (ies) of Willie Masters' Lonesome in the Wife deluxe, limited, signed, clothbound edition at $50.00 apiece (only 100 copies available).

Please send me copy (ies) of Willie Masters' Lonesome in the clothbound edition at $10.00 apiece.

Wife special Please send me copy (ies) of Willie Masters' Lonesome Wife in the paper edition at $1.50 apiece.

I enclose $

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�E

FIRST MONOGRAPH will be devoted to the work of

kinetic sculptor, HANS HAACKE. Wind and Water Sculpture A

thirty-two page monograph on three selected pape

with twenty-four half-tones and commentary by Jack

Burnham, author of the forthcoming book Beyond Mod;

Sculpture: The Effects of Science ana Technology on I Sculpture of This Century.

Free to subscribers; retail $1.00; or free with the certificate below.

of store

purchased my copy of TriQuarterly at (name -and rough address} and would like a copy of your first TriQuarterly supplement YES, I

free of charge.

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o I w�d also like to subscribe at $5'.00

a

year,

w�I enclose (not

manill

TAKt� FROM' THE NOT TO BE

LIBRARY