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NEW DIRECTIONS XIII
new directions in prose & poetry
COPYRIGHT 1951 BY NEW DIRECTIONS
These New Directions Annuals are published
more or less annually. The Editor will consider
only contributions which are sent in with a
stamped, self-addressed return envelope which
fits. All the earlier volumes are out of print
except Number 7 ($3.50), Number 9 ($3.75),
Number 10 ($4.50), Number 11 ($4.50), and
Number 12 ($5.00) . However, many of the best
pieces from the other volumes have been, re-
collected in the anthology Spearhead ($5.00)
which is available.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES
BY BLUE RIDGE MOUNTAIN PRESS
PARSIPPANY, NEW JERSEY
New Directions Books are published by James Laughlin
New York Office 333 Sixth Avenue
EDITORS DEDICATION
This Volume is dedicated by the Editor
TO
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Some of the material in this collection was first
published in the following publications; Imagi,
Fragmente, Vou, The Partisan Review, The Mon-
grel (Faber & Faber), Poetry, The Saturday
Review oj Literature, The Western Review, Das
Lot, Symposium, Botteghe Oscure, The Listener,
New Road, and Origin #2.
CONTENTS
arranged alphabetically
EDITOR'S NOTES . 9
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS 16, 537
PEARL BOND: Fcmr Poems 307
CHANDLER BROSSARD: Jewel of the Soul 220
LOUIS-FERDINAND CELINE: Homage to Emile Zola ... 60
ROBERT CREELEY: Mr. Blue and Other Stories .... 94
BENJAMIN DEMOTT: The Dead Writers 196
RONALD DUNCAN: A Short History of Texas ..... 32
NIKOS ENGONOPOULOS: Bolivar 500
EDWARD FIELD: Donkeys 117
CHARLES HENRI FORD: Your Horoscope 192
KIMON FRIAR: Five Modern Greek Poems 476
On the Greek Language and Its Prosody , 513
NIKOS GATSOS: Amorgos 507
PAUL GOODMAN: Two Methodical Pieces 42
FLORENCE GOULD: "A Staff of Honour" for His Age . . . 310
HERB GREER: Ten Poems 232
HAROLD K. GUINSBURG: A Publisher Takes a Gloomy View 298
JOHN HAWKES: The Courtier 236
BARBARA HOWES: The Horizontal Trend 278
MAUDE HUTCHINS: A Play: The Wandering Jew .... 21
W, H. HUTTON: The General 208
MAX JACOB: Some Prose Poems , .214
FRANCIS JAMMES: Prayer to Go to Paradise with the Donkeys 206
JACK JONES: The Travelogue 90
NIKOS KAZANTZAKIS: The Odyssey 477
DAVID KEENER: Sketches of Mother and Child .... 349
A. M, KLEIN: A Shout in the Street .327
CONTENTS
arranged alphabetically
ALEXANDER KOVAL: From the Letters of
Sebastian Schirlewahn . . . 249
EYRE DE LANUX: The Street of the Mottth,-of-tfre-Licm . 55
R. E. F. L. ARSSON : The Last Visit to Mallarme . . , 27R
NICHOLAS MOORE: A Lake for Tantalus 291
STANLEY Moss: Two Poems 53
JULIAN MOYNAHAN: Four Poems , 246
LORINE NIEDECKER: Switchboard Girl 87
HAROLD NORSE: Warnings and Promises 83
CHARLES OLSEN: Introduction to Robert Creeley . . , 92
JEAN PAULHAN: As for Poetry Let's Wait Until Tomorrow 121
Decisive Cases ........ 140
Diligent Soldiers ........ 157
J. B. PICK: Take Heart ,524
KENNETH REXROTH: The Dragon and the Unicorn (Part II) 370
EDOUARD Room: The Others , 532
HOWARD O. SACKLER: Sharp Weather and the
Six Infirm: A Masque . . , 346
GEORGE SEFERIS: The Thrush 493
ANGHELOS SIKELIANOS: The Supreme Lesson ..... 487
CHARLES SNIDER: Four Poems , 53
DAVID STACTON: The Dinner at Vidocq ...... 454
SOL STEIN: Fragment of Conversation from a Play . , 262
MAY SWENSON: Appearances gg
NICCOLO Tucci: The Lonely Song ...,.,.. 264
PETER VIERECK: Stanzas in Love with Life and August , . 324
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS: The Interior of the Pocket . . 530
SANDRA WOOL: Four Poems gg
Appendix: Letter from Niccolo Tucci ..,.,. 541
EDITORS NOTES
THE TEMPTATION to over-simplify is appealing. It is difficult to
see the present world mess in any other figure than that of a Battle
Royal of Frankensteins, Statism, its menace increased a thousand
fold by subservient Science, whirls us inevitably toward the vor-
tex. The tops have been wound up, and, alas, the winder has come
close to the secret of perpetual motion; nothing can be done to
make them run down. The individual, the man of good will, is, and
feels, completely helpless. He retreats into hermeticism. He waits
for the next explosion with his hands piously folded over the
stomach of his self-righteousness. Christ's sacrifice becomes a
symbol of frustration rather than hope as we look at a world where
hundreds of the good are destroyed every day and their torments
serve nothing to unify the rest into some positive course of thought
and action. Science contracts the world but does little to pull down
the Tower of Babel, That tower, which leans far more perilously
than the one in Pisa, becomes the dominant nightmare image of
our guilty dreams. At its top, clinging to the scaffolding, the good
Senator McSorley and the humane editor of Death exhort the
builder ants to greater effort. How contented would be our friends
Bouvard and Pecuchet today! They could copy industriously by
daylight and bulblight without ever exhausting the catalogue of
mortal idiocy. There is a whiff of these jaundiced gentlemen's old
smoke in some of the lines of Edouard Roditi's The Others in this
volume*
And there is much to ponder in the lines of Kenneth Rex-
roth, who goes on with the poem of his journey, The Dragon and
the Unicorn, On the surface level it is the travel diary of a Euro-
pean tour; Europe today as seen by an enormously erudite but in
some ways bitterly prejudiced mind (there are at least five points
of view with which the editor must state, very firmly, that he does
not agree) . On the deeper level it is the great journey that the
EDITOR S NOTES
major poets attempt into the wilderness of life's meaning. Rexroth
presents our crucial predicament the cannibalism of the individ-
ual by the State monster with a clarity that is not accidental; we
feel coming through from his statement of it all the suffering that
has tormented poets like Crane and Kenneth Patchen. Nor has
Rexroth shied away from a positive synthesis. His concept of the
progression of love for the one into love for the many, with its
Laurentian correlative of a candid sexuality as symbol of a healthy
society, is one which a man with a mind and a soul could well
live by.
Yet the reader perplexed by that crucial question: why is
our age so barren of spiritual leadership? will find confirmation of
his fears in Rexroth's rabid intolerance of the Catholic Church
and of homosexuality. How can one get the world any closer to a
saving unity by advocating the hanging of the Pope or by deport-
ing, as Stalin is said to have done, all of Russia's homosexuals to
the Arctic Circle? Is not this un- wholeness of genius, this taint-
ing of vision by bitterness, one of the significant tragedies of our
civilization? What adolescent meanness, what hidden need to get
back at the other children by blowing them up, allows the scientist
to let himself be used by the State monster in a way his instincts
must tell him will lead to evil? Or why had a man like Pound,
who joined in himself one in a million both an insight into the
true nature of money which was denied to " trained economists"
and an unequalled gift for language, why had he to be crippled by
an invalidating prejudice (which he cannot himself identify or
recognize) ? Is the drive toward "the beautiful" nothing more
than the misplaced thrust of the ego in rare beings who, as Cyril
Connolly somewhere has suggested, become geniuses because they
had unhappy childhoods?
It must be clear by now that the politicians are not going to
save us. Their compulsion is plainly an ego compulsion* Too many
of them will take a nation into a war before they will give up the
office that gives them power. How short a time it has taken them
to convert the idealism of the United Nations into a forum for
power politics a sort of international boxing commission!
No, the movement of counteraction will have to be in the
nature of a religious or spiritual movement. Nothing less dramatic
than another life-and-death as suffused with the properties of
soul-stirring art as was Christ's seem likely to be able ever to move
the emotions of the masses to the degree, and with the unanimity,
that would be required to produce the great all-world sit-down
strike against violence.
Meanwhile, what do we do? Mr. Pick of Scotland meets that
problem squarely in his Simple Meditation on War, which I have
10
EDITOR S NOTES
included in this volume to illustrate the temper of those in Britain
who cannot accept the drift toward war. We can, as he says, we
must "take heart."
And we can each keep on hoeing his little row to keep the
weeds down. We who are writers or work with books can go back
again and again to Pound's principle that in clean language lies
the hygiene of the polity. We can all keep trying to say what we
mean with a directness that will help restore the efficacy of the
language. This all comes under the heading of semantic house-
cleaning. Pull down the idola fori (as Bentham called them) as
fast as they are put up, and whenever you meet an advertising
copy writer try to reform him into an honest grocer or mechanic.
Tell him that life is too short to make all that money and have to
spend it too. TeU him to sit in the woods and listen to the leaves.
And we who are occupied with publishing books in the USA
have a particularly hard lot of hoeing to take care of. As everyone
will have heard by now, for the groans have been going up on
every side, traditional American publishing is a very sick industry.
Mr. Harold Guinzburg, one of the respected leaders in the busi-
ness, has kindly permitted me to reprint his analysis of the pre-
dicament. It is worth careful study. Apart from specialized pub-
lishing such as text books, technical books and so forth, few are
making ends meet, without book club or similar windfalls, except
the new publishers of 25-cent reprints. Original edition, hard-
bound publishing has fallen victim to the inflation and book stores
are suffering with it. It now costs more than twice as much to
print and bind a book as it did when I set up shop at New Direc-
tions fifteen years ago. But you can't double your selling price to
the public and sell many books* Fiction will take care of itself be-
cause it fits perfectly into the distribution pattern of the 25-cent
industry* And it is even encouraging to note the only cheerful
thing in the whole situation that at least one of the 25-cent houses
(Victor Weybright & Kurt Enoch's New American Library) seems
to be meeting some success in circulating books of a decent liter-
ary standard. But what will happen to poetry, criticism, philoso-
phy, belles lettres, biography the real core of a serious literary
culture?
Must the publication of the serious literary book be aban-
doned, or left to the subsidized university presses? Will some of
the great foundations step in to help this category of book as they
have already done more power to them! for the serious literary
magazines? Doubleday, mammoth of publishing, recently took a
drastic experimental step in absorbing shipment charges on all
books sent to trade outlets. At first glance this strikes me more
as a gesture of competitive temerity than a long-range solution to
11
EDITOR S NOTES
the problem. It will take more than a few additional pennies of
profit per book to the bookseller to preserve literary publishing.
In earlier introductions in this series I piously called on the
teachers in our schools and colleges to produce more new read-
ers on the level of high taste. That still seems to me the ulti-
mate goal, but in the meantime ways must be found to cut publish-
ing costs. How can it be done? Printing in low-standard-of-lmng
countries where labor is cheap might be one possibility, but savings
by that method are often eaten up by our import duty and the
fantastic cost of clearing shipments through U.S. Customs. Free
entry for books, without any red tape, would certainly help. Can
our legislators find the time to deal with the matter? They would,
of course, have to buck the lobby of the printers' unions on it.
Another avenue toward economy might be the elimination of
hard bindings and fancy jackets. French and Italian publishers
manage to get along very well without these refinements, A hand-
some cloth binding is a joy to the booklover but it is hardly the
element essential to his reading satisfaction. Let's look at the case
of a typical book on the New Directions list: say, perhaps, a 256-
page work of criticism, with a first edition of 2500 copies. Putting
it in a cloth binding will now cost somewhere around 30 cents a
copy. Half of this could be saved by using a French-type paper
cover. Figuring in the artist's fee and cuts, the jackets for such a
book may well cost us $250. (Really fancy jackets for a novel
might run twice as much!) That works out at about 10 cents a
book. So there another 10 cents could be saved by eliminating the
jackets. 10 + 15 = 25 a measily two bits ... but when you con-
sider that publishers in the U.S.A., because of their high overhead*
must operate on a 5 to 1 ratio, this saving would mount up to $1*25
by the time it was passed on to the consumer in the retail book-
store.
Why, you may ask, have such steps not been taken long since?
There are three good reasons: 1) American book stores do not
like to stock paper-bound books (they are hard to display and
also soil easily; 2) American libraries do not like to buy them
(there is the expense of binding them before they can go into cir-
culation) ; 3) few American newspapers or magazines will review
a paper-bound book. These are hard realities which no single
American publisher can buck by himself. But supposing all the
publishers took a stand together? The stores and libraries and
review editors could hardly then ignore all the good books much
as some of them might like to. Why should the publishers not face
the fact squarely that they are all taking a beating on costs with
the small-circulation "literary" type of book and then adopt a
joint program to cut their losses on them and keep them available
12
EDITORS NOTES
to the public at a price level which will not discourage their pur-
chase? Every publisher worth his salt brings out a few books each
year which are pure "conscience," his gesture of respect or affec-
tion for literature. He knows in advance that these titles will not
pay their way they are not "business" so why not relax entirely
the rules of "business" competition in their favor?
Beyond these specific technical points lies the whole area of
Waste in American publishing in general. We go through so many
motions that are not really necessary again, to be competitive, or
perhaps sometimes just out of mimicry, for prestige or to play up
to the vanity of authors and this waste motion simply raises the
cost of the book to the consumer. The reader gets no better book
because of them. European publishers, observing our methods,
are always appalled by the sheer waste involved in our "high-
powered" promotional techniques. Look critically for a moment
at the whole pattern of "publicity" in publishing here the time
and expense that is put into "building up" and "tying in" books
and authors. And are our book advertisements much more than
an insult to a discriminating reader's taste and intelligence?
Granted, of course, that trash can be sold to the boobery with full-
page ($1500) displays of lush bosoms and gents in costume, does
any serious reader of literature choose his books by the same
criteria? Compare our book advertising with that in England's
New Statesman or Times Literary Supplement, where a simple
descriptive listing in modest space is the norm.
The publishing system we have is the way it is because, like
a lot of our cities, it just grew without any planning. But now that
it is in crisis we had better stand away and look at it objectively,
then take some remedial steps.
I should like here to do justice for two contributors to New
Directions 12 who were unintentionally wronged last year in a
matter of stylistic presentation, So let me herewith tender a for-
mal and very sincere apology to Henry Schnitzler and Seth Ulmaix
for the alterations in the wording of their remarkable translation
of Buechner's Woyzeck as it appeared in our pages. These changes
were chiefly the result of the routine copy-reading done in our
office to prepare material for the printer in accordance with our
habitual style practices for the setting up of play texts in this
volume. It is our usage to convert stage directions into complete
sentences so that they will read like narrative description. Thus,
for example, in a typical case, where the translators rendered
Buechner's text literally as: "Scene I: The Captain's room. Cap-
tain on a chair; Woyzeck shaves him," this was converted by our
13
EDITOR S NOTES
copy-reader to: "Scene I: In the Captain's room. The Captain is
sitting on a chair; Woyzeck is shaving him." This practice was
followed throughout the play. Obviously, such changes were an
offense against accurate scholarship, even though they may have
contributed to more fluent reading. Under ordinary circum-
stances the translators would have had an opportunity to correct
the objectionable conversions in proof, but, in this instance, owing
to unexpected printing delays and the necessity for getting the
book out on schedule, there was not time to show proofs. The
translators, who have taken this irregularity with a very indulgent
patience, have kindly supplied a complete list of errata, which is
available for loan to anyone who would care to correct the text in
his copy of the book. In addition to changes in all the stage direc-
tions, which follow the pattern noted above, the following more
serious errors should also be corrected:
Page 417: "thought it was a hedgehog" should read "thinks it's a
hedgehog."
Delete "Is riding he ... " from Woyzeck's second speech.
The line "Quiet, everything quiet, as if the world were dead
should be spoken by Woyzeck rather than Andres.
In Margaret's speech "Fm surprised at you" should read simply
"I'm surprised."
''you can sell them for two buttons" should read u you can sell 'em,
for two buttons."
Page 418: "I'll sing the night through as I can" should read "I'll sing
through the night as I can."
"Wine, cool wine, shall they drink up" should read "Wine, cool
wine, they shall drink up."
"Yoohoo! Coohoo!" should read "Yoohoo! Yoohoo!"
There should be an "JSrrit" at the end of the last line,
Page 419: Insert the direction "in -front of a booth" before the Barker *s
first speech.
Stage direction for Scene IV should read: "Booths. Lights. Woy-
zeck. Marie. Barker and his Wife. Crowd."
Page 420: "Boscay" should read "Biscay."
"Raggle-taggle gypsies" should read "Wraggle Taggle gypsies,"
Page 421: "An earring; I found it" should read "An earring; found it"
Page 424: The period after "lucky" should be a comma.
Page 425: "long steps" should read "broad steps."
"calling after him" should read "shoots after him."
There should be an "Exit" at the end of Scene IX,
Page 426: For "blisters" read "blister."
Delete "out" from the last direction in Scene X.
Stage direction for Scene XI should read: "The Doctors Court-
Yard. Students and Woyzeck below, the Doctor at the garret
window."
14
EDITORS NOTES
Page 427: Insert comma after "steaming."
Page 428: The period after "meadow green" should be a comma.
Stage direction for Scene XIII should read: "Inn. Windows open.
Dance. Benches before the house. People."
Page 431: "A Bystander" should read "One."
Stage direction for Scene XVIII should read: "Junk Shop. Woy-
zeck. A Jew."
Page 432: Stage direction for Scene XXI should read: "Street. Marie
with little girls before the house door. Old Woman."
Page 433: Delete "There is a silence" after Woyzeck's last speech on this
page.
Page 434: "But the Lord know who I'll marry" should read "But the
Lord knows who 111 marry."
Page 436: Delete "rail" after "doorstep" in the first direction.
Stage direction for Scene XXVI should read: "At the pond. Police-
Clerks. Doctor. Judge."
Page 439: "Giddyup, horsey! Giddyup, horsey!" should read "Giddyup!
Giddy up! Horsey! Horsey!"
So much for the corrections, barring a few obvious misprints
which are immediately recognizable to anyone.
JAMES LAUGHLIN
15
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
PEARL BOND has published verse In a number of the liter-
ary magazines. She is the wife of John G. Ernst, a watercoiorist,
and lives "a la Thoreau" in a log cabin near Woodstock, New York.
CHANDLER BROSSARD is a young New York writer and
editor. His first novel, Who Walk in Darkness, will soon be pub-
lished by New Directions.
FRANCIS J. CARMODY is a member of the French Depart-
ment at the University of California in Berkeley. He has done
valuable cultural service in making available to American readers
the work of significant French contemporaries. Last year he intro-
duced Maurice Toesca in New Directions 12,
LOUIS-FERDINAND CELINE returned to France this past
summer after his exile in Denmark. His novel GuiffnoVs Band is
now being translated for New Directions by Bernard Frechtmann,
Celine's Journey to the End of the Night and Death on the Install-
ment Plan are available in the Modern Readers' Series.
ROBERT CREELEY is a young American writer who is now
living near Aix-en-Provence in the south of France, He tells us?
that one of the prose pieces in this issue has been published in
German translation in Fragmente and another in Japanese in Vmt
in Tokyo. The second number of Cid Gorman's magazine Origin
(51 Jones Avenue, Dorchester, Mass.) was devoted largely to
Creeley's work.
The Dead Writers, which is reprinted from Partisan Review.
is BENJAMIN DE MOTTs first published story. He was bom
on Long Island in 1924 and now teaches at Amherst College. He
16
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
is working on two literary projects at present: a novel, the setting
of which is Washington, D. C., and a book about philosophical
language in the late Renaissance.
RONALD DUNCAN is one of the leading men of letters of
the younger generation in England. He edited the magazine
Townsman before the War and since then has become active in
the field of the poetic drama. His play This Way to the Tomb ran
for over a year in London and his historical verse drama Stratton
has been translated for production in several foreign languages.
He has done the libretti for several of Benjamin Britten's operas
and has also adapted plays of Cocteau for the English stage. His
poem in this volume first appeared in his book of verse, The
Mongrel, published in London by Faber & Faber. Duncan lives
on a farm in Devonshire.
EDWARD FIELD spent several years in Greece after the
War, but is now back in this country. He appeared last year in
New Directions 12 and has also contributed verse to the literary
magazines.
CHARLES HENRI FORD, at the moment of our going to
press, is living in the country near Westport, Conn. An account
of his editorial activities would include the founding and editing
of the avant-garde magazines Blues and View; the first from his
native Mississippi (1929-30), the second from New York City
(1941-47) ; The Mirror of Baudelaire for New Directions (1942)
and A Night with Jupiter and Other Fantastic Stories (Vanguard
Press, 1945) . His only published prose work is a novel, written in
collaboration with Parker Tyler, The Young and Evil (Obelisk
Press, Paris, 1933) . Ford's poetry has been published in numerous
magazines and anthologies, including several of the New Direc-
tions annuals, Transition Workshop (1949) and Edith SitwelPs
anthology of American poetry, The American Genius (London:
John Lehmann, 1951) . Published editions of his poetry, besides
smaller collections, include three full-length books: The Garden
of Disorder and Other Poems, with introduction by William Carlos
Williams (1939) , The Overturned Lake (1941) and Sleep in a Nest
of Flames, with introduction by Edith SitweU (1949) , In prepara-
tion is a book-MS of poems in prose, of which Your Horoscope in
this annual is "an untypical example,"
Born of Greek parentage on a small island in the Sea of Mar-
mara, some thirty miles from Constantinople, KIMON FRIAR
was brought to the United States on the eve of the First World
17
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
War at the age of three. He won a scholarship at the Art Institute
of Chicago, attended the Experimental College of the University
of Wisconsin, received his B,A. in English Literature at the Uni-
versity of Wisconsin and his M.A. at the University of Michigan.
He held the Zona Gale Literary Scholarship for five years and
translated, designed, and produced The Bacchae of Euripides as
a student. A study of the poetry and aesthetic of William Butler
Yeats won him an Avery Hopwood Major Award in Essay. After
graduate work at the State University of Iowa he became an
Instructor of English at Adelphi College, Garden City, N. Y. then
Assistant Professor of English at Amherst College, Amherst, Mass,
Between 1944-47 he was the Director of The Poetry Center of the
YMHA, New York City, where both the established and younger
contemporary poets were invited to read from their work and
where he lectured on contemporary poetry and conducted a class
in the writing of poetry. An anthology of his students' work. The
Poetry Center Presents with an Introduction by him was published
by The Gotham Book Mart in 1947. He is the co-editor with John
Malcolm Brinnin of an anthology of modern poetry recently pub-
lished by Appleton-Century-Crofts. Friar first visited Greece in
1946, returning in October 1947 to remain there until this year.
With the aid of the modern Greek poets, he has been working on
four books of translation: The Selected Poems of George Sef&ris,
The Selected Poems of Anghelos Sikelianos, An Anthology of
Modern Greek Poetry, and The Odyssey of Nikos Kazantzakis
with forty-one illustrations by Ghika. This winter he is lecturing
again at the YMHA Poetry Center. The biographies of the Greek
poets in Friar's collection will be found at the end of the section.
PAUL GOODMAN, who lives in New York, is publishing two
new books this season: Novelty, Excitement and Growth (in col-
laboration with Dr. F* Perls; Messner) a philosophy of psycho-
therapy; and Parents' Day, a novel (The 5x8 Press, Saugatuck,
Connecticut) . Goodman is represented on the New Directions list
with a collection of stories, The Break-up of Our Camp.
FLORENCE GOULD teaches courses in English literature
and the short story at the University of Washington in Seattle,
She has published stories in Sewanee Review and Interim,
HERB GREER was born in 1929 in Santa F<, New Mexico,
and grew up in New Mexico and California, where he was gradu-
ated from the Fresno State College School of Music in 1950. Work
at the University of Washington Drama School and The AsUand,
18
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Oregon, Shakespeare Festival followed. He is now doing his mili-
tary service in the Army, but reports that it has not agreed with
him.
HAROLD K. GUINZBURG is one of the leaders of book pub-
lishing in New York. He founded the Viking Press in 1925 and
has devoted himself to it since, with time out during the War for
government information and propaganda activities.
JOHN HAWKES lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where
he and his wife are both employed in the production department
of the Harvard University Press. His third novel, The Beetle Leg,
has just been issued by New Directions, who also brought out his
second one, The Cannibal, a story of Germany. His first, Charivari,
appeared in New Directions 11. Hawkes served in Italy during
the War, and Italy will be the scene of his next book, from which
his contribution to this volume is excerpted.
BARBARA HOWES, a native of Boston, edited Chimera, a
literary quarterly, for several years in New York. A book of her
poems, The Undersea Farmer, was published in 1948, and her
poems and stories have appeared in a number of magazines in-
cluding Partisa?i Review, Sewanee Review, Botteghe Oscure and
Poetry, After three years in Europe, she now lives in Vermont
with her husband, William Jay Smith, and their small son; she is
currently at work on a novel.
MAUDE HUTCHINS, sculptor, writer, and aviatrix, lives in
Southport, Connecticut. She has published two novels with New
Directions, Georgiana and A Diary of Love, and a volume of her
stories and plays, Love 1$ a Pie, will follow early in 1952.
W, H. HUTTON, who appeared in New Directions 12, is now
serving as a clerk in a medical detachment of the Army in
Hwachon, Korea.
MAX JACOB, one of the important French literary figures
of the early part of this century, was born in 1876 and died in the
concentration camp of Drancy in 1944. A representative selection
of his work (in French) , edited with a long introduction by Andr6
Billy, is available from New Directions in the Poets of Today
Series,
FRANCIS JAMMES was born in 1868 and died in 1938. He
was one of the outstanding French poets of his period, publishing
19
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
about sixty volumes during his lifetime. A selection of his work,
with a study by Robert Mallet, is included in the Poets of Today
Series, distributed in America by New Directions.
JACK JONES lives on the lower East Side of New York City.
Recently he has been employed in a factory, but he is also working
on a novel. His stories have appeared in earlier New Directions
annuals and in Spearhead.
This is DAVID KERNER's third appearance in the New
Directions annuals. His A Dead One, which is reprinted in Spear-
head, delineates the father who is missing in Sketches, of Mother
and Child. Kerner published an analysis of James' The Beast in
the Jungle in The Kansas Review about a year ago. He lives in
Philadelphia and teaches English at Rutgers. He is working
toward a Ph.D. at Columbia.
A. M. KLEIN, a Montreal attorney, is one of Canada's leading
men of letters. He has just published a novel, The Second Scroll
with Alfred Knopf. His book of poems The Rocking Chair won
The Governor General's Medal for Poetry in 1948. He is repre-
sented on the New Directions list by The Hitleriad, a verse satire
on Hitler & Co. Klein has been at work for several years on an
analysis of Joyce's Ulysses, other parts of which have appeared
in the magazines Here and Now and Accent. The section pre-
sented in this volume was read in New York last year at a
meeting of the James Joyce Society and caused, to put it mildly,
a sensation.
ALEXANDER KOVAL was born in Berlin in 1922 and spent
most of his childhood in a neighborhood that was to a great extent
middle-class Jewish and is now part of the American Sector of
the city. In 1936, Koval emigrated to Holland, with his parents,
who were anxious to avoid, for their son, a Nazi upbringing. The
family was, however, forced to return to Germany, shortly before
the War, because they found, as non-Jewish refugees, so little
assistance and support in their exile. Koval was then trained as a
paratrooper in the German army, but his political convictions in-
spired him in 1942, after several of his friends had been put to
death for their underground activities, to hasten his own death:
at the time of his seventh practice jump, his parachute failed to
open properly. Seriously injured, Koval spent the rest of the War
in hospitals and witnessed most of the Allied bombings of Berlin.
Since 1945, Koval has organized a ballet theater in Weimar, in the
Continued on page 537
20
A PLAY: The Wandering Jew
o
Maude Phelps Hutchins
This play shall consist of two parts: the Predicament (meta-
physical, theological) and the play itself.
The Predicament (metaphysical, theological) shall consist of
the argument: God created man. God sent his son as a man on
earth. He was called Jesus. It is understood however 'that he was
Christ. As Jesiis he had a soul. As Christ he was God. Jesus
died upon the cross. He was placed in the tomb. Three women
watched. In the morning the stone was rolled away and he was
not there. f( He is risen" the women said. Aside from the fact
that he returned sporadically three times after this to his dis-
ciples and to certain women, no more is known. It is simple to
accept in the abstract the "return" of Christ to the Trinity. It is
not so simple to understand what became of Jesus the man,
either spiritually or physically. Jesus the Man had body and soul.
The placing of his soul in Heaven would be superfluous and
embarrassirg. Likewise his everlasting stay on earth would be
unreasonable and unacceptable.
Conclusion: With no place for his soul in Heaven and no
place for his* body on earth Je$u& the Man became the Wandering
Jew.
The play itself shall consdst of the wanderings. The wander-
ings will be the uneasy reminiscences and flighty recollections of
an old man whose domicile at the time of the play is an Old
People's Home.
Description: No description of the characters in this play
seems to me necessary, their description being inherent in what
they do and say. I hardly need to insist therefore that the old man
does not physically resemble Jesus,
Extra notes: The old man may be referred to in the pl&y as
Eli (for Elijah) f Jerry (for Jeremiah) or Abe (for Abraham) . He
may on the other hand be simply referred to as J. C. The old man
21
MAUDE PHELPS HOTCHINS
at some time may explain the necessity of his everlasting pres-
ence by the expression "moral exaggeration" He does not clarify
this and I will therfore leave it to the reader's insight, with the
help of my written Predicament, to understand. I would hesitate
to be so impudent as to suggest that God in his desire to impress
the -followers of Jesus as well as confound His enemies, iras
guilty of an exaggeration.
THE PLAY ITSELF
SCENE 1
The Administration: consisting of some men and two women.
They straggle in; seat themselves.
IST A. : Are we all here?
2ND A. : Yep.
SRD A. : Guess so.
4iH A, : Yes sir, seven.
IST A. : There's no sense in being formal. He's got to get out.
WOMAN A.: But . . .
IST A. : There's no sense in being sentimental
WOMAN A. : He's so nice.
2ND WOMAN A. : Nice ! He's dirty.
2ND A. : He's awful funny. I tell my wife about him; he's a card.
WOMAN A. : He's pathetic.
SRD A. : He's nuts.
4TH A. : He's crazy as they come.
2ND WOMAN A. : The nurses are complaining; they say he
makes passes at them.
WOMAN A. : I don't believe it.
2ND WOMAN A. : He calls them pet names and Bible names.
WOMAN A. : The old hags ought to like it,
IST A. : But they don't, though. They think he*s making fun of
them. He's got a light in his eye. Sometimes he laughs him-
self sick. He's insulted the Reverend Jenkins so often the Rev-
erend says he won't come back if we don't oust the old man.
He says he's blasphemous, and impudent; that he abuses the
cloth and insults the Church,
2ND A. : He means him.
IST A. : Well, there are too many complaints,
SRD A. : The other inmates like him,
4TH A. : Yes, those two old lady friends of his and that young
feller.
STH A. : Young?
22
MAUDE PHELPS HUTCHINS
4TH A. : He's only seventy. He likes the old man. He says he's
a combination of Rabelais and St. Paul.
IST A, : He's a dirty old man and a Jew if that's what he means.
WOMAN A. : As a matter of fact we all know he thinks he's
Jesus Christ.
3RD A, : There's nothing unusual about that.
2ND A. : But this old man is positive,
IST A. : It can't be helped. He's got to go. He's a terrible expense-
He's the biggest item on the books. He's always been here,
I've been here fifteen years and that old man is the same age
as when he came in. There's no record of when he came in
even. I tell you he's always been here. As far back as I can
make out in those old books we've got, there's items about
him: candy, cigars, mxistard plasters and so on. I tell you I
was looking at an old book there, the date was . . . (He hesit-
ates and looks around.) . , . 1852.
2N0 A. : That makes him just a hundred; that's possible.
SRD A, : That means we ought not to throw him out; he can't
last much longer.
IST A. (amazed at what they haven't realized) : But folks!
This ain't no orphan asylum. This is an old people's home!
(He Zoofcs scared.) He didn't come in here as no boy! We
don't take urn under seventy.
(There is astonished silence as they figure it out.)
2ND A. (foolishly) : He's a hundred and seventy.
ANOTHER: But look here, man, you've made a mistake, that's
an.
IST A. : Mistake nothing. I've got the books here for you. Look
here and here and here Item: cigar for J. C. Item: ten
pennyworth licorice for J. C. Item: mustard plaster for J. C.
(They all look over the books excitedly.)
SRD A.: But that may be a different J. C.
IST A. : Different nothing. Look here 1854. Item: fee for Dr.
Griswald: examined J. C. again. Report: delusions of grand-
eur; harmless. Thinks he is Jesus Christ. And the very next
line. . . . Item: two pennyworth licorice for J. C. It's the same
old feller all right. Whew!
(One of the Administration has been taking down old records
from the shelves. Some yellow leaves fall to the floor; he reaches
dotcm, and picks them up. Some books, papers and junk fall to
the floor, raising the dust. Those who aren't too old sit on the
floor like children in an attic; the rest hang over them.)
3RD A, : Jimminy Christmas! Look here! Be careful it's coming
to pieces. Look! (He reads out loud.) 1796 . . . Old J. C. had
23
MAUDE PHELPS HUTCHINS
severe fall out of second story window. Says Devil told him
to jump. Item: pennyworth licorice. Item: mustard plaster.
Item: leech. But good Lord are we all crazy? What's ibis? (He
holds an old daguerreotype up to the window.) Cracky! It's him,
and there's the date pasted along the side. Well now look at that
1839. Proof enough proof enough. That's enough for me;
proof that's what it is.
AN A.: What's he doing?
ANOTHER: He's just grinning.
AN A.: Jesus Christ!
ANOTHER: Hush, Mr. Welch.
SAME A.: I guess I can say it if he says he is it (He giggles,)
AN A.: Wait. See here . . , here is something. A copy of an old
newspaper notice of some sort and a card attached. I can hardly
read it. The date on the card is 1720; the newspaper date is
lost. This card shows they were wondering about our old man
in 1720.
ANOTHER.: Read the notice.
AN A. (reading the dipping) : "An old Jew this forenoon
nearly broke up the founding exercises of Harvard College by
declaring he was Jesus Christ. The Fellows of the College
courteously invited him to partake of refreshment. He at-
tempted thereupon to change the water into wine and labori-
ously cut his bread into injfinitesina&l pieces, declaring he
would feed the multitude. He arose, called for order and an-
nouced that all seven Fellows would betray him before morn-
ing, but that he forgave them. He was lodged in the county
jail for the night."
IST A.: When was Harvard College incorporated?
SOMEONE: 1636!
SOMEONE ELSE: By cripes he's 300 years old!
ANOTHER: Came over on the Mayflower I'd like to bet my bot-
tom dollar. Haw!
ANOTHER (practically overcome with delight at his witticism);
Not him ... He walked!
(They are all in complete disorder by now. Some are giggling*
others are slapping their thighs and throwing themselves about
At this moment the aid man appears in the doorway. He is smil-
ing affably and eating a long piece of licorice. They stagger to
their feet. They all sing crazily, the tears streaming down their
cheeks, "Stand up; stand up for Jesus" The old man calmly
raises his hand in benediction. They fie past him in various
moods and out the door.)
24
MAUDE PHELPS HUTCHINS
SCENE 2
It is a semi-public anteroom, a pretty dreary looking place. The
old man is reading the Bible. His two old lady friends are rock-
ing, sitting cm their hands and staring into space. There are some
artificial flowers and an old clock. Through the door can be seen
a sign turned partly toward the room. It reads: Visitors Day.
OLD MAN (shaking his head) : . . . I just can't remember it all.
IST OLD LADY (MAGDALEN): Reading' your diary again, lovey?
2ND OLD LADY (SALOME) : Allus is. Allus is. Allus is.
OLD MAN: Those disciples of mine now; they didn't always get
me straight, not by a long shot. I had a good time, too. They
make me out pretty solemn. (He reads on a little to himself,
following the lines with a big finger.) Cracky if I didn't! (He
starts to laugh; he laughs and laughs.) I scared Hell out of
them pigs! (He slaps his leg.)
M. (laughing) : Them swine, lovey.
S. (laughing, and passing a little bag); Have some candy,
Maggie.
M.: Thank'ee Sal
(The old ladies munch and rock.)
OLD MAN (mumbling and serious, the book closed on his knee,
while the old ladies regard him with affection) : Chief priests
and scribes; chief priests and scribes. Get out of my house.
(He gesticulates.) Git now. Robbers. Humph. No! No signs
today. Git! Go easy with the little doves. Place the little dove
in my bosom, (Hi& head drops and he sleeps a moment.)
M. (whispering) : My eyes ain't so good and I keep forgettin'
what he tells me; I keep forgettin' who I am. Dearie me. Who
am I, Sal?
S.: You were sinful, you were. You sinned but you took his
eye. It says so in the book there. You were beautiful and
wicked.
M. (accepting this): I was that. So I was* (She strokes her
wispy hair.) My hair was black and long, down to here!
S.: That's it; you were Magdalen.
M.: No, no. Abigail I was Abigail, but my hair was black and
long to here. (She rocks excitedly.) And Sal! Come closer Sal.
Sin? Sure! (She holds up her knotty fingers and starts count-
ing them off,) Him and him and him. "What d'ye think I think
about all day long! (She rocks.) Ah, that one, that reprobate.
Don't tell the Holy Ghost there. (She laughs vulgarly.)
S.: He knows it. He knows everything. Shut up and repent.
Where's your long black hair now I'd like to know.
25
MAUDE PHELPS HUTCHINS
M. (beginning to cry) : Uh uh uh uh uh.
S.: Shut up, I sayswhat became of you in the diary there?
Nothin. Me, I am Salome. I allus stayed with him; allus, alius.
M. (still weeping) : Uh uh uh uh uh. Some candy, Sal, like a
good un.
S.: It's gone. There won't be none till Saturday.
M.: What's today Sal? What's today?
OLD MAN (waking up; calmly; then wide awake) : "What went
ye out into the wilderness to behold? A reed shaken with the
wind?" John! There was a friend! Aye, John my friend. A
fine man. And what did they do to you for your trouble.
Prison! And that little bitch Salome! (He suddenly looks furi-
ously at the old lady.) You fat little bitch what did you do
it for? You gold-headed vampire, you naked wench. John my
love. John my darling. (He sobs.)
S. (frightened) : No no I didn't do it.
M.: It was me. God save us,
S. (turning on her in anger) ; It was me!
AN ATTENDANT (appearing at the door) : Quiet in there, folks.
Visitors.
S. AND M.: When do we get our tea?
ATTENDANT (to the visitors) : You see how comfortable every-
thing is; and these are three of our oldest guests. Abigail here
is. . .how old are you Abigail?
M. (pleased) : A hundred.
ATTENDANT (admonishing her gently) ; Abigail.
M.: Well goin* on it. Sal here she's only ninety-two goin* on
ninety-three.
S.: Good evening folks,
ATTENDANT: That's a good girl, Lucy.
(The old man has watched all this with disgust and contertvpL He
stands up and everyone looks at him,)
OLD MAN: These ladies are not Abigail nor Lucy. They are my
friends, Magdalen and Salome.
(A visitor titters,)
ANOTHER VISITOR: And what is your name?
OLD MAN: I am Jesus Christ and I shall one day sit on the right
hand of my Father which art in Heaven. And where will you
sit, miserable sinners, robbers, thieves, Philistines, mockers,
pigs and bastards! In the dump heap! In the ashes; covered
with boils. Git now. Get out of my temple!
(They go. He sits down exhausted. The old lacfoes nod with de-
light.)
OLD LADIES: You did it beautiful, Jesus, you did it grand.
26
MAUDE PHELPS HUTCHINS
OLD MAN: I ain't got the strength anymore.
M.: Aw lovey.
(A woman who is searching for her father comes in with an
unidentified gentleman.)
WOMAN: It isn't him. . yes it is. . .no it isn't
OLD MAN (kindly): Sit ye down, 'publicans or democrats.
Visitors day we have all kinds.
M. AND S.: Tea's a'comin.
WOMAN (tearfully) : I am looking for my father, my old father.
(To the old man) Are you my father?
OLD MAN (sternly): Woman, what have I to do with thee? I
have no daughter, only daughters. These are my daughters.
(nodding at S. and M.) and my brethren are everywhere, even
in Congress. Sinners and monkeys and reptiles and little chil-
dren, republicans and skunks and cockroaches. Art thou the
Syrophoenician? Talitha ctimi.
(The woman looks around, frightened. The old ladies look very
pleased and proud.)
GENTLEMAN (in a businesslike tone) : Where were you born,
Old Man?
OLD MAN (quietly) : Bethlehem.
GENTLEMAN : Pennsylvania ?
OLD MAN (roaring): No. By God!
M. (delighted at having remembered some of the Old Man's
teaching) : Oh, oh, lovey. Don't swear. Say only Yea or Nay.
Alus Yea or Nay. Yea or Nay, That's it. Hm. Hm.
GENTLEMAN: Come, my dear, it's no use.
WOMAN: But it's so awful. My poor father. I promised mother
Fd find him, I have nothing but a picture of an old man. Mother
said he was an old man. Please, old man, did you have a wife
called Elizabeth?
OLD MAN (interested) : So you're it! I told her to keep still and
be quiet. I told her she would conceive and she wanted to ar-
gue. Go along, old woman, I said go home and conceive;
funnier things have happened. Mighty funny things goin* on
I said. Haw, Haw. (He has* one oj his laughing fits and the
old ladies rock faster and faster with excitement it has been
a big day.)
(The gentleman leads the woman out She is weeping into her
handkerchief. She moans over and over: *Qh God. Oh God.'
The old man rises, slaps his leg, and yells after her impatiently.)
OLD MAN: Where's my buddy? Where's my friend? Boanerges?
(The old man sita down again and quickly falls asleep. The old
ladies rock quietly so as not to disturb him.)
27
MAUDE PHELPS HUTCHINS
SCENE 3
The resident doctor's of ice. He has a distinguished visitor, Doc-
tor French, calling and the old man's jriend, Boanerges* is present.
KESH>ENT DOCTOR: Yes, Dr. French, I am sorry you see fit to
remove my friend to an asylum. He is a remarkable old man
and I do not think I shall stay after he goes.
DR. FRENCH: Mr. B. has means.
R. D.: Oh, excuse me but your name is an unusual one, excuse
me. . . ?
MR. B (smiling) : It was given to me by my old friend. It means
**Sbns of Thunder" you know the surname given by Jesus to
his disciples. I prefer it to my own. I have no family. I like ii
here. I like being called Boanerges. Flayd-Jones is common.
DE. F. (in a snobbish tone): Long Island?
MR. B. (bored) : Possibly.
DR. F. (to the resident doctor) : Is he in good physical condi-
tion? Heart. . .kidneys. . .what about his tonsils?
R. D. (going through charts) : Perfect. He has some sores in
the palms of his hands which respond to local treatment , . .
otherwise hale and hearty. Hale and hearty.
MR. B. (quickly) : Sores in the palms of his hands?
R. D.: Yes.
MR. B. (a little excited) : And his feet his feet?
R. D,: Feet? O. K. O. K., far as I know.
MR. B. (letting it pass; talking partly out loud and sometimes to
the two doctors who look and listen more or less amazed):
He is such a wonderful old man. His knowledge of the New
Testament is astounding. He is very old and consequently
often confused but when he is treated properly and appreci-
ated as I appreciate him he shows an astounding insight. His
recollections and reminiscences of his life among his disciples
are revealing.
THE DOCTORS: Recollections? Reminiscences?
MR. B. (annoyed): Knowledge then knowledge. He has
pointed out that the stories of the four Matthew, Mark, Luke,
and John are artistically true rather than factually true. He
made the distinction himself. He snorts at John. John was
a theologian and used the story for his own intellectual pur-
poses. He likes Matthew the best, calls him a realist. No one
of them, he maintains, was an intelligent man or a good histor-
ian. They make him out a simlpleton and that he was not. They
did not understand the parables; not in the least. They mis-
quote him and take him out of context; Luke in particular
28
MAUDE PHELPS HITTCHINS
shows his ignorance by his quotations concerning the parables.
(He pauses, then continues.) I, gentlemen, shall write a fifth
testament; according to my friend, my old friend. (He hesi-
tates again.) According to Jesus. (The two doctors look at
each other nervously; they frown but say nothing. Mr. B. looks
at them, wondering if they have the wit to understand.) Jesus
the man you understand not Jesus God. My new testament
shall of necessity be the life and teachings of Jesus and not
Christ. Let the Old Testament stand as revealed truth and the
New Testament as a beautiful and artistic but unsuccessful
attempt to combine the life and teachings of man and God. My
testament will be based on the truth as this old man has told it
to me and it will speak for itself. It will be authentic as this
old man is authentic!
THE DOCTORS (astonished) : Authentic!
MR. B.: He is Jesus.
THE DOCTORS (foolishly): Jesus?
MR. B.: Jesus, but not God. He is with us and always will be
because of a moral exaggeration.
(The doctors are petulant; not noticing that they are being asked
to accept something t?ery remarkable. They have accepted it and
are only annoyed at his saying he is God.)
R. D,: But he says he is God
MR. B (to himself) : I wonder why he does not know that he is
not God, .seeing that he was. (To the doctors) He has forgotten
that he is not God. He cannot grasp that he is not. He is a man.
He is the Wandering Jew. He recollects the details he remem-
bers everything. He can easily grasp the abstraction of his
being God but he cannot grasp his not being God and I cannot
tell him.
DR. F.: Why? Why not tell him? You are the person he will
believe.
MR. B.; You ask me... whom he calls Boanerges. . .to deny
him!
DR. F. (seeing the light) : Of course you couldn't.
R. D, (excited; and talking fast) : But this is terribly interest-
ing, , terribly interesting. It's amazing but simple! Look here,
Dr, French; look here, Mr, Boanerges. The old man didn't
really ever quite believe he was God when he was God. Ha!
Because look here now, he was a man: and as a man, of course,
certainly he doubted. He doubted he was God,
DR. F. (sarcastically) : What a predicament.
R. D. (paying no heed) : But he had to maintain it ... he had
to. , .to everyone . ,to his disciples, . .he had to prove it even
29
MAUDE PHELPS HUTCHINS
by (He hesitates he can hardly believe himself.) miracles.
Miracles wasn't it, Boanerges?
MR. B.: Yes.
R. D.: For fifty years he had to prove he was God.
MR. B.: Thirty-two.
R. D.: For thirty- two years he struggled with his doubts. (To
Mr B.) Am I right? I mean as to facts?
MR. B.: Even on the cross.
R. D. (finishing up) : His doubt became his belief; his weak-
ness became his great strength. It is the one thing you cannot
take from him; the belief that he is God.
MR. B.: Now that he is no longer God.
R. D. (completely convinced of everything now that he sees the
"psychology" of the "case") : Is it clear to you, Dr. French?
Dr. F. (bitterly) : You are all nuts.
R. D. (with exhilaration) : Shall we have a drink, Boanerges?
SCENE 4
The Anteroom again. The old ladies are rocking as before and, as
before have a little bag of sweets. The old man is snoozing and
then wakes up,
OLD MAN (murmuring) : Simon, Simon, behold, Satan asked to
have you, that he might sift you as wheat, (The crazy clock on
the mantle starts ringing although it does not mark the time*
The Old Man is startled.) What was that! Eh? Sal and Maggie?
How many times did it ring?
S.: It allus rings wrong. It's a antique. Have some candy.
(The Old Man sits back os> if he were tired. The members of the
Administration come in with a man who has come for the old
man and a female attendant. Gradually other inmates come in
until the room, is nearly full of old men and women,)
OLD MAN (starting up and excited) : I am delivered up to coun-
cils! (To the female attendant, angrily) Take down your hair
and wash my feet.
THE MAN (wheedling) : Come along nice, Mister,
OLD MAN (very angrily) ; Is this a prophet's reward!
THE MAN: Now you come along nice, Mr. Jesus
OLD MAN: Mr. Beelzebub!
THE MAN (uneasily,, but gradually gaining assurance): Now
you come along nice, Mr. Jesus, and you're going to like it
over to our place. We got a nice view. We got a fine modern
building and a elevator. And we got some fine folks over with
us; just as fine as you got here. Nice and quiet they are and
30
MAUDE PHELPS HUTCHINS
harmless, absolutely' guaranteed harmless. What say, Mr.
Jesus? And listen, we got a garden, too, Mr. Jesus, so you
come right along nice.
OLD MAN (standing straight and very dignified; seeking for the
apt thing to say) : Neither tell I you by what authority I do
these things.
OLD LADIES: That's grand, Jesus, that's lovely,
OLD MAN (starting to cry, and shaking his fist weakly at the man
^and $he Administration) : Hypocrites. Dead men's bones.
Whited sepulchres and comfort stations. Sadducees and suck-
ers. Gangsters!
M.: Aw lovey, lovey.
S. (trying to stand up) : I stayed with him. I followed him.
THE MAN: Take it easy, girls.
OLD MAN (in an imposing and convincing tone; speaking gently) :
I say unto you that the harlots go into the Kingdom of Heaven
before you ... So long, Sal. So long, Maggie. (He starts to go
along. His old comrades make way for him. They are solemn.)
OLD COMRADES (sincerely and spontaneously) : Stand up, Stand
up for Jesus, Ye soldiers of the Cross.
M. (trying to get the old man's attention) : Jesus, Jesus lovey.
I almost got that Solomon song. I almost remember it ... but I
keep forgettin* it. I keep forgettin' it. Uh . . .uh . , ,uh . . , (She
subsides and rocks.) Where's he going, Sal?
(As the old man goes the old people close in on him, singing.)
Old People (singing): Stand up, Stand up, for Jesus, Ye shall
not suffer loss.
(The old man is gone and there is quiet. The voices of the man
and the old man are heard from the hall.)
THE MAN: This way, Mister Jesus.
OLD MAN: Let us go out by the narrow gate for wide and broad
is the way to destruction.
31
A SHORT HISTORY OF TEXAS
Ronald Duncan
Dedicated to Brother George Every, S, S. M.
The land is a desert; nothing will grow there.
Railways can't cross it, nor bridges span it,
It is a wilderness for the wild chaste prickly pear.
And there small adventure and no profit,
Green-eyed serpents and scarlet flamingoes
Scare the farmer who goes there. He leaves a poet.
Land only fit for the cumhersome buffaloes
Mesquite grass just good enough for goats' grazing
A wind-scorched pasture and not a tree grows
There, there the panther the night devours the heron the
morning,
Till the sun steps into the day's damn dryness there,
A dry wind blowing and no rain falling.
'This is the hell that divides America
Running from the Rockies to Sierra Gorge
Covering Texas, Kansas, Wyoming and Minnesota.'
Well, that is what Pike said or Major George
and other explorers who tried to cross it
with inadequate vision and too much luggage,
'The blizzard blew the tires off my wagon, and our kit
was buried in the running sand/ I quote Greeley,
New York Tribune. THE Yankee Trumpet
32
RONALD DUNCAN
Of 1859. And these reports merely
encouraged the Southerners to secede
from an Old Deal not dealt squarely.
*If nature divides us, so should Law. What we need
the East can't send us, and if they could, they would not.
We pawn our harvest when we buy our seed.'
And so the Plains got left to the Indians
for a time, to the red-skinned Apache, to the Arapaho,
to people, not damned pedestrians,
But a race mounted. . . .
(*Our eyes had not met it before.
It stood on a hill
We bellied the ground about five furlongs
from it,
Our eyes as arrows shot to its head to its strong
shoulders.
We elbowed towards it.
Its ears moved. Its nostrils opened.
It mounted the wind and was gone.
'Fifteen suns after, by the river, strangers.
Strangers sitting on the four-legged wind.
The first arrow killed him. He fell.
The limbed lightning trotted towards us.'
By 1714 the Comanche entirely mounted)
. , . thanks to Coronado
who lost his horse looking for gold
at Quivira, as did Moscoso.
And before him De Soto. And old
IS-A-Keep said: *My own sons could
steal more horses than were bought or sold
At Santa Fe/ All Arabs of the blood
With the electric eye and the alarmed nostril
beasts saddled with silver and already shod.
Mount one of these, you fly, you are a god.
The bison sniffs, it is a race, it is a kill
33
RONALD DUNCAN
The hot horse stamps the earth, the women catch the
blood.
'Poor as sandbanks and drought and indolence
can make it, void of timber and covered with thorn'
Austin, somewhere around Laredo 'and since
The mounted Comanche had taken and torn
our saddles, blankets and a Spanish treaty
We moved south to Brazos where we grow good corn
When we are not harried by the Cherokees
Tukiases and Wacos. I wrote Washington
then joined the Rangers with fellows from Tennessee,
Whom we could only pay in land, paper or
land all equally valueless in Texas where
horses needed, women wanted, and few of either
this side of San Antonio. It was not fear
that beat us, it was not luck that beat us
but the Comanche's weapons. For the first seven years
it was fight and no surrender. We fought, we must,
For the Comanche's saddle takes no prisoner.
Our Rangers lay like pincushions in the dust,
not a prayer or a sod over them. And there
was no getting around it whilst the Comanche
rode with 40 arrows to the Texan's hair
trigger gun needing two minutes to load and we
couldn't fire the damn things if mounted.
They made us porcupines. I had the sense to flee/
In 1830, Samuel Colt, sailor, carved
out of driftwood the first revolver,
,34 calibre, patented, the first six-chambered
which he had good reason to call the Texas, for
the Rangers carried at Pedernales one a piece,
when fourteen met seventy Comanches or more
34
RONALD DUNCAN
'but -we were not outnumbered, not the least,
for Colt's gun multiplied one man by six.
The Indians attacked on their black-blooded beasts.
We emptied our rifles first. They, to their tricks
circled to draw our fire. We let them ride.
Then we mounted. We pursued. And powder burned
their backs/
'Never*, said an old Indian, 'were we more surprised.
The Rangers had a shot for every finger
Along the trail to Devil's River seventy Indians died.'
With a small hole in their sunburnt backs the warriors
lay as adverts to Samuel Colt's Incorporation
to progress, and the genius of sailors!
And the porthole the sun on the rimmed horizon
scalds the woman's shoulder as her knees fall
to the dust, to do what has to be done,
Done at a birth and done at a burial.
Wash the blood and bring clean linen.
Anoint the limbs and brush the hair. That is all.
*Whoopee-ti-yi-yo. Get along little dogies
It's your misfortune and none of my own
Whoopee ti-yi-yo get along little dogies
For you know Wyoming will be your new home/
The contract called for 3,000 cattle.
The trail Pasco Granado to Blackfoot Agency.
Left the Rio Grande March 15 in fine fettle
With six months to make it at fifteen miles daily,
Ten horses per man in our remuda,
Can we make it? Yes, perhaps, well maybe.
Boys you can all shoot up Ogalalla
Get soused in Abilene or skinned in Dodge
when we get there. Till then the saddle's your bar.
Beat it! Wait a minute. Don't let cows budge
a foot lest they're moving our way
And our way is; after Abilene, Dodge!
35
ROKTAI>I) DUNCAN
Get going! Oh by the way. On this trail what I say
goes whether I'm. right or wrong. Don't argue.
One boss bosses better than six who can't agree.
'For the first few days followed the Luguna Madre
Swam the Atoscossa. A week to pass
two ranches: "The Laurel" and "The Running W'V
Our herd trail-broken, plenty of water and grass
filling their bellies. Quiet on their bed ground.
No milling. None lame and not a single loss
except a mule swimming, sank, not found,
And plenty of wood for the camp fire and
new yarns which hadn't got around and around,
'Whoopee ti-yi-yo get along little dogies
It's your misfortune and none of my own
O h! get along little dogies
For you know Wyoming will be your new home.
We watered at the Indian Lakes and were
Set for a dry drive sixty miles to the divide,
Fifteen miles daily four days without "water
And God knows a thirsty herd is a rough ride
What with four mounts during the day and only
One hour in the blanket bridle by our side.
We threw the beeves off the bedground early
before the sun dried the dew off the grass.
Forty-five miles to go now and we moved slowly
with the arse cattle now trying to pass
the lead, then the lead bullocks suddenly
surging like a clumsy ocean back to the arse,
and still thirty miles to go thirsty
and our sullen cattle lolled their tongues
an ominous appeal persistently.
The next day's nasty heat, the torrid sun,
flies drawing human fury and a white bone
on the way saying: the plains had often won
36
RONAU> DUNCAN
the last lap, now fifteen miles. A skeleton
said 'Man ami pzerrot/ Death's a bad poet
Four of us holding the lead now au clair de la lune.
Noon the next day trees! trees! we've made it
Whoopee! git along little dogies here
we let the cattle surge towards it.
To the water, water which wasn't there.
There the river's obese bottom like a heap of bowels
baked in the sun. There was no water there.
We dug a well with basins as trowels.
This way two of our horses watered.
The rest circled the bellowing maddened cows
till morning. And at last we coaxed the herd
into a trail to go twenty miles to water.
Without spit to sing, we rode saying never a word.
At noon they started to mill. We quartered,
cutting the mass at breakneck speed, then
like a damn lost cartwheel we slithered
over the prairie. Then the lead ran
over its traces and the herd stampeded
like a mighty river. We fired our guns
straight at their faces. Threw our ropes. Cut the lead.
But nothing would stop them. And slowly my mind
admitted the whole mad herd was stone blind
thundering sixty miles back to the Lakes,
Oh! if I owned Hell and Texas Sir, well
I'd let Texas Sir, and live myself in Hell!
Quoting Letter from Tom Wade to his Mother:
'Circle Dot Ranch, Texas, Jan. 1863.
My dear Mother thank you for your letter
and the gloves. Glad you're all well. As for me
I'm swell. Waal, that is to say, I'm very well.
How's Devon? Still gossiping about me?
37
RONALD BUN CAN
Yes, I guess. Yip-hi-yo! And will you tell
Dad and Uncle Will that if they came here
they could buy beeves at four bucks and then sell
at forty: profit of 9 per steer
just by trailing stock North to the railway.
Feed costs nothing and land costs less, a year's
interest would set them up proper, and say
what about Aunt Maud's legacy? Tell her
to send me 100 instead of letting it lay
like lumber in the Devon and Exeter
she'd be frightened by the proceeds; age
could do with: clothes, more fowls etcetera.
Sure, I'm glad Dad's paid off his mortgage
at last, and bought the Western meadows
and the run right down to the Vicarage
That gives him forty acres more. I know
he's been after that plot of grass for years
and how he'll sweat to get the grass to grow
and how he'll keep a bigger bunch of steers
now, and never see his fire or chair again
till Doctor chains him to it. What will tears,
Mother, do then but show that you complain
too late? Better he sells the land and rest
and let me graze his cash upon the Plains
I can get yearlings at a 1, the best
cost 30s., and fatten them on free range for nought
and sell at fifteen quid the thinnest beast.
Or put it this way; say, Dad and you bought
a hundred cows: in ten years' time they would
by breeding number 1,400 and ought
to sell at 20 a piece which should
bring you 28,000 at least
which is more than they meadows would or could!
Your loving son, Tom Wade.*
38
RONALD DUNCAN
And the reply from Mr. Calib Wade reads:
'Your Mother has persuaded me. I've sent
you the enclosed 200 and left the deeds
of Western meadows at the bank. They lent
at ten per cent dear for such a fat pasture
which will be grazed bald if I'm to pay the rent
from here. Your scheme may be good but whether
a hundred cows can breed to 1,400
in ten ytears I doubt unless each calf's a heifer!
Most improbable to your loving Father.'
1877:
The editor of The Galveston News
opens up his correspondent column
The subject 'Hedge plants' . . . wants his readers'
views.
He gets them. One thousand suggestions and some
sent cuttings of prickly pear, briar rose, thorn
Locust and osage-orange seeds; but none
of these helped the Nesters much who born
to field cultivation couldn't stick it there
without fence timber and what there was, gone.
Damn Nesters! drawing with ploughs the ranchers'
range, turning the sods over which were all
right way up in the first place. Damn Nesters!
'VICTORIOUS AND TRIUMPHANT!
HAISH'S
IMPROVED BARB
STEEL FENCE WIRE
Sold on its merits and not
through the influence of
threatened Lawsuits
WHOM THE GODS DESTROY
THEY FIRST MAKE
MAD
Hence the impotent rage of men who have sought to defend the
legitimate results of HAISH'S ingenuity who have blindly supposed
39
RONALD DUNCAN
they could hoodwink him and draw from his possession the vari-
ous patents and claims which he owns knowing as they did full
well that unless they could secure some of the BOTTOM PATENTS
owned by him there was no prospect of ever being able to hold
the BROAD CLAIM. Yet the MONOPOLISTS will fly into a passion the
moment you dare utter a word disclaiming their right to dictate
to you what barb wire you shall use. But their words are idle
tales twice told. It is easy to threaten and tell a plausible story
but the facts remain unaltered that HAISH has patents and claims
on barb wire and machinery for its manufacture which lie back
of everything and in the control of these miserable MONOPOLISTS.
Such being the case HAISH guarantees to all vendors and con-
sumers of HIS barb wire a safe passport from perils by Land or
SEA.
VICTORIOUS AND TRIUMPHANT!'
'They say that heaven is a free range land
Good-bye, Good-bye, O fare you well;
But its barb wire for the devil's hat band;
And barbed wire blankets down in hell.,
SANDBORN & WARNER
Manufacturer's sole agent for the State of Texas.
GLIDDEN'S PATENT
STEEL BARB FENCE WIRE
GALVANIZED OR JAPANNED
ITS SALES ARE 5 TIMES GREATER
THAN THAT OF ALL OTHER WIRES
COMBINED
THEREFORE IT MUST BE THE BEST
'They say that heaven is a free range land
good-bye good-bye Oh fare you well. . . .
You can have Texas. I'll have hell.
1881. The first barb wire fence
erected by Colonel Day in Coleman County
enclosing 7,000 acres. The consequence:
'CHICAGO TRIBUNE
HELL BREAKS LOOSE IN TEXAS
WIRE CUTTERS CUT 500 MILES
IN COLEMAN COUNTY*
And, Sir, why the bloody hell shouldn't we?
Who ov/ns Coleman County, Day or God, Sir?
At any rate, we were here first. And we
40
RONALD DUNCA3ST
got this place going and where Indians were
we are for good. And if they wire, we cut.
Now come and see our steers' torn backs and where
My fifteen horses lie torn and dead, but
for just dying. Wire started those sores then
the screw-worm gets in. If they wire, we cut!*
And that's what we did for a year, but when
I saw that blasted thing making a 1,000 feet
of wire per minute, I wrote to my men:
*You may as well quit cutting boys, we're beat!'
Railways and barb wire made cowboys retire
Same as we made the Indians retreat.
History you observe was made of barb wire
and previously a Colt revolver.
And if Texas is Hell, Man lit the fire
by burning the watersheds and never
planting a single sapling. Ajnd what's worse,
mad with nickle greed he overgrazed the pasture
and with prairie busters ripped the earth's
belly, behind his plough a wake of birds
squall incessantly over birth and death
found in the black furrow. And the herd
got crowded to two per acre. Mesquite
ousted the thick lush cover, and the sward
unshaded and sun-scorched died in the heat
trees would have alleviated, and earth
becamte dust, dust where there'd been wheat
wheat after wheat with no fallow. Then death
rounded the cattle up, and the -wheat fields
saddened to dust and lost the knack of birth
and the plump seeds satiety and yield
of bread, dung and a full cradle. And here
even our fat graves are by fine dust concealed.
We push our barrows from Minnesota.
The Land is a desert. Nothing will grow there/
41
TWO METHODICAL PIECES
Paul Goodman
The first of these pieces is an exercise in naturalism in the
light of character-analysis and psychosomatic physiology. The
various ambivalent and past-fixated and purposeful meanings of
a behavior are narrated as simultaneously oceurraig, as is
indeed the case. The action of opening the door and advancing to
the table is repeated in its analyzed elements; and a gesture, the
smile, is narrated as acting independently. All this is analagous
to portraying the profile and full-face in a single image.
The second piece tries to narrate with the attitude involved
in certain primitive languages whose unit-words are concrete
and particular in expressing relations 3 rather than analytic and
general like our words. Each phrase between colons is to be read
asi a single- word-notion, as if the words were connected by
hyphens. The parentheses are connectives from our point of view.
A GOVERNOR
When Luke stood in the doorway, his wife and a stranger-
man were seated at the deal table having coffee; and he paused
in the doorway to take in this cheerful scene.
A scene of theater, to be regarded for itself. That is, there
was an absent-fourth-wall between the spectator and the scene,
the wall one could see thru but not go thru. But the cheerful
scene, of persons socially drinking coffee together, as it is said*
"Lo how good and pleasant is the sitting down together n
He loomed in the doorway out of the indefinite darkness of
another space. In the room the space was sunny and a blue
Delfft clock ticked on the plaster wall. He was framed in the
doorway, claiming attention, altho the high-light was in the room.
42
PAUL GOODMAN
The floor supported him as he advanced.
The shudder of fixity of an unfinished situation, for ordin-
arily a man does not pause on the threshold to take in the scene
but he takes part in it advancing. The clock ticked a little loudly
as they turned to him their soft smiles which he answered
with a broad smile advancing. Often his mother used to bring a
beggar-man or woman for a sandwich and coffee. People of that
generation did not find it so hard as we do to enter into friendly
contact with one another, and if a man was hungry they gave
him food instead of money. This was a cheerful scene.
So he reduced the stranger to a condition passive and in-
ferior; he kept the situation under control in his golden grip; the
floor did not fail to support him and a shaft of sunlight made
brilliant his outstretched hand
As he came in with white clenched fists, never before had
mama dared to bring him home. He knew that she was seeing
the gaunt man with the blue jaw that could never be shaven clean
(he was so sad-faced and homely) , but to sit with him at the very
table feeding him cake and coffee: The child /noticed that they had
eaten most of the cake. He did not hold back his flaring anger
but at once came on making! apposite remarks. They? rose to their
feet, to their great height.
At this moment occurred a pause. They stood in a Byzantine
fixity: two looming figures in mosaic, complexions of purple and
brows scored by black horizontal furrows, in a streaming aura
of gold. But the Emperor had a golden fist.
For the murderousness was frozen out of the scene, or frozen
in the scene (it comes to the same thing) . And the darkness on
those frowning brows was perhaps not wrath but perplexity.
What was the puzzle in the sun-washed kitchen? The table was
tan deal, the little circles of coffee were black in the white iron-
ware cups, and the Delfft clock ticked on the plaster wall.
Likely the stranger was an angel, as it is said, "Blessed is he
who comes!" the missing father of the fatherless. When the angel
came to announce his good news, and he was the good news, sure-
ly he would be invited to sit down and share a meal. But what
would father be like after so many years?
There was plenty of reason for laughing, for often there used
to be jokes. "For God's sake," mama would say, "don't always
take the bigger piece of cake, it's not polite." "If you had your
pick," said Luke, "which piece would you take?" "I'd take the
smaller one of course." "Well you've got the smaller one, what
are you kicking about?" And why shouldn't the beggar-man
that mama invited turn out to be an angel, with the gold and
43
PAUL GOODMAN
jewels of the Creation pouring in thru the window?
But therefore he paused and inquired. It was a scene. He
came forward with clenching fists. Stood framed in the doorway
and they turned to him their guilty smiles. He opened his weapon-
less hands and came forward imploring for friendship and protec-
tion. The floor failed to support him and he fell but did not land.
He was falling. He stood in the doorway about to turn and flee in-
to the outer waste. He was frozen in murderousness.
What attitude should he have when the dreaded longed-
for moment arrived at last? When father was sitting at the table
when he burst into the room? No pause! A boy of four does not
pause but shrieks with fright and rushes into the loving embrace,
as he shyly stands his ground and turns his right toe inward and
looks up thru lowered lashes perplexed.
He recoiled and stood his ground. A man (whoever it was)
was giving him a single blow and then, abashed, withheld his
hand. But a single blow ought not to be given: it outrages pride
and does not penetrate to feeling and action. If he had beaten him,
as the unmannerly youth deserved, provocative and longing to be
touched even tho hurt, in order to discover some meaning in the
ungoverned waste that was merely free, as Franz said, "nothing
more senseless, nothing more hopeless than this freedom, this
waiting, this inviolability" surely they would have come to a
kind of love; or better (for the boy was a little old to be mas-
tered), they would have entered into complicity laying siege to
the woman (whoever she was) .
As it was, by shuddering in fixity he achieved three things:
he was fleeing into the waste world, blotting all that and all
those persons from his concern, to start a new life of vengeance
against them; and he was flinging himself down gasping, beaten,
mastered, and in love; and he was advancing to deal the mur-
derous blow that would rid him forever of any danger of loss.
He was lording it peacefully over the devastation. He was used to
keeping the situation in control, without risks or surprises.
Hungry for the cheerful matter-of-fact poverty of the good
coifee with friends at the plain table, that in fact he enjoyed
The half-cups of coffee looked cold and bitter, a gray cigarette
was floating in the scum and the rim of one cup was stained with
lipstick. A smjoke-haze hung from the ceiling. His gorge was
rising because this was practiced with guilt, hastily gulped
down before it could surprise us, oh trying to cram the hole that
they tore from his breast. The clock was stopped two years ago.
His eyes were close-set with envy: all others have a satisfac-
tion but he was in a waste and could not return from it, only peer
44
PAUL GOODMAN
in, not break in. Withdrawing in pride. He was good at surprising,
suddenly springing the door and standing in the threshold; but
then they started guiltily apart, when what he longed for was
for them to continue right on, so, watching the show, his desire
could learn to mount while (they were contemptuous of him)
his claws advanced He kept a good watch; but he was blinded
with grief, the legs of the overturned chairs stuck into the air,
she was gone, that is blotted from existence.
"You have been fighting again!" he cried. "You mustn't do
that, you nice people. Can't I have peace in my own home? Now
what's the trouble? let me straighten it out." And with keen rea-
son and large goodwill he took his seat in the not-overturned
chair and embraced them in his loving understanding, holding
his right arm on the chair-back with the right hand hanging be-
hind, not to deal the blow. "Why did you let the clock run down?"
he began inquisitorially; but he said, "I am above these jealous-
ies, and further, how can I live myself if I'm not just and equal,
and I take my pleasures where I find them, if I find them. Ow!
Don't imagine for a moment that this loss will crush me; I have
lost a hundred times and better than this. I arn^ left. The reason
in me, by which now I judge and do not, after all, fly into the
fragmented parts." He brought his strong right from behind the
chair and pounded on the door before opening it and pausing on
the threshold, as if to give one and all due notice of surprise and
an added moment of pain,
He advanced with an inquiring smile, for of old he was one
to be interested (erotically excited) only by the causes of things.
The pornographic pictures and stories of the other boys did not
arouse him much, but he masturbated to etiologies. Hot to ask
and know, and subdivide, and penetrate.
The parts were held together by reason, here, and the clock
was softly measuring the now lapsing into the next.
The inner door sprang open and Jane jumped upon daddy
crying "Daddy!" There was an instant that both doors were open.
He closed the outer door.
The stranger half-rose and said. "My name is McHale."
He lifted his shoulders against the weight of duty and at once
he felt the joyless spot in his chest. He was not dropping the child.
It is by the primary growing (nature) that the parts of the world
cohere and do not fragment; but to a man who cannot know this
joyous power as it bursts and blooms, the sense of it is patience,
duty, relying on the underlying energy, but it is underlying. His
world did not fragment and bring on death and woe; he felt this
as not neglecting his duty. He closed the door. That is, he did
45
PAUL GOODMAN
not like there to be two openings, one of which he could not
survey.
"Please, keep your seat. Have you been waiting long? I'm
sorry." McHale was a young man with the usual problem and
would make of him again a father.
He was sorry because he was not merry; he was sad because
he was not glad. Not pain is the opposite of pleasure, but unplea-
sure; the pain follows, it is in the chest. Therefore it was impos-
sible not to give in, in everything, to the small girl, because she
was still merry. She was the primary nature as it burst and
bloomed. During the instant that the both doors were open he
escaped howling into the outer waste carrying the child. But he
experienced the streaming primary space as his fatherly duty,
a heavy garment on the shoulders that stood up by itself. He slip-
ped out of it it stood there of its own weight and he ran howl-
ing into outer space.
He closed the door.
It was a single smile that empathetically communicated it-
self, fleetingly defined itself by being communicated, in the room.
For tho there were several persons and the smile was coming dif-
ferently to each, the social trust of mankind was an overpowering
influence and drew each smile, also, to a little skeptical point
at one corner. They were hungrily sucking consolation from one
another.
His smile relaxing into the lovely social smile was drawn
back above the canine teeth; but this snarl was quivering unable
to hold under the wide circle frighteyes masked by close-set in-
looking (invidia). With a smile of relief as one says Oof, the
smjile descended the flowery slope to the safe general smile: the
general smile that did not dare to bare its teeth bcause it did
not believe in itself, and nevertheless it was truly radiantly
smiling. (For the surface expresses the deepest secret.)
One looks, in dangerous Hasions, for this lovely persisting
smile that is a guarantee that, however the next passions mis-
match, it is unlikely that there will be violence within the limits
of the present felt space and hour, for this smile is a flag not of
truce but of the indissoluble alliance of mankind. It is embarrass-
ing to untwitch the face from, it and during this interim of
effort, who does not have time to take to has heels out of tfa!e
place becoming charged with menace? unless he wants to suffer.
He bit his lower lip and closed the door.
In control. And now it was in control. It was not in his
control but it lay here of itself, gasping. There was no surprise
46
PAUL GOODMAN
but the expected (tho momentarily he had been threatened with a
surprise.) That is, he was in its control. At last!
At last a situation that occurred, comfortingly enough, most
of the time he was overpowered, fixed, in love: over-
powered by its control, in love, without joy or surprises, with
its control. He sat down gasping. He was not smiling, he was
serious in love, but it was smiling. He had long ago, as Franz said,
"fallen under the wheels, comfortingly enough."
Safe in its control, he let rise a little the soft feelings of com-
plaint.
He noticed that with his golden grip he was holding the
wrist of the other hand. Thus in control there was no danger that
he would strike in vengeance for not getting what he wanted
which also he did not reach for. But he paused one keen to
analyse and subdivide (oh, into small pieces) and penetrate
and by this wreck his joy.
At the table, but, was too close to the scene, that advanced it-
self as the reality, blurred somewhat by tears. A wife bonded to
a governor: let her go free! What was the use of vindictively
preventing the chance of joy improbable in the world (it was al-
most indifferent to him whether she did or not once he had
surveyed the scene and knew the probabilities) ? He kept a good
watch; and if one time mama brought him home, he slyly knew
the apposite remarks provocative How he hated himself for
this, he could not keep down the loathing.
"God damn stepmother nature!" he was waiting in the outer
waste, safe at horn^e but what was the use of it, since they merely
hid themselves elsewhere? " It seems that there is every chance
of joy: beauty there and the season and the parts of the soul
and body reaching inquiring for more. Should it be difficult to sit
down to a cheerful cup of coffee?" He sent his shadow-self
abroad.
And easily she walked the street and had the delights that his
substance was afraid to take (which the world with almost
no derangement of its order could afford us all) . But his shadow-
self kept returning to Mm. "Why do you return and not abandon
me for dead with this body that I cannot use?" But so it was,
that she returned.
"Why am I bawling? D'ye think I know? Bawling because
the coffee's spilling in the saucer. It keeps spilling over (d'ye
think I know?) If I make a swan's neck I can hardly swallow. No
more! No more! Can't take it down. Bawling because the dough-
nut's on the floor. If I look up d'ye think I know? Can't keep it
down if I look up."
47
PAUL GOODMAN
He unclasped his restraining hand from the other wrist,
leaving both fists free.
''And what can I do for you, young man? What's your
trouble?"
DAYLIGHT AND ADAM
NAMING THE BEASTS
1. Daylight
Crashes softly the slow avalanche snapping trees the penis
beginning to grow radiates delicate feelings unevenly: (also)
haul and pull of a rope between two centers resisting it but not
failing to approach: (as) with a frantic itching and scratching
till they melt and uniformly burn
(the Sun daylight) primary of what is out there hungrily
appropriated: O! the "the" respectfully considered as with a
capital letter but not adressed: (also) there is none other one is
lost when this is lost
Found with such finding that perplexity and anxiety dissolve
into improvable confidence: (the sky and Adam are as) when
the breathing regularizes after climbing a steep: greeted by eyes
that relax their scrutiny and see color-forms
(the panorama) pauses over the whole extension so no mo-
tion is possible not by constriction but desire^ss: as food is in-
wardly absorbed without putting oneself to it
(Adam and the Sun) stare at one another each waiting for
the other to volunteer to do what both wish but are not able to
begin.*
2. A Meeting
Face to face with a face surprisingly present claiming atten-
tion and fulfilling expectation: (suddenly as) one leaps to his
feet inquiring: being electrified with shaping power in the blue
field that accompanies ordinary (heroic) action accurate and
irresistible.
(Adamj) approaches the similar with all sensitive surfaces
moistening in order to melt in touching: with the tautness of the
* "The Fuegian soars above our analytic wisdom with a 7 -syllabled word
whose precise meaning is, 'They stare at one another each waiting for
the other to volunteer to do what both wish but are not able to begin.'
In this total situation the persons, as expressed both in nouns and pro-
nouns, are embedded, still only in relief and without finished independ-
ence. The chief concern is with the lived relation." Buber
48
PAUL GOODMAN
awareness narrowing concentrating crystallizing to a definite
figure that is urgent: as one comes to a decision to plunge into
an abyss hoping it is a cooling pool
the eerie of unresponsive eyes hypnotic wells to the bot-
tom of life but not flashing a present message!: (he steps back)
with revulsion from the unlike that attracted as the like: (as)
one notices unlikeness in the set of the teeth making it hard to
empathize.
(Adam is) disdainful as only the assured user confronted
by other customs: as a man beats about for refuge when he is
unaware of danger because he has never experienced fear
(They) stare at one another each waiting for the other to
volunteer to do what both wish but are not able to begin.
3. The Tiger
One holds something at arm's length (and is thereby) appre-
hensive of a crack of the branch in the wood: when the reaching
out of confident self-giving and appropriating is arrested and
there is vertiginous spiralling of the incomplete: (but Adam)
slowly comes to a pause at the center of spiralling breathless
safe (in the fact that) what is held out there at the end of
touch and sight-touch is the self holding it out there and it is an
"it": smiling the secondary friendly smile of safe examination
opening the eyes blinding wide: "Aha!" greeting with contempt
what is only that u it" a toy of attention not advancing.
Flushing with the glory of being about to initiate and be an
unmoved mover: confirmed in the sense of the soul growing dar-
ing the confused unknown yet instantaneously crystallizing into
the definite: (and) deciding with the gracious ease of the ordin-
ary (heroic) to do the unique as if there needed no decision
("Is it a tiger?") not quite yet but expected as in the inter-
val between the lightning and the thunder: (Adam names it)
"the tiger" easily as sweet rain falls as semen spurts plenteously.
They stare at one another each waiting for the other to vol-
unteer to do what both wish but are not able to begin.
4. Forepleasure
With the grateful secondary love for what has caused one's
pleasure
as one notices pleased and afraid (like a poet) fearful sym-
metry burning bright.
5. Guilt of Having Created
"The universe is my temptation" Buber
Flaming with the self-love of the instant of initiating the de-
49
PAUL GOODMAN
finite (when one is) calmly open to the favor of the unnoticed
creator spirit all-pervasive of the world: thankful aware of noth-
ing but his own grandeur yet resting easy in the creator spirit:
aware that what is created in recognizing what is held out there
is I
"You!" thing given in the Six Days not made by me: humi-
liated you and I we in our relation thrown: (yet safely) upheld
as a babe who does not fear to fall in the continuous generation
from the beginning to this moment and, a little beyond
(Adam is) dizzy with the self-joy of grand achievement that
makes one sense within the abyss of unsuspected power: shud-
dering with the arrested embrace: frightened at (an erotically-
fired memory image of) the unlike set of the teeth
(he feels) the guilt of having dared to beget something in
blinding forgetfulness of who and where one is: "Lo!" there
abides the thing and must henceforth be reckoned with
(Adam and the name) stare at one another each waiting
for the other to volunteer to do what both wish but are not able
to begin.
6, The Snake *
Alert at the noise of a snake in the grass: In flight from
guilt to a contrary place where one can repeat the guilty deed:
seeking out what is unlike in order not to repeat the reaching
out arrested
(Adam, is) yearning with joy that the snake has come to
his water-trough on the hot day: (but) patiently waiting not
to disturb a guest quietly drinking: with aching soul because
the loved one will depart peaceful and unnoticing into the burn-
ing bowels of the earth
(succumbing to the suggestion of) slow eyes most like slow
motion most like oneself thrice adream: frigid with horror con-
fronted by a spirit inaccesible to material embrace: awesomely
loving an equal lord and king of another realm when one is one-
self a fearless lord and king
"It is the snake: " owai! vanished into a black hole and one is
left with an empty thought.
(Adam and the black hole) stare at one another each waiting
for the other to volunteer to do what both wish but are not able
to begin.
*After Lawrence.
50
PAUL GOODMAN
7. The Tree of Knowledge
Feeling the cold sweat of warding off the world (the feeling
we others have domesticated as security)
entangled in ramifying branches (of the names)
as colored-birds hop about in fright peeping and grieving.
"Do not eat of this tree,'* utters the warning Voice.
(the Voice) all Thou only Thou deeper than my next wish
and providentially calamitous to me: (to which one is) so turned
as not to notice that one's feet are not on the ground: (altho)
one's legs are planted in the rock and aching with the vegetative
currents: a communication not pleasant painful violent nor
peaceful but promissory
(Adam) lowers his stare as one wooing met frankly gaze
for gaze*
8. The Dog
(He and the dog) stare at one another each waiting for the
other to volunteer what both wish but are unable to begin: With
the sadness felt for a trusting limited gaze: noblesse oblige
Stretches out his hand as one offers a great hand: weeps the
boiling tears whose meaning is "unknown but they are for oneself:
touches with the despairing grip that is meant to indicate not
what it does but something else.
Teasingly moving this way and that to see if a gaze will dog-
gedly follow: (Adam says) "You are the dog" as if giving not
an abjective name but presuming to say "my" as an essential
relation: exasperated by having one's mere whim complied with
feeling the loneliness unmixed with fear of a person so su-
perior that few understand him: feeling the need to subserve in
order that one's nobility may not lose contact with the continuum
of life
beginning as one gives oneself wholly but without confidence
to what cannot eventuate.
9. The Names
The passionate use of a new tool for the sake of using it till
one is overcome with meaninglessness!
wild with success until stupefied
(Adam) shakes the dream out of his hair and notices he is
alone.
Notices that the milieu is apt for steps to be taken when one
is no longer taking the steps,
51
PAUL GOODMAN
10. No Helpmeet
Lonely with new experience one cannot communicate: as a
surface expands meeting no resistance and is dissipating itseli:
aging with committed powers that do not eventuate
Thoughtful without puzzlement at a disproportion in the
nature of things: (Adam) frowns a great frown
as one spreads one's fingers and unspreads them clenches
the fists and unclenches them
hates the self for senseless excellence as tho this were boast-
ing.
Naming things in order to tell them off: expressing without
communicating in order to exhaust the soul and sleep.
Crying himself to sleep: becoming healed and solid in con-
tact with the rocks gravity the rolling earth.
52
TWO POEMS
Stanley Moss
THE WANTON VOYAGER
Would that strength were weakness and I were weaker still,
Could rest my head upon its floor and not strong or weak
Conceive a world that unconceived is happier still
Than morning scourging its wide arm across the sun's hot peak,
Bailing the sun from the day, taking part in on anyway or
anywhere,
But to speak of happiness, to hear its sorrow purr and whine and
reek
The breath of hour after hour, lung and blood bare
To sunlight; time: song to song and silences to wit,
And of sorrow to scold its wail, smack and ruin it, light flares
Against its eyes till it winks, and I not wanting this will hit
Its face with a rail of stars and twirl upon its brows the moon,
And light darkness with wild fires a cold wind lit.
Cold seas to ashes, and trees and leaves over this, and moon,
At the end coming closer but in this ending no ruin
Of winter or its sky in winter walls beneath the snow,
No corpse of leaf or paper, no weaving dead sunlight
This hand that never weaved, no snow to lie beneath and know.
PAXPOETICA
Peace for this poor earth; this plant, bloom
Of dreaming dogs in swimless swirls of intellect,
Peace in drunken gardens where butterflies swoon
53
STANLEY MOSS
Into a sun, living one day, and dying in puddles
Of that night; wing and blood, a flowered sail wrecked
While God stands for a moment at the window and red bells
Ring. Beside a fountain lovers drink wines
Of the loveless ages formless in each glass; Forever
Praying their lips to kiss, but the future of oceans, times
Of wanton voyages, the sounds of space, their pasted sun,
All stale, slain on the beach of no where. O peace
Do not touch my skull, for had I words I'd run
Beneath a sun of fable and fire, romping toward pinwheels
Of things unknown and things beautiful, harvest bright horns
While love grows as grapes, till naked earth steals
Naked to my arms and the chapels of each morning
Become a harbor where ships of night, dark and Godlike,
Float to the playing children on the shore. For death is worn,
And spawning blood sets fire to the wind and trees,
And fishermen lift their nets, hoist death weeping,
Tossing death twinkling as a small coin into the profitless seas.
54
THE STREET OF
THE MOUTH-OF-THE LION
Eyre de Lanux
AT six O'CLOCK in the morning Rome is quiet, bathed in light.
Clouds are still resting on the Pincio Hill and the swifts have
not yet come. The shutters are closed.
Three cats possess the otherwise empty street. One is
stretched out as though as^ep. One glides by confounding him-
self with facade and door. The third sits in contemplation in the
exact center of the stone-flagged street.
The first footstep to announce itself is that of the street
cleaner. He wears a mist-blue garment with big pockets and a
cap with a visor. He carries a broom and a tin box and comes
slowly down the street brushing into the box the invisible dust.
He bends down and picking up something he tosses it to the cat.
The cat puts out a paw.
A black and white priest turns the corner. He walks stur-
dily and his boots are big. At the via Frattina the first puff of
wind inflates his robe.
The cat's eyes follow the priest's transit and then again con-
centrate on the stone in front of them.
Three ancient women come down the street in the opposite
direction from that taken by the priest. They are carrying heavy
bundles tied with rope. One has a bag on her head. U. S. Flour,
it says.
Now a clear and sustained whistling: "quanto e bella Roma
..." and a youth, dressed in white, bicycles by carrying on his
head a flat basket covered by a napkin, containing almond-
sprinkled brioches.
A waiter from the cafe" on the corner then appears and
stands in a doorway looking up and down the street.
A very elegant man with blue-black hair and a light gabar-
dine jacket walks briskly by. He is only remarkable in that he is
55
EYRE BE LANUX
wearing shorts and the beige and gray triangles on his golf stock-
ings are exactly the same size and shape as the stones of which
the street in made.
A girl in a pale green sweater and a purple skirt is the next
to pass.
Although the irises of the roof-garden stand motionless, the
branch from the lemon-tree breathes and wakes.
The sun has arisen because the cat has acquired a shadow.
The newspapers have come. Two men unfold their new sheets
and walk by, talking in low tones together.
The street cleaner returns and leans his broom against the
wall of the Cinema Bernini and stares at the photographs of
Charles Boyer and Margaret Sullivan in Gli Amanti.
The air is light with incense and bex*gamot All at once the
swifts arrive and careen down upon the street, inhaling and
whispering their ecstasy.
A woman's voice calls: "M-A-R-I-O . .! M-AJEW-O . .! "
Shutters swing easily open without complaint or refusal.
R-I-P-P-P-P ... the cafe pulls up its iron front.
A motor-bike tears down the street announcing a new day.
The cat has disappeared.
II
AT THE CORNER of the via Fratiina there is a cafe and outside the
cafe stands a round white table. A ray from the sun strikes
through the roofs and falls with precision upon the table.
Nearby is the newspaper stand. Nearby is the flower stand
where the flower vendor is arranging the lilies, the carnations,
the roses.
Up from the Corso comes a large woman with deep breasts
and balanced hips. Her sandals are ancient and the expression
on her face is fixed in desperation. She goes into the eaf6 and
after a few minutes comes out again, wiping the corners of her
mouth delicately with the knuckle of her first finger, As she pas-
ses the table she puts her hand inside her blouse and plucks out
a black and white kitten and lays it upon the table. Then she con-
tinues up the via Frattina.
The kitten's eyes are not open and it pushes and slides
around the table. When it comes to the edge a little boy gently
pushes it back again. Two nuns arrive, and standing side by side,
look from a little distance. The boy with the bicycle, his basket
now empty, wheels his bicycle near and leaning on it stares at
the kitten. A police officer of the Carabineri walks over to the
56
EYRE DE LANUX
table. Insensibly a crowd has formed. The kitten has arrived
nay at the opposite end of the table and gropes for support. The
officer puts out his brown ringed hand and the kitten veers off
again. No one speaks. Everyone is thinking: who will take it?
The flower vendor's friend brings her basket of dried la-
vender and stands near, forming it into neat bunches. Will she
take the kitten?
Now the waiter comes out of his cafe, a napkin on his arm.
As loud as a clock striking the group could be heard thinking:
it is his cafe, it is his table, if anyone should take it, he should
take it The waiter gives one look at the kitten on his table, then
he walks to the newspaper stand and after saying a few words to
the nex/spaper vendor and considering the headlines, he goes
back to the cafe. Discouraged, the nuns walk away.
"Why didn't your mother drown it?"
"We drowned the others/* one of the little boys answered.
"You can't do two drownings."
"Then why don't you take it back to its mother?"
"As if we hadn't thought of that!" a second little boy said.
"Its mother is unnatural. She is very amorous and this one is also
a female. She would lie on it and kill it"
Then the first little boy continued in a patient tone of voice
as though talking to someone much younger, "It is true Vittoria
is innamorata, but she is not for that unnatural. She did not kill
her children, she abandoned them. She abandoned them for
Cesare, the black cat of Number 44. She went to him three days
after the little ones were born. And she has not yet returned.
This creature is ten days old. I know because I have fed it for
seven days. But she languishes. Every day I have gone to look for
Vittoria but it is cf no use. Cesare lives in the via Gesu e Maria
but they are not there. They have gone further away."
No one speaks. The black and white priest who went up the
street earlier in the morning is now returning accompanied by
another priest. They do not glance at the group around the table.
The waiter stands in the door of his cafe, his radio is turned
on. It plays Night and Day.
Now from the direction of the piazza comes the woman again.
Her face wears the same desperate expression. When she reaches
the table she stops and looks at each person in turn. The kitten
has again floundered to the table's edge but no one moves to res-
cue it, The group dividing for her she goes through it to the table,
reaches over and picking up the kitten, thrusts it back inside her
blouse. Then she walks on down the via Frattina, passing the
street of the Mouth-of-the-Lion.
57
FOUR POEMS
Charles Snider
QUEEN NEFERTITE
Queen Nefertite is back in Berlin,
she of thin face, long neck, slant eyes, like German woman
of breeding with delicately involved and gothic sin
blaming its cause on contact with a Lumen
that never could shine through that gray, she who has
been interned in vault or salt cave like
tomb of her dynasties, a mushroom of spas
stygean. And riot and shriek and strike
will thunder about her small ears: she shall never hear
but will smile her feline smile, perhaps thinking
that Cleopatra's Needle there whose stare
pricked her to jealous rival green is gone, and claps
with imaginary hands for her slavewomen with perfumes
who also will not hear her nor enter the rooms
gone for her kind as the usefulness of fin
on human foetus, or the eyes of Tutankhamen
(not painted on as hers are in a mask
vulture victorious over death but without life's task.)
BLAKE
There's no more bread on the table, husband . . , Well,
Christ will divide the loaves and fish in due
time . . , but the fish must go toward making glue
for the little figure of the prophet in Hell
that must be behemothian and swell
over all England . , . Adam grew
hair to cover his clothelessness * . a few
leaves of the vine for Eve . . , Ah, once the spell
58
CHARLES SNIDER
of wearing only a liberty cap of red
oversnaked me, my good wife, and I rushed
out in the streets of a London mad and was flushed
with power! . . . But Jerusalem must be green . . . the bread
wheat grown of course, of water, not of blood smell,
like lambs beneath trees in spring morning dew
NIJINSKI
Life was meant to be dancing under stars
but of late mist hid the stars and the dance
ceased in the fingers of circumstance
strings stopping, the movements paralyzed behind bars
in shufflings like the captivity of bears
and somehow God had turned away his glance
and the hiatuses were filled with trampling mares
dark with an indefinite darkness in their prance
or the moon frozen in contemplation of dead scars.
Yet the dance could be the renewal of latent volcano
emptying in the pressure of core needs
like dust pounded off a tuned up piano
white surging over black rapture as earth, its keys
creating new black potent tangible seas
or red as when a whole people slaughtered bleeds.
LOCOMOTOR ATAXIA
I heard the great canning factories staccattoing out
tin after tin in thousands of the harvest of the land
and saw driven by but one hovering hand
milelong plants spewing with whole shout
car upon car from the mined metals . . . whale spout
of smoke and flame and gas over Gary, Cleveland grand
as the syriac star, over modern Bethlehem;
and yet I could not think what we were about
to be so mighty and yet such the mite
as to cease to vision beyond mere piled up things
like nursery blocks to fail to overcome
that anger of a maniac delight
in breaking all things to pieces yet leave Ming
vases of archaic uselessness intact dumb.
59
HOMAGE TO EMILE ZOLA
Louis-Ferdinand Celine
Men are mystics of death
whom it is necessary to mistrust.
IN TURNING our thoughts to Zola, we remain somewhat con-
strained before his work, which is still too near us to be judged
well I mean, judged in the light of his intentions. He speaks
to us of things which are familiar enough. We should have been
better pleased if they had changed a bit.
First, may we be permitted a small personal reminiscence.
At the Exposition of 1900, we were still very young, but we have
nevertheless retained the memory, quite vivid, that it was one
enormous brutality. Feet on everything, feet everywhere, and
clouds of dust so thick you could touch them. Interminable lines
of people tramping, pounding, stamping, crushing the Exposition
and then there was this rolling sidewalk which gnashed into the
very gallery of machines, filled, for the first time, with metals in
torture, colossal menaces, catastrophes in suspense. Modern life
had begun.
Since then, things have not improved much. Since L*A$so~
moir we have not done much better. Things have remained the
same with a few minor variations. Was it that Zola had labored
too well for his successors? Or were the newcomers themselves
too fearful of naturalism? It may be . ,
Today, the naturalism of Zola, with the means of self-instruc-
tion which we possess, becomes almost impossible. A man would
not issue out of prison if he told of life as he has known it,
beginning with his own. I mean what has been understood by
the term life for a score of years now. Already in the time of
Zola, some courage was necessary to show his contemporaries a
few gay tableaus of reality. Today reality would be permitted
to no one. For us, then, symbols and dreams! All those transfers
which the law has not reached, which I should say the law has
not reached yet! For in the last analysis, it is in symbols and
* A public address delivered at Medan in the summer of 1933,
60
LOUIS-FERDINAND CELINE
dreams that we pass nine-tenths of our lives, since nine-tenths
of true existence, that is to say of living joy, is unknown to us
or else forbidden. Our dreams too will be entrapped some day
or other. That is a dictatorship still due us.
The position of man in the midst of his rubbish heap of
laws, customs, desires, of instincts tangled and repressed, has
become so perilous, so artificial, so arbitrary, so tragic, and so
grotesque at the same time that never was literature easier to
conceive than at present, or harder to tolerate. We are surround-
ed by whole countries of stupefied anaphylactics, the least shock
precipitating them into murderous and interminable convulsions.
Here we are, come to the end of twenty centuries of lofty
civilization, and nevertheless no regime could withstand two
months of truth. I mean to speak of Marxist society, as well as
of our bourgeois and fascist varieties.
Man could not remain in any of these social forms, entirely
brutal, all masochistic, without the violence of a permanent lie,
more and more massive, repeated, frantic, "totalitarian" as it is
called. Deprived of this restraint, our societies would all go
tumbling down into the worst anarchy. Hitler is not the last
word; we shall yet see one more epileptic still, here perhaps.
Naturalism in these conditions, whether it wills to do so or not,
becomes political. Therefore, it is cut down without mercy. . . .
Those men were happy whom the horse of Caligula governed.
The big noises of the dictators go everywhere nowadays to
meet the masses who are haunted by hunger, by the monotony
of their daily tasks, by alcohol, the myriads of the repressed all
plastered in an immense sadico-masochistic narcissism springing
from investigations, inquiries, experiments, and social-minded-
ness. I hear much about the youth of the country nowadays, but
the disease goes deeper than the youth. In fact, when I look at
the young I see nothing but a mobilization of ardors for drink,
for sports, for automobiles, for spectacles, nothing more. The
great majority of the youth, so far as ideas are concerned any-
way, remain in the wake of the babblers of the Reserve de
rArme"e Territoriale that is to say schemers, chiselers, and kill-
ers. While we are on this subject, to remain entirely just, let us
note that youth does not exist in the romantic sense which we
still lend to the word. From the age of ten onwards, the destiny of
man seems to be almost fixed, at least so far as his emotional re-
actions are concerned. After this time, we exist no more except
by insipid repetitions, less and less sincere, more and more
theatrical. Could it be that whole "civilizations" are subject to
the same fate? Our own seems to be caught in an incurable war
61
LOUIS-FERDINAND CELINE
psychosis. We do not live any longer except for these destructive
repetitions. When we observe what rancid prejudices and what
rotten trifles can feed the absolute fanaticism of millions of indi-
viduals, who pretend to be advanced, who have been instructed
in the best schools of Europe, we are certainly entitled to ask
ourselves if the instinct of death in man and in his societies does
not definitely dominate the instinct of life. Germans, French,
Chinese, Rumanians, Dictatorships or not! Nothing but pre-
texts for playing at death.
I grant that if one wishes, everything can be explained away
by the malignant defensive reactions of capitalism or of extreme
poverty* But things unfortunately are not so simple or under-
standable. Neither profound poverty nor police repressions justi-
fy these mass rushes towards aggressive nationalist extremes,
which enrapture entire countries in ecstasy. Things can be ex-
plained so simply only to the faithful, those already convinced
in advance, those to whom scarcely twelve months ago, the in-
fallible accession to power of communism in Germany was prom-
ised. But the taste for wars and massacres does not have for its
essential origin the appetite for conquest, for power, or for bene-
fits to the ruling classes. Everything has been said, everything
has been exposed in this dossier without disgusting anyone. The
unanimous sadism actually comes out of a desire for annihila-
tion deepseated in Man and above all in the mass of men, a sort
of amorous impatience, almost irresistible, for death. With co-
quetries, to be sure, with a thousand denials, but the tropism
is there, and all the more powerful insofar as it is perfectly secret
and silent.
But the governments have taken the correct measure of
their sinister peoples; they are well adapted to them. In their
psychology, they dread all change. They want to know only
the puppet, the hired assassin, and the scapegoat. Liberals,
Marxists, and fascists are in agreement on only one point sol-
diers! . . . Nothing more and nothing less* They would be ab-
solutely baffled, in fact, about what to do with peoples that were
entirely pacific.
If our masters have arrived at this quiet, practical agree-
ment, it is perhaps because after all the soul of Man is definitively
crystallized in a suicidal form*
It is possible to obtain everything from an animal by sweet-
ness and reason, while the grand enthusiasms of the masses, the
really durable frenzies of crowds are almost always stimu-
lated, provoked, and maintained by stupidity and brutality. Zola
never had to envisage the same social problems in his work
62
LOUIS-FERDINAND CELINE
those presented under this form of despotism. The scientific faith,
then quite new, gave to the writers of his epoch a certain social
faith, a reason for being "optimistic." Zola believed in virtue.
He intended to horrify the criminal but not to drive him to des-
pair. Today we know that the victim always demands more
martyrdom. Have we still, without foolishness, the right to make
a Providence of any kind whatsoever play a role in our writings?
It would require a robust faith. Everything becomes more tragic
and more irremediable as one penetrates more deeply the Des-
tiny of Man, as one ceases to imagine it in order to live it as it
really is. It is being discovered, though we still do not wish to
admit it. If our music turns toward the tragic, it has its reasons.
The words of today like our music go much further than in the
time of Zola. Our work at present is directed by sensibility
rather than by analysis, in short it comes "from within." Our
words proceed as far as our instincts and sometimes touch them,
but we have learned at the same time that that is where our
powers forever halt.
Our working class hero does not drink as much as Zola's
Coupeau. He has been educated. . . He is more delirious. His
delirium is a switchboard with thirteen telephones. He does not
like ladies. He is courageous. He's covered all over with dec-
orations.
In the game of Man, the silent instinct is very well placed,
perhaps by the side of egoism. It holds the place of zero in
roulette. The Casino always wins. Death likewise. The law of
averages works for him. It is a law without exceptions. Every-
thing that we undertake, in one way or another, very soon comes
up against it and turns to hatred, to the sinister and the ridicu-
lous. It would be necessary to be gifted in a manner quite bizarre
to speak of anything but death in a time when, on the earth, on
the seas, in the air, at the present time and in the future, it is a
question only of that, I am aware that it is possible to dance to
a bagpipe in a cemetery and to speak of love in an abattoir, the
comic author retains Kis opportunities, but it is very hard going.
When we shall become completely moral in the sense in
which our civilizations understand the word and will soon compel
us to understand it, then I believe that we will end by bursting
completely with wickedness. We shall be left with nothing to dis-
tract ourselves except the instinct of destruction. It is that which
is implanted in us by our education and iwhich is maintained
along the road of what is still called Life. Nine lines of crime, one
of boredom. We shall perish together, with pleasure, in a world
which we shall have spent fifty centuries in putting behind the
63
LOUIS-FERDINAND CELINE
barbed wire of all imaginable constraints and anguishes.
There is perhaps only just time enough to render a supreme
homage to Emile Zola on the eve of another disaster, one more,
There is no longer a question of imitating him or of following
him. We possess evidently neither gift, nor power, nor faith
such as create great movements of the soul. Would he, on his
own part, have had the power to judge us? We have learned
some curious things about human souls, since he has gone.
The street of Men is in a sense unique. Death keeps all the
cafes. It is the gamble "in our blood" which attracts us and
holds us.
The work of Zola resembles for us, in certain respects, the
work of Pasteur, so solid, so living still, in two or three essential
points. In both of these men, transposed, we come across the
same meticulous technique of creation, the same care for ex-
perimental probity, and above all the same formidable power of
demonstration, become epic in the case of Zola. This would be
too much for our epoch. A great deal of liberalism was already
necessary to endure the Dreyfus Case. We are far from those
times, academic in spite of all.
According to certain traditions, I ought to bring this little
work to a conclusion on a note of good will, of optimism in spite
of all. . . . But what can we hope for from naturalism in the con-
ditions in which we find ourselves? Everything and nothing.
Sooner nothing, because cultural conflicts irritate the masses in
our time too much to be tolerated long. Doubt is in the course of
disappearing from the world. It is killed together with the doubt-
ers. Nothing is more certain.
"WEen I hear the word 'Culture* pronounced in my vicinity,
I spit," a recent dictator has informed us, and for that he found
himself adored. I wonder what this sub-gorilla would have done
if he had heard us speaking of "naturalism."
Since Zola, the nightmare surrounding man has not only
taken on more precise form it has become official In the mea-
sure that our "Gods" become more powerful, they also become
more ferocious, more jealous and more stupid. They organize
themselves. What to say to them? We no longer understand each
other.
The naturalist school will have done its duty, I believe, in
the moment when it will be outlawed in every country of the
world.
That was its destiny.
Translated by Milton Hindus
64
FOUR POEMS
Sandra Wool
SONG OF THE BIRDS
Who can conduct my inquisition
Who can judge my misprision
Having devoured the mind, the heart and the eyes,
You went away
Leaving me alone, food for
The gadflies.
Like harpies, they came
With tinny bills pecked at the crumbs
From your banquet
The suggestion was made that crumbs are insipid
The point was debated; evidence to the contrary shown
Seal out the sun; blind the cracks in the
Window-shade
Forgive, forgive (oh do not forget)
FASHIONABLY DRESSED
Fashionably dressed I seek a scarf
in the shadow of the silence
in the image of the moon
Skillfully dressed I seek a ribbon
among the leaves among the worms
among the pebbles among the
Weeds
Meticulously dressed
65
SAN0RA WOOL
do not think I lack your livery
See the unqualified extravagance I have about me,
The foppery and finery of untrammeled wealth. I arn corrupt
With silk as once I was with you and the season.
My wardrobe heaves with the profusion of unwrinkled
secular dresses
My closets tremble with the false fecundity of hats
1 am bedded with superfluity with satiety
In pampered magnificence I entertain my only
Invited guests, the orthodox and simpering bats
Saints are such dribbling tailors (do not believe you cut wedges
in my unwedgable heart) But
Wheresoever I bend the effulgence is gone you yesterday
clothed rne in
This scrupling bombazine is transparent, this coward's kersey
Glimpse-bestowing.
I cannot stop my ears: the world out-titters itself at my
denudation
The figure of my illusion cracks
Without you I am ungowned
TWO QUEENS
Two queens, one purple and one blue,
Rocked by an open fire, waiting for
Pandemonium to brew
Unpluck your crown, my sister,
Throw away that heir-apparent garter
The elder uglier more wizened sister crew
Cast off your virgin diamonds, baubles
Of lives you never lived, of the times you might
Have been undone
Of the public men whose private selves you did not
Deign to win
A knock? the furibund wind at our unhinged door
He does not come to woo
Irredeemable irreproachable sister
Your dignity will be unspoiled until your blood
66
SANDRA WOOL
Congeals and your flesh betrays your innards
Uncased neither by my fleering gaze nor judgement day
your works and days your embroideries and plays
That you should have been
Condemned by a counter-logical god to my felly
The absurdity that the divine gesture of our infinitely
Dissimilar sins should be twins
The special dispensation, the graceless grace
Of a convivial cell.
Simpering corrival to my misery
1 cannot sing
I must cry Cry that I could sing
Could beg implore beseech imperate
Curse order command
God one more feast one small antipast from among
Mv hundred lovers Then hell
Queen Mercides smiled The path to the alter winds not through
the bed
She carefully whet her rose-leafed lips and out of her gown
pocket Pulled a biretta and the instrument of last
unction Small like her lips, a delicately exquisitely
carved gold bell
TIB-SONG
No oyster-wench
I am the Kate of cates a velvet drudge.
Of love the sempiternal qualities to unfold
Were begging indeed. I qualified your scope
With no paltry scruple
Sang
Rang celebrated welcome your concupiscent scopulative love
Remove! I'll not be wagered wasted with eleemosynary kisses
Become supplicant
Till I am senescent. Un wrinkled be jeweled my crown hangs
On the sign
You were not trained to sluttery, nor I to beggery
Go get thee hence, no more of my perry
Be aleconner to some drubbing chine, ravin other prey
67
SAKDRA WOOL
Salt uneorrupted with soul is beneath my ordinary table
Begone
A slattern reverts to mortality. Still human
Already I am become drunk on the dregs
of your speech
Quick quick desire decay
68
APPEARANCES
May Swenson
" AFTER ALL, we are no longer children," the doctor said, with
reference to the conversation that had gone before. He hitched
the ladder-back rocking chair closer to the round-bellied stove
and, drawing up his seersucker trousers slightly at the thighs to
preserve their creases, he crossed his legs. He was a small-boned
man, with neat hands and feet, his straight sandy hair brushed
flat to his head above a long, pale brow.
"On the contrary, I believe that we are all still children,"
said his host, a dark-skinned man in a purple shirt, yellow cor-
duroy jacket, and rumpled earth-stained pants. He sat by the
bare table in the center of the room, straight-backed and alert,
yet with a relaxed, somehow Indian calm. His cropped hair was
the color of tobacco ash, his hazel eyes so intensely white around
their irises that they gave off a bluish sheen. As he talked, his
nostrils, eye-shaped and almost as large as eyes, widened and
narrowed above his beveled mahogany lips.
Chinks of red glinted behind triangular vents in the stove's
gray body, giving it the look of a seated animal, panting rhyth-
mically, showing its bright rippling tongue.
The weather was still warm in September here on the estate,
but the evenings were chill. At this time of year there were few
guests at the mansion where the doctor was quartered, and he was
glad to make the acquaintance of this new arrival, an artist, who
had moved into one of the cabins which had been converted into
a painter's studio by their mutual benefactor, the owner of the
estate. Although crude and barnlike, with its unshaded bulb
dangling from the steep skylight (through which the night looked
immense and very black) the cabin seemed a welcome place,
especially since it contained the means of making a fire. The
munching sound of the flames over their meal of dry logs tore
comforting slits in the layers of silence which the thick pine forest
wrapped around the cabin.
69
MAY S WEN SON
"The unknown makes us, and keeps us, children in one-way
or another and who knows but what that is best," the painter
said with a spread-lipped smile. "For instance, my adventure of
today ... ,
"Soon after I arrived this morning, I went walking. 1 cnose
a leopard-pelted trail of light and shadow leading away from the
cabin. I had no idea, nor did I want to know, where I was going.
Some people find maps a necessity. They wish to know at every
step where they stand in relation to their starting point and their
destination. The possibility of getting lost fills them with guilt as
much as fright. They expect landmarks of course, and if there
aren't any, they set about making them. They're avid to^learn the
history of everything encountered on the way; if there's a stone
tower they must establish whether a duchess was born in it; an
especially old tree will interest them only if, for example, a mur-
derer was hanged there. Then the location of gates and shelters
is a matter of anxious concern for them, in case a storm should
come up. And, of course, a prime objective is the finding ^ of
trophies or mementoes of one kind or another, to bring back with
them."
"That's most normal and natural," the doctor said. While
listening rather indolently, from behind his glasses he let his
eyes wander over the whitewashed walls, but found them feature-
less except for a small chalk drawing in an alcove, which he could
make little of. However, the colors were gray, yellow, green and
black.
"Very normal/' the painter agreed, *'But hardly natural, I
think."
The doctor thought of some of the guests who fitted the
painter's description, and remarked: "They are a proper and
quite-to-be-expected product of our age meticulously self -ad-
justed implements for the reception or rejection of specific phe-
nomena, said phenomena having been selected for them by other
highly organized 'implements' whose superior wisdom they justi-
fiably take for granted But do go back to your leopard-pelted
trail* through the forest."
The painter's forehead, which had bunched into a knot,
leveled again to its habitual smoothness. "I had no idea how large
or small the forest was, nor of its configuration/* he went on, **I
quickly lost direction, as was my unconscious purpose, I suppose.
The trail undulated up, down, in and out, and was closely grown
first with birch and hemlock trees, and then with tall pines,
The area was large and involved, and each bend in the path pre-
sented a new vista. Everything my eye brushed over was a sur*
prise to me, every perspective a first discovery. From their
70
MAY SWENSON
hidden leafy ledges high in the trees, the birds seemed to be
calling news of my progress to one another, and when I stopped
and stared, trying to detect one of them, he would become motion-
less and silent. Then, standing there, my feet no longer snapping
twigs and crunching leaves, I became conscious of the sounds of
myriad insects in the air, as if sewing on some crepuscular, all-
enveloping fabric; and of creeping things beneath the humus,
creating the sensation of some vast unraveling. And these two
processes were fused in a continuous husky whisper which, while
walking, I had perceived as the absence of sound."
How minutely he describes a perfectly ordinary experience,
the doctor was thinking. As if he were the first person hereabout
to have taken such a walk and to have felt these sensations. He
talks well, no doubt of that. A tendency to over-embellishment,
but very observant. He rocked back and forth, smiling at his host,
who was saying as if in apology:
"You will understand that, living in the city as I do, this
experience with nature is an unfamiliar one, and my impressions
are apt to be the exaggerations of a novice. But it was the same
with vision. Where, at first, looking at a thick hedge simply
leaves and more leaves just a restful repetitive design I would
suddenly see clustered on the twigs blue and gold scarabs which
I had mistaken for drops of sunlight and shadow; and on the
ground, apparently a resilient carpet of uniform gray, there un-
accountably appeared, as soon as my eyes had accustomed to the
gloom, spots of intricate embroidery colored mushrooms and
mosses of the richest texture."
"I remember experiencing comparable effects on my first
visit to the city," the doctor replied. "Noises were strange and
upsetting to me until their source was disclosed in the subways
and the sirens, but after a time they tended to sink beneath con-
sciousness into inaudibility. Faces of people cramming the streets
at first looked all alike, a doughy mass, until my sense of being a
foreigner abated, and I began to discern their features. As indi-
viduals they were no longer frightening. It is an old story that
the unknown inspires a mixture of awe and menace, of reverence
and fear/'
He felt his point had been rather well made, and taking out
his pouch, he rewarded himself with a fresh pipefull of tobacco,
of which unfortunately there was little left. He made a mental
pact with himself to write his tobacconist in the city before he
retired, a chore he had been putting off day after day. This country
leisure made one lazy even in the maintenance of the most im-
portant personal necessities.
71
MAY SWENSON
The artist had the impulse to point out the discrepancy rather
than the similarity between his guest's description and his own
to say that the former seemed to come to terms with the unknown
by means of a contraction of his senses instead of their expansion
but he merely took up the doctor's concluding statement, and
exclaimed: "Oh, not fear! At least not yet. Of surprise first, then
of beauty . . . and then, of power a mysterious and lavish power
veining everything in nature, spilling free and raw from every
stone and leaf."
His dark supple hands resting on his knees. . . . What did
they suggest? the doctor asked himself. Sleeping animals, per-
haps. . . . They were hound-brown in color, and there was an
attentiveness in their very stillness, as if they might rise at a
signal and move unerringly on the scent of something.
"Emerging from the pine forest," the painter went on, a l
came upon a fresh unclouded lake, with a steep slope rising from
it, and a conical stone tower which might have been an abandoned
mill. The stones of the structure were clothed with an ardent green
vine; the slope from which it rose was padded with delicate and
brilliant grass. Small warted frogs looked at me with their
crystalline eyes as I dipped water into my mouth from the spring
that fed the lake "
Lulled by the warmth in the room and the recitative cadence
of the artist's voice, the doctor rocked and smoked without fur-
ther interrupting his host. When the beguiling tale was finished,
with whatever philosophy or fantasy behind it laid bare, he would
no doubt be asked for comment, he thought.
"I ate my lunch sitting on the coping of a bridge," the tale
continued, "suspended in sunlight, held safely in that protective
element as if in a large benevolent hand, feeling myself part of
the scene, one of its happy and unselfconscious details; free to
pause here as long as I wished, or leave when I wished, like the
marvelously patterned dragonflies which entered the broad bowls
of the lilies on the water below and, for an immobile moment, let
their green and aluminum bodies be recharged with warmth and
light, then rose and shot away.
"I left the place by the path I had come. After a short distance
it turned into a pair of grassy ruts which climbed upward, I
ducked my head to pass beneath a partly fallen tree that straddled
the road, and somewhat farther on I blundered into a wild orchard
and ate some apples that lay on the ground. They were dewy and
cool from their beds of shadow in the grass, and their tart crisp-
ness made my tongue curl with appreciation.
"On the other side of the orchard I entered another pine
forest, and was gradually led into the thickest shade, Here the
72
MAY SWENSON
floor of the forest was as springy as a circus net. My feet hardly
sank beneath the millions of reddish-tan strands of which this net
was densely woven; instead, I was bounced by it, as I strode with
long, noiseless, twining steps, grasping the pines like poles as I
whirled around them. But soon I had to shorten my steps. The
spaces between the pines narrowed, their tops closed together
above me . . . and the increasing shadow felt as if veil after cool
veil were being drawn over my body, heated and tingling from
my foolish acrobatics of a moment ago.
"I lay down on the mat of pine bristles. It was clean and
shining. My palms began somnolently to stroke the rough, tawny
hide of the forest. The forest was a great leopard sleeping, and I
a small invisible creature resting among his dark markings. High
above me, through his tangled fur, I could see the sky as only tiny
sparkling lozenges of blue. Under my ear I could feel the great
leopard breathing in his long and languid sleep. His inhaling
breath was an interminably building wave, which, before it broke
into exhale, would cover and exceed my little lifetime on his back.
"I lay on my side and felt no inclination to shift position in
the intact stillness. My mind slipped into that halfway state
between sleeping and waking. How long it remained there I do
not know. . . .
"I felt something move against my chest. A tender, flickering,
and yet confident pressure.
"Two impulses sprang up in me. The first was acceptance, the
impulse to remain still for the touch I felt was friendly in fact,
provocative, exciting. The second was recoil and rejection, because
of the unexpectedness of the touch and its ambiguity. My body was
quite ready to enjoy the closeness of this other living body, which
had somehow become aware of me, been bold enough and trusting
enough to come to me; while I, up to now unconscious of it, for
all that it could know, might be suspicious or scornful of its
approach . . . but ..."
The painter's voice had become halting and nearly inaudible.
The doctor noticed, with an uncomfortable quiver, that his eyes
had changed expression. There was a queer reckless craving, yet
cringing, look in them. Was he going to make a confession? And
if so, would it be one of the wildest, daemonic love, or of the
filthiest guilt? Or both, since one did not preclude the other?
The doctor's knees had gone to sleep, one hooked over the other
as they were, and he wanted more than anything just now to
recross them the other way. He moved the inside of his hand
against the slick, still-warm bowl of his pipe, and this relaxed
him somewhat. His companion was going on, thank God, in a
firmer voice:
73
MAY SWENSON
"But my mind reacted oppositely. So I obeyed the second im-
pulse. I violently squirmed away. For a simultaneous moment
my body and the other writhed on the ground in an identical dance
of panic, awkwardly lurching away from each other. Then I stood
up, shaking my blood in turmoil wanting to run crashing
through the woods. Not because anything had hurt me not from
the actual experience of danger but simply to escape my own
fear,
"However I stood still and watched the snake (for that s what
it was) blindly zigzag a few feet. Then he stopped and made himself
into a curve to look at me. He was quite small, about three feet
long, if one were to straighten his kinks; gray and yellow striped,
mixed with slivers of green, and with a head like a dark polished
flint. His tongue whirred in and out as smoothly as a humming-
bird's wing. I felt sure he wasn't poisonous, and suddenly I wanted
to capture him. Was in it order to make friends with him and
repent of my former distrust? I moved my foot, and he unhur-
riedly slid toward it. I reached for my empty lunch kit and placed
it in front of him, but the noise of the lid being opened made him
retreat. I waited tensely for him to come back and investigate.
He seemed disinterested and merely flowed aimlessly about over
the pine needles. I moved the kit a little closer. The clanging of
the lid this time made him look up and ripple forward again. . . .
"But I lost the game, for in the course of our flirtation he
happened to glide beneath some dead branches which were the
exact color of his skin, and although I stared and stared, I could
no longer distinguish ham from his hiding place. I could not cover
the whole area with my gaze the middle of the scramble of twigs
as well as all the orifices around the edges from which he might
emerge; and as my eyes left one exit, I imagined him oozing from
another. I stood there a long time, unable to tell whether he had
left or not. At last I went back to the open kit, half expecting to
find him doubled into it, waiting for me to close the lid and carry
him with me.
"Had I had him safely locked in my kit, all would have been
well. But since I didn't know where he was, I felt, for some
obscure reason, that I had to leave the place at once. Now I
pitched through the trackless forest impatiently, wanting to get
out. The birds had begun their comments again, which sounded
insidious and mocking, I was scratched and disheveled, puffing
and hot, when I finally reached a road, I hurried along. For
the first time the path seemed familiar* Sure enough, soon I
came to the fallen tree, whose slanting trunk I had ducked under
just before entering the wild apple orchard earlier in the day. I
wanted a sense of direction now* I felt I would promptly get back
74
MAY SWENSON
by this road on which I had noted a landmark. I laid my hand
affectionately on the trunk's gray ribs as I bent and passed
beneath it.
"But the trail swerved and, again all around me looked new.
I could not recall facing this particular prospect before. I trudged
on, simply because there was nothing else to do. Then, through
the enigmatic screen of tree trunks and foliage to my left, I made
out a structure of sepulchral stone, a low square tower of grizzled
blocks, with a vaulted door on which was a rusty knocker of
iron and ornamental hinges muffled in cobwebs. I was glad to see
this habitation so steady and definitely placed among the shifting
green. But although it was quite close, I had a hard time approach-
ing it, for it sat in a low gully which was clotted with thorny vines.
The closer I came, pushing my way through the tough under-
growth, the gloomier, more sunken the place appeared. No sun
could reach this hollow; it was damp and smelled of rot. It
crouched in a green-brown shade such as lurks on river-bottoms,
through which glide the brown ghosts of fish, themselves only
muddy shadows submerged in a browner dusk. I had a strange
revulsion to the place at the same time, I was determinedly try-
ing to get to it.
"Well, I got to the door, my shoes covered with slime from
the marshy ground, and there was a gray metal plate nailed to it,
which seemed to have been put there recently. Painted on it was
a very conventional warning: DANGER! KEEP OUT! But, as
usual with such warnings, no hint was given of the kind of danger.
And here I was, at the very jaw (or so it felt) of something sinister
and nameless, and not able to retreat very easily. I felt my hand
go up to bang the knocker or press the latch. It was the next
thing to be done, now that I was here. But my hand came down
as though it realized, before I did, that there was no use trying
to enter. I stood there looking and listening, and I knew somehow
that the tower was empty; that, furthermore, the door would be
locked. The danger wasn't in it; it was inside of me. And it was
that tower the shadowy tower of my own fear I was being told
to keep out of.
"But if the door to it was locked and the hinges rusted, that
meant I hadn't revisited that sunken place for a long time. Must
be a corpse of myself inside there. Either that, or a half-grown
child standing, just as I had abandoned him, fresh-skinned, smil-
ing just fixed there; a child I had locked up and forgotten, still
standing, asleep, waiting for me to come back, to lay his hair off his
forehead and put my hand under his china-round chin and say:
'Come along. We'll go right on from here.' I would melt into him,
and I'd walk out of the tower as a boy again. And things would be
75
MAY SWENSON
set back a bit, in their former places, but adjusted a little differ-
ently than I had felt them up to now. I'd live over again going
through life at just a slight tangent to the path I had taken, and
everything would be new completely new on account of that
imperceptible deviation at the hub, the beginning, of things.
' : Or maybe there was the partly decomposed body of an old
man in there. Thin, in rotted clothes, his beard and hair the only
part of him alive, running like living silvery vines from his brown
mummified head and face, where the features had shrunken,
become vague and shapeless like charred wood. And the mouth
like a ragged black gap in the wood; the eye-sockets suggesting a
mask of frail material, something like a wasp's nest, which would
fall apart, become ashes if you touched it. As for that old man, I
thought, maybe it would be just as well for me to break nit o the
tower now, and poke my finger into his eyes, and becoming him,
help him to descend to dust all at once, instead of letting him wait
those intervening years before slow nature settled him into her
rich mixture of rot. Because that way, things would be speeded
up for me; I'd the sooner arrive at the turning hub of another
wheel. I could get a head start maybe, on becoming something
else whatever I was going to be perhaps an entirely new kind
of creature, a thing different from, yet grown out of, man; a thing
there wasn't yet a name for, whose shape and intellect I couldn't
yet imagine.
"Still my hand wouldn't rise to that iron latch. Something
held it rigid. So I backed away from the door. And turned around,
And in front of me there was a path narrow, walled in by growth
but definitely rising, winding out of the ravine,
"I started up the path, full of energy and calm now, feeling
realistic, amused at myself. At the top of the gully was a level
sunny meadow. The path flared out, bordered by long grass which
was being slowly tumbled by the wind. The sky was full of little,
fleecy, rapidly changing clouds, all marching one way the way I
was striding. I heard in my mind the voice of an old teacher of
mine, the way she used to say my name when the roll was called in
the morning at school. 'Present!' I answered aloud, and kind of
chuckled to myself."
The painter's lips had spread, his teeth glinting in a mysteri-
ously grateful smile. The very same, the doctor thought, as must
have come to his face at the age of eight with the teacher's pro-
nouncement of his name. Even then, of course, his peculiar pro-
pensity for egoistic daydreaming had kept him busy making shin-
ing mountains out of mud-gray molehills. But no doubt it was
this very propensity that shaped the artist's temperament. Here
before him, in this man, was illustrated the well-known theory of
76
MAY SWENSON
compensatory illusion springing from early frustration (in this
case, the special nature of the latter would remain undefined
unless the patient were fully analyzed, but the general trend was
substantially clear) this tendency to illusion nurturing an often
deceptively healthy and lustrous growth of the imagination, which
in turn, might throw off a by-product called Art. And that by-
product, the doctor reminded himself, was a phenomenon which
he took genuine pleasure in; it was, in fact, one of his hobbies, in
the form of landscape gardening.
He uncrossed his legs and leaned back in the rocker. In the
morning he would suggest a walk through the formal gardens
with this artist. It would be interesting to converse with him on
a number of aesthetic topics, on which his, the doctor's, knowledge
was by no means sparse.
While this diagnosis and the resultant resolution took place,
the painter's story went on, until the doctor's attention was
snaffled by these words:
"Just then I saw a gleaming object in front of me on the path.
My lifted foot would have stepped over it and walked on, had I
not happened to be looking down. Carved in angular stillness,
loosely stretched out, yet stern, hard, stone-like. A queer contrast
to the giddily blowing grass, the flowing tops of the trees. It was
so motionless and finished in its shape. Like an artifact, rather
than a living changeable thing. Its colors were glazed, more per-
manent than the surrounding leaves and twigs on which the sun
played, for around the deep ochre, bluegray and black, the light
seemed enfolded like a crystal film that vibrated somberly over
each symmetrically whittled scale.
"It was my snake. The very same one. Was it possible he had
followed me all this winding way? Had he waited behind me
outside the old square tower; had he been undulating through
the grass at my side, his movement one with the lisping grass?
His head was lifted just a little from the ground, as if watching
me, but there was no curious tongue whisking in and out.
"I passed around him, and looked back. No movement. Was
he dead or alive? I couldn't bear to poke him with my foot. He
lay too perfect there; a fixed jewel he seemed, that could not
except with difficulty be pried from its setting. How beautiful he
was! I remembered how different his beauty had been in motion.
The smooth, quick, yet languid twist of his body making suc-
cessive graceful curls as he slipped over the ground like water.
A simple form, yet subtly complex a spiral his head merely an
extension of his body; no arms or legs, no details to him, except
the sinuous designs on him darkly vivid on top; pale, vulnerable,
77
MAY SWENSON
tender-hued on his underside. If he was dead, it seemed to me I
had killed him,
'An unreasonable grief welled up in me, as if something
irreplaceable might be lost. And if lost, this was my unconscious
fault. I would be punished then; not for an act of sin, not for an
aggression, but for some omission; a failure at a certain crossroad
somewhere behind me to recognize some sign ... a sign with a
double meaning . . . and I had turned down the broad and level
way instead of up the steep way. . . . But maybe he was not dead.
His beauty was so eloquent, it burned and chilled my blood at
once, as if lightning were leaping from his shining scales into my
pores.
"I circled him several times with whispering steps. His head
did not follow me, but as I went on around a bend, looking over
my shoulder, I thought that he began to ripple very slowly in my
direction.
"I hurried along now, swinging my kit in order to make a
noise louder than the incessant mutterings of leaves and insects.
Would I ever get out of this endless forest? As a matter of fact,
around the next turn, through a slash of leaves, I saw tall gates
with shorn lawn behind them. As though I'd been lifted up onto
someone's shoulder, who took much longer steps than I could, I
was all at once set down in the familiar landscape in front of my
own cabin."
The doctor, who had been listening with an interest and ten-
sion which he realized might have been too openly displayed, and
for which, he reflected, in view of the abrupt and obvious end to
the story, there had been inadequate reason on his part, laughed
shortly and remarked:
"Well, you have certainly proven that yon are a child, but
not exactly, do you think, that all of us are?"
The dark man let his hands come together now. They caressed,
clasped and explored each other affectionately, like long parted
playfellows. "Well, I haven't finished the story. Although maybe
Fd do myself a favor not to add what came later. It will make me
appear very foolish in your eyes.
"This evening at dinner in the mansion, I mentioned something
about my walk in the woods to one of the guests one of the
'map-carriers' I was telling you about I remarked on what an
apparently wide and varied area I'd covered, having been out
since early morning; about the profusion of roads and branching
paths; how these paths, dipping and rising, take so many turns;
how their ends and beginnings are obscured by trees and thick
growth, as well as the contours of the land. I told him how con-
78
MAY SWENSON
fusing it all was, and what a lot there seems to be to learn before
one can find one's way about easily.
"I watched a rather irritated smile begin on his face. I knew
he was anxious for me to stop talking so that he could begin his
exact and detailed explanations. But I went on and told him about
the snake; how it had followed me all that winding way, for all I
knew, slithered through the gate behind me, and might be waiting
there by my cabin right now. How, if it was, I meant to make a
pet of it, as I was sure it was harmless.
"Then I told him about passing under the fallen tree, once
going out and once coming back, so that I knew there was one
path, at least, that I'd crossed twice that day. And then I made
quite a story out of the ^old mill' beside which I ate my lunch;
how beautiful, sunny and tranquil it was there, with the green
turf sloping up to the silvery white stone, and the stained glass
window in the top of the round tower throwing color like delicious
notes of music from out of the ivy around it. As a contrast to this,
of course, I related the story of that grizzled old square tower in
the hollow on the other side of the wood, and the fantasies that
the damp and darkness, and my own insecurity, had called up
in me.
"Well, here's what he said about it all and in a few con-
trolled, well-chosen, factual terms, too. For that I have to give
him credit, because from his point of view he certainly had the
laugh on me. Maybe he pitied me a little for being such a child,
was afraid ridicule would bruise me; or maybe he decided I was
'touched,' and he had better not cross me. Anyhow, he unfolded
a pocket-map of the region, and showed me that, since only a
limited portion of it was heavily wooded, and since, by my descrip-
tion, I had been scrambling through that part most of the day, I
had really been moving within a relatively small maze, and must
have walked the same paths countless times. Their apparent dif-
ference in scenery, of course, was occasioned by the changing
angles of approach, and the multiplicity and variety of the objects
confronting me. He worked it out from my story that there must
have been two fallen trees, each on a separate trail, and he pointed
to the fact that trees fall in every heavy storm, so that this would
hardly constitute a reliable landmark, or one of permanence.
"He located for me, on the map, both the high conical stone
building, and the squat stone one, where, not a duchess but some-
one equally important had died or been bom I forget which. It
is situated quite close to the main gates, just down the hill to the
right, if you approach it from the front. In that case, you get a
lovely view from beside the lake, looking up a grassy incline, with
the round, ivy-clad tower silhouetted against the blue and white
79
MAY SWENSON
sky. An extension to the tower is built square in the back, I
learned a section added later around the top, its foundation con-
forming to the brow of the hill there. The place is left rather
uncared for in the back, and to get to the entrance from that
direction, one has to cross a swampy ravine. The gardeners store
their tools inside, and so keep a sign on the door to discourage
trespassers."
"Oh," the doctor exclaimed, blinking. "There was but one
tower tEen! I see. Two fallen trees, rather than one. One tower
instead of two!" An inadvertent guffaw left his lips. Really^ this
fellow was a classic subject for analysis. A monograph written
around this story of his, a patent fantasy constructed over a few
sticks of fact, would make an interesting contribution to one of
the Psychological Monthlies. The tale was as full of significant
symbolism as a dream. The paper could perhaps be called, Paral-
lelism in Prevaricative, Creative, and Dream Emblemology, Indi-
cating Displacement of the Surrender-To-Reality Impulse into the
Infantile-Exhibitionistic Sphere.
"And the snake?" the doctor asked. "Were there one or two
of them?" Or none? he amended to himself.
"Well, it turned out that a snake had been killed near the
tower that day by one of the gardeners, who acted on the assump-
tion that any reptile, poisonous or not, should be disposed of,
because it would make the guests apprehensive," the painter said,
"Since there are two species of snakes having a good deal the
same markings, one of which is venomous, the map-man couldn't
tell for sure whether the one killed was innocent or not. There
was the possibility that the two snakes I encountered were one
and the same. On the other hand, they might have been different,
for all' their identical size and appearance."
"Your story is most revealing," the doctor said. "It only goes
to show ..." but he paused. "By the way, I might add my assump-
tion (although it is only that, since I am not an authority on forest
lore; my province, as you know, is the wilderness of the human
mind) that the reason this snake you say you met, cuddled up to
you in this intimate fashion, was simply that, being of reptilian
blood, it would constantly be seeking warmth, and it sensed that
this object, yourself, which accidentally lay in its path, would
furnish temporary *fire and shelter/ so to speak* But, what strikes
me most forcibly in your story is the contrast between you and
this other man, the map-man (I am well acquainted with him,
incidentally) who knows exactly where he is, and where he is
going at all times, because he has taken the trouble to study his
locale and make use of the knowledge experts have gathered for
80
MAY SWENSON
him. To him the world is a safe and sane place, and small enough,
because of his information about it, to manage comfortably with-
out fear."
"Yes," the painter said. He arose and stretched, letting a full
yawn have its way without any gesture toward muffling it. The
pliant fingers of one muscular hand fooled with the cord dangling
from the bulb in the skylight. "There is much to what you say,
except for the fact that my informant admitted he had never been
beyond the gates himself, and would not think of entering the
forest, particularly alone, small as it is, considering the dangers
of poison ivy, for instance, and other things which he did not
enumerate."
The doctor drew on his pipe, while thinking of an answer,
but found it had expired so that he received only a sour mouthful
of whistling air. He became aware that the fire had died in the
stove, leaving the cabin drafty and empty-seeming. A sort of echo
of the silence outside rang against his eardrums, which had the
effect of making him slightly dizzy, and unable to clarify his mind
to present the logical reply which certainly waited there in readi-
ness. He wished all at once that he were back in his own com-
fortable quarters at the mansion, and cringed inwardly at the dark
strip of forest he must cross to arrive there.
"There was one point of uncertainty in the map-man's expla-
nation which gave me the greatest relief and pleasure," the painter
was saying, softly, confidentially.
What was that? the doctor knew he was expected to ask. But
there was a really odd grin on his host's face. The corners of his
mouth had taken on the contour of a sharp new moon lying on its
back in the sky. His very white teeth and his very dark eyes were
gleaming in his mahogany-skinned face.
The doctor arose from the rocker rather suddenly, so that his
stiff knees gave him a painful twinge. He had the impression that
his host was going to pull the cord and turn off the light. "A most
interesting evening," he managed heartily, holding out his hand,
with his upper body already swiveled in the direction of the door.
"Thank you so much for inviting me in."
The painter was still grinning whether affably or gloatingly,
the doctor could not decide. He stepped forward and gripped the
doctor's hand, much too hard, leaving the light bulb swinging in a
jerky arc behind him.
"I'll tell you what it was," he pursued in an intense, husky
whisper, fixing the doctor's eyes (which were leaping from left to
right behind his glasses) with his own direct and disconcerting
gaze. His pupils, large, shining and bottomless, seemed to contract
and dilate to the rhythm of the pendulous bulb, which made the
81
MAY SWENSON
squatting shadows in the room, those of the stove, the rocker and
the table, expand and shrink, expand and shrink, upon the walls.
"It was the doubt as to whether the two snakes, the dead one
and the live one, were the same. Maybe my snake is still alive in
the forest and is the evil one/'
82
WARNINGS AND PROMISES
Harold Nc
i
Roll of the hills, seaward in paved waves:
In winter, sledding down dead slopes,
And the sudden accident, crying
From puffed lips blood
Freaking the snow. Do you remember
(Mountains weft the years)
Lean miners mariners of the sod!
Blue-eyes charred, dug
From the pit, Saturday evening
Revenants with blacker pittance?
Lamplit caps hung
In the dark shacks on the hillsides
Scranton, down the years.
2
That day it rained
On one side of the street
You watched from the porch rail
Sunlight across the road rolling,
Wonder lifted looks
Still innocent. The Erie track
Gave hoboes, coal and ice, O run
Again, shouting to black-face friends!
Will the day ever die (in memory)
More memorable deaths
Already forgotten?
3
You stood upon a mound with charcoal glass
Burned from the eclipse: the moon
Moved full across the sun . . .
83
HAROLD 2SJORSE
Wonder of wonders 'twenty six
Or earlier? Too much
For childhood to take in that darkness
In the heart of noon stars sharp
In midday sky and memory
Stuck at this moment out of compulsion.
One day you'll understand.
4
She brought in chunks of ice
From the railroad yard. The shack
Had flowers, blue and yellow, like flywheels.
She grinned hello with teeth like a fork
In the air coffee and smoke
Of locomotives, sweeter than cream
Stretched dry limbs upon the cot, slyly
Beckoning two wishbone fingers!
Panic trailed you home.
5
An, old man with a sack
Bent over, called your name. How
Did he know your name? His chin
Spread withered splinters of gray stubble.
Train whistles screamed. He said
"Here's candy for you" and bent down
Suddenly. Your shirring mouth
Contracted acid's kiss!
All afternoon the backyard hose
Couldn't wash out the sting,
6
School, I have not forgotten those hours
In. the room where I learned to spell,
Bright as a bird reciting poems
His? lips are cold and still
And Mrs. Carpenter, of the sheepwool hair,
At Christmas, leading in Silent Night
Windows stapled wreaths of green!
I have not forgotten though memory
Ride back on roads torn up - * ,
7
Two stories high were violets
In a window-box. Soft coal ash
84
HAROLD NORSE
Blew gently, wafted
Into the room. Downstairs
The fat landlady in a calico dress
Hung washing on the line. Heat
Punched and pounded her dress
As it pounded the walls.
In the room with the violets
I listened to Waltz Bluette.
O room with the whirl of Waltz Bluette!
The phonograph winding winding
That summer madness of the poor:
Over the dirty violets
My father flung the machine . . .
8
By the mine shaft standing I looked down
Into the dark hole where a circus clown
With crazy lamplit hat and weird streaked face
Had just descended. Down is another race
There night, in long black passages, is glaring
Rock, black rock and slate. Skinny canaries
Pipe drab semaphores of death. I peered
Down beneath the rubble and glass through time . . .
Querulous crypts, tunnels some hell I feared
Had gulped him up, earth growling with high-geared
Hidden inner brakings. But the bells
Are carolling, are signalling as he sinks . . .
In The Church of Our Lady there will be litanies
And liturgies. Wind blew around the mouth
Of that cave, I fell upon my knees
And heard, as I imagined, devils hooting
Out of the mud when he was raised in blood,
The elevator groaning. On a cliff
They wait for him in an old frame shack that hangs
As if it would fall. Engines are throbbing
Now the pile-driver heart
Beats in my temple choirs, waves and prayers.
9
Grey woofs of smoke muffle the clouds soft
Fabric of cinder and dense fire
In the engine's larynx coughed
Out, spewed from the funnel in a bolt of wool
Floating, unspooled, on rooftops and windowsills,
Geraniums wrapped in "wool
85
HAROLD NORSE
As the cloud wrapped. Something else
It is wool on the memory,
Hooding the approach is happening, a
Scene, two figures, in the dawn, dare
Under cover of wool, mysteries
Of motion, undulant pain . . . ? Or
Possibly, as the window cools to pearl
Panes, clearing, it is shuttling
There, in the lump of shadows
Parents weave a bobbin in
My eyeballs, till they purl hot flame!
Pulling the warp down over shame . . .
10
And then recall . . . factories, knitting mills
Where sewing children's bathing suits
My mother sat behind the frosted glass:
And I, upon the curb, watched autos pass.
And peddlers with forget-me-nots
And ice cream vendors by the gate
Joked with the girls who laughed but wouldn't wait
When the factory whistle blew. The dusk came late
In summer, bringing assorted smells
Of locomotives, beer, gardenias . . .
We walked home, knitting hands, through traffic, noise
Of vendors crying, crying of newsboys.
And Peter Rabbit, somewhere in the din
Hopped chicken-wire to the cabbage patch.
Jump, Peter, Brother Fang is hiding
There, behind that briar, he will catch
You if you don't watch out!
But where
Could Peter go? The woods are dangerous. . . *
86
SWITCHBOARD GIRL
Lorine Niedecker
I DIVINED this comedy, Dante, before I went in. But I had to have
a job. "Like one who has imperfect vision, we see the things
which are remote from us." O brother, we saw tho the eyes were
shot. We had light if not love. We had business.
Nystagmus ("The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling"), the
searching movement, combined with 80% vision. You'll have to
use a magnifying glass, we can't give you glasses to reach print.
Good-bye to proof reading. Good-bye to a living. No! That low,
rangy, glass-walled office and plant in the Frank Lloyd Wright
setting, clean-mowed acres, tulips, petunias, evergreens I would
apply there. Not literature but light fixtures and pressure cookers.
Out of daylight into Wade Light.
I was the September dandelion forty, female seeking a
place among the young fluorescent petunias. I keep cropping up
in the world's backyards while here in America, on all sides they
shear civilization back to the seventeen-year-old girl, not yet
young shall we say.
I entered the window-walled office of personnel. Or was it a
corner of a little theatre? What would the director be like? A
properly placed man may expand his influence over the whole of
your sight. We met ideally, as strangers do, without prejudice,
without violence . . . courteous before the guessed-at depth. All
art between us. Will he help me? He is not usual. He moves as
in a dance to be considerate. As if to speak, against the room's
outdoor backdrop, of Renoir? Of Einstein? Is he the master
economist with a sense of the relative value of things? The artist
with a sense of needing fewer things ? The political observer with
a knowledge of electronics? What does he know really, sweetly,
by touch?
He said, "You read."
Beethoven: "It is impossible to say to people, *I am deaf."
But I said it: I have an eye handicap.
87
LORINE NIEDECKER
U I wonder if you should . . . we have a switchboard opening.
You might try it."
I went in. Lights, polished glass, blond satin finished desks,
glossy haired and bald-headed efficiency. Shine. Lamps to be
produced. Lamps to be sold. The antique sweatshop base with a
new shine. You'll never have to polish this brass, a lacquering
process, won't tarnish. This is the lust that will never rust.
The shade by the door, the grey parchment face, cracked in
a half smile. Shall I appear alive or let myself be carried along?
I suppose man is, the most sensitive physical part of him, an elec-
trical apparatus, switches, wires, etc. . . . How much do I give to
Wade lamps? It takes 1028 human bodies to build a star. Purely
business.
The girl at the switchboard shouted, "Come in if you can
it's my birthday, you know. Once a year and at Christmas this
happens nylons, table lamps, candy, help yourself. The bosses,
the old honeypots, must like me a little bit, anyhow. Sit down.
Let me tell you what goes. They're all good enough guys, family
men, church, golf, they're after the business, they 11 lay on you,
of course,"
You see in a place of this kind, she said, the switchboard girl
is one of their outlets. They do a great deal of their sweating thru
you. You'll make the contact and in haste, also they relax thru
you. You're a part of it when their bags are full and you jazz 'em
when they're down.
"Get me the Howard Hotel, a single."
"Good, I like to sleep close."
That was Mendau, the burnt-out fuse in the beautiful suit
who still thinks he's got something to sell.
"Give me Philadelphia." Give me Europe. I'm waiting, oper-
ator, for the Paris pick-up. I'm on wartime Montparnasse, gas
mask, phosphorescent heels, illuminated brooch. **What's that?"
What does it look like? There they call it what it is.
The Japs: We had neither hens nor eggs. We went requisi-
tioning, A miserable village. On the way back we began to look
for Chinese girls.
They don't make 'em as sensitive as geiger counters.
"Goddamit what the hell happened to that call to Lethal
Steel? Sleeping at the switchboard?"
"I reported to you, sir, that Dan Blaine will talk."
"Christ if you can't get anybody but Dead-End Daniel "
"What was the name they wanted?" Somebody by the name
of Christ.
Please pass the blood. Human materiel is obsolescing.
88
LORINE NIEDECKER
As for the work itself, she plays an intricate chess. You gamble
with the red and the white and the green, without benefit of spa.
I lost. "No natural aptitude."
Dante? Yes, go ahead.
END
THE TRAVELOGUE
Jack J
ones
The red yak clambered from the long canal
And stood among the blue rats, pastoral.
He thinks of food, twigged and cantalouped
Where he swam from, of viewing a monkey roped.
A voice, to the yellow giggling rabbit, begins
Advice displeased and subtle; so she spins
Her father's drill.
All green to gray, milky arrows rise
To swiftly run a maze with poisoned claws.
The canal overflowed too slowly. The rats scaled
The back of their highest hope, and he inhaled
Before they did. Hunted by the second wave
The rabbit turns white, then black; but his high grave
Gains on him, until
Lights on. A blank screen. I have a headache. We admire
The nerve of logic, but when it brings a fire
Into favorite jungles, the brightest ruin befalls
Our hiding places. For mine, there are sand squalls.
I saw none in the film, and I remember none
Having visited the country to lie in the sun.
Returned, my eyes cleared of all but a dozen grays.
That guide "You comprehend?" But there was no way
One could accept this, for an alien to be explained
Or taught foreign colors, if he disdained
The surface of anything alive or dead, '"Perhaps
Inside, the clutch of more retentive traps.
Escape is a bitter pill."
A dialogue with darling (B) "If you divide
Your life into a world war, then which side
90
JACK JONES
Am I on?" (A) "Suppose you recall and free
Your prisoners first, without a fourth degree."
Impossible: (B) "No side. Neutrality drifts
Through allies, enemies, suicides, leaving rifts
To squirm in granite, and reassign our eyes
To fragments. How can a building calm the prize
Winners or losers, when space responds to melt
Or freeze between them and earth? And if they felt
The sneers of the builders, they weighed the impulse to kill
For once, this once." (A) "With these Til fill
The peace economy, feed them swill."
For H. P.
91
INTRODUCTION TO
ROBERT CREELEY
Charles Olsen
I TAKE rr there is huge gain to square away at narrative now,
not as fiction but as RE-ENACTMENT. Taking it this way I see
two possibilities:
(1) what I call DOCUMENT simply to emphasize that the
events alone do the work, that the narrator stays OUT, functions
as pressure not as interpreting person, illuminates not by argu-
ment or "creativity" but by master of force (as space is shaper,
confining maintaining inside tensions of objects) , the art, to make
his meanings clear by how he juxtaposes, correlates, and causes
to interact whatever events and persons he chooses to set in
motion. In other words his ego or person is NOT of the story
whatsoever. He is, if he makes it, light from outside, the thing
itself doing the casting of what shadows;
(2) the exact opposite, the NARRATOR IN, the total IN to
the above total OUT, total speculation as against the half-manage-
ment, half interpretation, the narrator taking on himself the job of
making clear by way of his own person that life is preoccupation
with itself, taking up the push of his own single intelligence to
make it, to be by his conjectures so powerful inside the story
that he makes the story swing on him, his eye the eye of nature
INSIDE (as is the same eye, outside) a light-maker.
Both (1) and (2), both methodologies drive for the same
end, so to re-enact experience that a story has what an object or
person has: energy and instant. Here is their gain, over the fictive
not to spill out these bloods, but to keep original force in at the
same time that that force is given illumination.
There is another reason why I am sure that the choice now is
one or the other of these two attacks on the problem. They are
the only way that narrative can take up that aspect of verse which
is its multitude. For variations "motion" lies out there in the
92
CHARLES OLSEN
meat of reality, not in the small paper of egos or lyric soulness-
esses. Events have outreached narrators, have overmatched them,
because narrators have either succumbed to them or, as silly
white to that ridiculous black, have taken themselves to be more
interesting. They are not. Poets could have told them. For "things"
are what writers get inside their work, or the work, poem or story,
perishes. Things are the way force is exchanged. On things com-
munication rests. And the writer, though he is the control (or
art is nothing) is, still, no more than but just as much as
another "thing," and as such, is in, inside or out.
What it is, is two geometries, now, for the story-teller: either
he lets things in and manages them so well that they get curved
back by his pressure outside and make a self-existent sphere
(the law is gravitation) or he take on himself the other law
(they are recognized now to be identical) and, as center, as core
to the magnetic field, he causes the things to pull in to make
their shape.
I take it that the stories are of the second way, of the writer
putting himself all the way in taking that risk, putting his
head on that block, and by so doing giving you your risk, your
committment by the seriousness of his constituting himself
the going reality and, by the depth and sureness of his specu-
lating, making it pay, making you-me believe, that we are
here in the presence of a man putting his hands directly and re-
sponsibly to experience which is also our own. It is his presence
that matters, for it rids us of artifice as such (as the whole of
the story) , instead only uses it to keep the going going, to make
the reach of what is happening clear. For his presence is the
energy. And the instant? That, too, is he, given such methodology.
For his urgency, his confrontation is "time," which is, when he
makes it, ours, the now. He is time, he is now, the force.
Which is multitude. It is human phenomenology which is
re-inherited, allowed in, once plot is kissed out. For the moment
you get a man back in, among things, the full motion and play
comes back (not parts extricated for show or representation)
but the total bearing, each moment of the going as it is, for any
of us, each moment, anywhere. MR. BLUE, for example.
93
MR. BLUE AND OTHER STORIES
Robert Creeley
MR. BLUE
I BON'T WANT to give you only the grotesqueness, not only what
it then seemed. It is useless enough to remember but to remem-
ber only what is unpleasant seems particularly foolish. I suspect
that you have troubles of your own, and, since you have, why
bother you with more. Mine against yours. That seems a waste
of time. But perhaps mine are also yours. And if that's so, you'll
find me a sympathetic listener.
A few nights ago I wrote down some of this, thinking, try-
ing to think, of what had happened. What had really happened
like they say. It seemed, then, that some such effort might get
me closer to an understanding of the thing than I was. So much
that was not directly related had got in and I thought a little
nothing of what was basic to the problem might "be in order. That
is, I wanted to analyze it, to try to see where things stood. I'm
not at all sure that it got to anything, this attempt, because I'm
not very good at it. But you can look for yourselves.
1) That dwarfs, gnomes, midgets are, by the fact of their size,
intense;
2) that dwarfs, gnomes, midgets cause people larger than
themselves to appear wispy, insubstantial, cardboard;
3) that all size tends toward big but in the case of dwarfs,
gnomes, midgets.
But perhaps best to begin at the beginning. And, to begin,
there are two things that you must know. The first of these is
that I am, myself, a tall man, somewhat muscular though not
unpleasantly so. I have brown hair and brown eyes though that
is not altogether to the point here. What you should remember is
that I am a big man, as it happens, one of the biggest in the town.
94
ROBERT CREELEY
My wife is also large. This is the second. But she is not so
much large as large-boned. A big frame. I sound as though I
were selling her, but I'm not. I mean, I don't want to sound like
that, as though I were trying to impress you that way. It is just
that that I don't want to do. That is, make you think that I am
defending her or whatever it is that I may sound like to you. In
short, she is an attractive woman and I don't think I am the only
one who would find her so. She has, like myself, brown hair but
it is softer, very soft, and she wears it long, almost to her waist,
in heavy braids. But it is like her eyes, I mean, there is that
lightness in it, the way it brushes against her back when she is
walking. It makes me feel rather blundering, heavy, to look at
her. It seems to me my step jars the house when I walk through
a room where she is. We have been married five years.
Five years doesn't seem, in itself, a very long time. So much
goes so quickly, so many things that I can think of now that then,
when they were happening, I could hardly take hold of. And
where she comes into it, those things that had to do with her, I
find I missed, perhaps, a lot that I should have held to. At least
I should have tried. But like it or not, it's done with. Little good
to think of it now.
I did try, though, to do what I could. She never seemed un-
happy, and doesn't even now. Perhaps upset when the baby was
sick, but, generally speaking, she's a level woman, calm, good-
sense.
But perhaps that's where I'm wrong, that I have that as-
sumption, that I think I know what she is like. Strange that a
man shouldn't know his wife but I suppose it could be so, that
even having her around him for five years, short as they are, he
could still be strange to her and she to him. I think I know, I
think I know about what she'd do if this or that happened, if I
were to say this to her, or something about something, or what
people usually talk about. It's not pleasant doubting your own
knowing, since that seems all you have. If you lose that, or take
it as somehow wrong, the whole thijcig goes to pieces. Not much
use trying to hold it together after that.
Still I can't take seriously what's happened, I can't but still
I do. I wish it were different, that in some way, I were out of it,
shaken but at least out. But here I am. The same place.
It was raining, a bad night for anything. Not hard, but
enough to soak you if you were out in it for very long. We
thought it would probably be closed but when we got there, all
the lights were going and I could see some people up in the
Ferris wheel, probably wet to the skin. Still they looked as if
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ROBERT CREELEY
they were having fun and some of their shouts reached us as we
went through the gate and into the main grounds. It was fairly
late, about ten or so, another reason why I had thought it would
be closed. Another day and the whole works would be gone and
that's why she had insisted. ?
I feel, usually, uncomfortable in such places. I don t like the
crowds, at least not the noise of them, They never seem to stop,
always jumping, moving, and the noise. Any one of them, alone,
or two or three, that's fine. As it happened, we went by a num-
ber of our friends, who yelled at us, laughing, fine night, or some
such thing, I can't remember exactly what the words were. But
I didn't like them, or didn't like them then, with that around
them, the noise, and their excitement.
No reason, perhaps, to think she knew where she was going.
I didn't. I think we followed only the general movement of the
people, where they were going. It was packed and very difficult
to go anywhere but where you were pushed. So we were landed
in front of the tent without much choice and stood, listening to
the barker, to see what might be happening.
I can say, and this is part of it, that I didn't want to go in.
For several reasons. The main one is that I don't like freaks, I
don't like to look at them or to be near them. They seem to have
a particular feeling around them, which is against me, altogether.
A good many times I've seen others staring, without the slightest
embarrassment, at some hunchback, or some man with a de-
formity that puts him apart from the rest. I don't see how they
can do it, how they can look without any reaction but curiosity.
For myself, I want only to get away.
But this time she decided. It seemed that not very much
could be inside the tent. They had advertised a midget, a knife-
thrower, a man with some snakes, and one or two other things.
Nothing like the large circuses and none of the more horrible
things such might offer. So I got the tickets and we followed a
few of the others in.
They were just finishing a performance. It was so packed up
at the front, that we stood at the back, waiting until the first
crowd was ready to leave. I felt tired myself. It must have been
close to eleven at that point. It seemed an effort there was no
reason for. But she enjoyed it, looked all around, at everyone,
smiled at those she knew, waved to some, kept talking to me, and
I would say something or other to hide my own feeling. Perhaps
I should have been straight with her, told her I was tired, and
ducked out. It would have saved it, or at least got me free. But I
kept standing there, with her, waiting for the show to finish and
another to start.
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It did soon, the first crowd moving out, and our own com-
ing up to take its place. The man on the platform had got down
at the end and now we waited for him to come back and the new
show to begin. There was talking around us, sounding a little
nervous the way most will at those times when something is
being waited for, though what one can't say with exactness. At
this point, I was almost as expectant as the others. Nothing else
to be, perhaps. In any event, I had got over my other feeling.
The first act was a cowboy with a lariat, rope tricks. Not
much but he was good with it, could make it spin all kinds of
loops, shrinking them, making them grow right while we watched
him. It was good fun, I thought, not much but enough. At the
end he started stamping with one foot and at the same time, he
slipped his loop off and on it, brought it up around both feet at
the end, jumping and grinning. I think there may have been some
music with it, something for the beat, but it doesn't matter. The
man told us he was deaf, couldn't hear a thing. There didn't seem
to be much point in telling us that but I guess we're apt to like
that adding of what we don't expect.
We enjoyed it, the both of us. It's not often that we can get
out, like that, to see anything. And after the first I forgot about
being tired and liked it as much as she did. The next act was the
knife-thrower. He could put them all in a circle no bigger than
my hand, eight of them, so that they shivered there with a force
which surprised me, and each time one hit, she gripped my arm,
and I laughed at her nervousness, but it was a funny thing,
even so.
Then came the snake act, which wasn't up to the others, or
simply that dullness in it, the snakes much the same, doped, I
expect, though perhaps I was wrong to think so. Then sort of a
juggling act, a man with a number of colored balls and odd-
shaped sticks, which he set into a strange kind of movement,
tossing them, one after the other, until he must have had ten,
somehow, going and all this with an intentness that made us
almost clap then, as they did move, through his hands. Altogether
a wonder it seemed, his precision, and how it kept him away
from us, even though some stood no more than a few feet away.
Until at last, he stopped them one by one, and then, the last,
smiled at us, and we all gave him a good hand.
It's here that I leave, or as I go back to it, this time, or this
way, that is, now, that I make my way out, through the rest of
them, my hand on her arm with just that much pressure to
guide her, or that is my intention. Perhaps the lights that make
my eyes ache, begin to, or simply, that it's now, this point, that
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I am happy, that it's ourselves, the two of us, have come to some
sort of feel of it, that makes us so. Just that I am, now, running,
that it seems, from here, I make my way just that way, that it is
just that I do.
What she had been doing, or going to that, it was a cigarette
she asked me for, and I reached into my pocket for them, had
got out the pack, and given her one, and then lit a match for her.
She bent a little, got it lit, then looked back to the platform
where the juggler had been.
But the trick, that it's him who's there, the midget, as such
he is named, but the size, it's that which hits me, at first, that he
isn't small, or looking, he must be five feet, or perhaps, a little
smaller. Four feet. But not small.
The eyes, catch, get me so into it, that they are so, void, in the
head, shaded, the shades like changing shadows, colors, coming
in to want, to want to be filled. Seem huge. He looks at all of us,
moves over us so, to bite, to have something to be there, to bite.
But nothing, certainly, to make of it more or more than
what I could see, would be, that is, the barker introduced him,
and we stood, as we had, in that group in front of him, the boards
which made the platform, that roughness, and the pole on which
the lights were strung, the wires sagging between them. That is,
what is it had come in, as this was, to be not or to make it not
as it had been, if it were, as it was, the same place, which I couldn't
say or put my finger on, then, but waited like any of the rest.
I could see the muscle of his arm, where the sleeve had been
pulled up, rolled, above it, and with his movement, that slight-
ness of tension made him lift it, slightly, from time to time, the
muscle tightened and it looked hard, big, below the roll of the
sleeve. As my own would. He was smiling, the face somewhat
broad, well-shaped, the smile somewhat dreamy, or like sleep,
that vagueness, which couldn't be understood.
The barker had laughed, the pitch of it rolled out, on us,
and I wondered if he was as drunk as he looked. He was calling
the midget, cute, saying, a cute little fellow. He made a joke of
it, looking at the women and laughing. Saying, who would like
to take him home. There was laughing, they like the joke, and he
carried it further, sensing their tolerance, and played it up. It
was the joke he seemed intent on making us remember, the cute-
ness, the idea of the women.
Taking the cigarettes out of my pocket, the pack crumpled,
I held it out to her, but she was intent on what was before us,
and I expect that I was myself, and only did what I did, took
them out, to somehow break it, to make it break down. It seemed
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that, that is, that gesture, or an act, an action, so meant to serve
double, to be a break, but what was it, that is, more than the tak-
ing, just that, of the cigarettes, which I didn't want to smoke,
had even just put one out. I looked, then, around me at the rest
of them and they were looking at him, the midget, and I couldn't
see one that noticed I looked, or gave the least sign.
The midget stood still, beside the barker, who staggered a
little, under the lights, moved from one side to the other, his
face toward us, that drunkeness. He was still on the joke, fumb-
ling, and it wore down on us, that weight of it, kept at us, and I
wanted to get out. There seemed breaks, lengths of silence, hung
there, made the other, the midget, the whole of it, in his own
silence, which he kept as a distance around him, that the eyes
made actual.
I would have gone, or as I think, I should have in spite of
it, simply slipped out, when the others weren't looking, just left
and waited for her outside. I can't see that she would have been
hurt. That is, I would think, or think I would have that right to,
that it would make no difference to her, that is, that she would
understand my going, seeing that it had begun to tire me, even
became painful to stay. I think of it so, being such, that no dif-
ference could be in it, since she was enjoying it, or so it seemed.
I tried to, but the people around pressed too tight, pushed
against me from the back, all forward, to the one on the plat-
form in front of us. Not the barker, I knew that much, but the
other, who pulled them, kept them all, because the barker had
somehow fallen altogether to pieces, had just the joke he hung
to, and that was played out. But then he switched it, perhaps
feeling it had, and turned to the midget, and said, but you should
have some say in this. Which one would you like.
The midget turned, then seemed to pull himself out of it,
the distance, out of nothing, the eyes pulled in, to focus, grow
somehow smaller, larger. The eyes went over, the voice, when
it came, was breath, a breathing, but way back in, wire, tight,
taut, the scream and I couldn't hear it, saw only the finger lifting
to point at her, beside me, and wanted to say, he's looking at you,
but she turned away from me, as though laughing, but struck.
I looked, a flash, sideways, as it then happened. He looked at me,
cut, the hate jagged, and I had gone, then, into it. But she said,
then, she had seen him earlier, that same day, as he was stand-
ing by a store, near the door, I think, as it had opened, and she
there, across the street, saw him motion, the gesture, then, the
dance, shuffle, the feet, and the arms, as now, loose, and it was
before as before, but not because of this, the same, or it was that
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thing I hung to, when, the show over, they motioned us out, and
I pushed a way for her out through the crowd.
THE SEANCE
(SOMEWHAT COLDER, the wind came in at the door, and with a
quick turn, shifted and moved down the hall. There, they were
sitting, waiting, at the table, backs to the fire, the shadows of
them on the wall, against it, big black shapes there which, because
they were talking, they didn't see.)
A ghost story. An involution back into what was, he said to
the other, remember? I give it to you straight, listen.
You see the face, say, that face there. What is it gets on it,
I mean, the fact of it coming over & thru, now, as you are look-
ing. Or, how it dies, perhaps, or softens, the thing gone relaxed,
like a dicing. My hands are cold. I move them a little, flex &
wind the fingers together. The coldness. Or rub them, perhaps,
one with the other, chafe the skin a little. A charm against what
harms them. The coldness. Not so much to laugh at this, or to
be laughing, as to see, simply, what it is I am about.
Perhaps, then, in some ways something, something, different.
Someone is moving. The chair, itself, edges a little, & grates, the
legs of it, against the floor. Listen. Unmistakeable sound. The
slight shifting. The slight noise in the ear. Enough to prove it.
Something there. Well, someone. A person, like they say. Man,
woman, or child. Who is cold? Not so much cold, as there. That
is itself a character.
But even with that, it is still not there, or better, it is away
from where we are. Where I am. Or put it simply. I am alone.
To move from this to that. That shift, from here to there
where the weather is softer, warmer, & the sun already grows big
against the edge of the hills, where the eye hangs, to look at the
sun, against it. Strikes out. The trees, green but soft green in
the rising fog which the rising wind pushes. He said, never a
morning without the slight wind. Clears this fog, cuts thru &
lifts it, clears sight.
So good to be stretching. Out, lifts over the edge of the bed,
one leg, looks down at the foot, then gets up. Stretches. Through
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the window, the sun works clear & up, moves higher, and the
air is warm.
Lucy sings in the garden, two hours before him, gropes for
the weeds, is mad. Tra-las, echoing song. Lifts high as the sun
these symptoms of the desperate sound. Weeds, where they grow,
catch to her flowers and crowd. She, meticulous, takes each, one
by one, carefully, & pulls lightly, works them loose. The flowers.
Color & the morning sun.
Not much more than that, he was saying, I was thinking,
again. My head feels thick as a bag of barley. Thick? Well, barley
not so much that as slippery. That, too, in my head. What was it
you wanted to know about let's get clear on that. At this point,
it's hard to think straight. I'm in a hurry.
Colder & colder. He rubs his hands more frequently, puts
them to his mouth & blows on them, thru. The warm breath. Is
uncomfortable & the fire burns out. But flickers. The shadows
even more.
The sun, higher & higher. The day burns out. Along. And
she is still in the garden, still pulls at the weeds. Which move
thru her hands. Counters. Lucy, green, Louise, green, Lionel,
green. Lilacs, purple. Purple. Moves her hands with exactness,
picks & pulls.
Behind her, through a chink in the wall, he is watching.
Takes after a time, a small pebble & throws it, tosses it, at her.
It hits her back & bounces, lightly, down. She shakes & keeps
working. He takes another pebble, & throws it, she shakes &
keeps working. Another. Throws. She keeps working. Another,
larger, throws, harder, another, larger, throws, & harder another.
She keeps working.
The whistle, far-off, a kind of long screech. All over, they
stop. Put down the tools & move in long lines, past the tools & out.
A digression.
But the wind shifts, again, comes down the hall, & finds him.
Close to the fire, what's left, he puts his hands out to catch what
heat is left. Cold, very cold. No moon but out on the fields the
weather. Light light. He rubs his hands.
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THE LOVER
OUTSIDE, BENEATH the window on the grass which grew in an
uneven covering, the earth coming through in patches where the
grass had worn thin, the cats were playing. The sun was as high
as the noon would find it and yet the air had an edge of chill in
it and the sky was a yellow-blue, the chill, and hardness. It was
summer but they were north, so far north that even the summer
was part of it, cold and not the open warmth of the south which
they had grown used to a year ago, that they had travelled in
with the cats as unwelcome retainers, servants of their love. They
had need for an audience.
At noon the glasses and sandwiches sat on the table, and
they before them, and they both ate without haste or eagerness,
but more as occasion, usual, for which there was custom. Still,
looking at them, together, it was to catch some of the reason for
them being together. There seemed to be a reason. She was short
and he was tall and both were somewhat dark with brown hair,
eyes, rather oval long faces, and then their bodies, having some
sense of strength in them, and one thought that they would look
better without the clothes than with them. There was too much
awkwardness and constraint, although one might have been mis-
taken.
Too much subtlety he was thinking, altogether, to want much
to eat today. He said, I've been reading about this new book here.
It says, that his unwavering growth is continuing, that he has
been achieving universal recognition as a master poetical crafts-
man of the highest order.
Taking another sandwich, he said, what has happened to my
generation? Tell me. Where are those that stood with me?
And she answered, looking up above his head through the
window, to the peak of the barn: Isadore, shot in a raid, 1938;
Leo, serving 2 years for addiction, 1944; Sarah, teaches dancing
in New York, 1948 those are the ones that matter.
When will they call me, he said, when shall I resume my
command?
But she was clearing the table and then she had gone into
the kitchen, leaving him on the chair, still sitting, and he looked
at the door and then turned to look out of the window and saw
there the black and white cat, with a mouse, while the other,
the gray cat, sat some distance away, watching.
Poetically, he was an instance of despair, one more, as he
would put it, in the noon's sun. He could plan himself out of
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books or without them, what he could do but couldn't then get to it
or come to do it. He thought of Sarah as a body, before him,
which he would put out hands to touch, or fingers, to move over.
That would be a body, he thought, love. Was she one of those
mentioned? She was. She is dancing in New York, although where
wasn't mentioned. Would she dance well? He thought, I guess
she would. I guess that would be love, another instance, dancing
or not. But the others, that would be more subtle.
He spent the afternoon cleaning out a hen-house, moving the
caked litter in a basket to the truck, then taking it when he had
got the house cleaned to the dump at the edge of the woods. It
wasn't so much hard work as dusty, and his nose was blocked
with the dust and he coughed now and then, disliking it. But it
had to be done, he thought, but will they remember it five years
from now.
And then it was evening and he could sit down again, at the
table, and eat his supper. He ate it fast and with appetite and
she was pleased. After they had finished, they went into the other
room, she before him, and sat down again in the chairs some feet
apart. He took up the book he had been reading in the morning,
opened it, then shut it and put it back. His wife had one of her
own which she had begun to read.
I think 111 go to New York, he said, and then waited. She
went on with her reading. I think I'll leave tonight. She put down
the book and looked at him, but annoyed and even hurt, and this
surprised him. Go ahead, she said, but there isn't any money. I'll
walk, he said, I'll run, I'll fly. Go ahead, she said. But why get
angry, he said, why take it that way? What is here to keep me?
And why won't you come? I don't like New York, she answered.
It was there he could stop, he thought, right there. To hell
with it. Women with bodies but each different and each with ex-
citing differences and each with incomparable differences. But
I'm a lover, he thought, good god, this is my vocation!
Around the edge of the chair one of the cats came and pushed
against his foot, rubbing itself on his leg, and purring. He put
down his hand and stroked its back, slowly, so that his fingers
could feel the fur very soft and even and almost like oil, very
thin, on the fur. The cat purred and arched its back, then tired of
being stroked and moved over to where his wife sat and jumped
up to her lap, landing on the book and covering it. Annoyed, she
pushed it down.
Outside, down in the field, there was a mist coming up from
the river which he could still see in what light was left. It softened
the outlines of the trees, covering them, and what he could now
see of them was not the trees, but the mist covering the trees.
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A softness of the world.
Sentimental and odious.
But what could he put against it, he thought, that it hadn't
got to and covered? A softness of the world. A vacuum, an im-
penetrable emptiness. Two years ago he had been in New York
with Leo and Sarah, They had stayed at Leo's apartment. Leo
wanted Sarah. It was what he wanted, her, that is, but still the
idea of having some one, that being what he had mentioned later.
I was so alone, he said, having no one to sleep with. So what did
you do. He didn't know, he thought, then or now, not much in
any event. I've never done much of anything. But Leo said, you
slept with her. Which was right, but that was up to her, and he
could think of her in the bed, after, when he had got up to go
back to his own, saying, she said, stay with me, don't go back,
and he 'felt her face because he was obliged to see what she was
up to and found there that she was crying, the tears coming down
over her face, and he stayed where he was. And when Leo asked,
he told him. How old, he thought, 23, 24, and still I can't keep
my mouth shut? And old men talk too much?
He saw her moving in her chair and he sat up, quickly and
straight, in his own. You've been asleep, she said. But he couldn't
think that he had been, or remember, and answered, no, that
would be too easy and too right. I haven't been asleep. I watched
you, she said, and you fell asleep in the chair. She was smiling
and why, he wondered, and why should she have to smile. What
did you dream about, she asked and smiled. Women, he said,
nothing but women. Nice ones, she asked. You don't know them,
he said and tried to remember what he had dreamt about, but
couldn't. But he thought, was I asleep, and, where am I now?
Whose house with such impossible furniture is this? The cat
lay in a corner of the room, the one that he had stroked, curled
on a blanket that lay there, the other close to it. So where am I?
he thought, is it still 1938? What year is it if it isn't 1938?
He said to her, I don't do anything but think, do I? She had
got up and was going out to the kitchen to feed the cats. She
hadn't heard him. He tried again. I don't do a goddamn thing
but think, do I? She was in the kitchen and he wondered if she
had heard but didn't answer because she didn't want to. Why
don't I work, he shouted, why don't I get a job? Good Christ,
who do I think I am? Sitting around here all day doing nothing?
Look at other people. They work. They have jobs. They support
their wives. Why don't I?
It was very quiet in the house, he thought, and now that he
had stopped shouting, he could hear her in the kitchen, getting
the cats' food. No noise from the night came into the room and
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looking out, all he could see was the black and the quiet. Nothing
moved. Stop thinking, he thought, stop thinking about it. Get
out of it. Let go. But the women are there, he thought, all of them,
one, two, three, four, five. Were there that many? No, he thought,
there weren't. But there could be, there might be even more. As
a possibility he could add a half a dozen to begin with, that he
knew of and could, perhaps, someday add. That would be a be-
ginning. But what compels me here?
How about some music, he called to her. She was still in
the kitchen, feeding the cats. Some big wide chords? He waited
and then she answered, don't you want to go to bed? No, he said,
I'm not tired. Let's have some music. He got up and went over to
the phonograph. Reaching down to a rack below it, he pulled out
an album, very worn and patched on the sides with tape. He took
out three records, put them on the spindle, joggled them a little
to make sure they would drop down one at a time, and then turned
on the phonograph. In a minute the sounds came out, loud, deep,
and fast. He moved out to the middle of the room, stood there
listening, and then let his arms swing out in lazy circles, easy,
and murmured to himself the sounds of the music. When it had
finished, he turned around to find her standing in the doorway,
smiling again, and watching him.
You look like Buddy, she said, but not very much. That's
one you forgot, he answered, what about him? Where is he? He's
in Mexico, she said, but you know that. He looked at her in the
doorway and wondered. I know it, he said, but do you know it?
Do you know what that means to me, for example? I think so,
she said. No, you don't, he said, I do but you don't. Wait a minute.
He walked over to a table and took a letter from a small pile on
one side. Listen to this. He unfolded the paper and read, que
nunca olvidate, he says here, Your lad que nunca olvidate . . .
He had trouble pronouncing the Spanish and she asked him to
spell out the words. What does that mean, he said. It means,
which nothing will obliviate. Nothing, he said, how does he get
that way? What does he know about it down there in Mexico?
Don't you like him, she said. But he turned and folding the letter
again, put it back on the table with the others. I like him, he said,
very much.
She had gone over to the door and opening it, she looked at
him, to see if he was going to come, but he went back to a chair
and sat down and said that he would read for a little while. Take
a bath. I'll be up soon. I haven't much to read. Then she was up-
stairs, moving around, turning the water on in the tub, and no
other sounds but these. He took up the book again, opened it,
but couldn't read it, and closing it, put it back on the table. Too
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often, he thought, I've done that. Too goddamn often these days.
But thought then that what he would like would be no more than
something obscene, of the sort that he could remember having
got hold of as a boy, in school, but this was usual. But for a grown
man, he thought, is it still usual?
Upstairs he found her in the tub, stretched out, and almost
asleep. He left the door open, coming in, and she complained of
the cold draft from the hall, but he left it so long enough to an-
noy her and wake her up. Or perhaps no more than to annoy her.
He didn't know. Then he closed it and stood waiting for her to
get out of the tub, but she stayed where she was and he looked
at her there, in the dirty water, gray, so that he couldn't see her
under it but only what was above, her breasts, head, and knees.
My wife, he said, look at you, you big common thing. Get up or
you'll go to sleep. She smiled and then slowly started to get up
and the water slopped against the sides. He didn't wait but went
out, closing the door behind him, and into their bedroom, and
there undressed, and putting on his pajamas, got into bed.
Another book on the table, he thought, and there it was.
Books everywhere, he thought, nothing but books. It was an-
other he'd been reading with a torn match-book in it to mark
the place where he had stopped. He reached down to his pants
which lay on the floor where he had dropped them, took out a
package of cigarettes and a lighter. He lit one of the cigarettes
and then put the pack and the lighter on the table beside the bed.
Then she was in the room and looking up at her, he saw
she'd let her hair down and had put on lipstick, so that her mouth
looked bigger. Just like those books, he thought, and she said,
I'm all clean, do you like me? She got into the bed and rolled
over against him and began to stroke him with her hand, her
hair falling over his chest, and he said, look, what do you think
I can do, what do you think I'm good for. But he was getting
beyond it himself, and reached over and with his hands, took
hold of her.
But who is it, he was thinking, that I would want if it wasn't
her? But would this be important now? He wondered. He won-
dered if it were, then, those projected images of other, those
other women, he was dealing with, then, in the bed with her,
on top and around her, and over her. Or if it were himself, or
where was he in it. Like some kind of impotent shell, useless to
protect, he thought of the day and the sun and the lack of warmth,
the north, being that climate he had no business in, too cold and
hard, around him and over, on top, and talk, damn you, talk, he
thought, say something that makes sense, that won't leave me
always alone, here or there, or nowhere I have chosen for my~
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ROBERT CREELEY
self. As I am, now, here or there but nowhere I would be. And
the cats, he thought. The shell. The need for necessity, to have
dependents. She liked them, she fed them. They were hers. And
it was useless not to be angry anymore because he was and ex-
pected he would be, for a long time, that it would continue to
be her he didn't want or like or didn't want to have that close to
him. And always busy, he thought. Always busy. And could,
then, scream, get away from me, you common thing! But she
had rolled off and away, or he had, and lay there thinking, what
was I thinking of.
THREE FATE TALES
l
I PUT IT this way. That I am, say, myself, that this, or this feel,
you can't have, or from that man or this, me, you can't take it.
And what I would do, with any of this, is beyond you, and mine.
But for this time, yours too.
I haven't always lived here. I used to live in the city, in the
middle of it, straight, tall buildings, some of it, but where I was
they were cramped, squat, four stories. There was a trolley-line
ran down the middle of the street. Noise. Each day the iceman
came, under the windows. I could hear him shout. I even waited
for him to shout.
Thinking of that time, as it comes here, here and now, I
think of the other, somewhat different. I say time. I say time,
to mean place.
Let me put it another way. What have we got but this which
is myself, yourself. Or that word, self. You figure there's more,
some way to make it more, but what you keep is the means, the
ways. Make them the end. And that's the end of it, what might
have been more.
But nothing more strange, taken or not, than just that, the
self which is single. And I make it such, so call it, because it is
so. I only call it what it is.
One day, any day, there could be these people, or make
them three people, this man and this woman and this little girl.
They live in the next place to mine. I see them go down the
steps, out on to the street, there, the three of them. I don't say,
look for yourselves, see them, or what you may take as enough
to convince you. They are there. That is the fact of it,
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ROBERT CREELEY
The days are long, as it happens, hot. The sun in the city
is a hard thing, up, inaccessible, hangs over the hardness of the
city, out of it. Hot. I hate it but that is, again, my own business.
The woman sits there by herself, in the place with just the
girl. They work out the day the best they can. Make the time
pass. I know there are at least a hundred and one things anyone
can do, to get through these days. Hold to, the actions, the little
things done. I have my own things. I get up, eat breakfast, sit
around, read, look out the window. There are these ways.
They wait, the two of them, in the place next to mine. The
noises come through. The little girl has a ball. It bounces on the
floor. Its noise is exact. The woman calls her for her dinner, she
complains, doesn't want to come. There is some sharpness in the
voices. I listen. I hear all that I want to hear of it.
Then, as it happens, there is this one day, again, one day
out of the number, fifty, twenty-five.
The chair slides across the floor. I hear the girl push it.
There is no other sound. Just what comes from the street,
what I have grown used to, the trolley, and the cars, the people,
below me, out the window, down. This is what I am sure of, what
is down there, that I can speak of without looking, seeing, any of
it. It is the one pattern which cannot be broken because it is
the general, the collection. The numbers.
It is still quiet. But then out, it goes by me, and down.
Stops. But I can't do anything, sit only for a moment, and then,
jump, and look out, see there, down, the girl, and the people
already around her. Nothing of the woman until her head is just
opposite mine, the mouth wide, scream, and someone I see the
face of below, looks up and calls to her. If s all right. She isn't
hurt. A miracle.
It's all right, or right is what they have said, that it's all
right, but myself, I can't find their answers or even what they
answer, to say it's all right. To her, or myself, or to anyone, or
even looking straight down at it, after it happens, what happens?
It isn't known. I make that sense of it, that it isn't known,
any of it. This woman or this girl or what has happened, and
how I would have it, or my hand there. To feel. To be felt. Which
they want, or I want, more than the seeing. Any day of the week
this could happen, to any, this girl, to others, me, you. I can
think of it that way. I am not in this, or I think that to myself,
I suppose it as something, even, done with. As it turned out. Past,
and even complete. I am left with it, made different, because of
it. Or, am I? We are back to that.
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ROBERT CREELEY
2
I TAKE IT another way, since in this or in what is around is, per-
haps, some of it, that such can come to interest, or finds, so, some
place in the attention. Let me begin.
There is an old woman who lives in the country and she is
very old indeed. Her husband, somewhat younger than herself,
has grown tired of waiting but being an honest man, he cannot
bring himself to the act of deciding just how old she should be
before she is ready to die. It is to be thought that this old woman's
days are inaccessible, even to herself, and though she is certainly
alive, for the most part she is dead because she cannot remember
anything and when she talks, her words slide into one another
and the sentence breaks down before it is even half begun. It is
the practice of her husband, a rather cruel one, to have the old
woman do the week's shopping, so that each Saturday she arrives
in the village and totters from store to store, usually led by some
old friend of the family who has happened to be standing on the
street corner at the time when she is let down from her husband's
car. Often the job is divided so that one begins it and another
goes on with while a third appears at the end to guide her to the
car where her husband sits waiting. And behind them comes the
clerk carrying the groceries. It is a common sight each Saturday.
This is, it can be supposed, one of the old woman's horrors,
but her joy, which is equally distinct, has to do with something
which for others would be even more horrible. In the cemetery
where she is, once dead, to be buried, her stone is already set in
place and her name with all but the final date has been carefully
cut into it. She is often taken to the cemetery to see her stone,
perhaps with a certain willingness on the part of her husband
who may think that if she sees it often enough, this place where
she is to be laid to rest, she will hurry up the process of getting
there once and for all. For some years she worried about the
possible annoyance her choice of a final resting place might
cause another member of her family but when with reluctant
decision, she made her choice known to the family, she was
overjoyed to find this doubtful one quite approved.
In any event this old woman seems to be doing it all by her-
self, so that when it does come time to bury her, one would not
be too surprised, should the knotted old hands reach up and,
pushing the shovels aside, pull the dirt over all by themselves,
for at least that's one way to think of it.
3
I THINK WE DEAL with other wisdoms, all more real than our
own, which is to say, I think we have to do with others. Some-
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ROBERT CREELEY
times, sitting in a chair by the window, I see a man going by on
foot and I wonder at the precision with which each foot ad-
vances, so controlled and so sure. I would hope that if the man
and I were to trade places, he might think the same of me going
by but I am not at all sure that he would.
I think it is always a question of where we are and where
we have come from and where we are going, I think they are
important in just that order and I think there is little else to
think about. Of course, we are ourselves. It would be foolish
for us to believe those who tell us different. But to know ex-
actly, to know each time and all the time, about that I am not
so sure.
After all, what do we have to do with that is not ourselves?
What can exist that we are not part of or that we do not in some
sense make room for. This is an old story but a true one. The world
is my representation. So it is, all of it. And what is more, this
world belongs to us.
But the order is important, the grasp of the keys and the lay
of the land, so to speak. One must know these. Like the man with
the car I see each morning, racing its motor, tearing down the
road over bumps and stones, what does he know about his own
possession? Certainly not enough to make actual use of it, not
the use of understanding. This, then, should be criticized, such
misuse, and avoided at all costs.
But is is true that everything becomes our own. It's what
things are for. We see them and they are ours. It's as simple
as that.
The story I have to tell has to do with familiar objects in
familiar relations. Unlike the others, it does not suppose a stretch-
ing of the usual context. It has to do with a usual reality.
I am in the habit of feeding our cat each night before I go
to bed after I have put coal on the fires. This is my usual pro-
cedure and one I rarely vary. Both the cat and I are at home
in it. When it comes time, if the cat is indoors, she will be sitting
by her dish, waiting for me to put food in it. If she is outside, I
have only to open the door and there she is, waiting to be let in
and fed.
On the night of which I am speaking, or at least now I am
speaking of it, I had let the cat out earlier and so when it came
time to feed her, I went to the door and opened it but the cat
was not in sight. But do not take this as something altogether
unusual. I am not such an automaton that I cannot vary my
movements at all. It is often the case that I am a few minutes
early or a few minutes late with the cat's food. And the cat, too,
has her differences.
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ROBERT CREELEY
I opened the door but the cat was not to be seen, so I called
to her, once, then twice, but she did not come.
On that night there was a full moon. It was very bright out-
side, almost like day but still very different. The tall pines at
the edge of the field beside our house cast their long shadows
over the snow, and each object in the field itself that was big
enough to have a shadow had its own. But though it seemed very
light and the shadows black and distinct, still there were no
sharp details such as are to be seen, when a bright sun is shining.
I stood for some minutes, looking out over the fields, and
then, because she made a sudden, brief movement, I saw the cat
not too far from where I was standing, crouched, her own shadow
black and irregular on the snow. I called again to her but she
gave no notice, so I walked over to where she was, thinking to
pick her up and bring her into the house. When I came to her,
however, I saw that she had a mouse and although it's no pleas-
ant sight to watch a cat and a mouse together, one, in fact, which
I remember always with unpleasantness, my wife and I have de-
cided that since we have the cat in order to catch the mice which
bothered us previously, we have to put up with the unpleasant-
ness, even though it's difficult. So it was that I started to walk
away from her in order to let her finish the mouse but as I did
so, I was caught by the strange sight of their shadows, the mouse's,
though smaller, very distinct and the cat's, like some horrible
shadow trying to erase it. I stood there, absorbed, completely
caught, until suddenly the mouse's shadow was gone, but no, it
appeared again, coming toward me uncertainly, jerkily, until I
saw that what it wanted was to hide in my own shadow, which I
now saw to be there, just as their own, long and black on the
snow. It came toward me, the mouse, and then just as quickly
as I had seen it, I lost sight of it again. So again I started back to
the house but as I did so, I felt something wriggling on my sleeve
and with a sudden brush of my hand, I threw it back on the
snow. Only then, because the cat jumped on what I had knocked
from my sleeve, did I know it was the mouse.
I don't think that story much more unpleasant but still it
has the point of all I believe. For these things, so powerful in
themselves, in their own way, are to be looked at, I expect, and
and with more than the eyes. It's a case of making them ours the
best way we can. I can remember that as it happened, then, even
as it was happening, a good many things occurred to me, each
with its relation, and if these things did, as they did, lessen that
first impact of horror, they also made it my own.
There are other stories, some with more purpose, and one,
perhaps, bears hearing here, tacked on though it is. In any event,
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ROBERT CREELEY
it's short. After that snow and before the next, I went out, as
usual, to do the chores, and found one afternoon, patches of blood
on the snow. And seeing them there, I guessed that the cat had
cut her foot and was able to find her and dress the wound before
there was chance for it to become infected.
A short time after, it did snow and the patches were covered
and I forgot about them. It stayed cold for a week and then it
turned warm and the snow began to melt. And going out again I
saw the patches of blood on the snow and without thinking twice,
I went off to find the cat, supposing she had cut another foot. But
finding her, I found, as well, that none of her feet were cut and
then saw it was the melting of the snow had caused the old patches
to come back. I expect all that this might suggest is that a
reality, before it becomes our own, is often tricky and can be
easily mistaken.
IN THE SUMMER
I AM NOT SAYING that it was ever to the point or that a purpose
could be so neatly and unopposedly defined. Or that twenty-one
or so years ago, on that day, or on this, he was then, or is now,
there or here, that we could know him and see him to be what
he is. I don't much care for that. I had my own time to do, a
number of things to do. I had heard, then, that the growing-up
of anything could become an involved and crippling process. I
could see the sun each day, coming up, and then each night,
going down. I gave my time to that.
She said, do you really believe that, do you really see things
that way.
Of course, it isn't so neat, he said. He was being somewhat
difficult, he thought, to allow her to speak of things which didn't
have to do with her, but her hands, in his own, were chafed, and
rough, and his own, moving over them in a kind of tired real-
ization that they were not what they might be, said, here's a
little warmth, take it.
No, I couldn't have to do with him, then, because I was
afraid of him, of having him come too close to me, or to himself,
for that matter. I knew then what I was, what gave me pleasure,
or how I should best set about getting it. It was no sin, to know
that. I got up early in the morning, each day, to get that jump
on everyone else. They didn't see that I did, but just the same,
I did.
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ROBERT CREELEY
So is love, in itself, a kind of inverse plunging, which I can-
not say more about, or much more than that.
She said, why love, what has that got to do with this, what
you were saying about him.
And withdrew, a little, her hand from his hold which was
to say to him that she had become suspicious and was now
thinking of something else. But he drank what beer he had left
in his glass and took that occasion for speech, finishing.
Like that, he said, that I was then thinking of it, the beer.
That was what I had in mind. And I could love that too, I ex-
pect. One thinks of hot days and it's not so hard then.
She said, but not the same way.
The same way, he said, no different. And that is what was
wrong then. Wanting to give. That is itself a sin. There is no
other sin that I can think of that is worse. And I should damn
it more thoroughly, than I could myself, for considering it or
any one thing. That I haven't the time for, now or then.
The question would always be the same in love, and is:
can it be taken. How can I best take hold of it, in what multiple
ways, and all of these with the obscenity of blindness. Since it
will never be what I take.
She said, this is all the same, I know all this, and the kind
who say it.
And he could not himself have made such a thorough round
comment, as she had made, for which he didn't so much as re-
member, later, that she was even there, or that he had again her
hand, the fingers of which he went over, one by one, counting,
making sure.
What summer is more beautiful, he began, and then began
again. What summer is more beautiful than the one I can tell
you about. Let us think of it as all orchards and that kind of
smell, a freshness there, which one couldn't lose hold of if one
wanted. From the house, between the double row of maples that
stretched down over the slight hill to the field below, it was
always to be going somewhere far from the house though I could
be called to it by even the slightest of voices, to come back for
whatever it was they wanted. And close to the top of this hill
I had my coops for my pigeons, and they were all different colors,
different shapes. On the windy days I would let them out, with
the clouds, and they would go up, very high, except for those
who could not quite get there or loop in long fast circles, but
would hang in the air, to wait for the others to come round or
back, and then they would start off, as leaders, only to be left
again, and to wait. These were my fantails, which were awk-
ward, strutting birds with wide spread tails. Mine were white
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ROBERT CREELEY
and one spring I had a very nice one but he wasn't banded and
so he was never worth very much to anyone but myself. But
that is another tragedy, and not this one.
We spent that summer at home and when my mother's vaca-
tion came, we didn't go anywhere, to the beach or up to the
mountains, but stayed there in the town. I expect that I was a
little sorry then, but not too much. I had any number of birds
that year and could not be got very far from them, except to see
someone else's, which got me about, at least a little, here and
there, to see the other boys of my age, or the men who had not
got beyond this time in their own lives and whose garages or
houses still sprouted with flycoops and a variety of pens. It was
something to do.
He had left the first part of that summer, to go to a camp,
a caddy camp, some distance away, at a big hotel, in the moun-
tains, which his father thought would be good for him, to learn
to take it, and to make a little money. He was somewhat stronger
than myself, a year older, so in that way he went, without think-
ing much of myself, or that it was strange that I didn't go too.
Another year I was to have gone, he said. I would go, as it had
then been agreed. But for myself, I missed him very much, the
first part, and would get cards from him, these not very often,
and painfully written, as a fifteen-year old boy will write to one
a year younger than himself, in a way that neither can under-
stand, being fragments thrown off from the very force of his
living. I wrote to him much the same things as we had been do-
ing when he was at home, that such and such had come or gone,
these all on the only postcards I could get, of the town hall,
looking very gray and shoddy against the hard geometry of the
square with the surrounding and enclosing stones. It was not
wrong, then, to consider myself, in spite of the summer's warmth,
and what I had to do with it, still abject and though I could not
then have thought so, pathetic.
Sometimes I would go down to the barn which his father
had moved and built again, by himself, though we boys gave
what help we could, to be doing something during the fall he
put it up. And there it was, then, and maybe now, what tribute
he could put into so much wood, for his son, that he could move
and put up again with his own hands, to put the pony in, which
he couldn't afford, yet would have. I was allowed to ride the
pony that summer, now and then, when he was around but he
fed it while his son was away, and would let no one else do very
much for it. So for most of the day it was staked out, like a cow,
under the apple trees for shade though not so near to any of
them that it would eat the apples and get sick.
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ROBERT CREELEY
The barn wasn't too big, just room enough for a good-sized
box stall and what hay the pony ate during the winter, and a
place for harness and saddle. And he hadn't finished it off al-
together, being in a hurry as he was to get it done, so the pony
could come, and only himself to do it. So a good number of the
boards were nailed with only a single nail in the corners where
the pony wouldn't go, though where the stall was and the way
out to the main door he had fixed with two-by-eights, double-
planked, which the pony would never break through.
A year before the boy and myself had hit upon one board
in particular, soon after the pony came, when we were down in
the barn, most of the time, that we lifted and put things under,
pushing them far back, as far as we could reach, cigarettes and
what else we had.
And reaching under there, then, that summer, I could get
hold of the corner of the magazine and pull it out, without tear-
ing the page I had got hold of, slowly, dragging it, and then the
book, with the back off and the pages mildewed from having
been under there so long. And on the first page could see the
woman under the slightness of the slip, with its fine line of cloth
covering only that much of the breasts which would have been
in itself enough for the hand of a fourteen-year old. And where
the cloth moved down the body against the flesh, to the leg, and
there stopped, to end in a kind of torn edge, against the flesh,
which I knew almost by heart, and then to the face, with the look
of kind, that kind of, dismay, which then explained the man with
his own face, in the picture, across from her, but coming closer,
with his hands stretched out and wanting, about to, tear off the
slip.
Or the book, which I can, perhaps, still quote, being those
pages which I have no right to forget, or not quite so quickly,
since it was there written, that ". . . she did not at first under-
stand what he expected of her. But he came closer and then
she knew that he was about to . . ." As I myself was.
At least this much we had stored against a time when we
should know more of it, that those pages should themselves se-
cure us, that we should then know, all. But not enough then, to
see what we were cheated of. Those times I came alone, that
summer, to the barn, perhaps, what was I looking for, and here
I am very near tears, or much closer than you may think, to
look at me. That I should somehow have expected his own words
to have been there, on the edge of the page, which would have
been meant for me.
What embarrasses here is not altogether what you think but
is that which will always be more sad than embarrassing. I am
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ROBERT CREELEY
not sure that I speak now, even for myself, that I have not become
the fact of much more than I intend. But I do speak of myself,
nonetheless.
With the end of summer or toward the end of summer, since
it had not quite come but only that slight feel of the days some-
what faint and beginning to go into another kind of color and tone,
with that time I began to look for him to come home again, from
the camp. Later I read of those fair lovers who lay, without sleep
and all cares, on those no harder beds than love's own caring, but
then I could not invoke them. That much you must understand. I
had no idea of what part I should have in anything, much less in
this. So he came home one day toward the first of September, with
his father in their car, and drove into the yard opposite ours which
was where he lived then, in a small white house, Cape Cod, as
they call them, to which his father had added some dormer win-
dows and inside, rooms, so that there would be places for them
all. I could see them getting out of the car and then the bags and
boxes coming out of the back, with all his things, and then I expect
I wanted to go over and help, but didn't, and instead went down to
the barn, since I knew he would come there, soon, to see the pony,
if it was all right after the summer and his being away from it.
She said, he came.
He came, he said, but it wasn't sad. There was nothing there
or in that that got me, then, and it wasn't until later that I got
what I should have got there. It had been strong enough apparently
to carry the summer with it, all that fine weather, into the colors
of the fall, the cold, and then all that winter, sometimes in his
house, sometimes in mine.
She said, what did you expect from any of it, being fourteen
as you were, or any age, for that matter, what was it you wanted
to get out of something like that, that you knew you couldn't, and
didn't, later, much want, but just then wanted, as though you knew
that later it would have to come to me, this kind of thing, to ask
me what I thought and did I understand, as if there, in any of it,
was what I was supposed to understand.
I don't know, he said, since then or there I haven't been for
sometime. Sometimes it is just that I can't remember any of it
or have like a kind of fog that which I felt then, to wonder about,
and to put against, even, what I have now.
She said, you haven't anything, even with him here, it's your-
self you care about, and want, that you can hurt both of us, or I
don't care about him, if it's what you want me to do, that I
shouldn't care.
116
DONKEYS
Edward Field
They are not silent like work-horses
Who are happy or indifferent about the plow and wagon;
Donkeys don't submit like that
For they are sensitive
And cry continually under their burdens;
Yes, they are animals of sensibility
Even if they aren't intelligent enough
To count money or discuss religion.
Laugh if you will when they hee-haw
But know that they are crying
When they make that noise that sounds like something
Between a squawking water-pump and a fog-horn.
And when I hear them sobbing
I suddenly notice their sweet eyes and ridiculous ears
And their naive bodies that look as though they never grew up
But stayed children, as in fact they are;
And being misunderstood as children often are
They are forced to walk up mountains
With men and bundles on their backs.
Somehow I am glad
That they do not submit without a protest;
But as their masters are of the deafest
The wails are never heard.
I am sure that donkeys know what life should be
But alas, they do not own their bodies;
And if they had their own way, I am sure
That they would sit in a field of flowers
Kissing each other, and maybe
They would even invite us to join them.
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EDWARD FIELD
For they never let us forget that they know
(As everyone knows who stays as sweet as children)
That there is a far better way to spend time;
You can be sure of that when they stop in their tracks
And honk and honk and honk.
And if I tried to explain to them
Why work is not only necessary but good,
I am afraid that they would never understand
And kick me with their back legs
As commentary on my wisdom.
So they remain unhappy and sob
And their masters who are equally convinced of being right
Beat them and hear nothing.
TRANSLATOR'S NOTE
ON JEAN PAULHAN
Francis Carmody
JEAN PAULHAN (born at Nimes in 1884) is recognized today as
the master of irrealist writing and the champion of a new rhetoric.
His Jacob Cow, of 1921, already foresaw the problem of words as
signs; and before Paul Valery asked, in 1936, who was to give us
a rhetorical method, Paulhan had published his first articles in
Commerce, Valery 's own journal. The early articles were collected
and revised in 1941 in Les Fleurs de Tarbes ou la Terreur dans les
lettres; but A demain la poesie of 1947, here translated, is more
succinct, intriguing and artistic. Paulhan is no mere theorician:
as secretary and director of La Nouvelle Revue Frangaise from
1925 to 1940, and since 1946 of Les Cahiers de la Pleiade, he has
given to hundreds of young writers just the charming and elusive
advice we find in A demain la poesie, ecclectic and fleeting, yet
sound and never dogmatic or pompous (therefore he might be
called a skeptic, as we shall see in one of his Causes celebres) .
These Causes celebres are short sketches published from 1946
on recounting critical cases of his past experience, cases of con-
science that dominate his thought and his memory. They are prose
poems in a Mallarmean acceptance since they do not merely tell
a story, but portray intellectual crises; the role of the raw material
of human thought, words, is everywhere evident. The Lettre au
mddecin, though not presented by Paulhan specifically as a "cause
celebre," poses the general psychological problem of most of the
"causes." The thirteen short texts here translated may be grouped
according to several themes, personal memories of childhood
(numbers 2-6) , tales and legends (7-8) visions and dreams (9-10) ,
and episodes of the German occupation (11-14). L'Abeille is a
natural pendant to this last group, and recalls that Paulhan was
one of the principal organizers of clandestine literature in 1941.
L'Abeille, published illegally in 1943, and often reprinted, deals
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with the most important problems of the occupation, with illegal
literature (Paulhan pokes fun at Vercors' clandestine novel, Le
Silence de la mer, of 1942), with Vichy (a false hope), and with
the meaning of intellectual integrity (the keystone of the whole
movement) .
Our last text, Le Giierrier applique, a war novel of 1915, tells
to some extent of Paulhan's own experiences in the trenches as a
Zouave. The theme of "diligence" leads time and again to dreams
or reveries, and recalls the Causes celebres. From this work one
may imagine Paulhan's interest in, and passing association with,
the surrealists about 1924; but it also suggest Proust by the stream
of consciousness and the stylistic structure. Le Guerrier applique,
in some degree by its very differences from war novels we know,
and even though it hovers about realistic portrayal, is in a sense
another "cause" before the fact.
Francis J. Carmody
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AS FOR POETRY
LET'S WAIT TILL TOMORROW
Jean Paulhan
i : A MAN AND HIS PERPLEXITIES
I KNEW A MAN who, while still very young, set about to compose
a book in his head. He pondered on it a good part of the day; and
his parents, then later his wife and children, learned that they
must be silent when he fell into his reflections. For he invited
respect by his natural gravity and I can't say just what air of pro-
found labor; one felt that, for him, living with himself was not
easy. Even the dog of the house tried to help in his own. way.
Meanwhile our man sailed on from discovery to discovery, one
day in broad and sweeping flight, another in worry over this or
that image, and the next over some subtle nuance. In fact, this is
how his embarrassment arose later on.
For the nuance was so subtle that he was forced, that day, to
give up all thought of composing a novel; the image was so worri-
some that regular versification would have spoiled it; the flight
was so broad that it would have stood out too boldly even in a
treatise on metaphysics; the situation too shaking for a short
story; and the plot too dramatic for a drama. In short, his book,
as it grew full and rich, lost more and more each day any hope for
existence. You suspect that our author died happy, though he
never was able to set his inspiration down on paper.
2: FOR DREAMY POETRY, A SILLY POET
I IMAGINE AN ANGEL, or a Persian, or a man fallen from another
planet, discovering all at once (as such persons normally do) the
whole of French poetry, and German and English as well, from
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the Twelfth to the Twentieth Century, and from Theroulde (or
merely from Chenedolle) down to Paul Eluard. Here, roughly,
is what he would see: that poetry appears to us today infinitely
graver and more precious than formerly, something almost sacred;
but it has become puny and impoverished in proportion to its
apparent preciousness, and every year has lost in means what it
gained in merit.
For in our days it is common to hear reasonably mannered
people, writers and even critics, say, for example, that a poem
suffices to set rolling the secret forces of the cosmos, that a word
imprudently scanned goes off afar to awaken islands and forests,
that a verse has power to engender substance, and that one need
merely meditate on the first letter of the alphabet to be led at once
to hurl oneself into utter lunacy. Yes, that's what people say,
every day; yet nobody has fainted yet. They say that and a thou-
sand other subtle things, so profound that one cannot escape the
impression that the authors are really sure of them, since they say
them; but, have they come to the point of believing them? We
wonder how; we make a few timid attempts in this direction; we
mean to continue to do so. As for going a bit further than they into
boldness and invention, each of us sees that this is out of the ques-
tion. It would be ever so fine if we managed to understand them,
or materialize them (as one says these days) . We see, in any
event, that, at the price of such dreams, modest little two-penny
poems, as they have been created since time immemorable, as they
are invented by the dozens at every wedding party, in every child's
game or veterans' convention, become a marvel of innocence,
clarity and naturalness. It makes us want to write some ourselves,
if only to escape from the theses and explanations involved. I am
led to suppose that this is a natural and common feeling, since in
effect one sees poems become simpler and simpler, even simplistic,
in any event fleshless, as the theories become more flattering.
The poet discovers one fine day that poetry is prayer, and on
that day he abandons encrusted, imperial and leonine rimes, along
with sacred poetry and the villanella. He conceives of poetry, at
the summit of all creation, soaring above morality, and thereupon
he gives up the epic. When the poet becomes a seer and a clair-
voyant, then verse discourses, epistles and satires seem like paltry
business. When Orpheus and Amphion set animals and stones to
dancing, what use have we for an epigram or a little triolet? When
a poem becomes consciousness of the subconscious, transforma-
tion of Nothing into Everything, a spiritual exercise and a frantic
apprenticeship to mystic adventure, it overpowers the madrigal
and the rondel, idylls and heroics, didactics and the pastoral. When
poetry is ascesis and magic, fie on your epithalamia and your
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dithyrambs! When poetry is the identity of contraries, let the devil
carry off your metagrams, your monologues, equivoques and
forged derivatives. When poetry is both creation and creature, no
more verse tragedy, no more sonnets or proverbs; when a com-
munion with the essence of things, farewell to rimed couplets,
fugitive verse, and elegies; when the language of the Gods, adieu
mere language, genres and rules!
For the sake of simplicity. I limit myself to abstractions; but
it would not be too difficult to mention facts. I for one would
hardly be surprised if the poems of Pierre Jean Jouve took flight,
by mysterious means, and shook the universe and awoke planets.
There is no doubt that they are suited just for that:
The pearl regrets that it is not the mouth
Its teeth are hidden
Among the fleece crushed is anguish with the artist
Its nature its beast its soul
And devils are drunk with the red of the hollows of time
but it is equally certain that they do not resemble elegies, or epis-
tles or lyrical poetry; and I am not certain that they resemble
poems. In short, the more admirable poetry deems itself, the more
the poet finds himself impoverished.
One reads in folk tales of the street-sweeper who dreamt he
was the sultan. So many marvelous young houris (complacent,
too) , so many assiduous courtiers (even a bit dull) ! He strode
forward, every night, in this vapor of compliments and caresses.
You can guess the outcome: he remained as before, a street-
sweeper; in fact he became more and more just a street-sweeper.
(For if perchance he became sultan, what would he dream? prob-
ably about sweeping streets.) We also know the story of the sec-
ond-class private who got drunk every day and thought he was a
colonel: don't go talking to him about corporal's stripes!
But, you say, our critics and our poets, at least, are neither
dreamers nor drunkards. Speaking of that,
3: WHAT THE FIRST-COMER SAYS
IT is POSSIBLE (since everyone says so) that there is a mystery in
poetry. It is certain in any event that we behave toward poetry
as if some mystery were involved. You open a book of verse, and
at once you are seized; even before having read a line. You wait
for what? Little matter what, you wait, already isolated, en-
sconsed, and detached. From what? well, for example (whether
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you are a man or a poet) from all jealousy, all self-esteem, all care
for comparisons, completely rid of yourself (this does not always
go on without some grain of anxiety) . Yet, for all that, you are not
humiliated or molested, not the slightest. On the contrary, you
gather yourself together, stand up straight (as if you were enter-
ing a great monument or participating in some ceremony) . Recon-
ciled, you think of yourself without ill-humor; even your inner
voice is transformed.
Then comes the poem; but we'll skip that. And after the
poem? No, you didn't really learn much from it. How quickly
time passes. Yes, if you like (yet it is still here) . One must enjoy
life while one may, that's certain. Perhaps your hair does resemble
leaves and your teeth stones (not quite to that extent, however) .
You suspected as much. Yet you find yourself vaguely changed,
and the event has left a mark on you, as if suddenly it were strange
that your hair should resemble leaves, more or less, and your life
be short. Into what astonishment you have been plunged, that the
most banal things seem unusual, and unusual ones banal? Well,
this state may continue to surprise you for a few moments. (As
if the mystery of poetry was destined to render mysterious every-
thing that is not poetry.) A thread sticks out from your sweater
sleeve and annoys you, for you see it trembling on the paper of
your book. You burn it at its base with the end of your cigarette,
and suddenly it twists, shivers, bends and falls, like a tree being
cut; it seems to groan. You are consternated. A little later, every-
thing takes on an orderly form; but between the expectation and
the relapse, what has happened? Well, that's the mystery. And if
we agree that that is the mystery, what more can one say about
it. Nothing.
Yet one can say this (just another way of saying the same
thing) , that it is a common mystery. It is not a mystery for spe-
cialists nor for professionals; no, it is a mystery for every man.
We've all been through it, and can go through it again any time.
And one is surer of feeling the thing if one is neither a specialist
nor a professional. We know that an aesthete manages to admire
whatever he wants to admire, for he is, in short, in rather good
control of his mystery, and does just about what he wants with it.
He has his pet topics and his conventional rhythms, and some inde-
finable call from mystery that infallibly provokes great themes
and noble words (pearl,, anguish, fleece) . The very danger of being
an aesthete or a specialist is that the mystery thereby ceases to
be mysterious.
Well, the man in the street doesn't see things that way. On
the contrary, he is very suspicious of grand images and distin-
guished themes. It seems to him too easy to start off by accepting
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a ready-made mystery. He much prefers to have poetry created
in the full time it needs, with the games and labors, the bordels
and the grocery stores, and wars and misfortunes. In short, he is
willing to be surprised and fooled by the mystery, which is better
than directing or foreseeing it. He loves it, if you like; at any rate
he respects it. He doesn't in any way try to understand it, nor
dissect it. And the whole matter proceeds just as if the specialist
of poetry, the moment he began to construct his explanations and
his dreams, became a heretic, while the common man remained
orthodox within himself. For this reason we must question the
common man at this point. What does he want from poetry? What
does he expect?
Note that he is quite entitled to expect nothing at all. For
example, the poet doesn't excite him, and hardly even interests
him; he doesn't make of him (as do we intellectuals) a sort of star,
or prophet, or white elephant. No; normally he doesn't even know
his name (which, be it added, does not appear in the poem, except
on rare occasions in anagrams; but the anagram, as it happens, is
one of those worthless genres) ; the poet can keep his name. But,
as for the poem, our man shows different and very clear demands,
even categorical.
In the first place, he wants regular versification, verses with
caesuras, fixed numbers of feet, and in rime. Especially, in rime!
He doesn't want to sing them (at most he may hum them, using
his own music) , but he does want to remember them. The most
beautiful verses in the world are a waste of time unless our man
wants to recite them.
Oh, how fearful he is of obscure poetry! Not that obscurity
frightens him, for he uses it daily in his speech, and in proverbs a
hundred times more obscure than an obscure poem. (Which of
you would care to comment, for instance, on: "What smells
good, smells"?) But in such cases we are dealing with a naive
obscurity which seems to be carried along by events or even by
life. What our man is fearful of, what nauseates him, is concerted
obscurity, the poet's obscurity, used as a means to an end, as if it
were a sort of "poetry materiel." On this point our man is ada-
mant; as we say (vulgarly) , he won't have poetry run off obscure
on him. He prefers completely clear expression that can be turned
into prose.
Finally, he's not for ascesis, magic, or stars awakened afar.
He'd sooner be for epics (if someone would give him a few) , or
at any rate for sonnets, elegies and epistles; in short, for poetry
of means as against poetry of merit. And if for several centuries
poems have been through the troubles we've seen, he can truth-
fully say it isn't his fault.
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Perhaps he is wrong, you say. Of course he is! That's not the
point. I merely ask how he can adjust his thoughts with himself;
for he really believes in the mystery more deeply than the spe-
cialist, and yet he admits, approves and demands mechanical rules
and a labor of patience, the least mysterious things there are.
4: FREE VERSE, AND THE MARRIAGE
OF CONVENIENCE
SOCIOLOGISTS HAVE NOTED, even among peoples apparently delicate
and civilized, such as the Indians or the mediaeval French, a cus-
tom which seems barbarous to us today. It is the custom that once
was called the Christian Marriage, or the marriage of convenience.
When a girl reached the age of eighteen (sometimes merely of
eight or nine), the dear parents who had raised her till that
moment, having her learn sewing and sometimes music too, de-
cided to get rid of her. So, after due enquiry, they found a suit-
able young man (or unsuitable little matter) whose social situa-
tion was comparable to hers. They agreed to throw in, along with
the girl, a certain amount of ready cash, plus a few pieces of fur-
niture and some new linens. There were, besides, as they put it
so horribly, "further hopes." A notary, a priest, or an old family
friend, was asked to serve as go-between; and the parents of the
young man began to quibble about the ready cash.
When the matter was properly arranged, the future married
couple met. (In India, they got along without this step.) This was
done not so much so they could become acquainted as to prevent
their forming any gratuitous ideas about each other. A few weeks
later, the girl and the young man appeared together in church,
the young man pocketed the cash, and the young couple, having
sworn eternal fidelity, found themselves united for life, blindly
(among the Indians) , or with eyes practically shut (among us) ;
but not heedlessly.
There is much to be said (and much has been said) against
such carefully planned marriages. That they are calculated, I
agree. That they take not the slightest account of the taste and
personal preferences of the fiances, their way of thinking or their
dreams, is only too obvious. At this point one might add perhaps
that this was quite normal, that the Indians, and the Christians,
were silly old-fashioned people who didn't even have railroads,
and were the epitome of shabbiness and stupidity* That may well
be. Still, if we try to put ourselves in their places, ever so slightly,
and consider them as common men, in short try to understand
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them, this is what we discover: that one thing at least would be
absurd to say (it may be that we only happen to say it, but we
never stop doing so) , which is that such commonplace and paltry
marriages are in no sense poetic or mysterious. Well, without the
slightest doubt, it is the contrary that is true, for it is evident that
there is a mystery in the love between a man and a woman (and
even in other kinds of love) . It is a redoubtable and shining mys-
tery, one that swoops down upon us like an eagle or a victory, and
frightens us just as much as it delights us. Everyone will admit
this much. But the Christian (or Indian) marriage admits one
more element, for in it lies the problem of an inevitable mystery.
The mystery will swoop down upon us, whatever precautions our
common sense may take, or money, or other sordid considerations
lying outside of it. It will delight us all the more that we have not
foreseen it or made provision for it, as if it was getting even with
our disdain. The fact is, in short, that the young man and woman,
thus meticulously united, might even so fall in love and be faith-
ful, perhaps even the more in love and the more faithful for the
rest of their days. You may say anything you like about the mar-
riage of convenience, but you cannot say that it lacks adventure
and hope; it shows a hope so colossal and one might say senseless,
and it places in each object, contrary to all chance, a God so tender
and so terrible that, beside it, marriage for love seems mean and
paltry. So it is with poetry of convenience.
I can see quite well that free verse, rather than regular verse,
has a noble and generous air about it; it is free. And I also know
that genres and rules, elegies, epistles or monologues, and rich or
equivocal or balanced rimes have something paltry about them
(something not unlike ready cash or stocks) . The common man
doesn't deny that at all. He'U admit it quite readily; besides, this
matter has no place in his calculations. But he does imagine that
there is a real and sure way to conjure up the mystery, and this is
to act as if there weren't one, or if you like, to defy it. He is not
astonished that poetry today has become barren in proportion to
the poet's ambitions; he could have told you so, he would have bet
on it. With regard to poetry, he is at the stage of the marriage of
convenience; for he believes still another thing, that the force of
poetic mystery is so irrepressible that it is imposed on us, and that
it seizes us all the more violently that it has to surmount obstacles
meticulously set up. I realize only too well that, today, we are
fully aware of the paltriness of the obstacle (and of the caesura
and the rime) . The reason for this may be that our poets and our
critics if they are neither drunkards nor dreamers (and they are
not) are in frightful lack of boldness and hope, but not of method
and calculation.
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5: RULES MUST BE THOUGHT OUT TWICE
FOR A LONG TIME I was the secretary of a literary review; and it
is likely that from this I derive my particular weaknesses and
prejudices and my lack of hope. I recall, for example, the names
of poets, and the honors due them, better than their poems. Oh,
as for the names of the poets, no one can trip me up! But I'm not
proud of this. Fortunately I also happen at times to be merely a
reader, and I can even imagine that on these occasions I am a
diligent one, in short that I catch up; but perhaps I flatter myself.
Since we are on this topic, here is a little poem I read, I forget
where, some twenty years ago; and I've completely forgotten the
author's name. All I remember (vaguely) is that his name was a
bit commonplace, one of those names one says it is not hard to
remember, and forgets them right away for this very reason. But
I have not forgotten the poem:
Invisible singing bird
Through the charms of thy sweet voice
The sheepfold long abandoned
And every former sin
Are reborn pastorally.
Make the one go to pasture
Make others accomplices
Of the old shepherd's daughter.
Note that I don't say this is an admirable poem; perhaps it
is a bit quaint. Even though the assonances are somewhat care-
less, perhaps it is too perfect, in a classical genre, like certain
selections in a Greek anthology. I merely say that it captivated
me; and still does, but not quite the same way as before. For
one of the words in it, at least that one, has undergone a sort
of metamorphosis.
I mean "pastorally." I must admit that at first it embarrassed
me. For a long time I found it too heavy, a bit flat and indigesti-
ble. It had on me precisely the effect of a word, one of those
words which, as people used to say, smell of the midnight oil, a
word that the author must have spent a long time looking for,
and when he found it was so happy, because, after all, it was
just the word he needed to fill in his verse. So far so good. How
did it happen that this word became for me the most cheerful
word in the poem, and even the most pastoral so to speak, so
that the whole poem seemed suspended from it? the major word,
indicating, with the transformation of memory to desire, the real
meaning of the epigram? I can't say. You try to guess. The same
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effect rises from titles of books (such as Man's Fate, or The
Living) or of periodicals (such as Commerce or The New French
Review) , or even names of poets (such as Racine) . At first they
seem flat or even pretentious; then you read the book, or the
periodical, or the poet, and the name is filled with meaning;
finally, after a few months or years, it seems necessary and exact.
Exact and even light, yet it is the same word. True; but to appre-
ciate it fully you must pass from one way of looking at it to
another, you must as it were think it out twice. And if you re-
flect on the matter, that was the problem of the writer himself,
and especially of the poet, that he should write thus with words
which change as soon as he has set them down, passing from deep
to soft and from heavy to winged, or vice versa. Just imagine a
painter condemned to paint with red that became blue the next
day, or green that became red, or with curves which once set
on the canvas, straightened out; to say nothing of that great
illumined disk that never ceases to turn before your eyes. That's
enough to make you lose your head. No doubt the greatest poet
is precisely the one who doesn't lose his head, but manages to
put over a word that no one would have imagined as poetic, a
word everyone would have placed at the antipodes of poetry.
This little poem gave me another surprise.
This occurred the day I discovered, in an Art of Second
Rhetoric (by Jacques Legrand or Jean Bouchet) , that the prob-
lem, known before me, had been exactly foreseen during the
Middle Ages. This treatise gave it its name, in a discussion of
the "roundeling rondel," composed of seven verses of seven syl-
lables each, that is a septain. On this basis, my poem was irregu-
lar, for it had eight verses and not seven; and from this, accord-
ing to my author, came a limping lilt, not very noticeable, but
also not without charm.
The treatise added that such septains are appropriate (it
said they were "decorous") for heavy and prolonged regrets,
that is when the poem ended with a proverb (no, my poem
doesn't), but otherwise for light longing. It stated, more sur-
prising still, that longing of this category calls somehow for rimes
in i, for lightness (for example accomplices or sins), but also
allows rimes in a and oi (that is pastorally and voice) to show
the longing. Obviously, this last statement made the matter far
more serious, for it caused, if you like, a totally different sur-
prise, and yet it was the same metamorphosis. Pastorally, before
becoming pure feeling, had impressed me as a word, devilishly
thick and cumbersome; and yet I learned from the poem as a
whole, from its form and its rimes, that before being an enchant-
ment it had been a calculation and a measure of labored combina-
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tions. There is matter for reflection here. But I asked myself a
very precise question awhile back, and we must return to it.
What is a rule of poetry? It is evident, first of all, that it
appears to be a certain order of syllables and of words. All right;
but what happens later on? Well, like pastorally, it becomes a
sort of revelation, a shining light, and a durable brilliancy; and
from this all the rest, words and syllables, are obviously sus-
pended. Hence, in order to think the rule exactly, one must
think it twice, that is conceive of it in movement. This make me
think of baroque monuments, which we see inadequately unless
we pass very quickly about them and look at them as great
winds might (if winds could see). I don't mean that this is an
easy operation; but there is not the slightest doubt that it is a
necessary one, at least if you would discourse on poetry with
exactness.
To perceive this it might have sufficed to note the absurdity
of the reproaches we so commonly make against rules. The in-
ventors of free verse, for example, tried to lead us to believe that
they were too overcharged with feeling and thoughts to be able
to adapt themselves to the paltry molds of heroic verse or of
octosyllables; that they were so upset by their emotions that they
really had no time for calculations or words. Well, the simplest
observations show us that the opposite is usually true. It is not
in the least because children are worried about a game that they
respect its rules, it is rather because the game amuses them and
that they want to make it still more amusing. They are glad to
accept rules rather than give up the game. The humblest wood-
cutter's daughter, if you took her to the bazaar, would not be so
dazzled that she couldn't decide right away that the really real
dolls are the ones with their names sewed on their tummies, or
those that have blue eyes that roll.
Still, there is no doubt that in our days we have seen many a
rule disappear, those, among others, that fixed the order of our
daily meals (I mean the regular ones) . This did not occur in any
sense because we had too much to eat, but because we had too
little. In short, far from being signs of poverty, rules are a sign
of choice, of wealth and of rich enthusiasms. If there is one trait
that strikes us today in the work of the inventors of free verse,
it is not abundance and generosity, but an insistant and somber
monotony, as if they had only one thing to say, and never quite
managed to say it.
I know only too well that rules have been criticized, during
these last hundred and fifty years, and indeed in all times, by a
thousand subtle suggestions, powerful and noble, all labeled
as the most vital of freedoms. So much has been said about this
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that it is surprising that no one thought to notice that criticisms
of rules were proffered by rule, and that in this affair we wit-
nessed precisely another set of rules, with their consequences,
their second moment, and that feeling of happiness that rules
give the moment they have been stated. This disdain is similar
to that of the butterfly for the caterpillar, or the window for the
wall; it is a just and well-founded disdain, but it would be im-
prudent for butterflies to conclude that caterpillars could be
suppressed, or for architects to avoid walls, that is not without
some inconvenience.
6: DULL AS A STONE
I DON'T CLAIM that it is easy to think out rules and poetry twice;
I merely claim that it is inevitable, if you would think them out
exactly. Remember what -the ancient Greek said: "The road up
and the road down are the same road"; this statement was not
easy either, for if it had been, the poet wouldn't even have
thought of stating it: he merely said what was evident, which is
quite another matter. A construction engineer who forgot that
down-grades are also up-grades, and vice versa, would do a poor
job. This fact is evident; but we must not forget that it is prac-
tically untenable.
Just as it is untenable (or if you prefer, mysterious) that
men stand upright on a round earth (they say, besides, that it
rotates) , or that they think. How can this be? Is it in their brain,
as would appear when by dint of calculations they have a head-
ache? Or in their whole body, as one might conclude in moments
of rage? Or in the air all about their body, as they conclude some-
times when they awaken at night? You guess. Better still, it is
untenable that men should go on exchanging divers statements,
from "Hello" and "Good-bye" to the most solemn kind of maxims,
yet none of these with any relationship to their thoughts, none at
all; for words are inevitably blustering and visible, while thoughts
are silent and hidden. If you think about this, you'll see here the
mystery of poetry, and how it manages nonetheless to impose
words and sentences on us through unsuspected means, making
these words too seem to be thoughts and emotions. People often
say these days that sacred things have taken refuge in poetry,
and I am willing to admit this much; but there is one trait of
sacred things that we must not forget, for we can no doubt pro-
voke them or undergo them, but we cannot look them square in
the face, nor gauge them or interrelate them. That is why art is
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easy and criticism difficult; but in truth both demand first of all
that some modesty be shown (and a measure of humility) in the
face of the mystery, and that people be resigned to play with or
to mimic this mystery rather than understand it, in short that
people remain awe-struck in its presence.
Myths have the virtue of suggesting what would be too tedi-
ous to explain in detail, that is even if you understood it fully. I
note that people best remember about the adventures of Orpheus
and Amphion that strange power of poetry to gather stones to-
gether or charm animals. Of course, they were only animals,
bears, horses, rabbits and earthworms, and mere stones, flint,
sand, tufa and pumice; this does not mean that, to feel the charm,
one need make any particular use of one's intelligence or of one's
reason; it means that one must first of all become an animal or
a stone, and then (I gladly agree) admit, with the common man,
that poetry is no more than a set of words arranged in proper
order, with rime, a fixed number of syllables, rhythm and
caesura; and even admit later one that, to compose excellent
elegies, one need only know thoroughly the rules for the elegy;
in short, decree once and for all that poetry is what one finds in
verse. No one can say that this is particularly subtle, hardly more
so than a little pumice stone; it is merely modest, it means accept-
ing the mystery just as everyone accepts it, and accepting also
the fact (this is rarer) that the mystery is mysterious; or admit-
ting sacred things without thereby becoming sacriligious. Mean-
while we have seen our wily and immodest critic trying to
elucidate the mystery, and discovering for instance that poetry
is consciousness of the unconscious or expression of the ineffable,
or the conversion of Nothing to Everything; for this he is punished.
He is punished in the strangest way, for his theory becomes day by
day more abstruse, complicated, and practically incomprehensible,
while in contrast the slightest bit of poetry, despite all explana-
tions, is clearer than an oasis and simpler than a rose. So that in
last analysis he clarifies things to the same degree as the common
man (this is only a manner of clarification, since both end up at
the same point) ; but this occurs in spite of him and contrary to
his avowed precepts; and he finds no more than a diminished
clarity, as if indirect or secondary. Simultaneously, poetry dis-
appears, melting between his fingers, for henceforth one needs
only a few words, less than that a few syllables (any ones you
like) , or a practically untroubled silence.
It is quite exact, even though it is often said, that an anthol-
ogy should, so far as possible, show no preconceived norms, that
is should accept all kinds of poems, of whatever provenance,
even mediocre ones (these last are so marvelously exciting that
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they invite us strongly to write or to imagine good ones) . Agreed;
but there is one preconceived notion that cannot be ignored, for
an anthology should not be devoid of hope. It is unjust and un-
faithful if it holds, or seems to hold, or ever so slightly suggests,
that poetry ends as it presents it. No: with respect to poetry, an
anthology must be modest, just like the poet or the reader face
to face with his poem. In short, it must not take sides with Am-
phion, but with quartz or pumice. Well, in this respect we are
blessed with a piece of really good luck.
For modern commentaries and reflections (I mean the best
ones) come strangely to invite us (or even constrain us) to this
hope, once their error has been denounced. The history of poetic
criticism is strangely composed, during these last hundred years,
of exclusions and refusals of great subjects and of legends, of
eloquence and of narrative, later on of versification, -and even
later of such powerful artifices as abstractions, gift of feeling,
passions, and the pomp of images, of music and of lyricism. Freed
at last from all these, the poet (sighed the poets) "will hence-
forth be so so lucky, for he can no longer fly except with the
wings of poetry." Whereupon the poet turns about and looks for
poetry; but he is aghast, for he finds her completely plucked.
Who will give back the images and the eloquence, the passions
and the science of verse, of imperial and of crowned rimes? Who
will return his wings? We need only make this very elementary
(though double) reflection, once and for all: that banality is
stranger than the extraordinary, because it is strange that man
should be content with banality; and the rule is more mysterious
than fantasy, because at first sight it would seem so unlikely
that rules should satisfy us.
7: POETRY OF FORTUNE
ONE FRENCH poet, famous in former days, is so neglected in ours
that he doesn't appear at all in Ramuz' Anthology. He was an
ingenious and varied poet, who, long before Sainte-Beuve, re-
marked that the writer should not hesitate to deny rules if from
this denial he derives some new beauty; he called for the ener-
getic language of the people to replace the impoverished style
of the Great; long before Chenier, he was wise enough to take
lessons from English poets; long before Hugo, he spoke in verse
of cauliflowers and even of manure and dung-piles; long before
the Symbolists he maintained that poetry should take back its
own from music; no less adroitly than Verlaine, he used long
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and short syllables; "before Lamartine he wrote:
Took their immense flight toward a world to come
before Hugo
Drink y in each drop, a ray of sun
before Chenier
The farm is to the garden as is verse to the idyll
before Musset
Yet man may weep, his greatest privilege
before Vigny
For public calm is founded on the vices
before Baudelaire and Nerval
Have you then known these hidden ties
Of lifeless things to feeling souls?
before Mallarme
1 In earth and wave dwelt the equivoque
before Sully Prud'homme
Like Reason, Instinct has degrees
(what a fine gilded verse!)
before Jammes
Both red pomegranate and honeyed fig
before Raymond Roussel
The friend of art, alas, dies prey to savages
to such extent did Jacques Delille use at will all genres of poetry,
descriptive and exalted, dreamy or learned, abstract or concrete,
those that make Margot weep and those that enchant the aesthete
or the theorician. People commonly reproach him (when they
do not merely ignore him) with an excess of memory; I would
reproach him rather with an excess of insight or of divination.
We probably disdain his verse for having imitated it too often.
Whereupon one must admit that he overpowers us and
worries us. He worries us. The reason for this, however, may be
not that we have become too rich and varied since his day, but
that we are no longer rich enough. For a hundred and fifty years
we have witnessed the recession of poetry from the poet, like
the falling tide; we have been more concerned with marking the
spots where poetry could not be found than those where she
throve. Perhaps Delille embarrasses us because we have de-
cided beforehand that he is not possible; or perhaps he dis-
pleases us through a displeasure we should cure ourselves of.
The Ancients believed in a poetry of nature, the Mediaevals in a
poetry of faith, the Renaissance in a poetry of the Universe, the
Classics in a poetry of man, and the Romantics in a poetry of
Destiny. It is clear that all that is left for us is a poetry of poetry,
meager pittance, not much more sustaining than a love of love.
We know that it leaves us hungry.
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At this point you'll tell me that the kind of poetry we usually
call poetry of circumstance or occasion (I would prefer to call it
poetry of fortune) did not disappear with Delille; yet we cannot
reasonably make of Autran or Laprade, of Coppee or Sully
Prud'homme the great minds of their times. Granted. We would
have to argue about many a name at this juncture, and then claim
that Autran or Coppee, by definition, are those poets that we are
the least in a position to judge; we cannot help being unjust to-
ward them, just as we are toward Delille or Boileau. Since we
are discussing this:
There is an old saying, from China many years ago, that
genius is not inclined to appear where no one is expecting it or
wants it or (even if it happened to appear) would be able to
recognize and acclaim it. The Chinese apply this saying particu-
larly to horses and to generals. They thought they had noticed
that, lacking true connoisseurs, race horses are mediocre. They
added, I believe, that in nations (in China in this instance) where
military service is inclined to be scorned, along with war itself,
fortune (in just return) sends mediocre soldiers and sloppy gen-
erals; these do not, of course, fail to massacre each other, even
more so than elsewhere, but in disorderly fashion, and unsatis-
factorily. If you agree thus far, an explanation is simple: in such
countries the best minds are not encouraged to become generals.
Not there does one find children at daily exercises seeing who
makes the best leader, no, for families destine their ninnies for
the army. This is a simple and consoling reason; one's needs
merely form clearer ideas on warfare or on poetry, if one would
see genius, abandoning the ways of ignorance and disdain, re-
turn to just order, that of rules and of genres (and of poetry,
who refuses herself nothing). All this is very commonplace;
Lautreamont and Rimbaud said it better than I, and with more
passion (their passion rose from their unwillingness to start all
over again; they had gone too far the other way; they were sick
of it all) . They said it, precisely, with such passion that every-
one thought they were joking.
Of course, they weren't. When Rimbaud, between two little
songs, tells us that he is giving up the sophisms of madness, and
has at last learned to salute beauty, when Lautreamont main-
tains that one must again unite revolt and amazement against
hallucination, and throw in the thread of impersonal poetry to
boot, they mean (quite stupidly) just what they say, that the
poet must give up revolts and sophisms and write regular verse
like everybody else. This applies to poets as well as to all of us
(who are poets). In short, they call first of all for madrigals,
epigrams to pass from hand to hand, epithalamia for birthdays,
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and little war poems for veterans' banquets, the kind of poem we
all write because it comes to us just like that (we even cheat a
bit and borrow earlier verses, altered ever so little, or, as did
Lautreamont, famous ideas slightly remodeled). This is a fa-
miliar and continuous poetry, and the poet (in this case the pro-
fessional, the one whose name we remember) can choose without
embarrassment. This poetry makes him great; hope flies these
days toward the first-comer.
8: THE POE^S DOUBLE TEMPTATION
ON THE FIRST PAGE of certain old treatises on rhetoric we read a
sentence, innocent in appearance, but which, if we try to think
it out, opens up abysses to our thoughts. This sentence advises
the poet to push his art to the point of destroying all semblance
of art, and his trade to the very effacement of the trade.
This is a curious remark; we noted it awhile back, but it
surprises us each time anew. So then if we set up our sentence a
little better, it no longer resembles a sentence; if we polish its
letters and its sounds and facets, the facets, letters and sounds
vanish! The Ancients were fortunate to be able to treat Poetry
as a Muse, that is, a miraculous young woman. We can do little
more than talk about transformations, transitions, and metamor-
phoses.
There's no need even to go looking for books on rhetoric.
Everyday language says in its own way, a crude and naive
way, but a determined one, all those things I am trying labori-
ously to show you. It's remarkable, when you think of it, how
language strikes right at the very start, often seeming to have
known from time immemorable the things we take such pains
to dig out, often enough without finding them after all.
For the word "poetry" indicates both the container and the
contained, the emotion and the construction. So also does glass
or bottle, if we say: "I had a good glass of wine" and then "I
broke my glass." This lends itself to silly little jokes: "Here's
some poetry with very little poetry in it." We try of course to
avoid such silly jokes. But as for thinking as clearly as our lan-
guage does, that's not at all easy, you can see as much yourself;
no one manages to do it right off; and it is particularly difficult
for our critical thought to manage it I'm not thinking so much
of professional critics as of the interior critical faculty and the
image of art on which the poet bases his own composing and
invents himself as he goes along. At first, then, this image is
bound to fool him, and you can see why.
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The fact is that our reason has had time to bar the way. It
has its own principles, as is only right. It will not say: "What
smells good, smells!" no, quite the contrary. Naturally, the meta-
morphosis in question seems unlikely to our reason, and language
seems badly constituted and not easily stomached. It is just as if
you told reason that a pumpkin had been changed into a carriage.
Consequently, one must tell it, at one time (as did the Neo-
Classics and the Rhetoricians), "Sounds, letters and words, are
only words; poetry is only poetry," but then at another time (as
did the Romanticists and the Surrealists), "An emotion is an
emotion, a rapture is a rapture," in short, "Poetry is poetry."
This is the poet's double temptation, and the critic's too. Of
course, our reason begins to be wrong here and there, and it is
useless for her to try to correct this later on by frantic gestures.
Her errors appear rather quickly through their effects; for the
classical poet finds himself, on the one hand, led to think that
poetry, being no more than cleverness with words, rises (Valery
was nice to admit this) from pure and simple hoaxes. He is
lucky if he does not conclude, as did Toulet and Dereme and our
most recent school of Classicists, that nothing remains for him to
express except humbug and fantasies.
The Surrealists, on the other hand, may well scorn counts
and calculations of words and seek the sacred raptures of deep
song, but they are punished in the most vexing manner, for they
are obliged to write poems to show that they have escaped from
poems, and to align words to prove that they have been freed
from words. They consider, in short, that the nothingness of
human condition suffices for the creation of poetry. The bird
thinks he would fly better if there were no air, and the puritan
poet if there were no rime, no words, and no syllables.
Well, the puritan, like the fantasist, eventually betrays the
cause of poetry, if it is true at least that this cause implies as
much cleverness as the deep song, and as much industry as does
abandonment; for the puritan arrives rather quickly at auto-
matic writing and at fabrication of abandonment, while the fan-
tasist abandons himself to sheer fabrication; the latter is not long
in becoming a conjurer, the former a phantom.
If this is the error, say you, where is the truth, and where
the golden rule of the poet?
At this point, you must suspect that we can't solve bur prob-
lem by some unusually bold stroke thrown off as our final word,
and claim, for example, that a little poem goes off afar to arouse
islands and continents. No; we shall use a modest and continuous
tenacity, just like that of language, and observe the same kind
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of faith that forever sustains our neighbor, or the first-comer,
or the man in the street.
For that man comes and goes, has wife and children, does
his work, even informs himself on the state of health of his friends
and acquaintances, shaves every morning, and does not stop to
reflect. About what, anyway? surely not about his razor, nor
about his comings and goings all this just as if he had some
sufficient reason for living. What reason? don't ask him, you'd
worry him. But he thinks that that's how things are, and that's
all he needs.
So it is with the poet. The best advice you can give him is
not to use his reason crosswise and backwards and thus neglect
the transformations; that the seer in him not try to get along too
well with the artisan, nor associate with him too often, for each
of them should go his own way, and thereby advance the better.
At times, the poet may dig about in physics or chemistry, be
astonished at a microbe or marvel at a quanta; that is his busi-
ness. What would a poet be if he didn't know what his contem-
poraries know? Very little. In short, there is nothing that does
not belong to him, no emotion he doesn't feel, and no idea that
fails to pass through his head. Meanwhile he never stops writing
occasionally on this or that, verses in two syllables and verses in
fifty -two (he tries to mix them) . He reads an article on politics
and tries to put it into poetry, with rimes in -ism. He sketches an
epic poem in regular form, which might have some meaning, but
really has none at all. He composes an elegy entirely with un-
poetic words (such as psychoanalysis or gas meter). He pulls
the letters of the alphabet out of a hat. He indulges in endless
siftings of vowels and rummagings with consonants. He even sets
up a strictly new alphabet for his own personal use. In short, he
pursues his thought freely in every direction, even if it seems
absurd or queer, but just as if there were no language; and he
pursues language as if there were no thought, quite at his ease
(incidentally) and confident that in the long run everything will
turn out all right and (like the parents of the Indian girl) that
the mystery will occur and be all the more remarkable or terrible
that the poet scorned it in this ugly way.
9: ADVICE TO OUR MAN IN PERPLEXITY
WHAT SHALL we do about our man and his perplexities?
Sometimes I used to say to him "What good is your collection of
conceits? Why don't you try to write a third-rate novel?" At
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other times I said: "You can't make a meal out of nothing but
dessert" (we were talking about eating awhile back, you remem-
ber?) . I even added: "This old world of ours has a habit of being
stingy about its diamonds."
Of course, I didn't convince him. Today I would say to him:
"Don't think so hard about your book. Rules were invented so
you could forget your subject matter. Masterpieces are created
backwards. There's plenty of time for serious things. And as for
poetry, let's wait till tomorrow."
139
DECISIVE CASES
Jean Paulhan
"Men of science in our days agree
on the term decisive cases for
those cases whose effects are
shown to be paradoxical or very
unexpected"
(Manuel de physique a Vusage
des gens du monde, 1765)
i : A LETTER TO THE DOCTOR
I HAVE TWO REASONS for taking the liberty of writing to you in-
stead of coining to see you. In the first place you would certainly
not have the patience to hear me to the end. I'll tell you the other
reason later on, it's more serious.
I am well at the moment; or rather I'm beginning to feel
well, and don't know what I am exposed to at this point. I don't
quite like these periods of uncertainty.
Not that I expect any great surprise. During these last years,
you treated me for illnesses which seemed different to you, and
you proposed new remedies each time.
They were different, I admit; but it was only that they had
become so. At the start they all produced in me the same sensa-
tions and the same symptoms, as if they depended on some con-
tinuous disposition or bodily habit of mine that you hadn't yet
treated. It even happened that I caught a glimpse of this habit.
I think sometimes that I feel a number of drops of blood
losing their way in me and going to one spot to make a sort of
lake. I recognize the spot by the encumbrance that occurs there.
With my inner ear I hear a worry settle there.
When these slight efforts occur, you might well imagine put-
ting on a collar-button, washing one's face, or getting out of bed;
or a whole world of little men all atwit, an inventor proposing a
machine for pulling you out of the sheets, a contractor under-
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taking to settle some matter in three seconds, a man betting 500
francs on your luck, or a general gathering a crew of workmen.
At other times it seems as if the contractor and the workmen
were merely there, with nothing to do; meanwhile I think them.
By this symptom I realize that a lake is about to form. It also
gives off short waves, but they are regular.
Sometimes the lake changes place. During the night it goes
from my temples to my neck or from my forehead to my eye-
lids. It rarely leaves my face; in fact it starts there. Last summer
a wound on my thumb, that made me bleed, brought about the
end of the encumbrance and of the waves. On the other hand,
the lake may finally dry up, and I can no longer hear anything.
Most often, after four or five days, a knob forms; it is red at first,
then it turns purple. If I squeeze it between my fingers I feel a
crisp undulation, as if the blood had taken on the consistency of
snow. A bit later . . . but you know about the rest.
The more specifically interior lakes progress in another way.
I lose sight of them as soon as they have given off their first en-
cumbrance. After about a week they reappear as trachitis, bron-
chitis, or worse still. But there's not one of them whose passing
I didn't suspect from this first stage in which they seemed to be
warning me. It is as if my body tried to give me a signal that I
couldn't manage to hear, except that it gives me the signal with
more force if it has remained silent for a longer time. When I am
in good health, I feel fragile; and besides, if I have a questionable
idea, one that doesn't wholly belong to me I mean one that takes
root elsewhere than in my mind, that is in the slownesses and
stoppings by which a lake tries to form it is this very idea that
gives me strength and assures me of happiness; then all I need to
do is to be careful to maintain it.
It is in dreams, ordinarily, that I receive the first warning. I
awaken at once, for it seems to me that by setting about it quickly
enough I might understand the warning. But I have discovered
very little, or rather I have made many unrelated discoveries.
Sometimes, after several days, I have found myself worried and
disturbed by vexations. Yes, I'd been working up bad blood. At
other times I located a consciousness that was clearer than usual,
or a feeling of calm that seemed too sensitive.
When I felt my throat abscess piercing through my neck (I
was still a child) , I had only one afternoon of play with two little
girls who had entranced me. (It is true that the evening and the
cold had come early.)
At the root of the bronchitis you cured me of I see a month
of pleasures and carelessness. (It is true that for that month I
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had given up drinking at the table, I forget on whose advice; and
I often forgot to drink between meals.)
I still keep feeling a fatigue, a great thirst, and fear and de-
spair. Aside from this, everything starts with the lake; but per-
haps this is a sufficient symptom for you. If it is true that a single
illness can be diagnosed through this defect in my blood, that is
through this diverted current carried off at this point in every
direction, then you will be able to prescribe the cure or the diet
that will save me from it. I have the patience needed for this. I
still have to tell you the more serious thing.
One day one of these encumbrances happened unfortunately
to be placed at the base of my nose, so that a sinus inflammation
seemed probable to you. You decided to prevent its return.
So I had fifteen or twenty injections of a new vaccine (or a
serum) . Each tube contained bacteria by the millions, or even by
the tens of thousands (their names appeared on the tubes). To
tell the truth I didn't understand whether the bacteria were dead
and in this case were they still effective? or alive and how
then could one be sure that, left to their own devices, they might
not pass from two million I suppose to two and a half? But no
matter. The effect of these injections was decisive, for I became
crotchety. Even my wife, when she speaks of this period of our
life, cannot refrain from recalling my grudges and my strange
ways. She must have spoken to you about them. I couldn't stay
put, my friends found me independent. The movies alone gave
me peace, and the pleasures I got from them were so great that
there isn't a film today that doesn't disappoint me.
Money troubles came along later and brought everything to
a head. I ruminated on them for three days; on the fourth I awoke
cured, lightened and settled, for over my right ear I noted the
very uncertainty I thought I had lost. The matter followed its
course and I was rid of everything.
This release, in fact, worries me today. I am apparently ill-
suited for giving up these occurrences if their absence suffices to
throw me into such disorder (or was the vaccine alone the cause
of this?).
I must admit, besides, that illnesses don't inconvenience me
nor lead to the shame that most men usually feel (and even cer-
tain women). I feel like the accomplice of the illnesses rather
than their victim to the point that I even get to feeling remorse-
ful. You think me courageous when I get up and go about my
work well before the day set for this. The real reason is quite
different, for I have difficulty avoiding the idea that I was iU on
purpose; it is against this feeling that I'm fighting.
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After all, this may be precisely the case with other men.
They probably wouldn't be annoyed at being ill if they didn't get
some pleasure from it. One doesn't get irritated with oneself with-
out good reason.
I think I see the bonds that hold me to my illnesses, and I
have made friends with them quite stupidly.
I'm like everyone else, for I'm not certain all the time that I
lead a real life. And, indeed, I don't doubt that one day I'll dis-
cover a thought that, at almost every instant, can assure me of
pleasure or the absence of worry. I have more than one reason
for believing that this discovery is about to take place. (To tell
the truth I don't know what it will be nor whether I will be able
to describe it.) But until it does come, we must admit that illness,
fatigue or fever with certain surprises of the feelings, difficult
to foresee take its place, or almost. (They really don't take its
place, I know, yet these interior landscapes obscure the body and
confuse the big and the small, the fast and the slow, the sudden
and the smooth, yet nothing seems to me to resemble the dis-
covery or announce it, even crudely, except all these metamor-
phoses.)
I'm telling you all this inadequately; the fact is that I am
cured. I've already put off writing to you too long, but I couldn't
wait any longer just to see you.
I must add something, however: I am still afraid of the ef-
fects that will be brought on by the sudden disappearance of a
habit I used to champion so wholeheartedly that there are mo-
ments at which I wonder if it is anything other than a weakness
in my thoughts. If complete cure seems possible to you, let me
know how I can escape its dangers. Some drug, perhaps . . . You
must not be worried; I've told you already that it's a matter of
several months, of the year perhaps.
Wine doesn't agree with me very well, and opium makes me
vomit. I drink little coffee, enough however to be irritable from
time to time. I smoke. I have never tried peyotl.
* * *
Here is the doctor's answer, approximately: "Since you get
along so well with your boils, the best course is just to keep them."
2: LOST PLEASURES
IN THE COURSE of the day, I sometimes used to ask my father:
"Why not talk a bit this evening?" He would say: "We'll see."
We always talked. It was first of all about the games I had just
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learned: was it easy, if one went about it early, to become a bowl-
ing or a checker champion? Yes. But he added that, as for bowl-
ing, marbles (with which I was trying to get into training) were
next to useless, on account of the difference in weight. As for
checkers, I'd have to learn how to spell.
*I had, in effect, written on the box he gave me Gaem of
checkers. I didn't lack interest in spelling, and knew that the
word contained an a and an e, but I didn't know in what order.
Later, my father told me about his hunting trips and his visit to
Paris and to the Louvre. I don't remember this last very well,
except that one of his friends, tired of looking at the paintings,
left him and sat on a chair, where he went to sleep. My father
took pride in not traveling by auto or by bus, and went on foot
from the Rue du Mail, where he lived, to the Bois de Boulogne.
While talking, my father used to smoke his pipe, before the
branches flaming in the hearth. When he had finished his pipe,
I'd say: "Are you going to smoke another one?" and he'd answer:
"Perhaps" or "Let's go to bed." The prospect of the end of this
fine evening made me tremble. I haven't told you the main thing.
It was that I lay on the ground and studied the humus up
close, good for what? mixed with shag, iron shavings, lint, and
I can't say what kind of seeds coming up between the sheets of
the floor. Another important detail was that, by raising my head,
I could see from below my father's lower lip tremble, and some-
times his nose, like those of a great marionette of flesh and blood.
The trembling was unhuman, I've seen it since on a bull just
slaughtered. At that point it seemed that my father was about to
make some extravagant decision, such as breaking walls or walk-
ing through fire.
I have lost many other pleasures since I can no longer see
things as they are.
3: THE TRANSIENTS
THE BEGGAR came to sing about eleven o'clock, and my mother
said: "How sad his music is today." No, it wasn't sad, but non-
existent; this singer, who went stubbornly on, had no voice.
A little later she said to us: "I'm sorry for people who die
these days, for they won't see the end of the war." To reassure
us she added: "Oh, I'm not thinking about myself," and fell into
that state of distraction in which the invalid is pained by none
of the cares one is forced to give him, but asks for clean linen,
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and begs you to take his ring off his finger. She looked at us
patiently, and it seemed as if she wasn't going to speak again.
A few moments later she gave up speaking to herself; her
face twitched with a tic, then was labored in strong respiration.
Why did she need so much air? During the evening, I kissed her
again, but neither her forehead nor her hands seemed to have
under my lips more than a semblance of warmth. Then her nose
compressed, and her mouth formed a vaguely harsh pout. I tried
to recall it at moments of annoyance. But I couldn't find it again.
I happened to get up to open the window. I changed my mind
when I thought that she liked her room closed in the evening,
and I said quickly: "Excuse me," the words just came out.
It seemed to me at once that she had raised one arm slightly
as if to say: "It doesn't matter." I looked hard at the arm, which
had stopped moving. But a slight noise warned me that she had
just breathed. I looked at her lips, and she took this moment to
unclasp her hands. As I returned to her hands, an imperceptible
movement in the shadow told me that she had just opened her
eyes. Thus continued a strange game of hide and seek. I was to
awake during the night from a rather heavy sleep to the sound
of her footsteps as she walked along the hall. Then she went
down the stairs and her foot slipped on the last step. I arose
with a start.
It was only toward morning that I managed to feel sad, and
felt myself saved.
4: SURPRISED AND SATISIFIED
WHEN I was about six, I was surprised to notice that I existed.
Later on I tried to know myself.
The emotion I felt one day at the sight of a donkey being
beaten by its master (I burst into tears) led me to believe for a
long time that I was good (others thought so too) . Yet at times I
would wait for hours, by the railway bridge, for the train to jump
the track; this seemed probable to me, I can't say according to
what calculations.
People used to say to me at that time: "You just go along
like the cows." I thought: "Perhaps the cows go along like me."
In short, the accident I hoped for outdid in horror the beating of
a donkey. Nor did I find my own chagrins totally disagreeable.
Another day I was struck to see that my little friends had
different colored hair. I decided at once that the brunettes were
better than the blonds. What a relief when I looked at myself in
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the mirror: I was blond. I said to myself, a red-head perhaps (I
was exaggerating).
This is a trait I have kept until today. I like to fit into a
category, even if it is a less esteemed one.
But at other moments I'd rather not resemble anyone. I re-
member a distribution of prizes where my comrades, as soon as
they had received their books, bowed to the directress. That
seemed childish to me. When my turn came, I gave a military
salute. All about me mad laughter broke out, but this hardly
embarrassed me a bit. I felt myself strong, by what right?
I like gifts, but I don't like people to give them to me, they
bother themselves about me too much if they do. Being thus, you
can see that assent or blame, or love or hatred, cannot satisfy me
completely. Whoever finds me wrong attracts me. Whoever ap-
proves of me, I imagine that he hasn't understood me; I don't
take sides readily. As if, in order to be satisfied, I wanted to be
both other people and myself.
When I saw that I persisted in taking myself for God, I gave
up trying to know myself, once and for all.
5: THE PHILOSOPHERS' STONE
"PLEASE SIT DOWN, Mr. Thomas," said Aunt Adrienne. "I had
you come about the coffins." But little Peter, listening to her,
already knew everything.
In the first place, that Adrienne had received permission from
the prefect to take the remains of her parents to the cemetery
(till then she had kept them in the grave out in the vinyard) .
She took advantage of the occasion to dust off the bones and (who
knows?) to shine them with furniture polish. A matter of self-
respect, she said. Fat old Gertrude even suspected her of having
boiled her own mother's bones to loosen a few shreds. From
another point of view, the matter was even more serious.
For the carpenter was well known in the village for the way
he twisted his words, saying patty for putty and suspender for
suspension. The neighbors made fun of him; Peter alone suspected
that old man Thomas sometimes saw objects different from those
we know. Add to this that he was a spiritualist, for no one could
equal his little tables, which were so light that his customers had
taught him to consult the spirits. So Thomas used to call his wife
back, and she would answer: "I can't bring myself to leaving the
earth. I'm hovering about you." Here's proof of this.
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"In my estimation, Mrs. Adrienne," the carpenter answered,
"in my estimation, we should use good quality oak like for my
late wife." What did he really mean by this? It was more than
Peter could stand. He left the room and stretched out, near the
threshing floor, on the Split-Rock. He slid his head into the crack,
and all at once it seemed to him that the rock shared his ideas.
He in turn grasped the thoughts of the rock (but you musn't
mention this). Now he agreed with Adrienne and Thomas, and
said to himself: "All of them." And found himself relieved at
once.
They were still there. Even Mrs. Thomas? Yes, and even old
grand-aunty, whose bones they had boiled. Yes. Peter felt a bit
lighter. He didn't forget that he was stretched out on the Split-
Rock, but he was elsewhere too, he was everywhere.
When the stone grew cold and drove him away, he was
happy to have learned so quickly all that one can know about
life and death.
6: THE SCOTCH SHEPHERD
THE MISUNDERSTANDING came on suddenly like an illness. There-
upon half the family became invisible to the other half, and they
passed each other like strangers. Except the children among them-
selves, who tried out their latest insults. One of the reasons (they
hardly admitted it) was the inheritance. The other reason, which
George and Jenny did not hide, was the ugly way the sisters-in-
law had behaved.
But this ugly behavior, as it happened, helped bring about
the reconciliation, for from it Mary-Lou and Mary- Yvonne got
an apartment with rooms in Persian, Louis-Quinze and cubist
styles. (Between one room and the other there were endless
carryings-on.) In the Persian room there was a card table. As
soon as they were seated at it, the brother-in-law and the three
sisters, seized by great excitement, forgot meal, misunderstanding
and champagne, for the card game. As for the children, they
amused themselves with Mary-Lou's Scotch shepherd, whose
look was so grave that evening that:
"You'd think he's unhappy because he can't talk," Jenny
said. "Yet he has a fine tongue," Mary- Yvonne answered. There
was a moment of silence, and Mary- Yvonne seemed taken aback.
Then both girls broke out in laughter, hesitant, firm and strong
in turn. One bent over forward when the other straightened up;
they seemed to be doing a bowing dance.
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They calmed down. When the group had broken up, George
said: u How could Mary- Yvonne dare right before the chil-
dren . . . !" and then added: "It's your fault. You didn't have
to laugh."
A new misunderstanding followed, and the children won-
dered for a long time (the problem wasn't simple) what there
was in all this that they weren't supposed to know about. By the
time they thought they had found out, the family was already
reconciled; but they felt timid and uncomfortable when they
looked at the Scotch shepherd, as if they in turn were at outs,
for they had transferred to him all the horror that one feels
naturally toward grownups.
7: GOLDWISPING
HERE ARE the former wedding rites in this region: they made a
doll of pink wax and rubber in the exact likeness of the bride;
then they slipped it into the river, after having decked it in the
richest dresses and jewels that she had ever worn. The breasts,
however, remained exposed; they were painted red, as if they had
been skinned. Concentric yellow stripes made them look like
targets.
The river was known for bearing gold flakes; this is con-
firmed by the names of villages, such as Goldwisping, that have
come down to us. These flakes were not numerous enough to
support a real commercial enterprise. At best, the river people,
by panning them, could earn a humble livelihood.
But without giving the flakes time to stick to the doll, the
village boys, having planned this secretly, waited for it down
stream, dragged it to the shore, and took off its dresses and jewels.
Then they had all kinds of fun with it, though it had only just
been saved from drowning and was still confused.
We know of several meanings for this myth. Classical scholars
see in the act of dressing in gold the symbol of indissoluble mar-
riage. The romantics maintain that the bride should offer herself
quite naked, having for herself, herself alone, to the adventure of
the wedding. Modern thinkers believe that they merely wanted to
purge her of the poison that virgins secrete. It is possible that
the natives of Goldwisping, had they cared to reflect, would have
been just as divided on the matter.
To tell the truth, we do not know whether the undressing of
the doll was a part of the ceremony. It appears that there was
no understanding, on this point, between the children and the
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grownups. However, later on, in the family, the jewels and the
dresses were objects of blackmail and exchangings.
Nor do we know too well what was in store for the young
bride in this region.
8: LITTLE VIOLET
LITTLE VIOLET NOZIERE went along the streets from shop to shop
with boys her age. She did not imagine that one could seek the
pleasures of life in any other way than the most direct, but she
wondered how to go about it, and found herself separated from
the rags, hats and photos of actors by she didn't know what, but
it wasn't money.
However, on Thursday, March 6, 1927, her pal Peter, having
stopped her at the corner of Rue Lacepede, looked at her as if
he wanted to warn her, assumed an embarrassed manner, and
then gave her a kiss, for which he remained shamefaced for two
days, though she was merely flattered. When they met again,
Violet said to Peter, kissing him, "That's how to do it."
Later, she took Peter through a low door that opened under
a stairway and that he had always thought was the door to the
toilet. But no, it led into a closet under the steps. "This is my
boudoir," said Violet, "stretch out, my little rabbit." And Peter
saw the stairs upside down, another staircase just like the real
one, except that no one could have gone up it or down it.
Then he listened to Violet's stories. If one believed her, she
had already had three lovers. Meanwhile, squeezed into this tiny
space, he caressed her. He seized her and uttered various cries.
"I am already giving pleasure," Violet said to herself. Her nerves
were all a-tingle, and yearning for what? for the pleasure she
had so long awaited and which still hardly came.
It is from this that many misfortunes occurred later on, but
it would be unjust to blame her parents, for they could hardly
correct an evil tendency in their daughter when she really didn't
have it. Violet had lovers, whom she encouraged while waiting
to receive a revelation from them. Later she became one of those
women who, in forests, bar the road to cars driven by men. As
she was cold, and not resigned to being so, she had a bit more
to catch up with every day.
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9: A FINE EVENING
SINCE THE MISFORTUNE occurred, I haven't been back to the fac-
tory, and (this is fortunate) neither my wife nor my children seem
surprised that I stay with them and do nothing. When the sun sets,
I come and sit on this bench.
The rest of the day has hardly changed, but this hour is like
a twenty-fifth hour given to me as a present. Through it I see
passing so many rays and flames that I feel as if I held the sky by
its most sensitive spot.
I scan it from one edge to the other. I advance with sweeping
glances, and each of them lights a gleam that drags along behind
me and grows cold bit by bit. Sometimes I bring back grasses from
the depths of the waters.
Would you believe me if I told you that on my shores I can
see boats where, in the shadows, perfumes are sold, and soap, and
those milky flasks we used to see, when we were children, in
women's boudoirs. Later on I didn't find them any more.
Great luminous arcs, stretching out at times, at others floating
in the wind, rise above the boats. It's no use for me to close my
eyes, for I can still see their purple bands through a very light
tissue.
I'd like to divide the sky into zones in order to bring it closer.
The first zone is the river with its flames. The second is the fish as
they caper out of the water when they feel me approach. The third
is the instant at which the clouds seem about to fall.
The fourth . . . but that's enough. From that flaming space
comes to me an intoxication, heavier than that of wine. More like
the intoxication of meats and sauces. Then the night, suspended,
begins to fall on me again. I go home, taking care not to leave the
middle of the road. Yes, that's how my evenings pass since I
became blind; and the children, seeing me from afar, call out to
me that dinner is ready.
10 : THOUGHT WITHOUT OBJECT
ABOUT THE SAME moment (unless I'm mistaken) , I found that I
had gained one thing and lost another. What? How could I find
out, I wondered. Finally I tried to go back, to find out, down into
the depths of dreams.
There I discovered that the loss was my fault. Not negligence,
no, it was a more notable fault, a real misdeed, whose key I might
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have found at once had I known what the object was that I had
lost (it's possible after all that there was some negligence) .
As for the gain, I owed it to I can't say which. ... It was not
exactly goodness, nor niceness. (How hard it was to raise up such
a dream, step by step, from the utmost depths of sleep! ) But some
other feeling whose nuances I recognize; then the single center
that continued to escape me would have been revealed oh! if only
I had known what I had gained.
Besides, is it even a question of that? First of all we must
find out from whom these feelings come. I have not at all the
impression that I was the negligent one (for instance) and the
others the generous ones (or pretending to be) . It might just as
well be the contrary. I'll find out in a moment.
For I can at least find out if the gain compensates for the loss.
I need merely weight the two, or rather set them side by side, or
place one of them on the other. I can see that one of them is the
greater, but I don't know which. The whole business slips away;
and if I have to start this all over again, I give up.
At this point I imagined attaching them on two rollers turn-
ing in opposite directions. Like one of those toys that v give us high
hopes but never work really well. For now the rollers waver on
their frame: instead of coinciding, one of the objects goes off to
the right and the other to the left. I can see that I have to live on
chance. Yet I haven't stopped thinking, you can see that.
Such was the difficulty that I carried turn by turn to each
stage of dreams, bringing it up after I had taken it down, taking
it down after bringing it up, and each time passing from one end
of my realm of anguish to the other.
n: DURING THE RESTRICTIONS
MY FATHER had passed the week in bed, with a fever. On Saturday
evening he gave me his cigarettes of the last ten days. Misfortune
always brings some good. As a piece of real luck, my friend Noble
brought me, the next day, not the whole package of Virginias he
had received from England, but what do you expect! a good
half of them. I sent the cigarettes off to join their fellows in the
box, and never was there such a party.
No reason to be proud of this box. Although painted like wood
on five sides, it was just tin; you could see this on the sixth side,
the bottom, covered with finger-prints. It had another defect, for
it had no compartments or shelves. It was useless to group to-
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gether the Gauloises to the right, and the White Labels to the left,
for the slightest shock mixed everything up.
So I got myself an improved box, in real wood, and with five
decks. To complete my collection I bought while I was at it!
and on the black market, two packs, one of Green Labels, the
other of Yellows. At 120 francs each, what a disgrace! Meanwhile
I had smoked seven, so that there were empty spaces here and
there. I managed to get along without smoking for one whole
morning. Altogether, this was a curious experiment.
I noticed, in fact, that mere preoccupation with cigarettes,
coming back at regular intervals, brought me, or almost, the same
kind of distraction that I expected from smoking.
Besides I didn't dream of taking advantage of my discovery
so soon, but decided merely to remain in bed the next morning
until lunch time. Temptations are created by long days. At dessert
I even abstained from my cup of coffee, which is hard to enjoy
without smoking. What progress! But here's what's more impor-
tant: I understood why rich men are misers. "Oh!" I said to my-
self, "that's something 111 never forget/'
But I was mistaken, for I forgot very soon.
iz: A HAND UNDER THE STONES
ALTHOUGH THE VICTIMS had merely been crushed on the spot by
the falling stones, one might have said, on looking at the pile, that
they had been shot from above onto this confused terrain. Their
arms were taut and their faces covered with blood, so that one
was almost afraid, on seeing them, of recognizing himself.
Meanwhile Jean Dubois, the mason, not to be distracted, con-
tinued digging, without haste, as do miners, his slim tunnel, which
he shored up as he went along with planks and pieces of cabinet
work. His group had remained on the other side of the wall. As
he came out among the auxiliaries of the Eleventh, a fireman said
to him: "You ought to go lie down, Governor. Are you wounded?"
"No/' said Dubois. He was just starting another tunnel when one
of his companions cried out: "Lie down, you fool. Well call the
doctor.' 7
Dubois, following their glances, discovered at this point a
number of spots of blood on his belly. He was stupefied, and
thought senselessly that he was looking at drops of dew on a leaf.
Then he tried to go off again, but the others took him by the belt
and made him lie down. As they called out "Stretcher!" Dubois
said suddenly: "'Let me alone, let me alone, won't you. Can't you
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see I'm following a woman?" Then he perceived such deep atten-
tion on their faces that he thought himself saved; at the same
time he realized that his pants didn't fit his legs, and his face
became ashen, so that the firemen insisted: "See here, his belly's
cut open. We've got to fix him up whether he likes it or not."
When they opened his pants, they could see that he wasn't
wounded. But what did they find in his pocket? A hand, which
at first seemed neither male nor female, a hand cut off like a
plaster hand, a hand decorated with rings yet still bleeding, which
he must have cut off some dying woman under the stones.
13: A NEW WAY OF LIFE
IT WAS AN EARLY MORNING visit (too early) of the German police
that sent us off first to the rooftops, then to Neuilly, where friends
lent us two rooms.
Faithful Emily, our maid, came to join us the next day. As we
shared room, table and worries about getting supplies, I was
already grateful to her for the gratitude she would not fail to show
toward us. The contrary occurred; it seemed to her, after several
days, that her devotion was a bit of a nuisance. She asserted an
authoritative manner I didn't think her capable of, deciding
abruptly on everything and on nothing. The worst was that her
opinions were self-contradictory. The Patriots, at that time, and
at the price of immense losses, were storming the City Halls. But
Emily stated before the skirmishes: "I wonder what's it they're
expecting," and afterwards "I wonder what they got need for."
She judged us in like manner; and, while approving our past con-
duct, was triumphant to see us being punished.
I was engrossed about that time with various theorems, and
had a feeling that a mathematical training prepares a man poorly
for political questions. I was forced to admit that other kinds of
education prepare one no better. I let Emily talk on and continued
vaguely to mull over the problems interrupted by my departure.
In truth, I was working badly. Not that noise ordinarily bothers
me. But this is true only if it remains anonymous.
However I discovered one of the solutions I had been seeking:
this happened in the toilet, where I lingered at times over a note,
a page torn from a book, or a piece of newspaper (unreadable, I
might add) .
I said that we shared the bedroom and the dining room with
Emily. But there was one room, I admit, that we left entirely to
her. Led on by I can't say what scruple, she used for herself
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(while complaining about a number of inscriptions in bad taste
that she read there) the toilet at the back of the court, which she
didn't even call a toilet, but a bull chamber.
14: SECRET AGENT
AT POUR O'CLOCK I learned that Marinette had just been arrested.
I must get in touch with Jacquot at once. I sent her word to be
in Rue Le Verrier at nine sharp, it's more deserted than Rue
Vavin. At five, Alain missed our rendezvous at the Boule-Blanche;
he must have been detained by the preparations for Operation
Julia. I contacted Sebastian at seven, good! But I'm the one who
was picked up, at seven-thirty, as I was leaving the bistrot.
All right, prison it is, that's all I needed to become a hero. I
don't see too many boys about who know as much as I do. But
first let me breathe a moment: no more passwords, no more ren-
dezvous, no more home, no more bread ration, no more mysterious
people to see, no more expeditions to the country. Already I feel
the great breath of summer vacations blowing down my neck,
"Who is Alain?" "First I've heard of him.*' "Who's this Julia Coco
Marinette? >? "Don't know, don't know, don't know!" And what if
they force me to talk?
Already I was stupidly admiring the porch of the Saussaies
bureau (one might have said it was a palace built specially for me)
when the idea of torture struck me so irrevocably that at first I
thought it was a thing in my past. (It's good, I said to myself, to
have a taste of everything; and torture especially man lends him-
self to it so well you've been afraid of it since childhood, but
never without hope.)
And if there was none? At this point everything collapsed.
If I didn't hold out, I'd be surprised; not heroic a bit, but vain;
not firm, just nervous; an advantage no doubt. Who knows, per-
haps I even had an inclination toward betrayal? (What with
psychoanalysis, how can a man know?) Maybe I'd been collect-
ing secrets just to sell them one day.
But the policeman pulled on my chain, and I followed him in.
My past was just beginning.
15: THE BEE
IF rr HAD BEEN the Swedes who had occupied us (as people politely
put it) , they would have allowed us a dance step or a taste for
blue and yellow ribbons. If it had been the Javanese, we would
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JEAN PAULHAN
still have a way of moving our fingers. Or if it had been the Hot-
tentots, or the Italians, or the Hungarians, we might have kept a
song, or a smile, or a little movement of the head. In short, any
of those silly things that mean nothing in particular, which merely
show that we are happy to be alive, that we prefer that to not
living at all, and (specifically) that it is interesting to have a body
from which we may derive such measure of fancy.
But we can all see that they will leave us nothing. Not a song,
not a grimace. Even the little boy in the street would never think
of imitating their goose step. In the subway (which, like the gro-
cery store, has become our way of common life) , they never bump
anyone, as, alas, we shall continue to do. They even pick up bun-
dles we let fall carelessly. But they don't make us want to pick
up bundles. They have no spirit. Their passing here will be like
an immense void. As if they were already dead. The trouble is
that they spread this death all about them. In fact, that is all they
know how to do.
That they should appear so transparent to us is sometimes
said to be the result of our dignity. I'm willing to admit this. I
read in books (of the best publishing houses) that an honest
Frenchwoman can harbor in her home the most noble of conquer-
ors (and even fall vaguely in love with him, without saying good-
day to him once). But such a Frenchwoman is no doubt quite
exceptional. As for myself, I don't feel that worthy, nor do I so
quickly fall in love. And, besides, Frenchmen in general have not
been that worthy.
One must not forget that, in principle, France does not fight.
She is a sort of neutral country whose capital is Vichy. And, for-
tunately, we do not hesitate to say what we think about Vichy:
a nest of rotters. Which doesn't prevent us from being vaguely in
moral agreement with them: in each of us there is a man who
(regretfully) understands, who doesn't feel that they are purely
and simply fools, who at times even wonders if Vichy is not a ruse
for saving Algeria, and Petain a monster of subtlety. And we
reproach ourselves at once for having even wondered. Besides,
we are forced to conjure with them, because each of us who fights
does so without being obliged to. Hence it is with all the merit
and the pure greatness of soldiers, things which official wars
tended to hide from us.
Well, any among us who do not fight would be content at least
to enjoy life, if they were to offer us some enjoyment; or to learn,
if they could teach us anything. But it is clear that, from this
point of view too (and we have no cause to be proud of the mat-
ter) , we have been disappointed, and that the world goes on as if
they were already dead. But, I repeat, their death is catching.
155
When I was a child, I was astonished, like all children, to find
in vital statistics that there were more deaths than births. The
reason for this (which one doesn't think of till afterward) is, obvi-
ously, that, except for kings, a man is rarely well known when he
is born, while famous men have nothing more to do than to die. I
also had a feeling that all that had just changed, and that we had
come to the epoc of births. People died much less often.
This feeling is absurd; but I think I have kept it vaguely, I
think that it is a common one, and that it plays its role in the
sadness of these times, when each month we learn of the death of
a friend. One was in the maquis; they found his body in a field,
already swollen. Another was publishing tracts, still another trans-
mitting information; they were riddled with bullets, while they
sang. Others, before dying, suffered tortures which outdo in
horror the sufferings of cancer or tetanus.
And I know that some people say they died to small avail. A
little piece of information (not always very precise) was not worth
that, nor a tract, nor even a clandestine newspaper, sometimes
rather poorly prepared. To people who say this we must answer:
"The reason is that they were on the side of the living, that they
loved things as insignificant as a song, or a snap of the fingers, or
a smile. You can squeeze a bee in your hand until it dies. It will
not die without having stung you. This is a very small thing, you
say. Yes, it is a very small thing. But if bees didn't sting, long
since there would have been no more bees."
156
THE DILIGENT SOLDIER
Jean Paulhan
/ SEEM . . .
I SEEM TALL for my age my name is Jacques Maast, and I'm
eighteen. When the third week of the war came along, everyone,
and the girls in the village where I pass my school vacations,
asked me: "Aren't you going?"
These country people knew me back to my grandparents:
they had a long-standing opinion of me and I respected it. Besides
I felt them superior to me through their habits and even through
their jokes. The conviction that I was far better educated than
they was in the circumstances limpid and weak; it served me no
stead, and it was by my good will that I continued to deserve their
esteem.
Therefore they were surprised that I didn't go. In truth, I'd
been saying for two years that war would come and I had accepted
it without anxiety; it seemed to me sufficiently fine, for the
moment, that I had had this perspicacity and now had this energy.
They, on the contrary, considered that these qualities rose from a
sort of complicity with war, and that this ought to engage me to it
even more. It seemed so to me too, since I saw that they always
associated these two things. With my rather unsociable manner,
I am more sensitive than anyone to people's opinions.
Old Castagne would say: "I'd go myself, even though I'm
seventy-five. I'm strong and brave, and I work every day." And
Causseque pushing his cart would say to the women at their win-
dows in the morning: "I tell you we have twenty-two nations with
us. The Chinese are with us, only they fight with sticks; anyway
we can't get them to come over here. There are also the Canadese,
but they eat people."
This was considered ridiculous but it touched me because I
found plain feelings in it, unbitten by rationalization, and a spirit
of adventure.
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Richebois and Theaud had joined their regiment. As children
we had often played on this road with my tricycle; or rather I used
to make them compete and gave prizes to the winner.
What authority I had over them at that time, even though I
was younger! But during the last vacation they had gone far
beyond me with women. When girls passed with their baskets or
took their little brothers toward the fair, the other boys pleased
them more than I could; a girl often turned her head to look at
them, with a fleeting glance of gratitude.
I was embarrassed when people said of me: "He'll be the only
cock in the village."
I enlisted during the fourth week, partly out of timidity. I
joined up with a regiment of Zouaves at Saint-Denis.
My roommate was Glintz. He introduced me, one evening at
a restaurant, to his friend Sievre, and to Blanchet, who volun-
teered as I had we'd get along fine, besides we were to go off
together. He invited his girl friend, no doubt a laundress; she
lived in this gray and disorderly city.
It was then that, before her and us, Glintz and Sievre swore
never to part, and even to die for each other. "And if I'm killed,
you'll write to the family." "They'll be proud, we'll fix every-
thing." Glintz liked half-joking this way.
The ease with which they spoke of these inner things discon-
certed me a bit. I asked however that Blanchet and I be admitted
to the oath, but they wouldn't take us seriously: "Before you get
to the front, the war will be over."
And I thought: "If only I have time to fight for a few days."
THE SHEEPSKIN
l.
WE FORMED A REINFORCEMENT of fifty men as we left Saint-Denis
in silence. It was a fine morning, and a few urchins ran along after
us. Desplat, the carter, had stuck a little flag in the barrel of his
rifle. Blanchet walked beside me; a young woman, sometimes
behind, at others going ahead, would carry her husband's gun for
a few moments.
About the long road we came to afterward I only remember
our arrival at a farm; the truck that was following us emptied its
baggage on the ground at this point and turned back. We discov-
ered the stables and the lofts. When I decided to go out, women
peddling cake and wine were standing near the gate, resting their
baskets on the two pillar-posts.
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I talked with one of them. As it happened I had met her cousin
who, on a square at Algiers, sold grease-cakes, pots, or silver
service, each on different days; something to talk about. But when
I came back an hour later, her basket was empty, or just about.
She invited me to come to dinner at her place.
I followed her a long time on the paths she took. Or else we
walked along little dams separating the marshy fields. Her low
house, raised on four stilts, seemed to be made of cardboard and
sand. On the floor, worn rugs covered each other. Water was boil-
ing continuously.
They gave me some tea and bitter cabbage. One of the sons
was fighting in the east, another was an orderly. An old woman
came in and went out of the room a number of times. The cake
vendor sat near me and asked questions. Her two swarthy daugh-
ters came in, one began to read and the other went out again
almost immediately.
I didn't feel the simple pleasure I had expected. This welcome,
though I appreciated its charm, remained exterior to me and as
it were futile. When I happened to think, "I'm being carried away
by talk and tenderness . . . ," I did so not without embarrassment
and a measure of remorse. I found myself warned, by this, of my
new status: I was not tired by intentions nor avid for them, but
eager for abandonment and fatigue.
Returning later during the night, I had difficulty finding my
way. I met the younger of the two swarthy girls and she showed
me the path in the distance.
My memories of that evening, if I sought for them, would
probably not be very clear. Yet they seemed to me full of an inner
abundance like that of the monuments one sees in dreams: one
thinks one will find in them a hundred thousand new details, end-
lessly, as one's glance plunges deeper into them.
2.
We walked along as the mood took us, Blanchet and I, some-
times ahead of the troop and often running to catch up with it, or
taking a short cut over dry leaves. The forest, when we came onto
a height, appeared red, green, violet and confused with precious
colors. Cold perfumes came down from the tops of trees.
Whenever the detachment made a halt, we sat on the moss
and ate sardines. This occurred once near a cool cottage, on the
edge of a lake where a rowboat lay in the water. A slender tree
with a white trunk looked like a half-open door.
Even at moments of immobility we felt the necessity of our
march and of its direction. So keenly that we didn't need to worry
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about it, and we were left free otherwise for this kind of super-
ficial impression.
After the forest came a prairie where five skinny cows were
passing, each with a triangle of wood around its neck; then a half-
inhabited village where an old woman pushed aside her curtain
and, from her parlor, seated on a big armchair with a white cover,
carefully watched us go by. But the next house had a piece out
of its gable and two shutters were hanging by a single arm.
A gutted cellar, with its sidewalk, upset me more than all the
rest. Through the crack one could see a waxed sideboard under
a hash of cloth, dirt and wood, in its futile security.
The first hours of the march had surprised us and tired us,
but the following ones had a less simple effect: along with the
fatigue seemed to be developing in us all our strength to oppose
fatigue. This was especially noticeable while we were going
through the forest.
The war showed itself also by the gutted roads; a cyclist was
wiping off his bike, and a horseman was turning in circles before
the door of a chateau.
We crossed deserted fields and a muddy ravine. The halt was
made in a quarry. The breaches to right and left were said to be
the first trenches.
We sought shelter from the rain, by groups of four, under
plates of sheet metal. "Do you think we're in the war yet?" The
sergeant answered: "You tell me."
Gallas pulled a cheese from his sack but didn't eat it. We
placed a Zouave who had just been killed in the bottom of a ditch;
he trembled when the earth fell on him.
We waited, and the rain tinkled on the sheet metal. Then an
agile thick-set man came out of the cave backward. He waved his
cane and showed us the road: take the ditch to the right, that's all.
But no, he called to us again: "And keep low, boys."
We went into the communication trench. From time to time
a man stepped aside to let us pass. "Stop." I'd kept close to
Blanchet. We were already in the army fighting in the front lines.
Evening came; before us and behind us, and above us too, was the
inner and moist earth. The Germans were over there beyond that
parapet and that field; we couldn't see them, nor they us.
The cold rain went on and on. I often took Blanchet on my
knees, and we pressed close to each other, trying to join our hoods.
Then one of us dug a shelter with our pickaxe. The rich soft dirt
fell off at times and brought along the dirt from above. The hole
was hardly big enough to put a Holy Virgin in it when the order
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was given to stop work. Elsewhere the shelters had caved in.
So we had to remain in the rain, with that inner cold that
keeps you from moving. I don't know why that order gave me
such joy, hard as a sudden blow, and then that feeling, at first
uncertain, that began to rise in me, and was neither satisfaction
nor anxiety, nothing in fact except an attempt at enthusiasm.
Later on it grew stronger and pervaded my whole being,
3.
An Arab rifleman passed, carrying between his arms a pan of
red embers and moaning so we would make room for him. A
Zouave, his chest protected by a steel breastplate, climbed with
difficulty onto the parapet; he was going off reconnoitering. A few
bullets sighed or whistled about us. It seemed to me that I was
welcoming all this earth and all these men. Deep inside me I felt
my assurance and my equilibrium, as if a young tree had just
grown within me.
Well, all this conspiracy of the forces of my body and my mind
struck me simultaneously through their resemblance to exterior
things and to the effort I imagined among these assembled soldiers.
Without yet having learned anything about war, I felt it within me
and found it natural.
Day broke; over the loopholes we could see with some diffi-
culty a few spots of muddy ground with wire spread about on
them. I made the acquaintance of Ferrer and of corporal Caronis,
who were right next to me. Quartermaster Jules-Charles asked
me later on to work with him, and I accepted. I had no reason to
regret this. That same evening (we had come back to the main
shelters in the second line) he saved a sheepskin for me from a
bale of sweaters and warm clothing that the Dames of France had
sent. The skin had come in with a badly sealed jar of jam and had
a large pink spot right above the heart.
When I awoke a light snow was rising and falling before the
door. What a slow and troubled awakening. I was still only half
disengaged from my dreams: a surly merchant (what did he have
to do with it?) , a pain in my knee (I must go see the doctor) , and
especially a fear that they might take me to the sombre and bril-
liant spot from which came all these shells and gun volleys.
The cowardliness of these dreams left me with a feeling of
moral diminution. But even before sitting up, I groped for the
cause as if I had already guessed it. It did not pertain to my bent
and stiffened legs, nor to my cold head, but to my overheated
chest, soft under the sheepskin.
The memory of this same uneasiness, as I had felt it once
before, came to me immediately in full force. I had indeed just
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been dreaming of the cake peddler: didn't she offer me a cup of
hot tea, didn't she rip the fur off her winter coat for me? I don't
think that this woman's kindness was mistaken, nor the warmth
of the sheepskin. But I had considered both of them too much as
favors (it was the only one in the bale, as Jules-Charles had
pointed out) . My insistence on taking them as such and in being
pleased about them all by myself was contrary to a more constant
diligence which may well have betrayed (I can't say anything
else) the warlike conscience that was obviously forming in me.
CONFUSED NIGHT
l.
DURING THE DAY, smoke floated above the dugouts (this wasn't
allowed) . The sound of woodcutters and people saying: "Are you
building a new house? Why sure!" Houses of branches and of
leaves. Blanchet didn't put much effort into ours, his ideas were
ingenious rather than useful: rags to stop up the rain, mistletoe
(it brings luck) , and a wire fence that we used because of the
trouble he went to to bring it (it'd be good for holding up the
slender branches). The Zouaves were lifting billets onto their
shoulders; they slipped and held by one hand to the posts of the
sheds.
A tent canvas was stretched over the doors of the dugouts;
sitting or standing we ate there, we dreamt on one elbow or greased
an odd rifle. Toward evening the haze settled and joined with our
smoke, and the sheds were full of a light without brilliance.
Newspapers read aloud, sparks from the fires, and visits from
crouching friends.
Sometimes I had to tumble down the slope suddenly, for
Jules-Charles would call me to supervise the distribution of the
ration loaves. Or I'd go with Blanchet to make fagots in the forest
and we'd light fires to warm the soup and the men who brought it
when they arrived. The company was to stay on this hill in the
third line for five days.
I found pleasure in looking at the trees, the black or frozen
water in the puddles, the sky that seemed to me greater than any-
where else, and the Arabs silently weaving hurdles of branches
and rolling the barbed wire onto the chevaux-de-frise.
All these things, and the grass or berries coming back from
memories of childhood, were however not new to me; but the way
I looked at them gave them a charm they had never yet had.
Nature, laboriously dominated by the country people, had left me
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with an image of an old servant woman whose complicated and
normally malevolent habits one had to accept. While in contrast,
through equality with her, forced on me by war, I gained her con-
fidence today; thus, descending to the status of a man receiving
orders, one is surprised to find him rich in thoughts and in feelings.
The dignity of animals struck me. Crows flew with ceremony
over our woods or swooped down onto the paths. They were
neither friendly nor skittish, they just didn't associate with us.
When I approached them they flew away after several seconds,
without haste and not giving any sign that I was the cause of their
going.
(Sometimes a shell whistled by and plunged into a pond with-
out exploding. Or, going off in the air with a loud noise, it fell in
pieces among the leaves. One day I saw a bullet dive into the
trunk of a pine tree.)
I had long wanted to leave society (I mean civilized men,
people) and go to live near savages or in the fields. Or I demanded,
if I was to remain, an immediate revolution. This dream was
common to many young men (they hoped to find greater freedom
and breadth in a life of nature, and at the same time escape from
social restraints) . Well, this had just become a reality for me, in
a way exactly the contrary of the one I expected, because we were,
in nature, under the impact of a hostility far more dangerous than
that other. I felt, therefore, that my opinions had been scoffed at
a bit. But I gave them new form in accordance with my discovery.
The cause of my irritation surely lay in the peaceful existence
promised to my feelings and myself, because for the first time I
perceived, in this danger, the plenitude and assurance of my life.
As for the hostility of the world, it seems that the exact mean-
ing of my reproach was that this hostility was not strong enough
to force me to live under its threat. I found merely that I had
taken advantage of its weakness to complain about it.
As for the freedom I was to receive, in my first thought, by
life in the country, it came to me through the restraint that
weighed on me; it rose from the moments at which I escaped from
this restraint; the immense earth about us could then participate
in my inner life. I imagined its greatness and its differences, fields,
forests and useful land, as I might have created my various feel-
ings, and with the same ease.
At first and all at once I had found a common feeling with
war, obscurely as it were, with these nuances and these ways to
justify it. And this arose from the fact that, regarding the absolute
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clarity of the exterior events, the bullet or the shell, which prevent
all confusion (the confusion for instance that would make our
temper depend on the sun or the rain) , it sufficed not to be pre-
occupied for a moment with such events in order to experience,
further along in another direction, a deep and supple feeling in
our souls.
But here is where the two were mingled, and here's what
made one of our nights so strange.
2.
"They call it the poppet,' 7 Sievre explained. "It comes through
the air and hovers to right and left. It's slow, and you have time
to clear out, but wherever it falls, a good thirty feet of trench
blows up." He had left his company that evening to come to see
us; they had set up quarters in the ravine.
"Just to think all this is going on in the twentieth century,"
groaned Gallas from the doorway.
"Only, here's what really disgusts me," Sievre added. "We're
fighting for the capitalists, and they ought to be in the front line,
but they've got all the soft jobs."
"I've got a friend," Jules-Charles began, "who inherited sev-
eral millions ..."
Glintz, always indifferent, was stretched out behind Blanchet;
he was far from the fire, but more comfortable than the rest of us.
I cut him a slice of preserves.
"You left your knife on the straw, someone might get hurt,"
Blanchet said.
"Wounded in action, they'll say."
"Quick, a bullet in your arm, and a swell dame to nurse you,"
said Glintz. Bouchet smiled. But Sievre began another story:
"There was a German came out of his trench yesterday; he
came toward us, without a gun, nothing but a stick ..."
When it was nine o'clock, Glintz and Sievre lit a lantern
under their hoods and went out. To guide themselves they
stretched their arms out in front, they hooked on and passed from
one tree to the next. Blanchet and I remained motionless, while
Jules-Charles washed and tried on the sweaters from the Dames
of France to find the best one.
The fire was still burning, and made the shed even narrower.
Blanchet got up and, taking care to co-ordinate his movements
with those of Jules-Charles, he gathered into piles the balls of red
coals so that their heat would be concentrated. Then we rolled up
in our covers and went sound asleep, not dreaming, and even with
mistrust of dreams, and from evening to morning keeping the
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same position, our arms stretched out against our bodies; our
heads, heavy and precious, were covered with our hoods. Our
feet, with shoes untied, were light and seemefl naked to us.
"The sweater's too small/' Jules-Charles said suddenly. "I
can't breathe except by puffs." He tried to get up, and wiggled
his legs.
But what woke us was a sudden volley of bullets whistling
piff paff, hitting against stones and slapping on trees. Then, being
so numerous, they seemed continuous and motionless like a flock
of grasshoppers humming over our roofs.
"On your feet, sacks ready!" someone said outside as he
walked heavily by, from shed to shed. I got up at once, tightening
my shoe laces and approaching the doorway. I was trembling, yet
I had no feeling resembling fear. But everything became calm at
once. The 120's alone were going off and grating on the clouds. A
few broken branches slowly fell, crumpling those below.
Night returned to its habitual state. "I think I stuck myself,"
Blanchet said. "You left your knife on the straw. I told you to be
careful." Then he added: "No, it's a spider. I saw the dirty brute
during the day." Someone said to him: "Sometimes nothing's
nastier than spiders."
Thereupon he went to sleep. I remembered having seen that
spider with its yellow belly, like that of a wasp. But Blanchet
woke up later and asked me: "How's the man who was wounded?"
Jules-Charles answered: "That was you, you were wounded." It
all seemed quite simple to us then.
I got up late. Blanchet was just coming back, he'd gone out
without my noticing it. "I got hit by a bullet. I showed my arm
to the sergeant. He said to me: 'Your sleeve ought to have a hole
in it.' Yes, it went right through, I've got to find it in the straw.
Still I was so sure it was your knife. I was mad at you all night."
"Casamata got one just like that," said Jules-Charles. "It
hit him right next to the eye and stopped, stuck halfway in. He
turned to Ferrer right away and said: 'Damn you, quit it' (he
thought it was a bread ball). Then he pulled it out with his
fingers."
The bullets were coming from the battle at Tracy-le-Val. The
Germans had taken the village but had to give it up afterward.
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BETWEEN MY GUN LYING ON
THE GROUND . . .
BETWEEN MY GUN lying on the ground, this white bank, and the
moonlight, I stood guard until three in the morning. Then I came
back to sleep near the clumsy holes we made on the first day, in
this shelter propped up with thick planks. We began it and
Company Eight finished it yesterday.
Roots were hanging from the vault. We were bent down; I
especially felt my gun weighing down on me, my belt, and the
leather sling, stiff and clumsy as old flesh.
It was not the cannon or gun noises that woke us, but a sack
falling or a man getting up and disrupting the pile of us; and
morning gossip.
"The Arab riflemen aren't worth a damn. The one I saw
yesterday had dysentery and was lying there at the bottom in
the water. He must have croaked since."
"Go do so-and-so . . . Captain, me tired . . . Go . . . Captain
. . . Crack, he gets the stick."
"A can of slops, a can of slops . . ." (this is what we called
the weak coffee) .
Our words awoke before we did, we had to wear these wet
clothes and all this leather.
"Well, Virgil and I were saying: 'A couple of wounded Huns
are still over there in the woods; we'll go see.' But we'd hardly
taken a few steps than we got minnies and more minnies . . ."
"That's where you made your mistake. They can put up a
fight while they're over there. But in combat, if you give them a
load of knife in the belly, that's another story."
I raised the canvas a bit; from that angle the trench was
surprisingly small, just a man-sized ditch, and all you could
see above it was sky.
A shell exploded further up, with a rapid shower on the
branches. Through the loophole I could see a bit of field, a dead
man frozen and stuck to the ground like a leaf in the ice in a
pond. Corporal Thielment was shooting away (at what? I sus-
pected he was warming up on dead bodies) . A red belt around
his neck, a blue one around his waist, and he was wearing two
sweaters under his open coat; a pale rifleman's vest was sticking
out beyond them. Though he seemed heavy and callous, he
jumped every time he fired.
The leaves on one of the trees were turning yellow; the sun
was probably rising somewhere.
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Decoq went by dragging one leg and groaning: "I'd rather
get one good bullet and have it over with." His expression was a
bit distracted, like the nudity of a face. Thielment said: "He's
suffering a lot, but insists on staying; he's got real guts."
And so, even in man against himself, I recognized cruelty
present everywhere.
On slop detail, we got to the kitchen too early. We could
wait; I sat down on a sack of rice and the corporal and Gallas
went for a turn in the village. The coffee was warming on a
bright fire; we stretched our hands out toward it.
Pieces of green meat had been put on the table, and empty
cans, in groups of five. A broken-down wall with several plants
and gilliflowers on it separated us from the church. Cessac, on
all fours, coming out of the packing-case where he slept, was
astonished to see us so soon.
We rummaged about and found some chocolate. Cessac of-
fered us a drop of rum. (The former cook, he said, had been sent
back to his company because he had a woman in town.) We
found peace in material things, that day, through our attention
to them. When we were ready to leave, a minnie whistled by and
exploded, not too far off, with the noise of a huge door someone
had just closed brusquely, I went out and could see nothing except
a long branch bending and falling silently. But corporal Caronis
jostled me and rushed into the kitchen; his sleeves were covered
with dirt, but he didn't wipe it off. "Six paces away. I looked
at myself to see if I was all there."
"They're sure being nasty," said Normand. "And the way
this weather goes on and on." Little old Gallas came back at a
trot. Around his neck was the towel he also used as a scarf.
Another and louder whistle, closer to us, and frightening. We
all fell on our faces and remained motionless a moment, our
minds and our bodies shut off. When it exploded, Caronis yelled:
"Stay down, the splinters are flying." I saw or thought I saw an
ominous splinter sail heavily by.
It was all over. Cessac came out of his packing case again.
Gallas cut himself a piece of the cheese he had gone to buy; we
broke out laughing because Blanchet said: "If they'd set up their
gun fifteen feet closer, it would have been curtains." (He should
have said fifteen feet further to the rear.) We were still fright-
ened, or at least we were conscious of the shell, and indifferent
to everything else.
"If I ever come out of this," Cessac said (he was the calmest
on account of his packing case) , Til have things to tell about.
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111 gather all the kids around me and go to it. If one of them
says it isn't true, bang, a slap on his face.' 7
The second minnie, when it exploded in front of the kitchen,
didn't hurt anyone, not even the turkey, who clucked away and
pulled on his string. But the first one had broken the leg of a
dragoon and hit two horses. One died, the other, his chest and
left shoulder all ripped up, remained standing and, going a bit
away from us, would only show his good side.
2.
It is difficult to explain the nature of my feelings on these
two occasions, and what strange resemblance they assumed in
my mind; this did not pertain to the events themselves but to a
particular quality which was to them, if you like, what the level
of a lake is to the water in it. This quality first appeared to me
in deceptive fashion in so much as it was not the usual perspec-
tive to which it seemed that the events of war ought to raise me.
This or that sad account, as I listened to it, participated in
this, more or less, but did not raise me to its height, and besides
it seemed to me an injustice. Here, I'd say to myself, is a singu-
larly vital kind of delight, like plunging one's bayonet into the
enemy's belly; but, at the next lower level, I found myself ex-
cuded from it, while at the same time it inspired me with coolness
and a sort of assurance through which I perceived the existence
of cruelty. Similarly, in place of fear, I found there a rather
tender regret about life.
I know quite well that people are frequently considered to
have such feeling, but in the circumstances they seemed new and
approached me as does a light that someone is bringing.
I had often been astonished at my indifference; I felt, even
on leaving you, no other sadness than the one that yours obliged
me to feel, nor, besides, any great or tenacious desire for adven-
ture. From this also rose the fact that, in the interval between
my ideas or my worries, I hardly possessed the manner of feel-
ing and of continued interest that one shows toward things and
on which depends our dignity, among other things. If a stranger
had come up and unexpectedly given me an order, I believe I
would have obeyed through negligence before thinking of asking
the reason.
To tell the truth, I suppose that this is a common weakness.
And the most usual emotions in other people appear to me as
probably volitional and of artificial character, just as they were
for me when I was diligent at showing them. So that, having until
that point found myself in all circumstances slightly inferior to
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what circumstances demanded of me, I found myself raised by
war to a level that was not that of war but of the preceding peace.
Then came a time when I perceived feelings of exceptional
freshness and yet firm and fully formed. They appeared along
with insignificant events, and for this reason struck me all the
more.
Goudinot the cyclist was to bring back for me, from Com-
piegne where he went to buy things for the company, some paper,
a pen, and an inkstand with a hinged cover. I thought of them
and turned them about in my imagination from every possible
angle; and I beguiled myself by expecting them for a whole day.
And I'll be near you again, in a warm furnished room. This
thought opens me and tears me suddenly before I have time to
reflect; it is hardly even an idea.
But more than the others, it was the continuous and simple
sensation of my existence and of its gravity that made my slight-
est thoughts seem like things I believed. I found again a trace of
my first fear or cruelty through a sort of transmutation of all
this and even in the delight I experience today from the warmer
air, the pink and white fog, and those pigeons flying away.
HOW GLINT Z DIED
l.
A NEW WOODEN CROSS in the quarry: "Glintz, killed November 25,"
now stands beside Clech's, whom they buried the day before I
arrived.
We had just come back from soup detail; the evening before
I had seen Glintz writing, bent over in his hole, on a violet-colored
card.
After the quarry, one had to walk slowly, otherwise the two
walls of the communication trench sent our full pots and our
guns bounding back and forth. When the men saw us go by, they
unhooked their mess cans and began to wipe them out with bread.
I put the soup on a ledge and went to find Blanchet. In a
group formed along between two loopholes I saw Jules-Charles
sewing up a package. "You're all witnesses, there are 110 francs
in this purse. I don't want them to come tell me afterward ..."
Blanchet was holding the thread, the needle, and the label for
the address. So everyone was busy about Glintz. "He was my
buddy," said Gallas, usually hunched over and more so today.
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JEAN PAULHAN
"We've been on binges together, he wasn't proud."
"I know what happened," Blanchet said to me, "there were
three of them setting out barbed wire with corporal Delieu and
Tolleron. They managed to carry him back, he had a bullet right
through his heart. All he said was: 'Well, anyway, I was killed
on the field of honor.' "
"Why 'anyway'?"
"That's how it was. They were just half way between the
Germans and us. They were crawling along, they could hardly
be seen. Anyway, they must have real good marksmen. There
was only one bullet, and Glintz got it."
Blanchet spoke to me calmly, without showing excessive
sadness; I expected to hear other accounts in the squad, but I
happened onto the great moment in the life of corporal Caronis:
he was going to pass the whole afternoon in the village preparing
for the distribution of cartridges. And Delieu was giving him an
address and a few pieces of advice:
"She's the only one in the dump worth bothering about. You
just go in, you ask for a drink, and you can suggest it right away."
"Will she catch on?" Caronis was combing his mustache and
pulled a new fez from his sack.
"She will. And of course you offer her a drink or something."
After that, Delieu didn't seem to want to talk to me. Yes,
Glintz had been killed, that's that. One soldier less, and a good
one, he intended to say so.
These trips to the kitchen offered some pleasure, however.
As soon as we had left the communication trench, we came out
on the broad plateaus where, naturally, one could see the sky.
The mornings before dawn were loaded with cold grey air, less
cold than full of hatred; then rose a chunk of plushy pink cloud.
Sometimes the day became delightful, and the fields green under
the circle of poles; or else each tree was mixed with the fog and
the sun shone uselessly in a sky without light.
The soup boys each took his own way back. "I know the best
road." But we met again by the shell hole where the body of a
dead horse lay, its skin stretched and already thin, grey and more
transparent than a spider web. Then, in the middle of the quarry,
we would look at the crosses to see "if there were any new ones."
It was there that I found out about Glintz's death, with the sur-
prise and (I reproached myself about this) that sort of satisfac-
tion one gets from news of some important event.
I noted later on one attribute of our loss when I saw how we
missed Glintz. I didn't happen to think "if Glintz were here, I'd
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tell him . . . ;" but our eyes often looked for him in spite of us.
Here is the picture of him as it most often comes back to me:
his shining curly hair, his teeth, and his vaguely gypsy manner.
A fop no doubt, but, aside from the pejorative meaning of the
word, which did not concern us in the circumstances, he had been
for us an element of grace and of taste, like the presence of a
woman in the trenches.
Sievre had heard the news in the course of the day; he man-
aged to come to see us in the evening. He was furious: "So they're
sending men out thirty yards from the trenches to try to set up
barbed wire. The brass hats are all alike, doing big things with
the hide of the soldiers."
"Glintz volunteered to go," Blanchet answered.
Certainly none of us experienced the simple and irrevocable
regret that the death of a friend would have caused us in times of
peace. Perhaps we had the impression at this point of finally en-
tering into the real and dangerous war, and, in spite of ourselves,
the pleasure of an expectation now satisfied. Or, through a more
personal reflection, we felt vaguely that one chance for death had
occurred, and that it had not been ours.
But far more certainly I felt irritation and rancor against my
former respect for life, against my attachment to the living, and
the other feelings that had deceived us since they had been in-
sufficient and war had had to come. Through the casualness that
arose from war with regard to sacred bonds, war was for us like
another childhood.
2.
We resolved to avenge Glintz. How diligent I was when on
guard; to begin with, all I could see was a spot of mud, barbed
wire, and beets, my loophole's share of the view. So I sought out
a bush or a stone so that my eye might come to rest.
A bit of earth somewhere would fly into the air. I'd fix my
eyes on this point at once, making all the rest secondary to it; and
I'd aim with the greatest care. Then an object would appear, a
shovel, someone throwing mud, or a man's head; I'd shoot, and
that's all I knew about it.
At one place, where the German trenches were near ours, I
noticed one day an opening through which I thought I saw lighter
colored earth. When the opening became dark and closed up, I
realized that a soldier was looking. I fired; an arm rose above the
ground and waved from right to left three times. But on that day,
two of our men were killed.
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Berard went first. It was his fault; he jumped out of the
trench in full daylight to go rummage in a dead man's pack. As
for Lehmann, it happened at the bend in the communication
trench where the ditch was shallowest. We were finishing our
watch, his head must have stuck up above the parapet a moment.
A bullet hit him in the temple, he fell down, and almost at once
his face became yellow.
This Lehmann had joined us in a strange way. At Saint-
Denis he was an auxiliary, suffered from hernia, and passed six
days out of seven in the guardhouse; and he even escaped on the
seventh but came back before being listed as deserter. He must
have decided to go to the front. If he had done this as a volunteer,
he would have regained everyone's esteem. But either through
timidity, or because he didn't want to avail himself of honest feel-
ings, he jumped jail, stole a gun, even stole a copper pot from a
squad, and caught up with a detachment at Le Bourget. Once he
was in the company he stayed, neither more nor less courageous
than anyone else.
We stretched him out on the rear slope in his oilcloth cape
that made him look like a sailor. He was grey and expressionless,
already swollen as if his whole body was flowing toward his face.
It surprised us to see him thus made of thick flesh; formerly he
had made us think of his clumsiness and his anxiety.
They didn't die suddenly for everyone. For several weeks
the quartermaster continued to receive letters for them for
Glintz, on fine paper, already expressing regrets and worries;
his death had been the first and seemed to us to dominate the
later ones and represent them. The finality of each of them, con-
trary to what we accomplished against the enemy, worried us
and led less to a real impression than to an element of discourage-
ment. It seemed that we were first of all obliged to see only the
unfavorable side of war.
Delieu was beginning to say that, after all, Glintz had per-
haps been struck by a stray bullet. Otherwise the Germans would
have shot at him again, and at Tolleron.
Five days after Lehmann, Lesage, another man of our sec-
tion, whom I didn't know, was struck in the shoulder by a bullet
and was evacuated. It was through this incident that we learned
the true history of Glintz.
Caronis remained a whole week at Tracy-le-Mont. He didn't
come back until this evening, but he brought a rabbit. Delieu
went right off to get a frying pan and some fat.
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"I followed him through the field and got him with a stick."
Delieu was on his knees before the fire, he didn't answer.
Caroms was expecting no more compliments, so he stopped lying.
"I bought him at a farm down below the plateau. If I had gone
there yesterday, it would have been no soap."
"Why so?"
"She charged me two francs, that's not much. When I was
getting ready to go, the shop girl says to me: 'She was keeping
the rabbit for her husband.' That's how it is, you fatten one up
and think about when hell be back. But yesterday she heard her
husband had been killed. Where? I forget the name, but I'd rec-
ognize it if you said it. A cute little woman of twenty-two, she
has kids, it's tough. Well, she didn't want the rabbit any more."
''Three men in the company have been shot up, one just
awhile ago," said Delieu.
"And in their lines, we don't know what's going on. When I
saw Glintz killed so neatly, I thought 'there's something rotten
in the air.' "
"As for Glintz," Delieu answered gravely, "no use wonder-
ing any more. Our men killed him. It was Pourril, of section three.
They hadn't warned him that the patrol was going out, he thought
at first they were Germans."
"Well," said Caronis, "it was death in the face of the enemy,
anyway." (That was the word Glintz used.) And, having re-
flected: "All the same, we've got some good shots too."
I had had the same thought. Thus Glintz's second death
didn't worry us any more than his first; but, even though horri-
ble, and so different, it strengthened us to this kind of life.
POLIO'S STRENGTH
POLIO WAS BENT OVER, looking like a hunchback; he plunged into
the mud and bounded out again. He was splattered right up to
his cotton-like beard. "What a phenomenon," said the young
lieutenant.
At the turn in the communication trench I perceived for a
moment the spinney we took yesterday from the Germans, now
set about with barbed wire up to your middle. The first men of
the section slowly entered the tunnel. We stood there pawing the
ground, and Polio turned to me and said: "Did you hear that?
Guys shouldn't say things like that." The stems and beet leaves
were hanging from the bank, as if from a flower pot. Those were
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the last things I saw before descending into the darkness of the
cave.
The quartermaster sent Chaize and Gallas to get the bread
ration from the quarry, where the mules stopped. Blanchet spread
four tent canvases on the ground; the distant lights of sergeants
leading their sections around props were quite ample. I already
heard the men pulling sand and wisps of straw up under them.
(Polio was supposed to save a place for me.)
Meanwhile I was going to right and left. What a huge cave.
A camp of Algerians was asleep on the other side of a rope. When
I tried to cross it the sentinel stretched out his arm: "Zouave,
go 'way, friend."
At this point the passage rose toward the daylight; its props
were covered with moss; a square opening took the form of a
window, but the thick haze stood up among the first trees and
protected us.
The bread arrived. From the distance I saw the heavy
shadows giving off a white smoke. Chaize had managed to spill
one sack; we were to divide the dirty loaves into equal parts.
When this was done, and when I had run through the cave cry-
ing out, "Come get your bread, sections," I went to look for Polio.
When you've stuck your bayonet in the ground, first of all
you hang on the hilt the strap that holds the three cartridge-
pouches; then, from its strap, the canteen can swing all about.
On the handle you put a few drops of wax, then you stick the
candle on; it never holds very well. Then all you need to do is
put your head on your pack. You'll sleep better than in the
trenches because you can stretch your legs out; but the night
will be cold with all the drafts.
"I got a package," Polio said. "I also got two letters, and
you've got to read them to me. I know one's from my wife."
Sure enough, first of all about the kids: "... and the babies
are walking now. When your cousin came to see them, they took
her to Panier-Fleuri . . . The customers aren't very numerous,
and when they're old ladies they always have to argue about the
price. But don't you worry about us, for we have the house, I'm
in good health, and I hope this letter finds you likewise. You boys
are like gypsies, and lots of courage to you."
When I had finished he said: "You can read me the other
tomorrow. I don't know who it's from; I don't get very many
letters." The package contained a muffler, some much-darned
sox, matches, a perfume flask full of brandy, and dried nuts in
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every empty corner. "She likes to fix up packages," Polio said.
As if he were embarrassed for me to see all this attention.
"There's no use talking," said Gallas, "women do all that to
amuse themselves. There was one who nursed me at the hospital
who used to say: 'What you've been through! I certainly admire
you.' That's got nothing to do with it."
Delieu: "Some women and kids start out that way. There
were twenty of them left at Tracy during the bombardment, hug-
ging close in the cellars. Then afterward they made them bury
the dead. That, I tell you, that's the worst of all."
Thielment: "Well, we haven't anything to complain about
then. Hell, as for food, we've got wonderful sleeping quarters."
Thielment might groan and grumble, but he was a good man
for war. He liked to fight, and in peace time he had no equal for a
good brawl. A born soldier, besides. But this war had gotten off
to a bad start for he'd just got leave for forty days; one doesn't
forget this sort of thing. Out of spite, he never wrote home. When
the folks asked him "We don't even know whether you're dead
or not," he would say: "Oh ho, they're afraid to lose a good man
like me." He also thought that things would be better next time.
But for Polio and me, this is the only war.
2.
It was five p.m., but we had nothing to do except go to sleep
again or talk, and just sit here on the edge of war.
"Well then," Caronis was saying, "when we arrived at the
village, me and Virgil, another minnie went off ten paces away.
I says to myself: see here, they mustn't make any mistakes . . ."
Polio woke up and decided he'd tell me about his first battle:
"That evening they asked which of us wanted to go to All Souls'
mass. You can think what you want about God, but when it comes
to the dead ... I said I'd go. Well, the next morning, reveille at
four; I thought it was so we could get to mass earlier. There was
a fire in the house, it was nice and cozy. They made us go out on
the road and walk for a quarter of an hour; then they said 'Pile
arms.' We waited. They could have left us by the fire; I could
see the whole batallion was there; so we were all going together.
We started out again, and marched and marched. 'On your knees,
at five paces.' I was surprised when it began to rain bullets and
more bullets . . ."
Then Polio stopped, and there it was. That was all; it didn't
occur to him that the leader had been mistaken or that they had
fallen into a trap. Even more vociferously, he was astonished
that men went to war and killed each other.
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Virgil: "When we were in the store, I showed her my
heart was in the right place. But she said no, she'd say Tm too
young.' No one ever put me off so long."
Normand: "It's like me in Morocco. A whole year I never
climbed on one."
Virgil turned toward us: "If only we had Polio's dame. Do
you remember, at Algiers?"
How could Polio allow us to speak that way? Suddenly I
imagined his peacetime life, and how in that too he was as help-
less and as destitute as in war. Wasn't he astonished at heart how
men work and get married and live and have a woman all their
own? "O.K., she's just ugly," Virgil said.
You can talk a long time alone with a man, but nothing tells
us more about his strength or his weakness than a few words
another man says to him.
Tolleron: "We marched along, choking with rage. We would
have liked to yell right out. How can you yell on an empty
belly?"
Thielment: "If we had at least been dressed. The leggings
the government gives us are just so much goose liver."
When would Polio accept war to the point of letting himself
complain? But his only resource lay in admiring everything,
without distinction.
Suddenly Thielment started off at a gallop after little Le Coz,
waving a stick. Le Coz fell down on purpose and lay there. Then
Thielment threw himself on the ground beside him.
Normand: "The rivers go back up in that direction."
"They go off to the sea."
"And the sea?"
Turquet said suddenly: "Take my old woman, she's forty-
three. She's just foaled again . . ." Around them was the dark
cave, bright near the candles. A fog of words and dust surrounded
the sleeping men in dirt-grey covers. Roseau raised a card, Ferrer
with his yellow skin bent over and lit his pipe sideways from the
flame. When the last candle had gone out, it was the real night,
long forgotten. (In the trenches night is more human than people
think, and is never entirely black.)
3.
Caronis: "Corporal Barren was lucky anyway. He had a
whole belt-full of dough to spend at the war. When he was at
Bordeaux he said to himself: 'O.K., I'm going on a spree/ He
had only thirty francs left afterward, he was finished off by the
first bullet."
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Tolleron: "Not Berard. He saved everything, someone
stole it."
Thus they spoke of the dead with benevolent irony, like two
men talking about another who has just left them.
"If that isn't stupid," said Thielment, "always waking us up
too early."
"We've got plenty of time. Why not read me the other letter
while we're here." Polio took it from his pocket, all crumpled up;
obviously he suspected something; perhaps he had already re-
ceived one like it.
"Mr. Polio, I am one of your friends writing to you because
I can't refrain from telling you that your wife is playing around
while you're fighting for France. It's with a waiter at the Citadel
Cafe. Every morning he tells us all about it: last night we did
so-and-so and we did this-and-that. Besides, Mr. Polio, you must
know that the same thing was going on when you were about to
go, with the dark little corporal ..."
"That," Polio said to me, "means corporal Barron, they were
talking about it awhile ago. But the rest isn't true, there's been
none of that since. I know it, she promised me on all that's holy,
the day we left. And when she promises . . ." He was talking
loudly; he might seem bold with me, but he wanted Virgil to hear.
She made this promise the day we left, on the heads of their
two little girls, or on her mother's. And Polio accepted it; he knew
he was worthy of promises and of their being kept. So I noticed
and admired the unexpected strength that he had acquired from
war. (He couldn't be very clever though, nor very brave.)
I imagine that the war was made for Polio or for something
that resembled him and also almost missed believing in and lov-
ing life. Just as a house of prostitution furnishes love for the
man who couldn't find it elsewhere, through timidity or indiffer-
ence, so it gives that coarse power of life and death about which
one cannot forget that one once possessed it. What would Polio
fear later on in other men similar to those he had killed, or in
men he might have killed? Through war, more intensely than
through other events, yet of the same nature and as it were a
magnified appearance of them, he would become accustomed to
the rest.
THE SHELTER THAT CAVED IN
1.
As NIGHT WAS COMING ON, corporal Caronis suddenly cried out:
"Attack!" He cleared the parapet and I heard him fall on the
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leaves. Rechia and Ferrer, without saving a word, jumped right
after him. I followed them, I ran, and got hooked onto a tree. I
jumped into a ditch; there they were. "We've captured the ad-
vance post/' they said.
Two dead Germans cluttered up the communication trench.
Another had run away after having struck Rechia, whose lip was
bleeding. But Caronis had been stabbed by a bayonet. The whole
business had hardly taken more place in my preoccupations than
it has to tell about it here. But we had to replace Caronis, and I
was elected,
No doubt I deserved to be named corporal, but I would have
had difficulty explaining why. Above all I felt a freedom that
didn't fit in with duty, and the specifically military part of my
life interested me very little. I was diligent about it, that's all I
can say.
I shared corporal Delieu's dugout and his meals.
Delieu was heavy set with regular features, pink skin, and
well combed hair; even though all this was not lacking in vul-
garity, it gave him an air, that evening, of a village lord. The
men about him had grey faces, and were holding their hands
out toward the fire. It was raining out there, and inside too,
when the water that had collected passed right through the can-
vas stretched under the branches of the roof.
When night fell, we all went back to our sheds. I missed
Blanchet; not that Delieu hadn't welcomed me cordially, but he
worried me by his assurance and his certainty of being superior
to me.
I was diminished with respect to him by having a broader
education. I don't know why people recognize an advantage
among cultured men, for the most certain effect of the lessons
one learns is first of all to put an end to all self-confidence. Per-
haps, feeling the danger that threatens them, and trying to avoid
it, they find themselves more totally untainted by knowledge
than anyone in the world. (The same happens to men one knows
have been in jail, or some other story: if they are not humble,
they must have more self-assurance than others.)
Blanchet asked to go along with me on patrols. Or we went
together to set up wire hoops at night.
2.
It seemed that our feelings of affection or antipathy had
taken second place and that war had subordinated them to knowl-
edge of the strength or weakness of each of us a knowledge that
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was reliable and gave great simplicity to the new order into
which we realized we had come.
Although Delieu spoke little, it was evident that he didn't
approve of my friendship with Blanchet; so, about this time, he
assumed over me a rather marked ascendancy. This did not rise
from his mind nor even from his will; but he had a certain way
that struck me of keeping posted and of being abreast of things.
For example, I was seated in my dugout busy cleaning my
gun. My legs stuck out and hung down toward the path. There
are mornings when you don't know what's lacking, a can of rum,
bad news, or working with a group; you haven't got a start, you
aren't yet living for that day. So it was that I found myself a bit
removed from what I was doing, and from everything else too;
and I perceived this by a sudden recall, Delieu standing next to
me: "So what, you're dreaming about mother?" he said to me.
He had come back because he was supposed to set up thirty
hurdles in an hour. Beyond his bare words I sensed real strength.
I couldn't get morally reset at once, nor even physically, in this
clumsy position; so I couldn't gain the self-assurance I needed.
Blanchet took ill, his knee swelled and hurt him. I seldom
left him during the marches, and he leaned on me. Once several
shells fell near our company; the men ran to shelter, but we two
remained alone on an exposed terrain.
One evening I had to rub him with alcohol; then I lay down
in Jules-Charles' dugout in order to be near him. Delieu sent
another corporal, Beaufrere, to call me, a gay fellow wearing
a row of shiny buttons on his vest, who kept singing, and added
"Marie" to everything he said. I answered that I wasn't coming;
Beaufrere turned his back and said "O.K., Marie."
So I slept with Jules-Charles, who had a stomach-ache dur-
ing the night; he groaned and tossed, trying to stretch out his
long legs, and almost gave me a kick in the forehead. During the
following days, Delieu didn't show that he was annoyed with
me; I merely noticed how severe his judgments were: "I know
some guys who hid behind trees while they were fighting at
Carlemont," he said. "Not to mention any names, they were
Virgil and Dubuc. You can tell them if you like."
When Blanchet was better, I began to see Delieu again. He
had the same influence on me as before; since we had no special
topic of conversation, no doubt I usually sought for subjects that
would interest him or flatter him. As for my first pride at having
resisted him, I sometimes found that my pleasure from it had
weakened, and I had the feeling one has when, letting one's
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thoughts wander and having just lost, by chance, the particular
one that pleased you, you remain with this confused pleasure,
forgetting its cause, and feeling that it escapes you more and more.
Word went about that a general attack was being prepared.
Delieu said it had been set for Tuesday morning. Monday eve-
ning, before returning to the front-line trenches, I inspected the
guns in my squad.
Delieu was excited, he laughed and spoke loudly. But when
he pointed out that Blanchet was not there, his tone was very calm.
I knew it and was annoyed about it. Blanchet had gone to Tracy
on some fatigue duty. It seemed to me that by not returning he
was betraying our friendship. I answered: "He didn't put his
name on the sick list. I'll punish him, that's too easy."
I reflected at once that Blanchet might have been taken ill
at Tracy, and at the same moment I recognized that I had spoken
to please Delieu.
It was a night of chalky dugouts and moonlight; a cold wind
blew through the trench. A wounded man was crying from time
to time "Stretcher, over here!" with so loud a voice that we
thought it was a trap. I had new sacks put on the ground and
had the battlements made ready. An abandoned coat, covered
with frost, was curled up in the corner of the dugout like a little
girl crying, her head and stomach on the ground.
About eleven, Delieu passed along the orders for the night:
dig an attack trench, and especially nobody sleep.
Tolleron, red and laughing to himself, imagined the Germans
jumping down on us from the bank. In his hand he gripped a
grenade round as an apple, and swayed through constraint at
not being able to shout. The night was calm, besides. Except that
Ferrer thought at one moment that he saw in the periscope two
men crawling in front of the trench to our left. I ran to tell the
next squad. But on returning I bumped into a pile of dirt that
had just slid down, and I almost fell. A man arose heavily and
disengaged himself from his ruined shelter; it was Delieu.
"I wasn't asleep/* he said.
I was willing to believe that Delieu hadn't been asleep. But
he had felt he had to affirm his innocence, and affirm it to me.
Meanwhile I told him what we had seen, and he answered; it
was only slowly that I realized the victory with which our con-
versation had been charged.
The night and the morning passed without an attack. Now
Delieu could regain his assurance; at last he was inferior to me,
and I could profit by his very assurance.
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I didn't see Blanchet until the next day, at Tracy. His knee
was swollen again, and he was to go to the infirmary for a few
days. He said: "It seems that someone complained about my not
being there. Here's why I wasn't," and he made his sore knee
crack. So someone had told him what I had said to Delieu. I had
been weak and thoughtless; and I also felt more keenly the joy
of my revenge. But my friendship with Blanchet was not at an
end, for I had become worthy of him.
Even though I was troubled by these worries, I found my-
self solidly held and fixed at a higher level. Here began a half-
unconscious life that set me securely in this country and in these
adventures. Through the contrast I felt the ruling order more
strongly. In like fashion, a man, taking his first mistress, rec-
ognizes in himself a new life; he is astonished to see that he is
not entirely its master nor its inventor.
THE WOUNDED RETURN
THE FIFTH, SEVENTH AND EIGHTH companies took up quarters in
the same block as we at Tracy. We had been out together the
night before and played cards or caricoco. The officers' gravity
and something in the air, I don't know what, convinced us that
the attack was near. Delieu sang: "They broke my fiddle 'cause
my heart is French;" but we preferred: "She's not the woman
for you, just look at her pearls" and "Marinette," which we all
took up in chorus. We were more serious when we awoke, and
at times we had the impression that there was an abyss before us.
"No use getting worked up beforehand," Polio explained.
"But afterward, when it's all over, I always say: 'Huh! so that's
what you've been through, that's what you saw, and up close,
just like you'd read a letter from your mother."
"After all, the only risk is that you might get killed." This
was the reflection that ordinarily put an end to all others; it had
something satisfying about it.
Sievre worried me, he was certain he wouldn't come out of
it, and considered that "the whole business got off to a bad start;"
for him, "if it hadn't been for his self-esteem, he would have pre-
tended to be sick." I had a good deal of trouble setting him
straight again. At the other end, a corporal of the Eighth was
yelling that this was going to be the big push, and that we were
about to see the greatest day of our lives. This exaggeration dis-
pleased me, just as did that of Sievre, by the way both had of
questioning war. Things were not so simple for me, and it was
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only after some time that I managed to find the attitude that
suited me.
At seven o'clock, the order was given to the Seventh Com-
pany to set out. It left along the road. At the same moment, the
artillery fire began to roll over our heads. We saw flashes on the
Church square; it was less a square than a street widened out a
bit, as if through complacency toward the church.
A cavalryman went by at a gallop; the street was deserted
again. A girl in wooden shoes, clumsy in her walk, crossed it
carrying two letters.
Planes in the sky; one fled rapidly, and behind it slow round
clouds exploded and melted away. The five convoy cars arrived,
with bread, meat and coal. A sergeant called out "Thirty loaves!
Fifty loaves." A Zouave cried "Pretty mess," speaking of the
white cooking grease he had just dropped into the mud.
Rifle fire to the north. I climbed up, and from the attic win-
dows I could only see the hill and the trunks of black trees on
the red ground. It was raining. Then a lone rifleman came up the
street, his throat covered with blood. He was walking stooped
over, his hands in his pockets, humming. An old woman who
seemed to ask him: "Are you hurt very badly?" She was wear-
ing a bonnet and had just come down the street. We called out
to him: "Did you get that this morning?" He answered "Yes."
2.
The artillery attack started up again about three o'clock;
this was the signal for our departure. At the very moment we
formed ranks, two German prisoners, fat and well clothed, led
by a Zouave, came up the path to the colonel's post. All at once
we were reassured, all was well; we weren't happy, strictly
speaking, but felt that a constraint that had been weighing on
us had been lifted.
Wounded soldiers were coining up along the road and passed
us. One of them was walking erect, his head thrown back, show-
ing on his face both pain and repose; his hands, stuck into his
blue belt, were no doubt holding his belly.
But we went forward with a strange emotion of avidity and
of gratitude; it seemed to us that our life in the trenches and our
thankless diligence were approaching an end. Old images of war
came back to us meanwhile, paths, evening marches among the
leaves, and above all the noise of artillery. Thus we thought we
were returning to order, and the roads had an expression of
great beauty.
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JEAN PAULHAN
We had taken a shortcut through the woods. At the first halt,
we stopped by a wounded man propped up against an oak tree.
Near him was a bucket of water. The order was passed along to
"keep your cans ready." "If they give us rum," we said, "it means
trouble; if it's tea, we're all right." Finally, nothing appeared at
all, and we drank water out of the bucket. As for the wounded
man, he'd got a stray bullet in his hip; he wished us good luck,
and said to "do as good a job as his company had."
Two more hours of marching and evening fell. Then we got
lost, I think, until we discovered a village of cabins on the other
side of the ravine. Arab riflemen were squatting there, warming
themselves at their fires; a goldsmith bent over seemed to be
working on delicate things; isn't that a woman I see with her
bracelets and her gilded shoulders? But we had to cross the
hollow, and Delieu fell into a mud puddle.
We were ordered to set up quarters; with a candle I examined
these dugouts without fires. In the first was a Zouave with spots
of blood on his cheeks. He merely said: "I don't feel so good."
"Where are you hurt?" "No." "Where is your company?" "No."
He had a heavy beard and a wild look in his eye.
The next shed was a big one, and hardly wet at all. We went
in; Delieu scraped the most insignificant spots of mud on his cape
with his knife; Blanchet went to sweep up wisps of straw here
and there. The others ate or went to sleep.
Young trees, whose trunks had been hacked by shells, were
held up only by a few fibers and the support they received from
their highest branches resting on neighboring trees. The edge of
the wood was over there thirty yards away; on the highway,
the wounded were going toward Tracy, others were awaiting
stretchers and groaning in a low voice.
Then I learned that we had captured two lines of trenches;
as for the rest, the testimony was contradictory, yet it touched
me by its sincerity and its gravity. A burly sergeant told how
he had captured a plot of French soil singlehanded. This love of
country, which in other circumstances he would have considered
ridiculous, now seemed to him quite appropriate. "And you know
the big adjutant of the Eighth, the one with the three medals, he
was killed. He went off first, and the others couldn't run fast
enough to catch up with him. There was a real guy ..."
Suddenly, I caught sight of Sievre. Two stretcher bearers
set him down beside the ditch; above his knees were stained
dressings. Perhaps his leg was gone, for I could see nothing under
the covers where his calf should be. I didn't ask him. any ques-
tions, I merely said: "You don't look too badly off." He answered:
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JEAN PAULHAN
"Oh, I can still laugh." He waited, then turned his head a bit
and recognized me: "What do you expect, old timer, what's got
to be has got to be."
When I returned, an Arab rifleman, his forehead bandaged
up, was moaning near the dugouts. The man who brought him
tried to get him to go in, but he couldn't bend his body or his
head, and both of them stood there awkwardly at the doorway.
3.
As for our feelings, they had become weak and confused as
suffering for these wounded men had become no more than a
mere accident, while at the same time it marked them all with
an identical character; and also as they became more numerous.
At certain moments they even resembled workmen coming from
the factory in the evening that same haste, that same indiffer-
ence to their surroundings.
Ordinarily we can only see sick people who are bound to us
by family or friendship; in such cases there is no hesitation. But
now the same thing happened as does with words like naive or
egotistical, or many others: we understand them perfectly in
some special instance, but when we try to go a bit further, and
wonder about this one or that one, their meaning escapes us and
it seems that they might apply to just about anyone. Thus our
feelings, if insufficiently prepared, are taken unawares.
In order to supplement them, however, an abundance of
ideas and reflections was forming in us. We saw this clearly when
we suddenly heard the news brought by a cavalryman that the
attack had stopped for the moment, and that we were to stay
right there.
It appears that the point of departure of these reflections
lay, for me, in the words Sievre used in accepting his wound as a
simple and necessary thing. That was all he needed to get through
his head that there were very good reasons for fighting. And I
thought I perceived on the faces of all these wounded men, each
recalling the other, the pride with which they seemed to say:
"Am I not a real soldier?" These men would have admitted
anything except that they had been wrong in getting wounded.
For this reason it never occurred to us to be sorry for them.
About eleven o'clock, we heard, behind the door: "Have
you room for another casualty?" "The first-aid station is further
down." "Well, how about a little water?" "Come in." It was an
old man whose arm was dangling, blood was coagulated on his
sleeve and on his hand. Lapouyade gave him a can of water, and
184
JEAN PAULHAN
Ferrer stuck an Algerian cigarette in his mouth. When he had
left, Turquet said to Ferrer: "Big boy, he's better off than you."
SONGS IN THE NEXT TRENCH
WELL, WE FINALLY arrived at the new trench, but through impos-
sible paths and bushes. We also passed through tunnels and
slopped about in puddles of water and ice. (Three or four shells
fell near our road. In daylight, machine guns would no doubt
have cut us down, but at night the danger was less great and at
the same time was accepted more willingly as something appro-
priate. Night fits in so well with those risks one tolerates with-
out attacking or without defending oneself; night seems here to
have been returned to her innate dangers.)
We no longer noticed the falling snow; the trench was in
total disorder because it had been captured only the day before.
Are those dead men on the parapet ours, or are they Germans?
We also questioned ourselves, gropingly. Then we began to dig
out the earth under us and set up battlements on either side. A
tree bowed its branches and its bizarre leaves toward me. It was
Christmas eve.
Ferrer didn't notice that there were two bodies at our feet
propped against the firing ledge; but, in order to be sure, I
touched their callous hands as one feels a leg that has gone stiff.
The night had become even darker.
Decoq had remained with us in mournful obstinacy. He
dragged his leg and groaned incessantly. Before the pain had
seized him, he had been a sort of hero, we said that he had taken
a German trench single-handed and brought back the machine
gun under his arm. A shell splinter had just crushed his head;
there was no way even to carry him away. We passed the word
along. Light appeared at ground level, and a few bullets whistled
by; all this murmur stopped short.
"Has anyone seen Kaddour?" Delieu asked me later on. "He
has disappeared twice already in a way I don't like." He said
this without seeming to intend to inform us. Kaddour had been
suspected of betraying us for several days.
At this point I saw five dead men suddenly rise on a mound.
They seemed so tall to me at first that I didn't recognize them.
(Their size was intrinsically that of a red moon one sees by
chance over a garden wall.) But, on comparing them to the
stones and the shell holes around them, I quickly managed to
give them human size once more.
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JEAN PAULHAN
Day broke, even and pale, and one could hardly grasp it at
any given moment. The snow made a pile on a harrow and on a
few dead bodies.
Behind us was a spot where the entanglements that had pro-
tected the trench the day before had not been pierced. Four
Zouaves were caught in them, pressed against each other; they
raised their heads and arms and kept the thorny wires about
their foreheads.
But a different sensation came to us with respect to the dead
men lying before us in the space that separated us from the
enemy; all I can say is that they were less friendly, they were
pointless dead men who had not succeeded. Ferrer made this
clearer when he said: "We've got to do their job all over again."
We also saw two or three dead Germans.
The sergeant went by repeating: "On your guard. If they
come out of their holes, everyone lie flat on the edge of the trench,
and shoot." But where would they come from? I tried to see,
and concentrated my hatred on that invisible enemy with the
same uncertainty as my view over their lines of defense. It was
a little later that we heard them singing for the first time.
2.
The branches were holding chunks of flesh and clothing high
above my head. "Do you see those steaks on the tree?" "Our
neighbors out there, I ask you, what have they got against us?"
But I was touched to see Ferrer put three colored cards on
the ground and look at them, the Bayeux Tapestry. How pleasant
it was to talk with him. No, he had found them on a dead man,
he said. From the same corpse came a package of letters and that
violet-colored magazine. This interrupted conversation touched
me more than all the dead bodies. It seemed to me that, after fall-
ing to the rear, I penetrated, by this chance, into the heart of war.
Then the day passed. We had canned beef and drank rum or
cold coffee from our canteens. I was still thirsty; we could see a
stream glisten as it crossed the field in the night; running water
is a sweet thing. A lazy day, yet so full; unaccustomed confidence
in our souls persuaded us that it had been a valuable one.
Polio asked me for a knife; and moving my hand toward my
pocket I was surprised that my movement was so slow. We
weren't working any more, we hardly even spoke, for the Ger-
mans were not to suspect that we were there. Each of us had
returned into himself, and was isolated; and it would be difficult
to describe my attitude at that moment by its real characteristics.
It struck me rather by its resemblance to those moments at
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JEAN PAULHAN
which one recognizes oneself, without anguish or any other feel-
ing with a name, as separated from all exterior things, and above
all from anything one might call an accent, a smile, or a nuance
of word, for one is abandoned at another level and as it were
gone down more deeply. The thought one can not avoid, at this
instant, remains and obsesses the memory. It seemed to me that
I was about to go into a comparable state, this time not by staking
my body or my soul, but under the influence and the weight of
events.
The wretchedness of these lacerated bodies and earth all
about me was so complete that it finally appeared awkward and
as it were intentional. It was not at all likely that, in our own
land, we should be deprived of water, room, and fruit, all those
things in which our country is rich, and keep only the lesser
part of our life, as did the former dead.
I did not feel superior to such poverty, not at all; but pre-
cisely for this reason it seemed to me like the effect of some
benevolence or goodness in things, trying to justify me. Thus the
edges of a vase might be lowered to the level of the water they
hold.
The songs began again about four o'clock in a German trench
we could not see. They were Latin hymns, and came to us in
clouds. Through them we were led to imagine a gathering of
young men sure of themselves, and their gravity.
3.
As for my impassibility in the face of all these dead bodies,
I am surprised to note to what insignificant degree it was the
effect of my decisions or of my past enthusiasms, but rather on
the contrary of the state of mind to which the circumstances led
me without possible hesitation. How war must suit us, and be
sweet for us, when our diligence follows it so patiently.
We had however just found that this life of expectation and
assent was inferior to us. Through these songs. They brought us
an opportunity to go beyond it, they led us closer to it as would a
rope we need merely grasp to be dragged along. So it was that
we would run toward them with rifle gripped in our hand, our
hatred high for all those men singing on our land, where we were
silent. All was ready; it seemed that the exterior and interior
levels were confused at the very point from which life was to
start again.
The songs, things open to all feelings, served this simplicity
strongly, and at the same time were marked by it. If the gusts of
wind happened to displace them, we saw'our hatred displaced too.
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JEAN PAULHAN
Evening fell, and still we didn't attack. We couldn't light fires,
yet the moon began to light us. Kaddour had just returned. Delieu
questioned him: "But I stayed at the most dangerous place,"
he answered, "they kept me with the first section, I was with
corporal Monmayour when he was wounded. And Decoq was
killed. Look what got splashed up here, corporal." Up here*
were several brown spots on the collar of his cape, pieces of
Decoq's brains. Why did Kaddour's innocence cause us a sort of
disappointment ?
About eleven o'clock, the fatigue detail brought us a pot of
boiled beef, some rice and a bucket of cold coffee. While Beau-
frere was pouring a can for Leynaud, a grenade exploded stupidly
between them and cut up their faces. Then we were led back to
the rear. It seemed to us that we would have to do the whole
thing over again later on, and that today's start would serve us
no purpose.
THE DOUBLE ATTACK
1.
ONE IMAGE is stronger and more exterior than all my other
memories: ten soldiers rose from the ground and, having gotten
shuffled, began to run on a ridge in single file. They were slim, a
bit bent over, and the sides of their coats flapped; one fell, he
seemed merely to have kneeled down. How slowly then ran.
A few clods of dirt flew up near them; they seemed un-
armed, as slim as deer. Still running, they went down bit by bit
on the other side of the ridge. And all at once I couldn't see any-
thing, they had penetrated into the open earth somewhere.
In the tumult of the beginning of this battle, black smoke
rose all at once, like great flames, and then its edges were lost.
And the thousand noises of shells and bullets, thunder in the
sky, a chestnut exploding under the ashes, the song of a toad,
grasshoppers, bees, or houses in ruins. I took delight with child-
ish pleasure in their variety and their intensity, until I saw our
first attack take form in this way.
The ridge to our left was now deserted. On it I distinguished
another body stretched out near the ones that had semed so big
to me the day before; this new one was not covered with white
frost, as had been the others, but the bright color of the pants
caught one's eye.
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JEAN PAULHAN
A pale round sun rose; it seemed more like a moonlight moon
than a sun. The trench we were attacking lay entirely on the
other slope, so we wondered whether the first men had been suc-
cessful. We began to feel confident again when an hour or more
had passed.
"There's a Zouave coming back," said Blanchet. We could
see his little head appear then disappear. He was returning on a
run, no doubt, but with that same inconceivable slowness. "It's
a wounded man going to the first-aid station."
A taller man appeared; or rather I didn't see him until he
was right on top of the ridge. He seemed to me to be walking
backward, and stood out thus against the sky. Besides, his coat
was strangely tight about him. There was a short time during
which we wondered what that might mean. The liaison officer
called out to us as he passed: "All's well, the Fourth Zouaves took
the trenches." Our joy was increased, but at the same time our
uncertainty.
And then there were twenty or thirty men, more than we
had seen go off. They came back without walking any faster, but
in disorder, crossing and passing each other. When they arrived
opposite our trenches, they let themselves sink down, and I
could no longer see them. That was all.
We waited for a long time for the order that would permit
us, so we thought, to recapture the lost trench, and perhaps others
further on. No order came, and bit by bit our excitement waned.
All we could find to do was shoot at a crow tree into which a
German soldier was climbing. The day was extremely clear and
white. We saw a wounded man crawling along the ridge; then he
stopped and remained a long time motionless.
I went to the rear to get the soup. The shells were groping
above us: what did they think they'd accomplish in the forest?
We went out a stretch with two Zouaves of the Fourth. "In our
company we had at most twelve killed. Going, only two. And we
took some prisoners."
"During the counterattack we had to give ground. But we'll
be going back, we've got a lieutenant, a real one!" This confidence
gave me great pleasure.
The beef and the soup had to be heated in a dugout. The mule
had brought in a sack of Christmas packages; there was one for
Blanchet, I copied his parents' address from it. We took the road
back to the trench. Nothing had happened since our departure,
except that a little rain had fallen and the parapet was likely
to collapse in mud.
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JEAN PAULHAN
Ferrer and Langella came back too late from reconnoissance
and there was nothing left to eat. But the lieutenant had two cans
of monkey meat opened for them. It seemed to us suddenly that
the problem of their meal assumed great proportions.
2.
In all the events I have just recounted, and from the moment
of their occurrence, there was an element of memory by which I
have retained them and hold them firmly, as they hold me. It
was quite different for what followed; I surely escaped from my-
self the moment we crossed the parapet, over the top for the attack.
A strange room I'm in, waxed, with chandeliers, mirrors,
and old pictures. But from one of the beds projects a black cripple
in a shirt, a turban, and a red sash. I can't get up high enough to
see my wounded hip; I can feel it bound in dressings. So I stretch
out and feel myself fall back like a stone.
I thought the whole body of a man had landed on my chest,
and didn't dare to have a look yet. First of all I noted that I could
turn my head about, then open my eyes up into the air. Around
rne nothing but fresh earth. Suddenly I saw, lower down, the
lacerated body of Polio, I think, and another man; bodies without
souls, without flesh even. I could only see their lower half, mixed
with earth and cloth.
My whole life seemed to have become inconceivably slow.
I couldn't look consecutively at two things; between them I had
to shut my eyes. But I touched my hip, it was covered with my
blood, still flowing. Then a new feeling of freedom began to rise
within me and permeate me. It turned into thousands and thous-
ands of ideas. Through them I recognized myself, freed from all
the effort and all the time of these domains. This joy seemed to
me longer than a whole existence.
In the trench they took me to afterward (who picked me up?
I don't know) , I was at first disappointed. It was all over now,
the door was closed.
At the moment when the shell hit me I was returning, last in
my squad, taking care not to hurry for fear of appearing to be a
coward, I felt indignation against the order (where did it come
from?) that forced us to abandon the trench we had just captured.
Couldn't they support us then, or was the battle developing in
another direction?
We must have felt real pleasure in taking the German trench
by assault; but I can't remember it, and it is more probable that
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JEAN PAULHAN
we were conscious, at that moment, immediately and without
memory, of our acts alone.
One of the reasons for our retreat was no doubt the flames
rising over there; the communication trench to the right seemed
to be entirely aflame.
Virgil died from a bayonet thrust, on the ground. He turned
as I passed and said: "Virgil's through, but long live France
anyway."
What happened to our prisoners? On arriving at the em-
bankment, I saw, with all my might and main, a huge German
aiming at me; but I jumped down on him. I saw him later on, he
seemed as immense as a haystack. Another German had had his
legs carried off by a shell; he remained in a corner, bundled up
like a new-born babe; his covers were getting spotted with red
at the bottom.
We had left for the attack without hope or fear, and become
exterior to ourselves. I don't think I saw anyone fall, except
Blanchet; even so he got to the German trench by dragging him-
self along, but we were so tightly packed together that he had to
remain on the rear embankment.
I can see Ferrer on my right, he's lying in bed too. He has
noticed that I'm awake. But I don't want to talk to him. Above
everything the memory comes back to me, humble and persistent,
like a dog waiting at a door, of the soldiers I saw rising and run-
ning along the ridge on that white morning. It doesn't obsess me,
yet my thoughts are attached to it, and to that accident in which
my impression of having foreseen our attack and our return was
exhausted. I hope, now that I have fallen back, that I can keep
at least an image of this, and the token of that sort of secret.
191
YOUR HOROSCOPE
Charles Henri Ford
Capricornus
Manifest exemplary cussedness if you wish to get through
this quarter with a minimum of Fortune's blows.
The loophole of self-pollution could save you from a tyran-
nical sweetness.
You may witness the annual deflowering of the daughter of
the King of the Demons. "My name's Dreamily/' she'll say when
it's half over.
Prepare yourself for a season that's misshapen, like the
stones from which we sprang.
Aquarius
If spiritual doldrums are encountered, avoid camp followers,
palmists and bicycle instructors.
Lucky number: the last two figures on your next electric light
bill.
Omit having shoes shined by bootblacks with a knowledge
of lingua franca.
The next time you behold the unnatural, no use to exult;
your fellow-creature disenchantment isn't gone yet.
Pisces
Those wishing to bring discredit upon their families should
fix themselves elflocks every other midnight.
192
CHARLES HENRI FORD
Yearning for dismemberment will do you no harm.
Impartial vituperation may solve things.
Combat what may easily become your besetting sin: bestiality
with a dildo.
Aries
If your feigning of beatitude is prolonged, you risk dis-
figurement.
The exorcist will be taken in, provided an unbecoming mod-
esty is assumed.
It may or may not be beneficial to solve conundrums in-
vented by cranky seamstresses.
Though a second offender, you will go free to offend again.
Taurus
Unless exalted by degradation, uplift will get you nowhere.
Experiment with rudimentary wonder-working on Tuesdays.
A gentleman with a diploma in Egyptology (or some related
science) may turn out to be a swine.
Ignore court summonses, unless written acrostically.
Gemini
Benevolent auditory omen: stellar zooms.
You'll find yourself most susceptible to corrective agents if
mood is neither vitriolic nor easygoing, but betwixt and between.
While awaiting a state of dejection, do without rollcalls,
palliatives, and candidates for office.
Minus misgivings, switch your favorite hurtful pastime from
self-denial to exchanging clouts, with former schoolmates.
Cancer
First quarter earmarked for explosive situations: be catlike.
Recommended motto for those suffering from self-improve-
ment: "O flesh, farewell!"
193
CHARLES HENRI FORD
Third quarter, permit yourself to be as deceitful as a coiffeur
with cold curling irons.
Shun coal oil lamps, dragnets, and anchorites with athlete's
foot.
Leo
Fathomless period of indolence. Only if you aspire to a knight-
errant evil-doing will you hit bottom; otherwise expect to remain
as moody as a drudge.
Thursdays propitious for body snatching.
Time to correct two minor vices: detestable cheeriness and
love of disciplinary measures.
If you dream of a grizzly bear clasping lemon blossoms, your
mental make-up is changing for the better.
Virgo
During chance commitment to penitentiary, comfort your-
self with being the most impenitent.
Beware of those criminologists and contortionists whose
fluids are excited by impromptu autopsies.
If there's a new moon (and you believe it's new), erlking
strivings should be discouraged.
When you hear the last words of the last druid spoken in a
dream, don't answer back.
Libra
In case you find yourself wanting either to marry, or to be,
a lumberjack, you'll find yourself wanting.
Artifice holds realistic potentialities.
Wear that badge of waywardness. Nothing will happen.
If you want to get rich, you'll stop wanting, when you do.
Scorpio
Though insensitive to all deterrents, you'll wind up the first
quarter charmed as a well-fed derelict.
194
CHARLES HENRI FORD
A reign of torpor will begin.
Verdict: for acquittal. The charge: none.
The reign of torpor may end as imperceptibly as the death
of a missing person whom you believed to be dead already.
Sagittarius
Don't be surprised to discover yourself capable of dog-like
affection when bedevilled.
Prevailing mood: expectation of uprisings.
It will do no good to change your status from that of Non-
combattant in the war against the Social Evil to that of Volunteer
in the semi-barbaric squadron of Posthypnotic Safeblowers.
Your happiness: illusory as a killer in repose.
195
THE DEAD WRITERS
Benjamin De Mott
Some one said: "The dead
writers are remote from us
because we know so much
more than they did." Precise-
ly, and they are that which we
know.
T. S. ELIOT
ONCE WHEN his friend bellowed contempt at the elegies, Douglas
met him strongly: "I say this, Flinty; I say if you die before me,
I'll be out at the edge of things all the rest of my time." Douglas
had built much on the words. Indeed, because he had voiced
them, he had become certain that Flint's death would be unlike
any of the others that had mattered to him: it would not be
priggish, would not insist that it be considered as a thing in it-
self. It would on the contrary draw up through him the unrealized
scraps of plan and purpose that had sunk in the years. It would
create conditions for the forming of the whole. And to respond
to these conditions rather than to his grief, to take Flint's death
utterly for himself, to believe that with it must come a stop to all
postponement, would yet be to do Flint the only homage.
Now, at the event (and Flint's death to be sure had been an
event a piece of the obituary running on the front page under
the dispatch from Wellfleet), at the event he observed his ex-
travagance. Admittedly, when he spoke the words he had not
thought that Flint would die in the newspaper, nor had he been
aware that so much would interpose: an office, conference day,
the intelligence he possessed (before the opening of the paper)
of flannel trousers for the stable time, October's pointless radi-
ance, the bell's thunder shaking still, distant, petaled faces in
the classroom, someone gracious in the library elevator a Pro-
fessor of German. But though he could not have known in what
context the event would fall, he had nonetheless known that
there would be a context. And even this knowledge had not made
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BENJAMIN DEMOTT
him hesitate. For the sake of the argument, or perhaps only to
own that the stube behind the bookshop in Baltimore was a
place worthy of a statement out of the penetralia of the self, he
had made the absurd commitment. And built on it.
The stube, he acknowledged at last, was on all grounds un-
worthy: it stood in no relation to any of the substantial content
of his life or of Flint's. Chimerical afternoon why had he been
in that town? Why had Flint called, chosen that place for porter?
Vinum daemonum because it filleth the imagination yet it is with
but the shadow of a lie. But Flint never lied for rhyme, wrote
the wars, knew that nothing ended at the fact.
In all events, Flint had been stopped at the words, had thrown
up his enormous hands, the gesture occasioning a sudden rigid
scream from the dachshund who rested upon the table of the
only other drinker in the place.
This sound and Douglas's response to it could have brought
the stube through the northern miles and fixed it in the field of
revulsion that grew dense now in his office: the sound a mere
scream of surprise still moved in the memory as precisely as
the words he had uttered. But that it did only limned the truth
that his revulsion was not simple; he drew back from no corrup-
tion in the words themselves "at the edge of things the rest of
my time." If he had permitted them to remain what they were, if
he had not raised them upwards and upwards until they became
the sacrament and calendar of his progress, the promised open-
ing of the dungeon at sundown, they would not now have seemed
diseased. Where lies wretchedness in the simple pretense (over
porter and for the defense of the craft) that a single death can
overcome a room and a situation? Nowhere. Hence it was no
matter that he had been unable to allow for the intolerable pres-
sure of the present situation; it was of no moment that he sat in
an office, in a room with many bookshelves that bore nothing save
his own poems, since these were the only duplicate volumes in
his library and the bareness of the room had necessarily to be cut.
Not the bell, nor the student, nor the circumstance that on this
day, involved in the death of his friend in the wars, he would
read edges of the experience of the generation which could not
yet have had a communicable experience to bring except out of
the war none of the turns, none of the complexities, were of
account. He had not been false because he had failed to foresee
them.
If he had been false, it was because he had built too ex-
travagantly on the words.
To comprehend this was to give way to a notion which had
quickly made much of itself as he sat at the desk with the news-
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BENJAMIN DEMOTT
paper before him. The notion importuned him at this moment to
admit that he had lived his life not by cold philosophy but by
casual remarks of his own, offerings lax and flaccid which never-
theless wound themselves rune-tight in the consciousness and
finally bewitched him out of sense. He desired not to give way;
he desired to war upon the notion, as Flint would have wished
him to. Flint would have had him lacerate his own being for per-
mitting the notion to become relevant to it. Douglas managed
obeisance in whirling words. From his desk to the opposite
empty wall he cast speech of extravagant awkwardness yet,
curiously, he, the flagellant, knew no pain:
"Words are bricks for the construction of the self. I have
built on words mainly. Monosyllabic bricks in the wall at the
edge of things
"And if the truth be in words, yet why fear ye?
"Flint in the forest of the sick-cold years, alone in his knowl-
edge: nothing ends at the fact. All dominated except Flinty. Upon
the desk the generation of new facts: never another Flinty: no
hope for witness of the coldness in the cold."
It was true that when he read the bits of paper which the
season scattered across his desk "an incident out of your own
life, spent no time on it" he was Tiresias, knowing ends and be-
ginnings, process and the poles, what words would answer to and
when they could not hear. Knock with the fact and they make
answer; come with the soul. . . .
He rarely brought the soul. Having come with Flint into the
late years of his age, everyman the poet commenced to teach. Sit
in the office of dead men, occupy the "noble old chair," display
the reflective being to the clod: confer. Counsel out of Joyce for
one bringing 1500 words and nine names and no density of time
or of place: ''Look again at the beginning of his big book no, not
that one, of course. But look at the one we can read even he,
you must see, had to come gently into his new way." Counsel
from Tiresias himself I, Douglas Calder for one who had
thought a narrative poem but who had gone to prose because he
could find no line: "I don't know that you've read what I've tried
of this sort, but I can tell you I'd thrown it into the desk after a
year's work. I couldn't find a line that didn't break out from me.
But then one Sunday morning I got my fingers into it, into just
the right way, and afterwards it simply came."
Confer.
Sunday it had been the sky flung open by the beating sun,
white beaches slipping away like whirled wake from the sides of
the car Sunday, Sunday, when Flint, years after Baltimore, set
him down. The noble old chair was accepted and he had gone to
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BENJAMIN DEMOTT
the issues driving out the cape. What can I do, Flinty. The dead
end, the school.
Goddamnit Flinty, when we were it there was the Cap.
Flight from the skipjack to the moon in the sea. A thing to hate
and company in the hating. A whole wide dollar-damned world
to trade for verse. And after, a hunger march sing God on relief.
And after that, battle again.
Manfred, by Asst. Prof. G, Gordon.
O Flint we have lives not offices. What has Maine to commu-
nicate with Texas; what do you say to the notebook?
Flint set him down: "All romance." Calder is all romance,
how high, how high. "Now look at me. Thirty years ago I sat out
one term with Homer J. right where you're going to be and
damned if he didn't teach me something.
"How to paragraph." Flint was serious. "Just that, paragraph.
How to make them come on, how to set one up for the next, keep
wheels turning all the time. I didn't know how to do it and Homer
showed me."
So here was the task. Wait for Flint to come and show him
how to turn wheels. Speak boldly at the beginning:
"I am not interested in dealing with any of you who wish to
be writers. For you and me, desire is a dangerous thing. I want
only those among you who feel that they are writers, that the
thing is done and over and that they are helpless before it."
And call for an incident, "a moment of your own that's still
breathing set it down in oh a thousand words at most, and then
I'll ask you in for a conference before you start to raise it up any
higher."
It was dark when the trucks stopped blacked out
so we couldn't see where we were. A kind of castle
outline in the blackness, but really not even that,
only a stone building spread back against a hill. We
went in. Each squad had an entrance of its own or
so it seemed. Our sergeant name of Davis had a
fat candle in his hand, and he brought us up some
stairs into an imposing hall vaulted ceilings two
stories high. There was straw on the floor and the
walls at each end were stone fireplaces. We dropped
our stuff. . . .
Douglas helped. We dropped our stuff. We dropped our stuff
and found logs somewhere and to hell with the blackout
started a fire. The flames were what we watched, not each other.
We thought of what it was meant to be and all the wall turned to
flame and the hall went wild with it, the room had mass, simply
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BENJAMIN DEMOTT
mass no size or shape and the fiery reds rushed against the
darkness beating on us and well
Let me tell you we were shit scared.
Let me tell you, boy, we never wanted that morning to come,
Sun go to cinders in the sea surge.
Douglas liked to rise with the morning and, above all, with
the particular, even drab particulars. It is a pleasure to stand in
the window of a castle and to see a battle and the adventures
thereof below; and close by Douglas often desired to stop. But
Flint had said and Douglas had believed, and believed as com-
pletely as he could without having made words for it himself, that
"the senses only reply to the idea when addressed. You cannot
believe in the particulars." Flint vexed because he was positive.
What after all did the palace of monosyllables in Baltimore aver
except that nothing but the particular stirs to belief?
We dropped our stuff and waited. We couldn't sleep
but we talked only a little. After midnight, Sergeant
Davis said in a loud voice what we of course knew.
"We're going in in a little while/' After the pause, he
added: "Might be a good idea if anybody's got any-
thing to say to spill it now. Koch, you got anything?"
What Koch said was the pattern for everybody else.
He said: "When we're sitting around next time, some-
body won't be here, that's for sure. If it isn't me,
whoever it is, I'll miss him. We got a good gang, fights
and all. We've stuck pretty close and let's stick close
now. And for God's sake you ammo boys come up
without being called. I'm a son of a bitch if I'm going
to stand up and whistle you in today."
Some of the others said about the same thing wore
out the hortatory "stick close" before they shut down.
Then we slept a while.
In a grimpen, in a maremma, rain slicking the mossgrown
stones, legs and rolling wheels were sunken columns, arcs sucked
out of motion, trapped at the mired bottom of the earth. We slept
a while 1 in November and December's rnud was the end of life. I
had fear in my boot. When we crossed the Borger (75, 105, 155;
150, 210, 310; 225, 315, 460 crows, blind beasts, in the air over
that hill) , my heel seemed loose in the boot. That was a great
terror. To look, to conceive was beyond that hill. I did not look
and soon my foot, then my ankle went to stone. Upwards and
upwards and all. I said always as we went:
"The legs of a man who needs them; hence let us celebrate the
natural thing."
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BENJAMIN DEMOTT
But the Hun broke at the lake and left nothing to pound. We
stopped there, gasping in the fog. And I looked. The leg was whole
and the foot needed only to be worked. I slept a while then. I
had no fear.
Douglas liked also to speak in other voices. There was exhil-
aration even when he did no more than sense forms of speech
proper to many, unique to another, but far from his own. But if
Flint had no voice, no speech which was individual, still he had
means of impressing himself upon the fact. He addressed the par-
ticular but he drank with meanings. And he took Douglas with
him where he went.
In the mind Douglas traveled now, alone. Waiting across the
hall, seated in the window, would be, very likely, the writer of
the incident he read. Allen, O., tallest when the great bell burst
the morning and swept up the classroom's horizontal line Oliver
Allen, conference at two. He will knock at the door with the fact
and I shall make answer. Vouch for the sins of the child with the
compurgation of the academy.
O my childer here was Flint's voice if he had had one. O
my childer what have ye done that ye know so little and fear so
much? Come unto my door with all things save the will and I will
tell you that the beginning is not unbelief but belief in unbelief.
We say a cursed generation for it will not affirm. O hills hear thy
prophets Flint and Calder: gray is the color of my true prophecy,
dimmed the eye; the elevator soars to the marble hall and the end
of life is the office.
And Flint will never come. A certain closeness of relation to
your experience, Flint no, I want to say this, let me a certain
closeness, that is what they will want out of you later and so they'll
come back to you. A certain closeness of the ideal to the detail, a
special friction in the irony. No, in all honesty let us see our-
selves. When the fact is contrary to the ideal we held I following
you we held the ideal so close that the fact simmered in the
sun, was not itself. I nearly followed you.
I want to say in a parenthesis that I chose to set
this down because I thought it would help me to real-
ize what I actually know of these two days. But as
I call it up every detail rather sprays out into non-
objectivity. I doubt all of it, and know none of it,
even what I want most to be certain of disappears.
A shadow world. . . .
It was that kind of world we came out into a few
hours later. More trucks, noise coming in closer. We
got out in a terrible racket, but our own stuff was
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BENJAMIN DE MOTT
making it.
We formed squads and took off, through a grove. I
had the tripod
I had the tripod was Crane's way, not good enough finally for
Flint. In every detail, the privated form, the opposite implied.
There is no incident without the contradiction and the contradic-
tion it is immutable is worth supplying. One must cross from
the general principle to the observable facts on the wire of logic,
but one must come back; though racing from side to side at light's
pace: neither the fact nor the sole alone but the confluence. Flint
and Calder, scholiast skeptics: yes, of course; yes, of course.
And yet in the fullness, in the totality, in the fair land of Ness,
the ideal and the real are one. Flint said, Flint said. Hence Crane
is not whole.
Or does a time occur when the whole is fact alone the time
of Crane and the time of Oliver Allen the student? And in such
time, in any moment, this moment, when the word is disembodied
and I Calder discover my being in words only in such time, is
Calder truly with but the shadow of a lie? Or can he simply not
drink with Flint. There is a difference.
We'd been going about five minutes long enough to
get to the edge of the grove, when we heard some
shouts coming up the incline that rolled back to the
trees. Some of our riflemen were down there at a
fence and they were calling to us to pass these guys
on back to the rear. Couple of Kraut prisoners they
were. Davis understood right away and almost all
the rest of us. He waved and the prisoners started up
the hill. Davis was out ahead where he should not
have been, of course, and with him was the chap by
the name of Bonjurno who was his walkie-talkie man
and his favorite almost from the beginning in the
States.
When Bonjourno started to yell I thought that it was
almost the first time that I'd ever heard his voice he
was the quietest in the platoon. But I didn't have
much chance to reflect on his voice because the case
was that he'd gone off his head. He screamed God
what a sound it was "They're coming, they're com-
ing!" Over and over, and he pawed at Davis like a
small, frenzied ape.
Davis was so shocked he could do nothing but push
out at him awkwardly in what I'd guess now was
simply profound embarrassment, not even disgust.
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BENJAMIN DEMOTT
The Germans were about 75 yards off; they knew
something was wrong but like the rest of us the spec-
tacle it was that and nothing else fixed them and
they just stood watching. We were all in the net of
forces, caught. But to be safe, one of the Germans
raised his hands high up.
That set it off. Bonjurno threw himself down on the
ground, pulled at his carbine until it came off ripped
with the walkie box from his shoulder, and he started
to fire. He was wild, way wild half a clip went up at
the stars all of us standing there like stone men,
nobody really aware of what he was after. Then sud-
denly he let out one mad shriek "I've got them!"
and leaped up and ran at them firing. The Germans
knew; they went for the ground. But on the way one
of them caught it, right in the middle of the face.
Bonjourno turned around, quivering, looked at us.
He started to cry. Davis headed towards him. I don't
know what he had in mind doing, what could have
been done he'd taken our names in vain, that was
all, damned us. Anyway Bonjourno saw Davis and
ducked past him on an end-around, brushed right by
me his face wet and torn and wild as a winged
rabbit at the brook and disappeared on the run into
the forest.
When his ships were down, pikes cooled, blood thick, the wind
standing firm, Due William sent to the Pope and rehearsed once
more the oaths of Edward and of Harold. Before my court, upon
his honor. In the witness of Holy Church and Her Saints, upon
his honor. Before God, before God, upon his honor, did Harold
swear an oath he was my man. Father, Blessed Father, bless our
struggle. May God damn and quarter the perjured one. Douglas
could still hear Flint saying as he handed him the ranges: "God
it is good that this has purpose. I don't believe in the soul and
neither do you but son of a bitch this has got to be holy. Why
could we stand it?"
O it is pleasant, it is pleasant. It is a pleasure to stand upon
the shore and see ships tossed in the sea. But Flintsaith, FHnt-
saith: you cannot believe in the particular: no pleasure is com-
parable to the standing upon the vantage ground of truth and thus
to see the errors and wanderings and mists and tempests in the
vale below. Umque. umque. Lord God damn and quarter
the perjurers at the brook and the channel and the range desk.
Lord God damn and quarter Flint and Domesday on the vantage
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BENJAMIN DEMOTT
ground shadowed with a lie for then it will be easier.
Douglas sat silent, trembling slightly at his baseness, holding
the incident from the war in his hand. In the silence he sensed
his own words scrambling from him, effluences now disconnected
from thing and idea. He had come to the end of the incident and
there was little time before the appointment with its reporter, but
he lingered a moment beyond with Flint. He understood that he
wished to abandon his friend: once he had been certain that this
would be to abandon himself. He knew that he had been willing to
curse his friend; he knew that he had in fact implored Oliver Allen
and the great Duke to unmask Flint, disclose him as hypocrite
and perjurer.
Yet in this was nothing but well and fair. It was fit that Flint
be buried once for all. What was base was that he had not strength
to put Flint down even his foreknowledge had not given him
strength. Douglas did indeed know the end. He knew that if he
had built all on the word, if his response had been always to the
word not to feeling, situation or principle he might have been
wiser, not weaker, than Flint. For what had begun long before
Flint died (Flint, because positive, had denied himself cognition
of it) would continue, would intricate questions no man could stop.
That the words revolve about the earth, Flint assumed.
Wrong, it will be seen, Douglas said. It will be seen. Sen-
tience, the particular all that his friend supposed must answer
to the privated form and to the general, all that his friend "knew"
could speak only when addressed by the idea all will be dis-
closed in final dependency upon the word alone. The blessing and
the perjury.
But to comprehend this was not to abandon Flint nor to win
release from the revulsion at the words which had been spoken
over porter. It was only to stand like stone upon the vantage
ground and see at a hopeless distance something intolerably
rich and vague. True, Douglas could advance to the perception
that to have built upon the word, however extravagantly, would
be to have built in the direction of the city, and that to have con-
structed in fortune's words, to have responded only to the stuff of
the constructed world, would be to rise firm from the given as no
Flint could.
But his sense of the conditional opposed the excitement of
this intelligence: here at two o'clock in October was no choice but
to admit that the calendar would run past him: at this thought he
wept at last for himself and for his friend. Amid the tumult of
the great bell he then rose, prescient in his grief. He walked quite
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BENJAMIN DE MOTT
quickly through the room which was now dense with the clapper's
ovation and the swelling sun; and he answered the knocking at
his door by greeting Oliver Allen with some spirit.
205
PRAYER TO GO TO PARADISE
WITH THE DONKEYS
Francis Jammes
(1864-1938)
Translated by Vernon Watkins
When it behoves me to go to you, O my God, let
it be upon a day when the country for a fete
powders the road. I want, as I did here below,
to choose a way to go, just as I like to go,
to Paradise, where are in full daylight the clear stars.
I'll take my walking-stick, and on the highroad's rise
I'll go, and I'll say to the donkeys, my friends:
I am Francis Jammes, and I am going to Paradise,
for there is not a hell in the land of the good God.
I shall tell them: Come, sweet friends of the blue sky, who with a
nod,
poor, loved beasts, with a quick movement of the ear, chase away
the flat, tormenting flies, the buffets, and the bees. . . .
let me come before you in the middle of these beasts
that I love so because they lower their heads, indeed
very gently, and stop still, joining their little feet
in a most piteous way, very kindly, that brings tears.
1 shall arrive, followed by their thousands of ears,
followed by those who carried baskets on their flanks,
by those drawing clownwise their somersaulting carts
or cartloads of feathery dusters and tin,
by those whose backs clatter with dented water-cans,
by she-asses wide as leathern bottles, halting often,
by those one dresses up in little pantaloons
because of the wet sores, blue and aching, that make
infatuated flies that surround them in rings.
My God, make it be that with these donkeys I come to you.
Make it be that angels lead us forward in peace
206
FRANCIS JAMMES
to tufted river banks where tremble bright cherries
sleek and glossy as the laughing flesh of young girls,
and make it be that leaning, in this place of soul's ease,
over your divine waters, I shall be like the donkeys
that will watch their humble and sweet poverty move
towards the limpidity of the eternal love.
207
THE GENERAL
W. H. Hutton
THE EARTH trembled. Heavy feet of marching men swung nearer
and nearer. Airplanes roared from clouds. Loudspeakers blasted
announcements.
"Tell me."
Buddy laughed, and began to talk and to stop.
"Tell me," N. repeated.
"You say you have never met?" Buddy asked. "Neither have
I. How do you plan to find her?"
"Don't you hear the announcements?" N. persisted.
"Yes. I hear them. There are always announcements, new
orders for keeping up the morale."
"Tell me."
Buddy turned his head sparingly; but he managed to explain
himself: "You get me wrong, N. I used to listen. Believe me, I
did. But it's always been just what you hear. There's a new voice;
I suppose even you can tell it. The phrasing is new too. But other
than that, I see no difference. The General is interested in every-
body. He wants to see everybody's story. And if he likes yours,
he will send for you. And he will include your name in his regular
announcement to the world."
"Buddy!" N. exclaimed. "You can't mean it."
"It's true, N."
"Perhaps she will hear of me," N. thought, half out loud.
"Wish you luck, N."
"Thanks, Buddy. Did the General see your story?"
"My superior wouldn't hand it on."
"Why didn't you write another?"
"Had none."
"Then why didn't you work on the story you had? You could
have made it better. I know you could have. Much better."
"It's true, N. But my superior wouldn't give it back. 'Orders,'
he said. They never give any stories back unless they call you in
208
W. H. HUTTON
to get them. Once you write what you have and hand it in, you
never see it again unless you see the General. How can you
change anything? How can you make anything better? And if
your story is very bad your superior won't wait. He'll tell you
the worst. 'Yes, don't go coming to me,' he tells you. 'You know all
about it. Now that's all you need to know. See?' And you see
nothing more of it. Nobody calls you to the General; nothing is
said at all. And then suddenly you find your friends and every-
body else know all about your story. They come around and pat
you on the back. 'Of course, Buddy,' they told me. 'What did you
expect? Anyway, aren't you content? We're still your buddies.'
And if you don't take it well, they go on and give you the joke.
Anything. You do anything they want you to; but they never ask
you to write. They know you can't."
"But listen to the announcement," N said. "It says all who
want to, try again."
"All?" Buddy grinned. "It says all. I know. It always has.
But how can it mean it? The men who have succeeded are merely
laughing. They have ordered us to march all day, and to be on
duty at night."
"Surely there is time. When you are marching, or "
"You are still new, N. Your energy is not yet exhausted. When
I march, all I can think of is keeping in step. I keep counting over
and over again and counting until I feel someone slapping me.
'Wake up, wake up, Buddy! Here, sip this; perhaps it will help.'
Then I go on counting."
"But tell me. Tell me your story, while we are marching.
Perhaps I can write it for you, and hand it in. Then they will give
you another hearing."
"Thanks," Buddy grinned. "It has been a long time, I have
forgotten so much of my story that it isn't a story any more. But
don't think I know nothing about writing. I studied under the best
writers. And don't think I've forgotten everything they said. I
hear them saying yet that you can write only your own stories."
"Then if my story fails," N said, "I I will have nothing else
to write."
"You won't have time," Buddy assured him. "Don't worry.
You will march and march, eat if you can, and catch some sleep
when you have to."
"I hope my story goes to the General. ..."
"I know, N. All of us in the ranks are hoping it goes. We're
all behind you. And if it don't you're too much of a buddy already.
We won't give you the joke."
"I'll take it, if it's the custom here. But thanks, Buddy."
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W. H, BUTTON
A truck with a loudspeaker rolled by, trumpeting, Is IV. in
the ranks? N.? Step out, N. IV.
"Good luck, N."
''Thanks," N said.
The General would like to see N. N. to the General N.
"The General " N. repeated. "I'll tell him about you,
Buddy. You've been so kind. I won't forget it. And if he doesn't
do anything, I'll write something myself into the announcements."
"Forget it," Buddy said. "The General will show you how to
write the announcements. There's a big staff, I hear, and if you
disregard him, you'll find yourself back in the ranks. Forget it, N.
But thanks. You better fall out now. Don't even mention my
name; I'm the most hated one around here. They're always waking
me up to it. Remember the General is a great old man."
"Good luck, Buddy."
"Ya. Thanks."
N. ran through the moving files and waved to the truck. When
the driver saw him, he stopped. N. ran up and saluted and
climbed in.
'"The General is a great man," the driver told him. "He is
respected by everybody."
"He is a very great man," N said.
"How do you know?" the driver asked, turning out of the
rough field onto the pavement.
"You have just said so," N. replied. "And Buddy told me."
"Buddy?"
"Yes, he told me."
The driver turned his eyes from the road and stared into N's
face. "Buddy has a reputation for his wit."
"Then the General knows of him."
"Yes/ 5 said the driver. "The General has heard of Buddy. I
heard him say once he thought Buddy was just about right to
enliven the target practice."
"Then there is something else they do besides march?"
"Already you say 'they,' eh? There are many other things
they do. But everyone must learn to march, and how to hit a
target."
"A very good idea," N. said.
"You learn fast," the driver told him. "Before the General
came, there were no targets at all to aim at. And no marching.
But nobody remembers that far back. It's too terrible to think
about, anyway. You see the General is a man of idea."
"He is indeed," N. repeated. "He is a great old man."
"Yes," agreed the driver.
N. wanted to know when the General had come. The driver
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W. H. BUTTON
could say; yet he couldn't.
"Doesn't anybody know?"
"I have never talked with anybody who did/'
"He must be a very old man," N. observed.
"Yes," the driver affirmed. "Fve heard ever so many ask
when the day is coming."
"For his retirement, you mean?"
"For his death. He can't go any other way."
"Why?"
"You are new, N. Nobody knows. My father used to say he
thought the General hadn't much longer either way."
"What does he think now?"
"I would like to know, N.; he is dead."
"Excuse me," N. said. "I did not know."
The driver pulled up before the long front of a building. The
building looked as if it might have been only a small house at first;
it jutted out in all directions. It shone and smelled fresh with
paint, and there were signs: Wet Paint. Men in uniform could be
seen working farther along into the distance.
"It is a very big place," N. said.
"Yes," the driver nodded. "It has to be big. The General is
older every day, and every day he usually adds a member to his
staff. Some days he adds more. Or none at all."
"I understand that," N. said, following the driver. "But now
the house does not seem big enough."
"There is that problem," the driver admitted. "But do you
see," he continued, pointing his finger far to the left, "do you see
those uniformed men carrying out that white box? Even if the
members of our staff are good enough to stay, even then there is a
time when they have to leave."
The corridors were long and empty. The driver at last gave N.
over to a man on duty. There were several turns, some empty
rooms, some closed doors, and at one of these, a door imprinted
with a gold circle, the guard came to a halt.
"The General is waiting for you," he said.
N. caught the knob. "It's gold," he observed to himself, and
he hesitated to turn it.
"The General is waiting," the guard reminded him.
"He is waiting for me," N. whispered.
"Yes, go in."
"But wait here for me."
"Those are my orders."
"Then the General has already decided?"
"Go in. Go in, and see."
"There is nothing else I can do," N. replied.
211
W. H. HUTTON
"They'll let you out again," the guard laughed.
"So they have decided," N. repeated.
He did not know when he turned the knob; the door was mov-
ing. It sirened open. The room looked like a theatre fuzzy with
people. N. awkwardly stepped out onto a stage. He felt the breeze
as the guard pulled back the door. A great crowd arose to its feet
and began clapping. Heated air rushed from the back of the audi-
torium over the thousands of heads bobbing in the semi-darkness,
picked up the fumes from the footlights, and struck N. in the face.
Closing his eyes, he tottered, swaying off balance, falling. An
attendant swished a chair across the boards. "Drink this," was the
command. N. did not know what it was; but immediately he felt
better.
When he looked up, a man in a checkered uniform was stand-
ing before him. N. did not know what to say; in confusion he stood
up and saluted.
The man returned the salute vigorously. Then he drew out of
an inner pocket a few scraps of paper. He looked them over. N.
watched so closely that the man told him to take his place with
the others. An attendant came and found him a seat on the front
row. Looking about him, N. decided it was the thing to do to put
your arm on the armrest. Like everybody else, he began to thrum
his fingers. Thrum, one, two, three, four; one, two three, two,
three, four, five; thrum, thrum.
"That's it," the attendant said. "You've got it already. Keep
it up." And he left.
N. asked the man on his right who the man was on the stage.
"The man in the checkered uniform?"
N. nodded.
The man on the stage seemed to have overheard the conver-
sation, for he stepped forward. He glanced from the papers to N.
Then he looked down on the papers once more.
"Listen to this," he announced to the assembly. "It says here
Tie has never known her."
Everybody laughed.
"It says I should say he says." (Laughter.) "He says she
has never known him!"
Everybody applauded.
"And he wants to find her!"
Everybody laughed and applauded. Then the hum of the tap-
ping fingers resumed. It seemed to be the thing to do to tap them,
and N. tapped his. But he wondered how long he could last, tap-
ping. He considered the possibility of telling the man on his right
that he could not keep his fingers going any longer. He thrummed
his stiffening slivers of flesh as quickly as he could, but they were
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W. H. HUTTON
slowing down, tapping. Trying to speed up tapping he did not
know what to do. At that moment, however, the man in the check-
ered uniform called him back to the stage. An attendant showed
him up. "I like your story," the man said. He had a face fresh as
a child's. But N. knew now that he was the General.
He saluted. "Thank you, sir."
The General smiled. "It is exactly the same story that every
one else in this room presented."
N. nervously saluted.
"I I did not copy"
The General smiled again. "No," he said. "You did not need
to."
"But I did not know" N. defended himself.
"No; you did not know," the General said. "I did not say you
did." The General continued, "All I say is that I don't accept any-
body unless he happens to write this particular story. All my offi-
cers are provided with copies of it. And when they get a story that
matches, they send it on to me. Ordinarily, there can be no mis-
takes. But once in a while, an officer has a friend in the ranks he
tries to help. Well, I can say now, it never does any good. As long
as I'm here, it never will. So don't think that because I'm getting
old, I don't have any wits about me."
"Never, never," N said. Already he had taken a liking to the
General, and he added, "But sir, there is still a very good wit you
might have."
"You don't think I have enough?" the General asked. "You
see, N." he proceeded, "you are as yet only new here. You have
much to learn. My staff has informed me about your friend Buddy.
He is not a worthless fellow; I'd like to have him, but he never
changes. I know quite well he has told you the announcements
never change. There is some truth to it. But we do the best we
can. If we keep making them often enough, we can only hope
But I want you now to go give him this answer. He will ask you if
you are immortal "
"And what shall I say?" N. asked.
"Don't say you'll never find her"
"What shall I say?"
The company rose and applauded. The General bowed; he
made N. bow, and he showed him to the door. "Tell Buddy," he
whispered suddenly, "I asked you for a swig of youth!"
The guard was waiting. N. said that he would.
213
SOME PROSE POEMS
Max Jacob
(1876-1944)
Translated by W. W. E. Ross
BURIAL CONVERSATION
As A RESULT of I don't know what circumstances, the celebrated
Mr. X. is attending this burial incognito. No one else knows him
or recognizes him at the cemetery. Mr. X. acknowledges my
greeting; he comes over and speaks of my friend George:
"He deserves to be here!"
"Why, you hardly ever saw him!"
"Oh! you know George, when he has a good fire, a good bottle
and a bad book ..."
"You're being too modest if you are speaking of yours."
"George doesn't read my books."
from WE WRITE ONLY OUR MEMORIES
At the age of enchantments: Oh! the palaces in the forests!
I perceived Dante's Beatrice. We were the same age! and my first
verses were in praise of her hair without my even daring to have
her read them.
At the age of pathos: Oh! the dictionaries, the examinations
and the money worries! I saw my Beatrice on the stage of a the-
atre. Women are sphinxes, I thought; they feed on particular men
that are passed to them through the bars of a cage.
At the age of white hair: I hers was dyed I met my Beatrice
in a drawing room and I spoke to her smilingly of my youth and
love:
"Oh! Indeed" she replied. That's very curious."
And I thought: "The old idiot!"
214
MAX JACOB
LET US REBUILD
It is enough that a child of five, in pale blue blouse, should
draw pictures in an album for a door to open into the light, for the
castle to be rebuilt, and the dry brown of the hillside to be covered
with flowers.
MOEURS LITTER AIRES
The sorcerer's apprentice fidgeted docilely; he smiled with
pleasure, looking at his master. He offered himself up to the words
of wisdom that were about to gush forth. He didn't resist, he was
already swimming in their flow.
The master avowed: "My soul is only a polyp, a sea anemone;
I might say it is only a calf's liver in the form of a hand on which
an invisible butcher is vainly hacking."
"Oh! Master," said the sorcerer's apprentice, "you are plagiar-
izing Huysmans!"
THE LAST VISIT
The old maid!
She wears a black silk cape; she arrives with her lameness
which supports her words and her hollow laugh.
She comes into the garden, descending its scarcely marked
slope.
They thought she was lying down, very ill.
"Well, since the doctor doesn't come to me, I'm coming to you,
and I wish to say that I died this morning at ... but I can't find
the words any more. . . . Excuse me ... if you see a flame in a
bowl, it isn't melted candle wax, it's my soul . . . yes, indeed!",
laughing, always amiable.
''Good health to you all! I'm going away."
ISSUE
The young girl it is my soul has been, brought into my room
by the four winged demons, her arms bound. They are going to
saw off her wrists. She faints. But Our Lord says: "Come this
way for there are among the saints many children who resemble
you." This way, it is snow! snow! snow! for Paradise is snow.
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MAX JACOB
EXHORTATION
The Breton it is I is seated in the midst of the flags of the
world. The moon carries a star in its hollow. The Breton pursues
his studies among the flags of the world and an angel has come
down towards him. "Stop your reading if God is still willing to
visit you." God! You know my sufferings! What is that written
beside your arm, angel with a woman's arms? Three Hebrew
letters that I cannot read. When I have the Holy Spirit will he give
me the gift of tongues?
The angel is furious to see me so stupid.
VISITATION
My room is at the back of a courtyard and behind shops, No. 7
Ravignan street. You will remain the chapel of my eternal mem-
ory! I have lain there thinking, stretched out on the couch sup-
ported by four bricks; and the owner has pierced the zinc roof to
increase the light. Who knocks so early in the morning? Open!
Open the door! Don't get dressed! Lord! The cross is heavy; I
want to put it down. How can it come in? The doorway is so
narrow! It will come in by the window. My Lord! Warm your-
self! It is so cold. Look at the cross! Oh Lord! All my life.
from THE ROOSTER AND THE PEARL
. . . And when, of the Polish lancer, his limbs cut off, his bottle
broken, there remained only an eye, the eye sang "The Two
Grenadiers."
... In a madman's hat, the knife-grinder (it is death) opens a
mantle lined with cherry-red silk to draw forth a big sword. A
butterfly on the wheel stops him.
. . . The game of dominoes on the cloth recalled Death and the
white apron of the maid didn't help to remove this idea.
... I dreamed that the nuns set out garden plots in the church of
the Sacred Heart, because God loves the earth, and sowed them
with confetti because He loves joy.
. . . Picture of grandpa by a five-year-old; an oxhead smoking a
pipe. The family is delighted: grandpa is annoyed.
. . . Heavy fruit of a dwarf tree, much too heavy for the tree. A
palace on the cliff of too small an island. One of the arts in a
nation much too pure for it.
... It comes about that when you snore the material world
awakens the other.
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MAX JACOB
. . . The archangel struck by lightning had only time to loosen
his tie; one would have said he was still praying.
. . . Mosaic pavements imitate ups and downs to make me lose
my balance completely* The wickedness of architects!
... At the foot of the bed, the mirrored wardrobe is a guillotine;
there you can see our two sinful heads.
... I saw again my former professor of rhetoric, and with a
woman. I perceived only their heads, eating chocolate eclairs
with no pleasure: the big head of boredom and the little comman-
dant head. Oh! Oh! The revenge of humanity on the humanities.
Well, I could hardly keep from laughing in revenge: the revenge
of the humanities on humanity.
. . . Mystery is in this life, reality in the other; if you love me, if
you love me, I'll make you see reality.
. . . Paradise I imagine because of the number of the dead as like
a mid-Lent day in Paris, and hell as like the distracted crowd of
families in a port on a day of storm.
MYSTERY OF THE SKY
On returning from the ball I seated myself at the window and
gazed at the sky; it seemed to me that the clouds were immense
heads of old men seated at a table and that they were brought a
white bird with all its feathers. A broad river crossed the sky. One
of the old men lowered his eyes towards me. He was about to
speak to me when the enchantment broke up, leaving the pure
sparkling stars.
HIGHER DEGENERATION
The balloon is ascending. It is shining and is shaped to a
point still more brilliant. Neither the oblique sun which directs
its rays as an evil monster throws dice, nor the cries of the crowd
nothing will keep it from going up! No! The heavens and it are
but a single soul; the heavens open only for it. But, balloon, take
care! There are shadows in your car and they are moving, un-
happy balloon! The aeronauts are drunk!
EFFICACY OF CONFESSION
On the road to the racetrack there was a beggar who looked
like a servant. "Pity me," he would say, "I am vicious. I'll go
217
MAX JACOB
and gamble away the money you are going to give me." And he
would continue his confession.
He was very successful and he deserved it.
IN THE FOREST OF SILENCE
In the forest of silence the night is not yet come and the storm
of sadness has not injured the leaves. In the forest of silence,
whence the dryads have fled, the dryads shall return no more.
In the forest of silence the brook has no waves more, for the
current runs nearly without water and changes course.
In the forest of silence there is a tree black as black and
behind it a bush that has the form of a head and which is in flame,
and which is in flame with the flames of blood and of gold.
In the forest of silence where the dryads shall return no more
there are three black horses; these are the three horses of the wise
kings and the wise kings are no longer on their horses, nor else-
where, and these horses speak like men.
MY LIFE
The city to be taken is in a room. The booty of the enemy is
not heavy but the enemy will not carry it away for he has no need
of money since this is a story and only a story. The city has ram-
parts of painted wood: we shall cut them out and paste them in
our book. There are two chapters or parts. Here is a red king with
crown of gold who rides on a sawfish. This is chapter II. As for
chapter I ... I no longer remember.
LITTLE POEM
I remember my childhood room. The muslin curtains on the
window were worked with designs in white lace. I tried to fond
the alphabet there and when I made out the letters I would change
them into figures that I imagined. H, a man sitting down; B, the
arch of a bridge over a river. There were in the room several
chests with opened flowers carved lightly on the wood. But what
I liked best was two rounded tops of pilasters that could be seen
behind the curtains and which I looked on as the heads of dolls
with which it was forbidden to play.
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MAX JACOB
A LITTLE THEOSOPHY UNFORESEEN
BUT NOT UNFORESEEABLE
The fortifications are paler and more distant. One can no
longer make out the gates. It is the time when I think about my
dead child. Divorced, remarried, I am a widower and I meditate.
exquisite face of my first wife! She was blonde, she had the
candid look of people who have not suffered.
O angelic form of our child; the dead child! Many evenings
1 have seen again the burial of the child; all the vices went behind
the hearse: those that touch the belly, those that touch the fore-
head, those that touch the thigh, those that touch the foot. There
were also one-armed, lame, crippled and blind.
Weep for your dead women! Weep for your beautiful dead
child; you would mourn them with less grief if the funeral pro-
cessions hadn't led to the cemetery the very gargoyles of Notre
Dame.
219
JEWEL OF THE SOUL
Chandler Brossard
THE LITTLE BOYS were sitting on the steps of the tenement building
when Diana and Harold moved in. It was as though they had been
expecting them, as though they had some secret knowledge that,
sooner or later, Diana and Harold would be there. They smiled
conspiratorially at each other as they watched them move in.
As Harold was carrying in the last piece of luggage, three of
the boys slipped inside the hallway of the old house and, giggling,
boldly peeked through the partly open door of the first floor apart-
ment that Diana and Harold were moving into. Then the other
boys scurried into the hallway to peek too, and they huddled there
giggling and whispering in secret amusement.
They did not say a word until Harold started to close the door.
"Hey mister," one of the boys demanded suddenly in a high
voice. "What's your name?"
"Mallon!" Harold said quickly, almost submissively.
"Mallon?" the boy repeated, turning to the other boys and
smiling. "Mallon? That's a funny name. I never heard that name
before. Are you sure that's your name?"
Then all the boys began to giggle and make strange faces and
to repeat his name incredulously to each other. Mallon? Mallon?
Harold half smiled at them and closed the door.
Inside the apartment Harold unpacked their bags, and as he
took the clothes out he heard the boys laughing and whispering
about them in the dark hallway before scurrying back out into
the street.
Diana walked in from the kitchen of the cold water apart-
ment, critically appraising each room and the cheap furniture in
it. "Well," she said finally, "it will have to do for the time being.
We're lucky even to have this, I guess."
"It's a place to catch our breath anyway," Harold said.
Diana lifted the Venetian blinds on one of the front windows
and looked outside. "I can't say much for the neighborhood. I
220
CHANDLER BROSSARD
never thought we would wind up in an Italian tenement section.
This is really romantic."
"We haven't ended up anywhere/' he said. "The place is tem-
porary. That's the only way to consider it."
"All right. Did you send the post office our new address?"
"Yes."
"They do deliver mail down this far, don't they?"
Harold wearily shook his head in rebuke, and began hanging
his clothes in the scarred beaver-board closet standing desolately
off the front room.
"These people," Diana said coming in from work a few days
later. "You can't tell whether they're going to speak to you or pull
out a gun and shoot you. They watch me as though I were from
another world."
"They are sort of strange," Harold said, recalling, with an
unpleasant suddenness of anxiety, the suspicious, almost belliger-
ent way the people in the neighborhood stores looked at him when
he spoke because he did not have their foreign accent and thick
inflections, and some of them were even openly amused by him.
"And those bratty kids," Diana continued during dinner. "Do
you know that every time I pass them they stop what they're doing
to stare at me? One of them even whistled at me the other day."
"They're just kids, honey. Don't let them bother you. You
should understand that you're something new to them."
"That doesn't help. Have the telephone people been around
yet?"
"No, they haven't."
"That phone should have been installed by now," she said.
"You may as well be non-existent as not have a phone in this
damn city."
"It's just possible they've run out of numbers, and they have
to wait until they find a brand new one for us." Then, because
Diana did not laugh at the implicit pun in that, he added, "nobody
is going to forget you, dear. You ought to get over that unwanted
feeling."
Harold read through the classified ads in the afternoon paper.
While he read he could hear the neighbors shouting and arguing
harshly at the pushcarts below their front windows. Everyone
spoke with an accent. The jobs listed in the newspaper were all
for skilled workers in trades, there was nothing remotely like a
listing for a research director. Harold turned to the sports section,
but for a moment there flared into his mind the nasty scene in his
ofSce the day he was fired. It still depressed him.
"It's getting cold in here," Diana said. "Is the heat on?"
221
CHANDLER BROSSARD
He said that it was; but the heat from the burner in the front
room was not strong enough to comfort them this far away. Diana
asked him if he could think of something to do. He tried to think
of something, but he couldn't and they finally decided on the
movies.
Diana took his arm going down the steps into the street that
was savagely littered with garbage-filled paper bags, much of the
garbage spilled out into the sidewalk. Her arm in his felt odd to
him for she had not done this in such a very long time. It seemed
to him that now she was drawing close to him for protection, and
this made him afraid.
"Don't you think it would be a fine idea if you put our name
on the door?" she asked. "I think that would be a lovely idea."
"I'll do it when we come back from the movies," he promised,
looking distractedly across the street at the little boy conspirators
who were staring at them with perverse enjoyment. At the corner
Harold glanced at the dead-faced men who were always standing
there with nothing to do, just waiting. He hoped one of them
would nod to him and Diana, or that he would nod to them, but
neither he nor they made the slightest gesture of human recogni-
tion. Harold told himself that he should have spoken to them. That
was what they were waiting for, he decided, for him to make the
first move, and he should have had the courage to do it.
Later that night Harold printed his last name in large letters
on a clean white strip of paper and tacked it on their door. Diana
laughed tightly as she watched him.
"Good God," she said. "It looks so makeshift. Maybe you
could buy a respectable metal plate one of these days."
Harold laughed too when he closed the door. "We never used
to take the name that seriously. Or did we?"
"Good name in man and woman, etcetera," Diana quoted.
"You make it sound so ominous."
Diana said she wanted a highball, maybe that would take the
chill off the room and herself. While Harold mixed the drinks they
talked over what might be done to redeem the place from its fallen
state and make it somewhat more comfortable and decent-looking.
Harold said they should not buy anything because the place was
not theirs, they were only subletting, and they would be there for
only a short time, thank God.
They found out how little privacy their apartment had when
they began to hear conversations out on the street as clearly as if
the people outside were sitting right in the front room.
"Do you think they can hear us as well as we can hear them?"
Diana asked him.
222
CHANDLER BROSSARD
"I doubt it. Besides, they probably wouldn't be interested in
our conversation even if they could hear it."
They saw the little boys almost every day. Each time Harold
passed them they did something to let him know, in case there was
any doubt in his mind, that they knew all about him. Once one of
them stopped playing pitch-penny to grab him by the sleeve and
demand a nickel, smiling triumphantly even before Harold handed
it to him, as if it were a tacitly agreed upon payment of blackmail.
One afternoon Harold went uptown to be interviewed for a
job with an advertising agency. In the ultra-clean, chicly deco-
rated waiting room of the agency he saw someone he had known
when he was a research director. Harold knew that this person,
who obviously worked there in the agency, understood immedi-
ately that he was there asking for a job, and this embarrassed him
so acutely that he was coldly abrupt in their meeting. The agency
told him they were very sorry, but there were no jobs open, but
they would certainly keep in touch with him.
After the interview, instead of going back downtown, he guilt-
ily went to a Forty-second Street movie. He had never realized
before what an efficient and comforting time-killer a movie could
be, and he willingly surrendered himself to the dark anonymity
there.
Later, walking up the street to his apartment building, he
came near the little boys. He hoped they would ignore him, but
they suddenly formed a line blocking the sidewalk, raising their
arms like a firing squad, and shot him.
"You're dead!" they yelled accusingly as he pushed through
them. "You're dead! You're dead!"
Sitting in the front room after dinner Diana and Harold talked
about his interview at the advertising agency. They joked about
agencies and the people who worked in them, for they and their
friends had always looked upon advertising work as a decidedly
second-rate way of making a living.
Harold did not tell Diana about running into the person he
used to work with, nor did he confess to her that he had gone to
the movies. He was ashamed of going to the movies in the day-
time, but he did not know quite why.
"You know," Diana said, "I'm afraid something awful is hap-
pening to me. Just because we aren't getting as much mail as we
used to, I'm beginning to suspect these kids of stealing some of it.
Now isn't that absurd?"
"I know how you feel. But I don't think anybody is stealing
our mail. Some of it must be up at the old place. It just hasn't
been re-routed down here yet."
223
CHANDLER BROSSARD
"I hope it's that"
She asked him if he had talked with any of the neighbors yet.
"I chatted with the old man upstairs," he told her. "But he's
so old he doesn't make sense. The friendliest person I've seen so
far is the Jewish man who sells vegetables outside. We always
speak to each other."
"As one rejected minority to another, I presume."
"That's right."
They did not know what it was the first time the smacking
noise came at the front window. It scared them. Harold thought
at first that someone had thrown something at the window. He
looked outside and saw that the little boys were playing stoop-ball
from one sidewalk to another. Every so often their ball had to
strike this window instead of the brick wall of the house.
Harold told Diana what was happening. He stayed at the
window watching the game and looking from right to left to see if
there was not another place in the street where the boys could hold
their game. There was not.
The ball smacked against the window in front of his face, and
he jumped back.
"Tell them to move their damn game elsewhere," Diana said
loudly. "They'll break the window soon."
"It's one of the hazards of living down here," he said, but he
went outside anyway and shouted to the kids to take it easy on
the windows.
"Sure, mister, sure," they shouted back, smiling dirtily at each
other.
But their ball struck the window several more times before
they finally broke up the game. In the intervals Diana and Harold
tensely waited for the ball to strike, and each time it did they both
experienced a sick jerking in their chests.
Harold looked at Diana and shrugged. "There's nothing you
can do with kids." He promised her that he would buy window
screens the very next day. They would at least protect the win-
dows, if nothing else.
"The little fiends," Diana said the next night when the ball
struck the window screen for the first time. "Every time that ball
hits our window I feel as if I were being physically attacked."
"I can talk to them again," Harold murmured, "but they don't
respect anything you say, it's just a waste of time. The only thing
they respect around here is violence. But if I kicked one of these
kids in the can, I'd have the whole neighborhood on my neck."
224
CHANDLER BROSSARD
"It's so awful being impotent, isn't it? Really so awful," and
she took a book from the shelf and settled down for a quiet evening
of reading.
The next morning there were several letters for them in the
rusty box outside the front door. This made them both feel much
better, and Diana said she would have to keep a closer watch on
her persecution tendencies. Although he was convinced now that
the mail was not being stolen, Harold still went outside to look in
the box when the mail was about to be delivered.
He decided that he might just as well be fixing up the apart-
ment a little now that he had so much time on his hands, now that
he was not going to an office. He began by painting the bathroom
and the kitchen. He had really intended to paint the entire apart-
ment, but he was so tired after painting these rooms and, he let
himself realize, so utterly, so def eatedly bored, that he gave it up.
He told Diana that night that he was getting used to the dirty
ivory color of the walls. She said she wasn't and she proposed
that when he recovered from his boredom he should finish his
revivifying paint job.
The ball did not sound as loud now hitting against the screen
as it had against the naked window, but Diana and Harold could
not acclimate themselves to the sound. They waited for the ball to
hit as they would wait for the first enemy shot signalling resump-
tion of the siege.
"The place is getting me," Diana announced. "What about
visiting somebody?"
They went through the short list of their friends and decided
to visit the Schulls, who lived nearer than any one else they knew.
Harry asked Diana to call them, but she said she disliked calling
people just as much as he did, so he made the call. Jack Schull
said fine, to come on over for a while, but Harold thought he de-
tected an indecisiveness, an edge of unenthusiasm in SchulTs voice.
They had the forced and unsatisfying time at the SchulTs that
Harold had suspected they would have. They could not seem to
come together, some special mixing agent was totally lacking
among them. On the way home Harold mentioned this to Diana,
wondering whose fault this failure had been.
"I never particularly liked them anyway," Diana said. "They
don't know how to be with people. They're heavy and sullen."
"I guess you're right," but he was sure Diana felt the same
disappointment he felt, and was going through the same anxious
self examination.
To take up some of the time now, Harold went to the library
in the afternoons and afterward took long walks. He finally landed,
225
CHANDLER BROSSARD
through an ad in the paper, a part-time magazine research job that
kept him busy for a few days.
Every evening, coming home from the library, he saw the
boys, but did not smile or pay any attention to them. He made a
point of shunning them. They, however, continued to notice him.
One evening the boys were squatting arrogantly in the middle
of the sidewalk playing poker. They looked up when Harold came
toward them, seeming to him like creatures with primeval per-
ceptions, and began to whisper in their dreadful secret amusement.
When Harold was quite near them, one of the boys was suddenly
shoved at him by the others.
The little boy put up his fists and challenged Harold.
"Want to fight, mister? Come on, I'll fight you."
He had to push the boy out of his way. The boy shouted that
he was scared, scared. He hurried across the street and into his
building, the boys' taunts and jeers cruelly pursuing him, and it
seemed to him that the whole world was taunting and jeering with
them.
He tried to convince himself, when he was safely inside and
the panic partly subsided, that boys everywhere did things like
this to adults, but this rationalization did not comfort him in the
least. He knew that what he really wanted to do was to beat the
boys half to death. He speculated on what would happen if he
threatened them or even complained to their parents. This seemed
to be taking them much too seriously, taking his and Diana's being
down there too seriously, and he reminded himself that they were
down there only temporarily.
He mixed himself a drink. The drink relaxed him, and it
washed from him the uncleanness of the incident and pushed his
part-time job far into the back of his mind.
"Have we had any calls?" Diana asked that night.
Harold said no, there had been no calls.
Even in the kitchen, three rooms away, they heard the ball
strike the screen protecting the windows. They did not mention
it, though, and remained there in the kitchen to finish their coffee.
"Let's go for a nice long walk," Diana suggested after the ball
had attacked the screen three or four more times. "We're getting
into a rut here."
Out on the dark and alien street they avoided looking at the
strange little boys clustered like criminal plotters in a doorway
and at the men standing dumbly on the corner. Harold still hoped
one of the men would nod to him, but they made no sign. In a few
blocks they were out of the tenement section, and walked more
226
CHANDLER BROSSARD
lightly now they headed toward Eighth Street. It was brightly lit
and crowded,
"Back in civilization," Diana said. "It feels so good and so
safe to be on this street. I love it," and she opened her arms as if
to crush the street in a thankful, loving embrace.
A young policeman walked by them.
"I feel almost like saying hello to him," Harold remarked.
"Yes, yes. Let's say hello to him."
They looked at each other and laughed, and walked after the
policeman. Catching up to him, they turned their heads and
bravely said hello. The policeman looked surprised, then he smiled
and, touching his cap, returning their greeting.
Harold knew their gesture was childish but he could not deny
it made him feel good. Diana's face was now pleased and untensed
and she was watching the other people in the street as though they
were all close personal friends of hers. They walked to Fifth Ave-
nue, and ran into Ernest Powers.
"Where have you been hiding?" Harold demanded of Powers.
"We haven't seen you at all."
Powers looked embarrassed. "I did try to call you once," he
explained. "But I couldn't get your number from the operator.
No fooling."
Harold did not believe it. He suspected that Powers had been
avoiding them ever since they had moved. He gave Powers their
phone number.
"I hear you were canned, Harold," Powers said. "That's really
tough. I'm very sorry to hear it happened."
Harold told him that he expected to find another job in a very
short time; he wasn't worried. Powers asked them how they liked
their new place. Diana shook her head and said '"Oh God." Now
Powers looked at his wrist-watch and said he had to run. He
apologized for abandoning them this way, but he really did have
to meet some people.
"Give us a call," Diana shouted after him as he hurried away.
"There's no excuse now you have the number."
Powers smiled and waved goodbye.
Harold began thinking about his relationship with Powers:
Powers had always been so elusive with him, he had never been
able to count on anything Powers said; he wondered why Powers
had not told them who he was running off to meet.
"Hey," Diana said. "Where are you?"
"Sorry, honey. I was off conducting an investigation."
Two nights later there was a fierce knocking at their door.
Harold could not imagine who it was, but when he heard the
stifled laughter, he knew. One of the little boys was standing there
227
CHANDLER BROSSARD
when he opened the door; two others were running down the
stairway.
"I bet them a nickel you would let me come in to see your
house," the boy said defiantly.
"Is that so?" Harold replied looking around at Diana.
"Uh huh," the boy said, and strode inside.
"How do you do?" Diana said.
"Hello."
The boy was trying to conceal his pleasure and trying also to
look tough. Then he walked arrogantly through the apartment,
Harold trailing him, and looked over each room. He turned the
shower on in the bathroom to see if it worked.
"How long you going to live here, mister?" he asked Harold
on the way back to the living room.
"That's hard to say. Why?"
"Oh nothing, I just thought I'd ask."
The boy stopped suddenly in the small room where the tele-
phone was. "Oh! You got a phone," and he picked it up to examine
it. They then walked back into the front room.
The boy stood in front of a cubistic painting hanging over the
couch. ''Did you do that?" he asked, turning to Diana.
"No. A friend of ours did it. Do you like it?"
"It's a crazy picture," the boy replied. "What's it supposed
to be?"
"A portrait of a man."
"That's a man?" he shouted, staring at the painting. Then he
smiled obscenely at Harold. "Is that you?"
<; No, that's not me."
"You sure?"
Harold did not answer him, but looked instead at Diana. The
boy looked around the room, still trying to conceal his special,
terrible pleasure, and then said all right, he had to go. He ran
laughing across the street to the other boys, and they all laughed
loud and shrilly when he made his report.
"I guess they're satisfied now," said Harold. "They just
wanted to make sure we live like everyone else."
"Oh really? They give me the willies," Diana said. "They're
like animals, precocious, horrible little animals."
The telephone rang while they were getting into bed. Harold
could not help the quick spasm in his stomach when he heard the
sudden ringing in the darkness. He picked up the receiver and
said hello three times, and the person on the other end of the line
hung up.
"Must have been a wrong number," he said, getting back into
bed.
228
CHANDLER BROSSARD
But he was not so sure. It took him some time to get to sleep,
because he was waiting for the phone to ring again, and he felt
Diana waiting too, holding in her terror as he was.
'It was the weirdest thing," George Preston said the night he
came by to return a book borrowed months ago. "You know these
kids on the street? Well, when I was in the middle of the block
looking for your number, they all suddenly appeared from no-
where and led me down here. They had me spotted and knew just
where I was going."
He laughed and shook his head. "They called you the
Bohemians."
The ball smacked the screen, and Preston started. Harold
explained what the noise was. After that they went back to the
kitchen to have coffee, and they remained there, away from the
relentless, attacking ball, until Preston had to leave. He and Har-
old talked about whom they had seen lately and what everybody
was doing.
Harold remarked that he had not seen many of his old friends
since he had moved.
"We might give a party soon," Diana said as Preston was
leaving. "I really feel in the mood for a good party. Getting every-
body together again.''
Preston said that was a marvelous idea.
Later on Diana caught Harold staring at the floor. "I can tell
you're stewing about a job," she said. "Don't. You'll get some-
thing. Don't let it demoralize you this way. We aren't starving."
"O. K.," he replied, wishing it were as simple as just getting
any kind of a job and not starving.
The phone rang. Even before he picked up the receiver, Har-
old could hear in his mind the caller hanging up. He said hello
sharply twice, and he thought he heard young voices laughing
lewdly, softly in the far distance on the other phone. Then they
hung up. The phone rang again in half an hour, but it stopped
ringing before Harold could get to it.
"We could call the police," he said. "But we couldn't prove
that the kids are the ones doing it."
"But why are they doing it, if they are the ones?"
"I don't know any more than you do."
He wondered how they had got his number, and then he
remembered how the boy had eagerly examined the phone the
night of the inspection tour. Perhaps that was the way they had
got it, perhaps not.
Every time the phone rang after that Harold got the same sick
feeling, and he had to force himself to pick up the receiver.
229
CHANDLER BROSSARD
Neither he nor Diana was sure any more whether it was a friend
calling or the boys, and it was a great relief when a friendly voice
returned their hello.
In the afternoons now, after he had done the shopping, Harold
continued to take long walks that led him from the "jungle/' as
he and Diana called the section they lived in, to the old neighbor-
hood farther north. The part-time research job had ended. Once
in a while, he had the good luck to run into someone he knew on
his walks, and they would have coffee together.
It was during these infrequent meetings, or really in worried
post-mortems on them, that he realized he had lately taken up an
anxious nostalgic bragging.
"At that time, of course, I was making a hundred and a
quarter a week," he would say. Or, "the really best place to have
lunch uptown is Mako's."
He hated this weakness in himself and he made an effort to
stop it, but he soon learned that there was nothing he could do
about it. It was involuntary as getting sick.
"They're docking us now every time we're late," Diana com-
plained one night. "None of us knew it until we got our checks
today. What a lousy trick. We don't have a damn bit of status
anymore."
She then unburdened herself of all the depressing things
involved in her job. Harold kissed her to console her, both now
sitting on the couch, and in a little while his consolations turned
to love making.
Then he heard the soft familiar giggling.
He jerked his head up. Three of ,the little boys were peeking
into the window. It seemed they had known this was just the right
time to look in. When they saw Harold look up they shrieked
hysterically with pleasure, and one of them made a filthy gesture
with his finger, and they disappeared from the window.
He looked helplessly back at Diana. She was crying. The boys
began to sing from across the street, "Two, four, six, eight. Who
do we appreciate?"
He ran out into the street after them. They scattered ducking
into the shadowy doorways of the tenements, and got away. Har-
old walked back up the stairs, furious but defeated, and slammed
the door of the apartment. But before he slammed the door, he
noticed out of the corner of his eye that his name was getting
slightly soiled.
It was the night that Burtons had promised to come down to
see them. They said they would be there around eight, now it was
eight forty-five, and Harold and Diana had had two drinks while
230
CHANDLER BROSSARD
waiting for them to show up. They could not understand why the
Burtons had not appeared as they had promised.
At nine o'clock Diana said, "Maybe they lost our address,
Harold. Or maybe they can't see the number on the outside of
the house. Why don't you take a look and see if they're wandering
around lost."
Harold went outside and stood on the stairs and hopefully
searched up and down the dirty tenement street for the Burtons.
He stayed there for several minutes, thinking that the Burtons
would probably appear at any moment. But they didn't. As a final
effort he walked up to the corner and searched the long, empty
bisecting street. Walking emptily back to the apartment, he asked
himself why the Burtons had decided not to come down after all.
He thought they had been such good friends once.
At the foot of the outside stairs, he looked up, then stopped,
horrified. Two of the little boys were in the hallway, in front of
his door. One of them suddenly reached out and ripped his name
off the door, then they saw Harold. They stared at one another for
two or three seconds, before Harold sprang up the stairs and they
ran into him. He grabbed one of them, but when the other
slammed himself against Harold's legs, they both got away from
him, and as they ran down the stairs one of the boys, with a quick
backward motion of his arm, threw the paper name plate back at
Harold.
He could not now make himself chase them, and he went into
the apartment.
"Nothing doing?" Diana asked.
Harold just shook his head, avoiding her face, and sat down.
And suddenly he felt unhappier and lonelier than he had ever felt
in his life, and he wanted to die.
231
TEN POEMS
Herb Greer
i
What will I do now?
Warm mash-feel of chewed food in my throat
I can trade it soon
Bargain it for hot blasted steel to cut my belly open
Rip apart my soul and spill its life out
No one will sob for my soul
And if they did blubber over the nothing I'd leave dying
I wouldn't want their Goddam snif&ag if I could want it
Because Fd know I couldn't cry myself
And I'd rather want that
I'd rather weep myself an ocean for a car-crushed dog
Than have ten million men wet their soulblind eyes over my grave
No good crying over spilt blood
I have life's wish for itself
And I want to keep it
Push death away from the happening that is me
Know that my soul is mine
And not for sale or giving
To be spit on
And destroyed by vicious hating animals called man
As Christ's was
2
O Jesus God
When the sky is clean
All unscratched blue
Everything in me is twice as big
3
So all you swine
With your souls of redwhiteandblue pus
232
HERB GREEK
Want to make the world safe for democracy
And the other pigs
Want to make it their God damned oyster
With a pretty red star on the shell
And what, just what
Is going to happen to all of us poor bastards 1
The demos
While your stinking ocracy
And theirs
Just as foul
Get all safed up
What
Is going to happen to that little bit of demos called
Me
Come along now son
Have a big black bite of death
Let it melt on the back of your throat
Pour cold sliming into the deep of you
Feel its dulling weaking flow
Cooling the gel of your brain to watery rot
Eating your soul with its blackness
Touch the gelid crawling with the flesh of your body
Sink in it
Watch the clean flame of your life rise dim away from your face
Darken through black thickness
Go
A smothered star
Spring
Spring is here my love
Clean white root
Splitting winter grey rock
Bursting new seeds
Wind
Warming greenness
Bluebright sky
O God and life singing
4
Green soft cupping undulance of meadow
5
Jesus was a good man
But he trusted the wrong people
233
HERB GREER
A lot of bastards who adore God
And pray to God
And ask God's help
And ask God's forgiveness
And sing to God
And lift up their countenances all shitgreen from several centuries
kissing what they thought was Christ's ass but all the
time it was their own to God
But who are all too fucking stupid to believe in God
And now I can learn from Christ's torn trust
Except
It's a little late for learning
6
O the gelid hardness of an iceblue winter sky
7
O you slimy pigs
Sitting on your bloodgort butts and smiling
Knowing I can only cry the tears that spawn words
All that bitters me
Is I might die before I see you strangled by the vining steel of
your own God damned war
O if I could have the pleasure of watching blood spurting from
the sticky redness of your cut throats
I'd be sad if you went too quickly
With less of the choking bubbling screams
And flaming shriveling sear of blinding pain
Than you deserve
O if I
Dead
Could have the privilege of watching Satan's crude bony claws
Rip your miserable souls to ragged bits
8
America is a lovely green farm
On which we are raised amid plenty
Fattened like hogs on choice juicy corn
To be slaughtered for the privilege of having been fattened
To be slaughtered
(this in answer to a friend's indignant question: would you grow up and
take advantage of all the benefits of America and refuse to die for it?)
9
City something big and black at evening
With little lights
234
HERB GREEK
10
Who the Hell you trying to kid
What is all this bullshit
Shoot the guns
Kill the men
Hinky dinky carve up who
Nuts to you America
Your lousy ship of state is floating in the blood some soldier's
bullet-torn heart spurted into a ditch
I'm damned if that blood is gonna be mine
Freedom
Ideal
That air's so hot it's killing lots of men
Liberty my ass
Rearrange the letters and it comes out
Lie
When are you gonna find out
That wars are only fought and never won
When
235
THE COURTIER
John Hawkes
THE PRIESTS on three white mules descended from a cloud, and
down the walls came into the steeper end of Castiglione's city.
The beasts were for once unsure of footing and without a halt
turned their white heads toward the top while little black pointed
boots laced furtively into the short-haired flanks. The blackbreasts
made a single file, one above the other, tightly skirted and silent,
sunken into the end of a dusty journey. Chains were disarranged
at their sides, the riders having been stopped far back on the
road and kept from passing, molested by thieves. These heavenly
picadors now stuck against the white roof of the city; then turned,
high as the bell tower, and without pity picked over the tiles
below. Down there moved the decked-out sinners, beating across
smokeless chimneys. The priests arrived from over the mountains
to the toning of the morning call.
Under the sign of the winged cock chopped in relief from
the door arch, butting its broken stone tip out of antiquity, the
dismounted priests made their own sign: against the past's brazen
statuary, against the secret parts of the dead hung from the house
walls like abnormalities perpetrated upon the loins of faceless
cherubin with the power of flight. The stone was pink, the sal-
mon color of long inactivity, out of which drooped the gray
heraldry of half the populace, the hindward spectacle of meeting
dogs.
In went the priests. Striking the door, they stepped to the
side of Adeppi Abatti's mother who, with a smile on her face,
lay nursing to its death a tumor which she clasped out of sight
beneath her breast. Adeppi he sat in the darkness among the
scattered litter of his brothers and sisters crying upward from
the floor watched them cross, lift, and carry her off.
The mules stepped out gamely with the load slung between
and picked their way again up the steep, nosing the shaggy thighs
of strangers.
236
JOHN HAWKES
Adeppi Abatti remained for a time where he was, kneeling
and silent among the mewing children. Dust, and the upflung
sheets, settled again to the bed under which another son or
daughter of the vanished woman scratched against a pot or stiff-
ened boot. He heard the children fall about each other. But
Adeppi was born to be no father and now he rose, stole out to
the sunlight and in the opposite direction from the mules, ran
down over the heated stones despite the piping fierce cries that
followed from the mouth of the abandoned cave.
One of Italy's covey of fragile birds, her singing boys, eyes
still red, voice yet untried, he sought, from the dens and squint-
ing stalls, the smell of food and the cries of many older than
himself. Before long he found this new world where women roll
the whitest flour and love on the darkest straw and beribboned
men tend the medalled wounded in open shirts and gentle arms.
A bakery and a hospital joined at the end of a narrow street
blocked with carts upon which the casualties lay in the sunlight.
The ovens and operating benches merged beyond the lake-blue
plaster walls; Adeppi smelled the still wet antiseptic blankets
and the rising loaves.
He sat on the steps, watching the puttees green with mold
of the bearers passing up and down. The bundles on the litters
rolled to the gait of the boots scratching the dust and flattened
twigs spilled in the road. His haunches cooled on the stone and
the sun fell across his pointed back. From the darkness behind,
Adeppi heard the ringing of the bloody pans. At an angle to
himself the baker's women came one at a time to the doorway,
peering into the sky and at the slow shuffling of the sick into the
Ospedale, commandeered. Here was an asylum, there the sleepy
eyes.
During the state's year of dissolution, when the chains across
the city gates were smashed and smoke rolled in from the sea
and across the mountains, it was the imperative institutions that
first succumbed, the sanctuaries that were put to rout. And so,
hardly awake, the baker's women in the morning brushed flour
from their bosoms, out of their hair, and the white sack dresses
bagged slackly over nakedness as if they had quickly dressed but
a moment before. The dough they pulled in the daytime soured
at night but another day blossomed in the starving kilns. The
pure brown flour itself was smoothed as between palms in near
empty, mill-sweet bins, prostitution grown naturally in the food
supply and smelled with heart, faintly, by the citizens as it drifted
from the baker's whitewashed chimney. Adeppi Abatti's mouth
was dry. He waited to see the smoke.
237
JOHN HAWKES
"Boy, do you want to work?" The baker himself called from
a window. Adeppi looked at the fat arms leaning on the sill, at
the Neapolitan, immobile bust.
"What does he want to work for?" asked the baker's young-
est woman, "he's come to play with the soldiers."
The man rose steadily on arms to the elbows overlaid with
plaster, and disappeared.
Adeppi stayed close to the entrance of the hospital, warding
off the sentries by night, counting by day the number carried
inside and placed at floor level along the walls. Of the two white
houses, equally life-begetting and equally infected, Adeppi first
chose for orphanage the renovated building of the church, whose
choir stalls were filled with the wounded. Prostitutes across the
way and surgeons were rightly mated, comforting, to the boy.
When Adeppi first stepped inside, it was morning again.
Two men entered the iron-patched yard, slow-gaited, stooped to
the weight of the stretcher they carried with handles across then-
shoulders, as a coffin or African queen was carried on humps
nearly drained of water. They stopped at the smooth blocks ris-
ing into the church, unable to climb farther, and the one in front
slipped from under his load, rested the end of the stretcher on
the stones. He began to smoke while the rear bearer stood in
traces, arms pulled toward the ground by the sway of human
gravity.
Adeppi crept close to the third who lay on canvas, hovering
in the injured's sight, for the man, on his back, was staring into
the sun. He had been sick over the side of the stretcher, the
blankets were packed thickly and drawn close about his wounded
neck. The first carrier turned around, snuffing the cigarette on
his puttee, and watched the child breathing into the severed,
horizontal face. Then from his belt he unhooked a heart-shaped
water bottle and leaned forward, at the same time pulling forth
his bandanna with which to wipe the drinker's mouth.
Adeppi saw the water splash and a few drops roll from flesh
to the cloth; and the tongue, with greed, unconscious of pain,
dart suddenly and glide across the lips. He heard the loaves
pushed from the baker's window on a board to cool. When they
started again, he followed. Holding to the edge of the stretcher,
his fingers caught aways below the blanket, Adeppi Abatti trailed
into the cool darknes where a regiment lay waiting to heal
and asked for his mother.
He saw three priests turn and hide behind the altar.
This stretcher was propped on two sawhorses. He stood by
it in a dark more heavy since the sun must pierce the red cross
flag hung outside each window, as well as the stained glass. For
238
JOHN HAWKES
a while they did nothing; then they pulled the blankets from the
soldier. Even then Adeppi stayed at his side. With a razor they
cut away one of the green fleecy legs of the britches, an officer
at the head of the stretcher, another stooping over the middle.
Adeppi looked at the brown limb, clothed on top, booted on the
bottom, and looked down the rows of men settled on the floor.
Sabers, trench knives, and unlaced shoes were stacked at the
foot of the sleepers, piled at hand for anyone walking on tiptoe
down the aisles. There were bandaged heads, some wore cages
on their arms.
The knife slit harmlessly, without sound, across the leg. Then
the other way, in the direction of a cross, merely burning a thin
line down the skin. Adeppi reached out his hand; he touched the
unfamiliar warm flatness of the thigh, for only a moment, as if
both hands had come against the breast of an animal fallen in a
ditch, his own bare feet ankle deep in roadside water. The sun
issued evenly from the flesh under his hand. Then, frightened,
he looked at the doctor and quickly pulled away his fingers, lest
they too fall beneath the blade.
"Hey, little boy," while the cutting continued, a voice echoed
from the furthest soldier quietly bedridden on the stone, "sing
for us!"
The oldest Abatti had come into the world's platoon of broken
lances and even while he smelled the iodine, he heard the far-
off cries of women as the hot crumbs burned their palms. The
child's homeless nightmare flowered to just such disaster the
need for loneliness, deprivation, flight, these were warmly nursed
for Adeppi Abatti and in a single night he found himself secured.
We go begging after the nimble legs of a pestilence: until it turns
and bites. It is these pangs, and even better, their gratification,
that makes the waist-high street singer open his mouth to yowl.
When they blew out the light he was creeping from soldier
to soldier, sitting cross-legged between the bodies, lifting a cart-
ridge pouch, a bandoleer, a badge, from the piles at their feet.
Behind the church the sky was pale with darkness, luminously
blue beyond the balconies, and the cypress in the graveyard
glistened, reaching for the steeple. Suddenly he was trapped by
the ankle, a match came forward lighting up a yellow hand. A
wide smile on his captor's face, and slowly Adeppi was released.
After that he did not move, fastened to the soldier in the
darkness, watching the darkness. And from time to time this
soldier, with a small-arms bullet still in his neck, struck more
matches, looking for him. The doors to the church were open,
the hospitalized lay exposed to the gray shadows in the court
beyond.
239
JOHN HAWKES
Toward morning, hearing the soldier Gino snore, Adeppi
licked his lips and began, stealthily and for the first time, to hum.
Sevilla, Venezia, the voice of sunken cities and for the love
of a woman he tasted the first few notes and the chin lifted,
feeling for the octave like a gypsy reaching out, upward on his
mandolin, paddling the air. Still he did not sing. But unmistak-
ably he had the flashing eyes, the lungs to burst; the snoring
stopped and, perfectly quiet in the darkness, fingering the band-
age on his neck, Gino listened.
From then on, Gino watched him sharply, kept him close by,
and whether at noon or midnight seemed to be waiting for the
tune, shrill sounds to ring with the bells. Adeppi was pleased to
find himself so guarded, and was aware also of the new voice
murmuring: the secret of the throat that would allow his stand-
ing under windows late at night. There was a tingling in his
vocal chords.
Gino was finally able to use his leg and though the wound
on his neck was unhealed, it had been cauterized, and only a
gradual swelling gave him pain. The soldier did not rejoin his
regiment. Instead, and applauded by the surgeons, he stayed to
work about the hospital during the months that were fragrant
and when a few grapes began twitching in the heat, behind the
hospital on the graveyard vines. Adeppi worked also, dressed ^in
a discarded garrison cap and a red cross band tied around his thin,
otherwise uncovered arm. In this period of Gino's convalescence
he was quick to learn and peered close to study the physicians
with their scant equipment, their broken razor blades, unearth
a vein Adeppi, with an effort, a sympathy miraculous, developed
in himself a wound, until one elbow was carried in a large sling.
His other hand was of not much use since his job was to unbutton
the shirts, pants, and remove the shoes of fresh casualties. Thus
disabled, without a smile, he followed Gino at medical chores,
upon which the soldier flung himself as if stitching his own cuts
in the sides of others. During the daytime, ' the child invalid
squatted beside the man clever with quick and painless hands, and
Adeppi started making noises, pressing tight his lips, frowning
to catch what melody might escape from his nose. He made these
sounds despite the hurry around him and the occasional weeping
of grown men and the cries, allowed them to slip out though
some might hear. He threw away the sling. The more Gino's
throat swelled the less he talked. But he listened to Adeppi's
whispering and while holding in both hands a brimming porce-
lain dish, still looked around to nod.
240
JOHN HAWKES
Gino took him out at night. Soldier and boy sat under the
partially bearing vines. They did not speak, merely sang at each
other, or rather Gino tried to sing while Adeppi watched the
movements of the lips. Laughter came from the bakery, a slap-
ping as of fists beating into bags of flour. But from the castle-
shaped heights of the city, not a head peered down to shout at
the gruff troubadour and little boy. Gino could not carry a tune,
yet snatches of slow song, on a terrible raw voice, continued to
the patient beat of the soldier's finger. It was these songs that
Adeppi learned. Gino, with puffy throat, low soft teeth and curl-
ing hair, throwing out his chest, sang with hampered, rumbling
desire; he waited for the clear voice at his side to one day start,
and in the middle he would break off himself and finish the song
by the simple waving of the finger, shaking it at the startled
nightingale.
Ill
There was wine as well as bread in the bakery. For weeks
Gino visited there, going just at dusk and for some reason re-
turning before dark. On these few hour visits he paid his atten-
tions to the Neapolitan, hardly speaking to the white-smocked
girls, until the two men began in a formal manner to exchange
presents. Gino's hidden motive seemed not the usual one, he was
forcing a slow way into the baker's licentious livelihood, not so
much for himself but for Adeppi. And it was only when the boy
began to accompany him that he consented to stay awhile after
the evening meal and after the shutters closed.
But the first time Gino brought Adeppi, the baker met them at
the back door and said abruptly, "Take him home. Immediately."
Hand in hand they stood in the yard. Gino seemed to hold
him up by the hand, grinning, speechless, reluctant to lose this
opportunity. A starving guinea hen perched on the run of the
hooded, sealed well, the setting sun streaked across the clay.
Behind the baker, inside, was a family, close-knit and warm as
any family of differently aged females. Yet more to be desired
since these members were unrelated and intimacies could be
imagined between strangers. Outside, man and boy stood in the
shadow of ancient buttresses in which no one moved, with only
the streets free to them or the disinfected floor of the hospital.
"Older than you think, Padrone" Gino murmured. And with-
out waiting for an answer, he obsequiously slid forward and
squeezed past the baker into the cool wood-smelling darkness,
dragging Adeppi over the threshold. Adeppi put his cap on the
table. The baker scowled, then followed them. He fastened the
shutters. After a time he put a liter of white wine on the table,
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JOHN HAWKES
but did not touch his own glass. Adeppi smelled the heat dying
from the ovens beyond the wall. The three men sat without a
light.
" Salute" said Gino and his eyes closed. He leaned forward
with both arms on the table. The bandage on his neck began to
throb and he watched the baker, made signs, proudly, for the
Neapolitan to take notice of his charge.
Without talking, and with not a woman in the room, a kind
of plotting or bargaining vaporized among them, as if the first
to speak would plunge them in proposal, liberation, and their
separate sleep. It was as if each one of them, not just the baker,
knew the number of a room, the name of an occupant, the street,
and the number of allotted hours, and waited only a chance to
tell his fellows. Gino clasped his hands, and with two stubby
fingers together built a steeple, to amuse the boy, then collapsed
it. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve. At last the baker looked at
him sideways: "Five," he whispered, "each with a petticoat."
The old man had to marvel himself. He reached across the table
in the darkness for a glass, drank down Adeppi's. "And right
now," whispering more quickly as if proposing they force the
door, "all five . . . available." He clapped Adeppi on the shoulder.
Not one of the men could see the others but waited, sealed
around the table, while this fluid dreaming grew, and the baker,
breathing heavier, opened all avenues.
"It's a madam's right," considered Gino through his half
open mouth, "to sleep first with her customers." His long hair
curled into his eyes. "Padrone" he said, "what are you getting
at?" He could feel the old man relieve his breast, excited as the
women he described.
When the baker lit a lantern, stood, and picked it up, both
men discovered that Adeppi had left the table. They saw him,
barefooted, small, with gleaming face, crouched at the door that
led to the upstairs, his nose and staring eyes pressed into the
door jamb. The baker chuckled. Then, twirling the lamp and
once more turning to Gino, he whispered more secretive than
ever, his forehead suddenly flush against the flame in the glass.
"Will you look at one?"
"Not tonight," shouted Gino. And then carelessly, "The boy,"
he explained, "if s time he went to bed."
They returned to the hospital but did not go inside. They
sat on the steps where they first met. They could not sleep here;
they watched, wide-awake, and Adeppi's shoulder rested for a
moment against Gino's knee. The soldier sat one step higher. The
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JOHN HAWKES
dew had started out of the stone, windows were quiet behind the
wooden mantles.
"After a minute/' Gino patted the boy's shorn head, "we'll
go back, eh?"
Adeppi tried to answer, but he could not speak. Each time
he uttered instead a few frightened random notes of one of the
songs, broke off, clutched at the army trousers.
"Wait," Gino smiled broadly, his ugly voice trying to imitate
Adeppi's chirping, "this is the night!"
He kept a steady watch on the bakery, smoking quickly.
Once he stole into the hospital and returned, knowing well the
supply chests, with an extra fresh wad of cotton stuffed in the
bandage on his neck. Again he took Adeppi's hand and they
crossed the few paces of the moonlit square. As they walked,
Adeppi pulled wildly, squeaking, making the soft scuffle of a little
fighting animal. He looked up at the rooftops. Gino held him
tightly.
Gino robbed the baker of his guitar. With his hand clapped
over Adeppi's mouth, holding the boy noiselessly off the floor, he
crept back into the room where Adeppi had drunk wine and
heard the word seduction, and lifted the guitar from its peg on
the wall. Outside, he slipped the cord over his neck, regardless
of the wound, and as he walked the instrument hit his side, and
unstrummed issued a hollow musical sound.
No one saw them, the guards had disappeared. In front of
the bakery, close to the shadow, Gino struck his feet far apart
and caught Adeppi by the collar. He 
